The Peace Club at Tracy HS in Cerritos, CA is a small but powerful tribe. Our club meets on campus every Thursday at lunch under the leadership of club president Kenny Fletcher and Vice President, Melissa Alvarez. Before we meet, our club officers meet and make the agenda and plan all activities. We also have time to discuss issues going on the world and even though we don’t see the military on campus all the time. We talk about the war and military recruitment and are making plans for Peace Week right now. We just had career day when the Marines were on campus, but we were on campus too with a table and passed out brochures. Earlier this school year, we sent care packages to our troops who are deployed overseas and recently arrived immigrants from El Salvador. We do this so we can help others with the little we have. We also do activities like marching in parades, so we can spread the positive meaning of peace.
The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
Student Voices
The Student Voices Category includes articles coming from High School and College youth that are forming peace clubs and are involved in activism organizing in their schools and communities.
Eduardo Perez / Vice President -
The peace club at Millikan High School in Long Beach, CA, is one of many high school clubs here on our campus. We meet up every Monday during lunch in Ms. Gombrich’s room and we discuss and organize peace activities. Our school is lucky to have a Peace Academy of over 600 students who have chosen to focus on peace studies under the leadership of Ms. Gombrich.
So far, we planned and participated in the Veterans Day and the Martin Luther King Day Parades. These activities were fun and showed me that the task creating activities and spreading the word of peace is not that hard. A lot of people on campus assisted us and supported our cause. Even though we are a new club and small, we have made plans for the rest of the year that we hope will get
noticed around the whole school, like the Teen Memorial. We will put up memorial markers with the names and faces of the over 500 teenager that are the casualties from in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This display points out what it really means to enlist in the military today. Many people don’t even know why we are at war anymore and not knowing makes it easier to sell the war as a solution for the problems in the USA.
Ashley Robles and Diana Gonzalez -
From the suburbs of Los Angeles in Southern California, The Manenberg Artesia AIDS and Peace Project (MAAPP) club at Artesia High School aims to inform our school and community about HIV, and AIDS and promote peace. Our school, for many years, has had an exchange program with Manenberg High School, a township in Capetown, South Africa.
We meet every Thursday at lunch in room 103, and with the help of our teachers and community sponsors, we discuss issues related to peace and current events related to South Africa including HIV and AIDS, and how it affects so many people. Our club presidents Ashley and Diana start every meeting with news updates. Sometimes this includes a report from our sister school in Mannenberg. After school every other week, we go to a Food Bank , which is part of AIDS Project LA and help dispense food for AIDS patients in Long Beach.