14/09/2005 / F. Timothy Martin / The Indypendent - Hundreds of parents, students and school board members are organizing groups around the country to protest aggressive military recruiting activities. Consider these recent actions:
On Aug. 30, a dozen people in Pittsfield, Mass. marched in the rain to protest high school recruiting in their community. The group handed out fliers advertising a public forum entitled ‘Is the Military Your Best Option?’On Aug. 29, Latino activists in San Diego launched a door-to-door campaign to inform Latino parents how military recruiters use information about their children. Latinos make up about one-third of the total recruits in Southern California.
On Aug. 28, 300 mostly Latino protestors marched through East Los Angeles to rally against the Iraq war and military recruitment on college campuses.
The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
Revisiting Our Outrage
The Revisiting Our Outrage category is a visit back to 2005 when the Iraq war motivated a confluence of activists extending from Boomers to Millennials into the streets in protest but also drove counter-recruitment in its "movement" moment. As we experience an international pandemic in 2020 we can be reminded that the Iraq War was an extended pandemic of perpetual war from 2003 to 2014 and led us into a time where our wars have gone silent and are now normalized with our citizenry.
"Revisiting Our Outrage," is a look back to activist reports in reaction to the Bush era Iraq war mobilizations, and the resultant school demilitarization activism and resistance that took place before we descended into the fog of protracted cultural militarization in the following years. The reports listed below also measure the distance that we have traveled that transformed a counter-recruitment movement into a proactive peace practice.
20/08/2007 / anscr / Americus Times-Recorder - A newly formed group, Peace Action Team (PAT) holds a forum from 7-9 p.m. Aug. 6 at Lake Blackshear Regional Library to discuss military recruitment in the area high schools. The event is free and open to the public; high school students and parents are encouraged to attend.
PAT is a group of concerned Christians who have come together in Americus to explore and implement ways of equality, peace and justice for all.
The forum will be facilitated by Christina Repoley, peace education coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The local PAT is collaborating with AFSC to develop ways to inform high school students and parents about the degree of access military recruiters have in the public schools and the methods often employed to entice students to enlist. The forum will also help equip those interested in working with the public schools and young people to counter military recruitment and find viable alternatives to military service.
A 20-minute video — “Before You Enlist!” — will be screened at the forum that documents the risks and misconceptions of military life, explores conscientious objection, selective service registration and U.S. militarism around the world.
23/10/2008 / Javier C. Hernandez / New York Times - Barbara G. Harris, 72, looked her troops in the eye. Staring out at mohawks on one side of the room, salt-white bobs on the other, she said in her delicately firm way: "Hold your ground. You have every right to stand there, and if anyone tells you differently, tell them your rights."
A retired teacher and longtime peace advocate, Ms. Harris was tutoring 20 new enlistees in the art of "counter-recruitment," her personal crusade to block recruiters for the United States military from contacting New York City high school students.
She had assembled the group in her war room, a space near Union Square lent by a sympathetic organization, where plants and antiwar signs line the walls, in preparation for a blitz Thursday evening at parent-teacher conferences, where Ms. Harris and the others plan to stand on sidewalks outside school buildings armed with opt-out forms and their best sales pitches.
"You don't have a whole lot of time - that's the point," Ms. Harris told the volunteers, who ranged in age from college students to the Granny Peace Brigade, a New York group of older women started in 2005 to protest the Iraq war. "Don't be frustrated by that. They do stop."
25/10/2005 / Anya Kamenetz / Village Voice - One Saturday this summer, Monique Dols, a Columbia University senior and a national leader of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), saw again why she has been working so hard to reach potential military recruits. “We were handing out flyers for an event with the brother of a military resister,” Dols says of that day in Washington Heights. “Three 16-year-old [ROTC] cadets walked by in full military uniform. We started talking to them, and it turned out they were completely against the war. They had joined because it was an after-school program that provided structure and something for them to do. The priorities of a society that puts millions into military recruitment and continually cuts funding for after-school programs, that’s backward, and that’s the reality people are responding to.”
10/09/2005 / Mike Rhodes / Indybay.org - A march and rally was held in downtown Fresno today (September 10, 2005) to encourage students to "opt-out" of being contacted by military recruiters. Organizers for the march said that under The No Child Left Behind Act public schools are obligated to furnish the contact information of students to the federal government for use by military recruiters. At the rally in front of the Navy recruiting center, participants were told that many students and parents may not know they have the legal option of opting out by signing a form requesting that the school administration not supply their personal contact information for military recruitment purposes. Schools are not financially penalized for informing students and parents that they have the right to opt out from being contacted by military recruiters.
16/12/2007 / Bradley@RiseUp / Santa Cruz IMC - Santa Cruz County activists, including the Santa Cruz gaggle of the Raging Grannies, demonstrated for peace in front of the Military Recruitment Center in Capitola on December 15th. The last time the Grannies sang songs at the recruitment center on June 26th, they refused to leave the entrance of the Army recruiters after being denied entry into the building and were eventually arrested and escorted to the police station in handcuffs. This time around, the Navy and other branches of the military wanted to avoid dealing with the Raging Grannies, so they, "Closed on December 15th, 2007 in support of gathering CARE package materials to send to the Sailors who are unavailable to be home during the holidays."
The following information was distributed on flyers to people who attended the demonstration or passed by on foot, and in same cases given to car passengers.
180,000 American troops are in Iraq or Afghanistan, dodging bullets and bombs. Thousands more are away from their families, on duty abroad. All of them are...
14/08/2007 / Haleakala Times - When it comes to military recruitment in public schools, no child’s information is left inaccessible.
According to a brief section of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), any school receiving federal funding is required to provide military recruiters with middle and high school students’ names, phone numbers, and addresses upon request. Meanwhile, the Pentagon maintains a Department of Defense (DoD) database known as the Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies Recruiting Database that contains extensive information on approximately 30 million Americans ages 16 to 25.
The database is updated daily and includes information such as social security number, grade point average, ethnicity, areas of study, height, weight, email address, selective service registration, and phone number. Individuals may opt out from being included in this database but must repeat this process upon changing address. Many objectors claim that this database violates the Federal Privacy Act.
The military also uses the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery as a means of information gathering. The “most widely used multiple aptitude test in the world,” the DoD develops and maintains the test and more than half of America’s high schools participate. Students’ scores determine which occupations best suit them. Taking the ASVAB is also a requirement for military enlistment.
- Hundreds of High School Students Rally Against Recruiting
- Youths Defy Attacks, Protest at Recruiting Station
- Pittsburgh Stands Up to Military Recruitment on "National Stand Down Day”
- Group protests Marine recruiters in Berkeley
- SDSU Activists Protest Military Recruiters
- Not Your Soldier Day of Action