Frontpage - The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

Parent Category: NNOMY Pat Elder Hits: 3438

Pat Elder | Originally published in Popular Resistance - June 29, 2017

Wars start in our high schools and this is where we can end them.

This year the Army’s goal is to recruit 80,000 active duty and reserve soldiers. The Navy is trying to sign up 42,000; the Air Force is looking for 27,000, and the Marines hope to bring on 38,000. That comes to 187,000.  The Army National Guard will also attempt to lure 40,000.

Military youth swearing inThese soldiers are needed to maintain the status quo for a year, aside from a last-minute increase of 6,000 additional Army soldiers added by President Obama.

The Pentagon is attempting to recruit somewhere around 227,000 troops this year, and they’re having one hell of a time finding them, even while they enjoy unprecedented physical access to kids in our high schools and equally unprecedented exposure to their minds through popular culture.  In 2010 there were 30.7 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24. 227,000 works out to .73% of prime recruiting age.

The military is forced to relax several standards to bring in soldiers. They say today’s kids are either too fat or too dumb or too misbehaved to make the grade.  They claim youth are misinformed about life in the military, but we know most youth don’t want to relinquish their freedom and risk their lives to serve in a military that is overly enthusiastic about going to war.

Military Recruiting in the United States Hits: 3215

Pat Elder |  Counter-Recruit Press | July 2017

Leading health organization calls for ending school recruiting

 

In 2012 the American Public Health Association, (APHA), one of the country’s foremost health organizations and publisher of the influential American Journal of Public Health, adopted a policy statement calling for the cessation of military recruiting in public elementary and secondary schools.

APHA demands the elimination of the No Child Left Behind Act requirement that high schools both be open to military recruiters and turn over contact information on all students to recruiters and eliminating practices that encourage military recruiters to approach adolescents in US public high schools to enlist in the military services.1

APHA identifies several compelling public health reasons in calling for the cessation of military recruiting in the public schools. Most importantly, they argue that adolescents experience limitations in judging risk at this stage in life and they are unable to fully evaluate the consequences of making a choice to enter the military. The pre-eminent health organization points to the greater likelihood that the youngest soldiers will experience increased mental health risks, including stress, substance abuse, anxiety syndromes, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicide.

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 3653

Sarah Jaffe | Originally published in Truthout - March 24, 2017

 

Rory Fanning speaks in Japan on a Veterans for Peace trip in 2016. (Photo: Yoshiaki Kawakami)Donald Trump's budget slashes social programs while inflating an already massive military budget, meaning that for many people in already underserved and underemployed communities, the military will be the closest thing to a welfare state they have.

Today we bring you a conversation with Rory Fanning, a veteran and conscientious objector, and author of the book Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger's Journey Out of the Military and Across America. His work centers on opposing US militarism at home. He is also the coauthor, with Craig Hodges, of the new book Long Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter. He lives in Chicago, which has become ground zero for military recruiting in the country, and often speaks at high schools there. "There are more kids signed up in Chicago JROTC and NJROTC than any other school district in the country; ten thousand kids: 50 percent Latino and 45 percent Black," he told me. We spoke about opposing Trump's military buildup, the roles that veterans and athletes can play in movements for change, and the long tradition of imperialism in the US.

Sarah Jaffe: We will circle back, certainly, to talk about military recruiting, but because we are in the wake of Donald Trump's first quasi-budget (and it has a lot of cuts to social programs in order to put all of this money into the military), I wanted to talk to you about the role the military plays in this right-wing nationalist political buildup and how people can resist that.

Rory Fanning: I think it is important first to note that this request by this budget, particularly through defense, is not unprecedented. It really only takes us back to 2011 numbers when they kind of set a cap on military spending. But Obama asked for $700 billion for defense in 2012. I think Trump is asking for $600 billion, which is an increase of $56 billion over the previous year. It is still more military spending than the next thirteen countries combined. One of the most alarming things about this budget is the number of active-duty Army troops that are going to be increased. It is going to go from 475,000 to about 540,000 at a time when there is really no existential threat to the United States. It is kind of ridiculous. I think that is just going to mean more intense recruiting in the most vulnerable communities in the US.

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 3408

Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft | Originally Published in Draft NOtices, January-March 2017

In July 2016, a letter in support of draft registration for women, signed by 16 organizations, was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. The joint letter was coordinated by the national American Civil Liberties Union and was sent on ACLU letterhead. Its signers included, among others, the Service Women’s Action Network, American Association of University Women, Human Rights Watch, NAACP, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and National Organization for Women. Their goal in urging the extension of draft registration to women was very narrow: advancing the cause of gender equality.

The fact that groups like the ACLU have historically opposed military conscription in the U.S. made the letter all the more frustrating to those who have been trying for decades to end draft registration and terminate the Selective Service System. In response to the ACLU-coordinated letter, COMD and a number of other organizations wrote and sent the following statement to various signers of the ACLU-coordinated letter. Because of space limitations, this is a slightly abridged version of the statement.

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 3348

Mark Karlin | Originally published in Truthout - February 19, 2017

Recruiters from the Harrisburg Recruiting Company assisted with the Youth and Education Services (Y.E.S.) October 8, 2010, at the Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Christine June / Harrisburg US Army Recruiting Batallion)Delving into the underbelly of the US military, longtime antiwar activist Pat Elder reveals how military recruiters are assisted by the Department of Education, the film industry, the video game industry and mainstream media in order to fuel never-ending war -- using the country's most vulnerable young people as fodder. Get the book Military Recruiting in the United States by donating to Truthout now!

Military recruiting is the beast that feeds the US military empire that spans the globe. It is unacceptable that many US schools allow military recruiters extensive access to young people who will become fodder for the Pentagon's acts of war around the world, Pat Elder argues in this interview with Truthout.

Mark Karlin: Is it safe to say that like the Roman Empire, the United States military is the power that futilely tries to secure the US as an empire in its waning days of hegemony?

Pat Elder: Our military, like Rome's, secures a dying empire while accelerating its demise.

The behemoth US military is a cancer on the national body politic. It has led to financial ruin while contributing to the destruction of our cherished constitutional separation of powers. We've become a violent people, addicted to war.

America is witnessing the "grave implications" of the "economic, political and even spiritual" influence of the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about. A single F-35 fighter jet costs more than the budget of a medium-sized city's school system and the US is building 2,500 of them while the schools crumble.

Pat Elder. (Photo: Counter-Recruit)Our military is a double-edged sword. One side of the blade is the unconscionable use of force to "protect" American investments. Major General Smedley Butler framed it so eloquently: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

Parent Category: NNOMY CR Reports Hits: 5276

Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford -

The counter recruitment effort in U-46 School District, which is the second largest school district in Illinois after Chicago, was begun several years ago by Bettina Perillo. She is a member of Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren in Elgin, and a member of Fox Valley Citizens for Peace and Justice. The effort began with a counter recruitment table at Elgin High School once a month.

As more volunteers joined in and the work gained sponsorship from the two above-named groups, the effort ran into criticism and active opposition from school administrators. Supporters went to the school district board meetings to express the need for counter recruitment in the high schools, meetings were held with school district officials including the school district lawyer, and meetings were held with members of the administration at Elgin High School. With help from AFSC in Chicago, who gave advice and helped speak to the school district board about the legal requirement for equal access to high schools that are visited by military recruiters, the counter recruitment effort was given equal access.

Since then, counter recruitment tables have been at Elgin High School and Larkin High School (also in Elgin) once a month, and for a couple of years also were at South Elgin High School.

Parent Category: NNOMY NNOMY Network News Hits: 4786

 Winning the Peace is a national leafleting campaign.

In cooperation with War Resisters' League and the Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities, The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth inaugurates the first national youth intervention against school militarization and military recruitment in U.S. National public schools to be offered for smartphones and mobile devices. Winning the Peace begins as a national intervention in our high schools as part of the Week of Actions Against the Militarisation of Youth, a third year project of War Resisters' International (WRI).

  1. Pat Elder #NoWar2016
  2. Bringing Truth to the Youth: The Counter-Recruitment Movement, Then and Now
  3. How 55,000 Female Veterans Ended Up On the Streets
  4. House votes down proposal to defund the Selective Service System
  5. Poverty, Militarism and the Public Schools
  6. Thanks for Your Service, but Don't Tell the Kids About It (We Need Them to Enlist)
  7.  These Grannies Are Helping to Plug the School-to-Military Pipeline at Its Source
  8. This Ex–Army Ranger Goes on Missions to High Schools—but Not to Recruit
  9. Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools
  10. 2nd International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth
  11. Education Action: Reining in Military Recruiting
  12. Urge Congress to support H.R. 4523

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