The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

Rebuttal to Groups Supporting Female Draft Registration

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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.

The US Military, Like Ancient Rome's, Is Trying to Secure a Dying Empire

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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."

Counter recruitment continues in U-46 school district, despite opposition that has generated a new ‘Parents for a Say’ initiative

Parent Category: NNOMY CR Reports Hits: 5651

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.

National Leafleting Inaugurates for International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth

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 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).

Pat Elder #NoWar2016

Parent Category: NNOMY SCHOOL BASED COUNTER RECRUITMENT Hits: 3485

World Beyond War organized a national conference called NO WAR 2016 at the American University in Washington, D.C., on September 23rd to 26th OF 2016. TheRealNews livestreamed video and video documented all the conference presenters. Pat Elder representing The National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, spoke about the militarization of American public schools by Pentagon programs designed to recruit youth into military service.

Bringing Truth to the Youth: The Counter-Recruitment Movement, Then and Now

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Emily Yates  | Originally published in Truthout - July 16, 2016

Recruiters from the Harrisburg Recruiting Company participate in an event for high school students with Youth and Education Services at the Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania, October 8, 2010. Military recruitment has targeted schools increasingly effectively while the counter-recruitment movement is struggling to keep up. (Photo: Christine June / US Army)"Back when we started, recruiters were just blatantly lying to the kids," said Susan Quinlan, the co-founder and volunteer coordinator of the peace and justice group, Better Alternatives for Youth–Peace (BAY-Peace). For 12 years, she's been bringing teams of youth into Oakland, California, schools to inform students about deceptive military recruiting practices. In that time, she has seen the recruitment climate in schools change drastically -- and not necessarily for the better.

"It used to be that recruiters would make promises to the kids that were patently untrue, like offering benefits that wouldn't materialize, for example, so our job was to go in and say, 'No, that's not true,'" Quinlan said. Then over the years, as the wars grew increasingly unpopular and recruitment dropped, the military beefed up the benefits and incentives to more closely match its promises. Many student activists saw that as a victory, she said, and as a result, the work lost urgency.

"The recruiters are still being dishonest," she said, "but it's become less obvious. And they haven't gone away. Now, recruitment is back up where it was before we started, and we're losing our funding."

How 55,000 Female Veterans Ended Up On the Streets

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Claire Schaeffer-Duffy | Originally published in National Catholic Reporter - June 28, 2016

Recent legislative efforts to extend draft registration to young women have raised an old conundrum for some feminists. Does pursuit of gender equality include support for universal conscription?

While not all feminists are anti-militarists, opposition to war and militarism has been a strong current within the women's movement. Prominent suffragists like Quaker Alice Paul, and Barbara Deming, a feminist activist and thinker of the 1960s and '70s, were ardent pacifists. Moreover, feminist critique has often regarded the military as a hierarchical, male-dominated institution promoting destructive forms of power.

In late April, the House Armed Services Committee voted for an amendment to the national defense bill that would extend draft registration -- already a requirement for men -- to women ages 18-26. The amendment was later dropped, but in mid-June, the Senate approved a similar provision in its version of the national defense bill.

Among the amendment's staunchest defenders was Armed Services Committee member Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).

"If we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, then we should support a universal conscription," Speier told the political website The Hill in April.

  1. House votes down proposal to defund the Selective Service System
  2. Poverty, Militarism and the Public Schools
  3. Thanks for Your Service, but Don't Tell the Kids About It (We Need Them to Enlist)
  4.  These Grannies Are Helping to Plug the School-to-Military Pipeline at Its Source
  5. This Ex–Army Ranger Goes on Missions to High Schools—but Not to Recruit
  6. Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools
  7. 2nd International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth
  8. Education Action: Reining in Military Recruiting
  9. Urge Congress to support H.R. 4523
  10. How to Counter Recruitment and De-Militarize Schools
  11. Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed for the Military at School?
  12. SkoolLive - School Jive - A new, interactive digital invasion of our high schools by corporations and the military

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