• Military Recruitment Issues
• Conscription
• Immigration
• discrimination
• chattel slavery
• white supremacy
• backdoor draft
• Segregation

De jure segregation, the backdoor draft, and elite immunity are part of a recurring cycle of American inequality. As the U.S. threatens new war in Iran, history again points to who will bear the cost—and who will benefit.

   espanol - 

June 28, 2025 / Sharon Kyle / LA Progressive - From housing discrimination to military recruitment, from school segregation to foreign policy, some issues in American life may seem disconnected—mere fragments of a chaotic system. But upon closer examination, these seemingly unrelated policies and practices are bound by a common root: the deliberate consolidation of power by a wealthy, white ruling class. 

From the very inception of the United States, a privileged elite has engineered laws, institutions, and cultural narratives to preserve its dominance—initially through racialized land seizures and redistribution, the brutal system of chattel slavery, and exclusionary immigration policies; later through Jim Crow segregation; and today through more insidious mechanisms like militarized borders, discriminatory policing, mass incarceration, exploitative labor practices, and the weaponization of poverty. At the core lies structural white supremacy—an evolving, interlocking system of racial and class oppression that resists democracy, adapts with time, and refuses to cede power. 

Today, as the Trump administration escalates tensions with Iran following the bombing of that nation’s nuclear facilities, we once again stand at the precipice of war. If military conflict erupts, it will be poor and working-class Americans—especially people of color and rural whites—who will be the first to serve, fight, and die. They are overrepresented in the armed forces but not by coincidence, by design. Economic hardship, lack of opportunity, and targeted recruitment strategies ensure that the burden of war continues to fall on those already most oppressed by the system.

• sexual harassment
• JROTC
• Mike Baker
• Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

 The high school classes taught by military veterans have been under scrutiny following a Times investigation that found repeated instances of sexual predation and little oversight.

  español - 

Sept. 26, 2025 / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mike Baker / New York Times - A government report released Friday on sexual abuse in high school Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs estimated that dozens, and potentially hundreds, of instructors have been accused of sexually abusing or harassing students in the past five years.

J.R.O.T.C. programs operate in more than 3,400 public schools, where veterans teach teenagers about topics such as military history, life skills and marksmanship to half a million students each year. But the instructors long operated with little oversight and limited training on being a teacher.

A series of New York Times articles in 2022 found that 33 instructors had been criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving students over a five-year period and that many students were being automatically enrolled into what is supposed to be an elective course.

• JROTC
• JAMRS
• ASVAB
• Opt Out
• Counter Recruitment in High Schools
• School Militarism
• Beyond Opt-Out

https://nnomy.org/2025ABTSKit/

The  U.S. funding of Israel’s war in Gaza and last year's sending of 100 U.S. troops to Israel to staff anti-missile sites has given students across the country a reason to question the presence of military programs in their high schools.

Many do not want to participate in a service that they believe is tied to a government complicit in “ethnic cleansing” and that has caused the deaths of many innocents, including non-combative women and children.

• NATO
• school militarization

  español  - 

July 18, 2025 / Nolan Higdon & Sydney Sullivan / CounterPunch -  During President Donald Trump’s second term, education has remained a central battleground in American politics. Republicans claim that classrooms have become hotbeds of “woke” indoctrination, accusing educators of promoting progressive agendas and tolerating antisemitism. In contrast, Democrats argue that conservatives are systematically defunding and dismantling public and higher education precisely because it teaches values like diversity, equity, and inclusion. While these partisan skirmishes dominate headlines, they obscure a much deeper and more enduring issue that encompasses all of these issues and more: the influence of corporate and military power on public education.