War Resisters Inject Truth into Military Recruitment 

by Eleanor J. Bader June 20, 2011 

On The Issues Magazine

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2011summer/2011summer_bader.php

The setting changes but the scene does not: Men and
women in crisply pressed uniforms enter public high
schools across the country and cajole the teenagers
they meet into signing on the dotted line to serve
Uncle Sam.

Thanks to Section 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act
of 2002, recruiters from the Air Force, Army, Coast
Guard, Marine Corps and Navy have the same access to
secondary school students as college recruiters or
potential employers. This, in concert with mandatory
Selective Service registration for all 18-year-old
males and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery [ASVAB] exam that is given to nearly
three-quarters of a million high school juniors and
seniors each year, has prompted many domestic peace
activists to organize opposition to the militarization
of youth. They advocate "truth-in-recruiting," arguing
that lofty promises made at the time of enlistment --
extensive travel, scholarships or an easy route to U.S.
citizenship -- often fail to materialize once service
begins.

What's more, these peace activists say that they are
paying particular attention to female recruits, warning
them of potential pitfalls: The risks associated with
wartime service even in "non-combat" positions, as well
as the too-common experience of sexual harassment and
assault by unit supervisors and peers. Little-Known
Facts

The War Resisters League, an 88-year-old national group
with more than 25 chapters across the U.S., targets
students and, when possible, tables at schools to
provide little-known facts about the military: One in
four soldiers gets a less than honorable discharge,
making them ineligible for college money; nearly
one-third of females seeking health care from the
Veteran's Administration report experiencing a rape or
attempted rape while conscripted.

"Up until the economic recession began, the military
had a hard time finding recruits," says Kimber Heinz,
National Organizing Director of the War Resisters
League. "But now the military is not only meeting its
quota, it's a de facto jobs program and you have
recruiters preying on students who can no longer afford
college or find work."

One of its brochures, Know Before You Go, offers this
information for those thinking of signing up: "The
military contract states, 'Laws and regulations that
govern military personnel may change without notice.
Such changes may affect pay, benefits, and
responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces
regardless of the provisions of the enlistment
document.'" In other words, beware: Even though a
recruit has signed a contract, the terms can be
modified at the military's discretion.

"We let people know that if we're at war a recruit can
be stop-lossed and might end up on multiple tours,"
Heinz continues. "The recruit has no control over this.
We always remind people that the military is the only
job where if the worker quits, he or she goes to jail."
The organization also provides data on what it means to
be a conscientious objector and outlines the penalties
for failing to register for Selective Service.

Other truth-in-recruiting messages are also hammered.
For one, despite promises to the contrary, Heinz
reports that skills learned in the military are rarely
transferable to the civilian world. "We make it clear
that many, many people come out of the military
traumatized or disabled," Heinz continues. "We ask
people to think about what it means to be an occupier
of someone else's land and we try to get people to
consider whether they'll be able to live with killing
someone or seeing someone killed."

It's a heavy message, and it is repeated by more than
75 local organizations throughout the 50 states.

Joanne Sheehan is an adult advisor to YouthPeace, a
student-led social justice group at the Norwich Free
Academy, a public, regional high school in eastern
Connecticut. Since 1998 YouthPeace has raised issues
including military recruitment and Islamophobia with
the student body.

Students Can Opt-Out

For the past seven years, members have also coordinated
an annual opt-out campaign to inform students that the
law allows them to request that their contact
information be withheld from recruiters. "Schools
typically send student names, addresses, and phone
numbers to the military in October, so we have about a
month once school starts to publicize the opt-out
provision," Sheehan says. "A few years ago we pushed
the superintendent to put information about opting-out
in the first paragraph of a letter that is sent to
parents at the beginning of the year. We want to be
sure they understand that their children don't need to
provide data to recruiters, that it's something they
can opt-out of."

The peace groups also broach a broader anti-militarist
agenda, even in places like San Diego with a heavy
military presence and 110,000 military employees.
There, the school board recently voted to ban students
enrolled in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps
[J-ROTC] from taking in-school marksmanship classes.
"Fifteen of the 18 high schools in San Diego have ROTC.
One of them, Lincoln, was temporarily closed for
rehabbing and when we saw the plan for the renovation,
we saw that it included a firing range. We brought this
to the community's attention and formed the Education
Not Arms Coalition," says Rick Jahnkow, coordinator of
Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, known as Project
YANO.

The consensus, Jahnkow says, was to focus on ending gun
classes rather than campaigning against ROTC more
generally because group participants felt an anti-ROTC
campaign would fail. Education Not Arms pointed to the
pervasive gun violence already plaguing the Lincoln
area and denounced planned cutbacks in Advanced
Placement classes needed by college-bound pupils. The
efforts paid off: The school board ended all in-school
gun training.

Boosted by this victory, Project YANO and Education Not
Arms next turned their attention to school-based
recruiters. In late 2010 San Diego activists succeeded
in restricting recruiters to two school visits per
year, similar to policies in New York City, Chicago,
Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland. As a
result, recruiters must schedule specific times to meet
with potential conscripts and cannot disrupt "normal
school activities."

"In some schools the recruiters eat lunch with the
kids, hang out and chill in the parking lot, and have
free rein in the hallways," says Pat Elder of
Maryland's PeaceAction Montgomery. "In most places,
what they get to do depends on the principal. I've seen
schools where male recruiters are always around,
playing one-on-one basketball with kids who don't have
fathers."

This scenario led New York City's Youth Activists-Youth
Allies Network to monitor recruiters to ensure that
they obey the regulations that circumscribe their
access to individual students.

YA-YA Network staff -- all but one of whom are between
15 and 19 -- also lead workshops about U.S. foreign
policy and the costs of war and militarism. "Several
years ago I asked participants what their peers thought
about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," says YA-YA
advisor Amy Wagner. "The wars were not very present for
them. I talked about how during the Vietnam War when
you turned on your TV you always heard the number of
dead soldiers. They thought about this and concluded
that facts were being hidden from them on purpose. They
did a lot of research and the result was a short video
now up on YouTube, called The War Will Not Be
Televised.

The YA-YA Network is presently focused on making sure
that schools abide by regulations that mandate that a
school staff person be appointed to provide guidance on
military recruitment in each high school. "We first
want to investigate and see if this is being done,"
Wagner says. "If not, why not. If it is, we want to
know where these people are getting their info and
who's training them. We want to give students the
information they are entitled to so that they fully
understand their range of options."

Indeed, it is this idea of options that propels
organizing against militarism. Take the Armed Services
Vocational Aptitude Battery test, a four-hour
recruiting tool used in nearly 12,000 high schools
nationwide. To date, Maryland is the only state to
require schools to select a provision that stops
student scores from being sent directly to recruiters.

"Look, if you take even moderate Democrats and sit them
down and ask them who they think should give student
data to the military -- mom and dad or the Pentagon -
they'll all support parental decision making," says Pat
Elder of PeaceAction Montgomery.

They want students to understand that becoming a
soldier is not necessarily the best way to show
personal strength or valor. "A lot of people want to be
tough and powerful, so they enlist," says the War
Resisters League's Kimber Heinz. "They ultimately learn
that enlisting is not a good way to test how strong
they are."

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