Truth in Recruitment

Download whatever you want from this page. Brochures may be downloaded by clicking on one of the links beneath “Resources materials for Students, Counselors, Teachers:”

Resource materials for Students, Counselors, Teachers:

* Cessation of Recruiting in public schools

* Changing Recruitement policies in schools conclusions of Militarism paper by Finley

* There are indeed many other examples of militarism in school structures

* Military Recruiting policies Seattle

* Military recruiters model policies 030511

* Militarys View of Counter Recruitment

* Teachers if you want peace work for justice

* What every girl should know before you go

* Military recruiters in high schools

* Considerations for counselors

Invite us to make a presentation at your school. All it takes is your invitation. We do the rest. Let us know you want us by emailing George Taylor, taylorgeorge1974@hotmail.com. Thanks.

Counter military recruiters are legally allowed the same access to students as military recruiters, according to a 1986 Ninth Circuit Court ruling.
Basically, the Ninth Circuit ruling stated that the question of military service (whether voluntary or compulsory) is a controversial political issue, and if a school establishes a forum for one side to present its views on the issue, it must give opponents equal access to the forum.
Counselors and teachers have worked with counter military recruiters to provide equal access by:
• Placing literature displays in career and counseling centers
• setting up displays at career and college fairs
• placing posters and literature on bulletin boards
• having speakers and printed materials in classrooms
• running ads in student newspapers
• having counter military recruiters/peace activists be present whenever there are military recruiter present.
In order to be sure that military recruiters, college and job recruiters, and peace activists
have equal access to each other, as required by law, schools document and regulate recruiter visits. Some counselors will only allow recruiters at career/job fairs. Some counselors require students to make appointments with all recruiters, others have military recruiters and military counter recruiters sitting at tables outside lunchrooms once a month or once a semester.

: Peter G. Anderheggen; 06 September 2017; 06 September 2017; Hits: 82

Connecticut Peace Group Engages Students with a Peace Wheel

Peter G. Anderheggen | Originally published in Draft NOtices – August/September, 2017

Winsted Area Peace Action has been visiting high schools in northwestern Connecticut for at least ten years. The purpose of our visits has been to introduce and discuss with students alternative methods of service to the country and non-military means of earning money after high school. Our goal is to bring some contrast to the appeal of the military, which spends many millions of dollars in its recruiting efforts. We make information available on such organizations as AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, Peace Brigades International and Heifer International, all of which take people who are age 18 or older.

We are usually invited during the lunch periods, often with a table set up in the vicinity of the cafeteria. There are several lunch sessions and invariably the students arrive in droves, hungry and eager to visit with friends. Our challenge is to present something that catches their eyes and engages them.

About five years ago, one of our members who was carrying out research for a book, Seth Kershner, went to Austin, Texas, and visited a high school along with Sustainable Options for Youth (SOY). He saw how a peace wheel could be effectively used to attract students to a table. The wheel intrigued our members and we ordered one from Thomas Heikkala, a Vietnam veteran and skilled carpenter who was one of the founding members of SOY.

: NNOMY Steering Committee; 02 August 2017; 27 October 2017; Hits: 240

NNOMY at the 2017 VFP Education Not Militarization Convention in Chicago

Education Not Militarization

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth will be participating in the 2017 Veterans For Peace National Convention in Chicago August 11th, 2017. Located at the beautiful and historic Palmer House Hotel, veterans and allies will gather to discuss “Education Not Militarization”. Registration begins on Wednesday, August 9th and ends on August 13th with a benefit concert by Jackson Browne. The week will be filled with amazing workshops, discussions, community and music.

NNOMY will be presenting a Mini Plenary workshop between 1:30 and 3:00pm in the Spire meeting room on Friday, August 11th 2017 with the theme, Education Not Militarization: The Nuts and Bolts of Pursuing Policy Changes to Counter Recruitment and Demilitarize Schools.

In the Hancock room, at 3:15 to 4:45pm NNOMY will conduct the workshop, Education Not Militarization: Educating students and countering military recruitment inside the schools, with multiple presenters. Please be on time so we can cover all the materials and have time for questions.

: Sarah Jaffe; 26 March 2017; 26 March 2017; Hits: 1297

Trump’s Austerity Budget Increases Military Recruiters’ Power to Prey on Youth

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.

: Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft; 09 March 2017; 09 March 2017; Hits: 1433

Rebuttal to Groups Supporting Female Draft Registration

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.

: Mark Karlin; 28 February 2017; 28 February 2017; Hits: 1354

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

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

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.”

NNOMY Reader

Learning the Issues about Youth Demilitarization

The NNOMY Reader is a useful primer to learn about the realities of military recruitment, the militarism effecting our youth in schools and our opportunities for peaceful coexistance. This collection of articles represents a historical overview of the U.S. based counter-recruitment movement’s strategies to inform and intervene in schools and the community about the Pentagon’s multi-billion dollar programs to recruit America’s youth into escalating wars. The NNOMY Reader also includes some information on alternatives to enlistment, as well as research presented by activists and investigators on the nature and risks of cultural militarization and how it threatens our democracy. Learn more

Teaching About the Wars

Teaching About the Wars breaks the curricular silence on the U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Even though the United States has been at war continuously since just after 9/11, sometimes it seems that our schools have forgotten. This collection of insightful articles and hands-on lessons shows that teachers have found ways to prompt their students to think critically about big issues. Here is the best writing fromRethinking Schools magazine on war and peace in the 21st century.

_{Teaching About the Wars is divided into five chapters:}

_{Introduction: Breaking the Silence on War}
_{The Road to War}
_{The Human Face of War}
_{Military Recruitment}
_{Anti-War Resistance}

Contributing authors include Bill Bigelow, Ann Pelo, Margot Pepper, Bob Peterson, Özlem Sensoy, and Howard Zinn

Learn More

Demilitarizing Life & Land

The Fellowship of Reconciliation pursues a vision of a free and “demilitarized” world in which the Earth’s resources sustain life and promote the well-being of all people. To do so, we challenge economic exploitation, work to eradicate racism and religious intolerance, and call attention to imperialistic U.S. foreign policy. As we continue to speak truth to power, FOR engages in an ongoing interfaith dialogue to shift the collective unconscious from a fear-based military culture to a peaceful world community grounded in faith and nonviolent justice. At the start of 2011, we launched a series of projects, campaigns, and collaborations to demilitarize life and land in the Americas and the Middle East.

Download this information as a printable PDF (2.6 MB).

Sowing Seeds: The Militarisation of Youth and How to Counter It

Through articles, images, survey data and interviews, Sowing Seeds: The Militarisation of Youth and How to Counter It documents the seeds of war that are planted in the minds of young people in many different countries. However, it also explores the seeds of resistance to this militarisation that are being sown resiliently and creatively by numerous people. We hope the book will help to disseminate these latter seeds. It is not just a book for peace and antimilitarist activists: it is a book for parents and grandparents, teachers, youth workers, and young people themselves.

Author(s)/editor(s):

Owen Everett

Publisher:

War Resisters’ International

Year published:

2013

ISBN:

978-0-903517-27-0

Homepage: http://wri-irg.org

Order the Book

Military Recruiting in the United States Paperback – December 8, 2016
by Pat Elder (Author)

Parents of high schoolers need to know that the Pentagon consciously conspires to abridge student privacy (as a means of enriching the recruiter’s contact data), misleads the public and school administrators, and even risks public health (see the chapter on lead residue from shooting ranges) in order to obtain sufficient numbers of new recruits.
I also highly recommend this book for high school guidance counselors and school administrators. R. Bolger – Oregon

Order Book at AMAZON

Counter-recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools

Scott Harding and Seth Kershner are the authors of a new book, Counter-recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools (Palgrave Macmillan). Drawing on dozens of interviews with activists conducted between 2012 and 2014, their book describes the various tactics used to demilitarize public schools in the United States. They also discuss case studies of successful organizing and advocacy to challenge the presence of military programs in educational settings. For more info, visit: http://www.palgrave.com.