December 06, 2011
Pat Elder -
NNOMY is a national networking body that serves to unite national, regional and local organizations to oppose the growing intrusion of the military in young people's lives. We seek to promote the importance of counter-recruitment organizing. NNOMY is not intended to function as an independent national organization, but rather as a coalition that strengthens the work of participating groups.
We are in absolute solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the occupy movement. We also embrace the notion that we are the 99% and we refuse to tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. But we feel that confronting militarism and countering military recruitment deserve a higher priority in the revolutionary movements sweeping the country.
Resisting the unprecedented and relentless militarization of American youth transcends the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Countering military recruitment confronts an ugly mix of a distinctively American brand of institutionalized violence, racism, militarism, nationalism, classism, and sexism. It gets to the root of the problem. Confronting recruiters, particularly in the nation's public schools provides a catalyst for activists to shift gears from the traditional revolutionary tactics of vigils, protests, sit-ins, and CD actions to the long-term strategy of opposing the militarization of youth.
It's frightening, but we've largely ceded our public schools to the reactionary, militarist right. The messages of the occupy and counter-militarism movements are muddled in the mainstream media. Meanwhile, the American educational system has systematically produced an ill-informed citizenry, somewhat oblivious to the alarming trends that consume them. We must focus on the schools. We've largely ignored them for a generation and it'll take that long to truly reach "critical mass."
Everyone is consumed with tactics, but revolutionary change requires a long term strategy and that strategy must include the schools. We're not solely focused on recruitment. The typical high school curriculum embraces reactionary, corporate texts that largely whitewash the histories of popular resistance in this country. Civics is taught with the aim of producing non-questioning subservience while the schools have become constitutional dead zones. We can't expect the products of this system to embrace our agenda.
We'll leave our comrades in the occupy movement to consider their strategy in the nation's schools. In the meantime we're working on school policies that favor military recruiters and we're organizing in our communities to change them. We're providing youth with training, employment and educational alternatives to military service. We're engaged with community leaders and we're being successful across the country.
You can help.
Do you know the policies of your local school system regarding military recruitment? The Pentagon preys on vulnerable 16 and 17 year olds to convince them it's in their best interest to enlist. It is an insidious practice. The military may request a list of the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the high school children in your town. What's your school district's policy regarding the military recruitment "opt out" form? Federal law says your schools are supposed to tell parents they have the right to remove their children's names from lists being sent to the Pentagon. What's your high school doing?
Does your school have a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) Program? Are children firing weapons on school grounds during marksmanship training? Are they using lead ammunition, spewing deadly particulates into the air?
Your local high school has probably been forced by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act to hire highly qualified teachers. Many school districts are requiring classroom teachers to have master's degrees after a few years of service. Meanwhile, many JROTC instructors need only a high school diploma to teach credited courses. The stringent "No Child Left Behind" regulations don't address JROTC instructors. What are they teaching? Certainly, they're reading more Clausewitz and Machiavelli than Jefferson and Thoreau. What kind of curricular oversight does your high school exercise over this program? If you want to stop wars, you might start asking.
660,000 school children in public schools take the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test every year. Does your school offer the test? Why is the Pentagon testing children in the public schools? Military recruiting manuals admit it is primarily to produce leads for recruiters. The ASVAB is supposed to be voluntary, but many schools require all juniors and seniors to take it. Students are forced to sign a "Student Privacy Statement," to take the test, violating state laws. Does your school automatically forward the results from the four hour test to military recruiters? Most do, even though two states have banned the practice and hundreds of schools and districts have stepped in to protect the privacy of their students.
Are military recruiters allowed to greet children as they enter the cafeteria during lunch while college recruiters are required to meet with students by appointment in the Guidance Office? Federal law calls for military and college recruiters to have equal access to children. Schools across the country have ordered the military to meet with students in guidance and career centers, rather than allowing recruiters to have access to the entire student body.
Do you know if your local high school lets children out of class to shoot M-16 rifle and M-9 pistol simulators in the increasingly popular Army recruiting vans? Are military recruiters frequenting some schools more than others due to racial and economic factors? Call your local high school principal and start asking questions. They're your schools and you're paying for them, even if your children don't attend. Wars start in your community and they can end there too.
