Before You Enlist Video - http://beforeyouenlist.org
Researching Pop Culture and Militarism - https://nnomy.org/popcultureandmilitarism/
If you have been Harassed by a Military Recruiter - https://www.afsc.org/resource/military-recruiter-abuse-hotline
War: Turning now to Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson - Christian Science Monitor
WHAT IS IN THIS KIT? - https://nnomy.org/backtoschoolkit/
Click through to find out
Religion and militarism - https://nnomy.org/religionandmilitarism/
‘A Poison in the System’: Military Sexual Assault - New York Times
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Military Recruiters and Programs Target marginalized communities for recruits...
..and the high schools in those same communities
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 Militarization of our Schools

The Pentagon is taking over our poorer public schools. This is the reality for disadvantaged youth.

 

What we can do

Corporate/conservative alliances threaten Democracy . Progressives have an important role to play.

 Why does NNOMY matter?

Most are blind or indifferent to the problem.
A few strive to protect our democracy.

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

Articles

Military counter-recruitment network is planned

Mennonite Church USA | Mennonite Central Committee

A U.S. Army recruiter visits Clarksburg High School in Michigan in March, 2022. — U.S. ArmyMay 17, 2022 / | / Anabaptist World - Mennonites Against Militarism — a collaboration of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. and Mennonite Church USA — is planning an initiative to counter military recruitment of U.S. youth.

Alternatives to Military Enlistment Network will connect young people with volunteer advisers who can help them find nonmilitary career, service and training opportunities.

Mennonites Against Militarism invites volunteers to complete an online survey at mennoniteusa.org that identifies areas they may engage with AMEN, including administration, web and graphic design, publicity, budgeting, fundraising and guidance/career counseling. Veterans and others who understand war and military recruitment are also encouraged to complete the form.

“This project goes beyond traditional counter-recruitment efforts by working with individual youths to find meaningful opportunities,” said Titus Peachey, retired coordinator of peace education for MCC. “In a highly militarized society, it is a practical way to embody our faith commitment to peace.”

What I Discovered in the JROTC Curriculum

Lauren Reyna Morales

July-September 2022 / Lauren Reyna Morales / Draft NOtices - In the summer of 2020, I was recruited by the non-profit Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) to review core textbooks used by the U.S. military in the high school Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) program. Project YANO organized a team of 15 reviewers that consisted of individuals with backgrounds in either classroom teaching or education activism, or with special knowledge of subjects that JROTC claims to address in its curriculum (e.g., U.S. and world history, geography, leadership methods, etc.).

In total, eleven Army, Navy, and Marine Corps JROTC texts were reviewed. The reviewers included current and retired teachers, military veterans, and several educators with post baccalaureate credentials. I myself have been a classroom teacher for five years. I’m credentialed to teach English and Social Sciences in the state of California, and I also earned an M.A. in education from the University of Colorado, Denver. I personally reviewed an Army JROTC textbook titled, Leadership Education and Training (LET 3). I was eager to investigate the kind of curriculum JROTC utilizes to influence over 550,000 students at approximately 3,400 high schools. What, I wondered, is the U.S. military teaching to youth in their places of learning?

GOP congressman says student loan forgiveness will hurt military recruitment

Christopher Wilson

August 25, 2022 / Christopher Wilson / Yahoo News - Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said Thursday that President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan will hurt the U.S. military's ability to recruit.

"Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military's greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments," Banks wrote in a tweet as Republicans continue to attack the White House for the announcement that it would be canceling $10,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans.

Though the White House is limiting forgiveness to those making under $125,000 per year, conservatives have attempted to paint the plan as a handout to the rich. Banks's comment appears to undercut that message, implying that lower-income Americans might no longer see joining the military as a path to a college education that wealthier families can typically afford without volunteering for service.

The US Military’s JROTC Program Is Even Worse Than You Thought

Steve Early / Suzanne Gordon

Army JROTC cadets participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on June 21, 2022, in Arlington, Virginia. (US Army Cadet Command / Flickr)August 23 2022 / Steve Early / Suzanne Gordon / Jacobin - We’ve long known that the US armed forces target poor and working-class students to meet their enlistment goals. But according to a recent report, the military’s JROTC program is also rife with sexual misconduct and outright abuse of young women.

Fifty years ago, no symbol of university complicity with the military angered more students than the on-campus presence of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). The manpower requirements of the Vietnam era could not be met by conscription, draft-driven enlistments, and the graduating classes of military service academies alone. The Department of Defense also needed commissioned officers trained in DOD-funded military science departments at private and state universities.

Anti-ROTC campaigning became a major focus of the campus-based movement against the Vietnam War. Critics demanded everything from stripping ROTC courses of academic credit to, more popularly, kicking the program off campus. Foot-dragging by college trustees, administrators, and faculty members reluctant to cut ties with the military sparked an escalation of protest activity, from peaceful picketing to more aggressive action. ROTC buildings were trashed, bombed, or set on fire — most famously at Kent State University. There, a May 1970 arson attempt triggered a National Guard occupation that led to the fatal shooting of four students (one of them a ROTC cadet) and then the largest student strike in US history.

Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military’s J.R.O.T.C. Program

Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Ilana Marcus, Mary F. Calvert
Former students say military veterans who led J.R.O.T.C. classes in U.S. high schools fashioned themselves as mentors, then used their power to manipulate and abuse.

Congress is again considering proposals to end, or to expand, Selective Service

Edward Hasbrouck


Sunday, 10 July 2022 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - Once again in 2022, sooner than we expected, Congress is considering proposals either to finally end the widely disregarded, unenforced, and unenforceable requirement for men ages 18-26 to register and report changes of address to the Selective Service System for use in a future military draft — or to try to expand draft registration to young women as well as young men.

Expanding draft registration to women is a bad idea that won’t go away until Congress ends draft registration entirely.

It has become increasingly obvious over the decades since 1980 that requiring men but not women to register for the draft is so patently sexist as to be of dubious Constitutionality. This has created pressure on Congress to resolve a longstanding stalemate: The attempt to get young men to register and report address changes has been a failure since its resumption, after a five-year hiatus, in 1980. But there has been no face-saving way for Congress to repeal the registration requirement without admitting to an embarrassing failure in the face of popular direct action, which would empower and encourage young people to further defiance of government orders.

For the last five years, Congress (and, for part of that time, a national commission appointed by Congress and President Obama) have been considering what to do about the Selective Service System, in light of this situation. If the sexist status quo is no longer tenable, the options are either to end draft registration entirely (the only realistic choice) or to double down on its failure (and its sexism) by trying to expand it to women.

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