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
Change your Mind?
Talk to a Counselor at the GI Rights Hotline
Ask that your child's information is denied to Military Recruiters
And monitor that this request is honored.
Military Recruiters and Programs Target marginalized communities for recruits...
..and the high schools in those same communities

 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.

Articles

Despoja "Tu cuerpo" de la Máquina de guerra

 

www.nnomy.org/despojatucuerpo - in English

CODEPINK, en asociación con una serie de grupos de paz y desarme, ha lanzado una campaña de desinversión para alentar a las universidades, organizaciones religiosas, fondos de jubilación, fondos mutuos, inversores privados y otras instituciones financieras en los Estados Unidos a tomar medidas para reducir los violentos conflictos mundiales. y frenar la hipermilitarización de nuestro mundo al deshacerse de la máquina de guerra de los Estados Unidos. La desinversión de War Machine significa la desinversión (eliminación de activos invertidos) de las compañías que obtienen sus ganancias al suministrar y beneficiarse de las intervenciones militares de los Estados Unidos, las expansiones y la militarización de nuestras calles. En otras palabras, estamos pidiendo la desinversión en las empresas que reciben grandes ganacias por matar.

La Red Nacional de Oposición a la Militarización de la Juventud está extendiendo esta desinversión más allá de cómo apoyamos la vasta y debilitante industria de la guerra con nuestros dólares para incluir la idea de desinvertir nuestros cuerpos. Por supuesto, desde un punto de vista humanista, su cuerpo no es un activo financiero, pero como tantas cosas en nuestro mundo contemporáneo, hemos sido reducidos de ciudadanos a consumidores. Y los militares nos tienen en cuenta en términos financieros: el costo de mantener nuestro entrenamiento, despliegue y, con demasiada frecuencia, nuestra salud de ser utilizados como soldados en guerras y conflictos interminables.

Once Again, the US Military Wants Your Kids

Jonah Walters / Jacobin Magazine -

240 High school students attend a two-day challenge designed to heighten Marine Corps awareness. Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images

Military recruiters understand that widespread joblessness is good for enlistment. They celebrate the arrival of “Sergeant Hard Times,” recognizing that misery is the best motivator.

The corona virus crisis has been a double-edged sword for military recruitment in the United States. On the one hand, the tightening of the labor market contributed to higher rates of retention than the Army brass expected, meaning that many soldiers decided to reenlist this spring rather than pursue civilian employment when their terms of service expired. On the other hand, recruiting stations across the country have had to shut down to comply with social distancing guidelines, limiting recruiters’ access to young people and inhibiting the “kneecap-to-kneecap” conversations recruiters widely acknowledge to be essential to their work.

Less than one percent of the Armed Forces’ target demographic — seventeen- to twenty-four-year-olds — is actively interested in a military career. After a “kneecap-to-kneecap” encounter with a recruiter, whether at a recruiting station or a school event, probability of enlistment climbs to more than 50 percent, according to the Army.

The reasons for this have been well-documented by anti-recruitment activists for decades. Recruiters, who are expected to meet regular enlistment quotas, aggressively pursue young people who express interest, generally attempting to separate them from parents, teachers, counselors, and others who might advocate for civilian careers.

Tiempos difíciles para el reclutamiento militar

Cómo COVID-19 está afectando el Programa de Entrada Retrasada y amenazando la salud de los reclutas.

Por Pat Elder / Red nacional de oposición a la militarización de la juventud, NNOMY - 8 de junio de 2020
- Read the English Version


COVID-19 ha impactado profundamente la forma en que los militares encuentran nuevos soldados. El comando de reclutamiento fue atrapado sin preparación para enfrentar la pandemia y se enfrenta a una nueva realidad desafiante.

El reclutamiento militar es una búsqueda psicológica intensa que tradicionalmente se ha basado en la capacidad de los reclutadores para desarrollar relaciones cercanas con los adolescentes. Estas relaciones se cultivaron en las escuelas secundarias de la nación, donde los reclutadores tenían acceso a los niños. Los reclutadores sirvieron como entrenadores y tutores. Trajeron donas a la facultad. Almorzaron con perspectivas, a veces cien veces en un solo año escolar. Los reclutadores militares jugaron baloncesto uno a uno después de la escuela con reclutas potenciales y se hicieron mejores amigos con algunos niños. Tan amigable, cientos de reclutadores masculinos han sido implicados en relaciones sexuales inapropiadas con niñas menores de edad.

Las escuelas secundarias eran el centro del universo de reclutamiento, pero eso terminó abruptamente en marzo cuando se rompió la tubería de alistamiento. Los reclutadores alistaron a personas de la tercera edad y los colocaron en el Programa de Ingreso Retrasado (DEP) en el cual el ingreso de un estudiante al servicio activo se pospone por hasta 365 días. (El Ejército ahora lo llama el Programa del Futuro Soldado). El objetivo del programa DEP es mantener la motivación del futuro soldado mientras

Tough Times for Military Recruiting

How COVID-19 is impacting the Delayed Entry Program and threatening the health of recruits.  

By Pat Elder / National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, NNOMY - June 8, 2020
- Read the Spanish Version



COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the way the military finds new soldiers. The recruiting command was caught unprepared to face the pandemic and is facing a challenging new reality.

Military recruiting is an intense, psychological pursuit that has traditionally relied on the ability of recruiters to  develop close relationships with teenage prospects. These relationships were cultivated in the nation’s high schools where recruiters enjoyed access to children. Recruiters served as coaches and tutors. They brought donuts to the faculty.  They ate lunch with prospects, sometimes a hundred times in a single school year. Military recruiters played one-on-one basketball after school with potential recruits and became best of friends with some kids. So friendly, hundreds of male recruiters have been implicated in inappropriate sexual relationships with underaged girls.

High schools were the center of the recruiting universe, but that ended abruptly in March when the enlistment pipeline was ruptured.  Recruiters enlisted seniors and placed them  into the Delayed Entry Program (DEP) in which a student’s entry into active duty is postponed for up to 365 days.  (The Army now calls it the Future Soldier Program.)  The thrust of the DEP program is to maintain future soldier motivation while minimizing attrition. When DEP members report to basic training, they are accessed (enlisted) into active duty.  

Why We Still Need a Movement to Keep Youth From Joining the Military

Elizabeth King /Article Originally appeared in In These Times web edition in June 2019 -

A scrappy counter-recruitment movement is trying to starve the military of labor.

Out of the spotlight, dedicated counter-recruiters around the country are steadfast in their organizing to cut off the human supply chain to the U.S. military.

­Eighteen is the youngest age at which someone can join the U.S. military without their parents’ permission, yet the military markets itself to—which is to say recruits—children at much younger ages. This is in part accomplished by military recruiters who visit high schools around the country, recruiting children during career fairs and often setting up recruitment tables in cafeteri­as and hallways. As a result, most students in the U.S. will meet a military recruiter for the first time at just 17 years old, and children are getting exposed to military propaganda younger and younger.

The recruitment of young people to the military is as old as the military itself, and has become more and more normalized along with the general militarization of schools. According to the Urban Institute, more than two-thirds of public high school students attend schools where there are “school resource officers,” a name for school-based police. This police presences comes on top of the role of military recruiters on campuses, or at college and career fairs. 

America's Heroes are always those who are expendable



Soldiers and Airmen from the Massachusetts National Guard gather together prior to completing COVID-19 testing on residents at the Alliance at West Acres nursing home, Brockton, Mass., April 10, 2020. Twelve medical teams are activated throughout the state and are conducting COVID-19 testing at medical facilities and nursing homes with high-risk populations. Homes and providers are identified by the Department of Public Health and Human Services for testing. This mission is one of several operations across the commonwealth in support of coronavirus response efforts. (Capt. Bonnie Blakely)Gary Ghirardi | OpEd | June 2020 -Back in May of 2020, I caught an interview on Pacifica's KPFK radio on a morning program where a young woman was explaining the loss of her aunt that was a nurse engaging patients with the Coronavirus. She recounted her aunt telling her that she was not provided with masks or gloves and that a patient had sneezed in her face a week prior to her falling ill. All this culminated with a Zoom meeting with the family saying goodbye before she died. Later that day I passed a local hospital that had placed a large banner on the street honoring our heroes that were fighting the current epidemic.

In my work for The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, I am constantly reminded of a similar refrain from those pushing back against our work of getting youth, with limited opportunities for their futures, to consider all the ramifications of serving in the United State's post 9/11 military. That push-back always invokes the heroic diatribes defending those who serve in our military branches and a forceful reminder of how dare we try to diminish the sacrifice of heroes who have served or are considering serving by revealing the harmful realities of military service. Of course we do not diminish their service but try to put it in context to a fuller and more accurate disclosure of what military recruiters manage to leave out of their enlistment appeals. The relationship between these two scenarios, and the contradictions inherent in both, stayed with me all week and encouraged this short OpEd.

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