Gary Ghirardi / NNOMY - A not surprising but concerning feature of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act is the doubling of the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps in our public schools and the expansion of DoD STEM and of the STARBASE Program into territories that the United States of America controls in the Pacific.

In the case of the JROTC the following is stated in the NDAA Report for 2021:

Expansion of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program (sec. 547) The committee recommends a provision that would amend section 2031(a)(2) of title 10, United States Code, to insert language expanding the purpose of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) to include an introduction to service opportunities in military, national, and public service. The provision would also require the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a plan to establish and support not fewer than 6,000 JROTC units by September 30, 2031.1

As of 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense cites that JROTC programs associated to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, are taught as elective courses at more than 3,000 high schools nationwide.2 How those expanded programs might be purposed is not totally defined other than a recommendation that there be added a focus within JROTC on cyber security education in schools.

Español / March 2, 2021 / Edward Hasbrouck / Counterpunch - A Supreme Court case challenging the requirement for men, but not women, to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft is forcing Congress to make a choice it has been avoiding for decades: End draft registration, or expand it to young women as well as young men.

The choice is not between continuing male-only draft registration (which is likely to be found unconstitutional) and expanding registration to women. The real choice is whether to expand registration to women or to end it entirely. Bills for each of those options were introduced in the last session of Congress, and are likely to be reintroduced within the next few months as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

This is a choice about militarism, not a choice about gender equality. Expanding draft registration to women would bring about a semblance of equality in war (although women in the military would likely still be subject to disproportionate sexual harassment and abuse). Ending draft registration would bring about real equality in peace and freedom.

Last year a National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service recommended expanding draft registration to women. But the Commission never seriously considered the possibility of ending registration, despite being unable to come up with any realistic scenario to justify it.

https://nnomy.org/socialmediaoutreach/

In this digital age, we are now firmly in an ongoing and evolving time where social media communications is an essential communication framework for current and succeeding generations in technologically developed countries.

For those groups doing counter-recruitment and youth demilitarization activism, it is an essential tool to communicate with youth inside and outside the school environment. The military has and will invest billions in their outreach to youth on multiple social media platforms as well as making their presence strongly felt in the online gaming channels. These platforms are becoming a powerful resource of both indoctrinating youth into a military ethos that normalizes war and provides all the military services an additional means of expanding their recruitment efforts to reach youth.

Groups that are doing Truth in Recruitment and Counter-recruitment outreach inside of public schools are going to have to implement limited human and financial resources to expand their online presence in order to stay relevant with the times and to increase their opportunities for communication with current generations of youth.

This will be a struggle for activist organizations that cannot hope to match the online footprint of the military recruitment budget and need to consider other opportunities to increase their visibility and messaging. Those opportunities will need to include coordinated campaigning on strategic themes during times of the year when military recruiters are most actively recruiting.

The following section of Social Media Campaign Resources are designed by categories most relevant to counter-recruitment practice and are used by the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth for their own campaigns directed at the groups doing counter-recruitment in the communities regionally and nationally. These resources also include images and video shorts that can be directed at youth by your groups that the military targets for recruitment that are designed to initiate reaction and education to provide an alternative narrative.

Together, in concerted campaigning, we can have a greater visibility and influence some youth considering joining into military service to explore peaceful alternatives for their futures.

Use them on your social media channels in your news feeds and announcements and in your general online outreach.

Social Media Resources by Category or Campaign:

• Considering Enlisting in the Armed Forces
• Eliminate Selective Service for Everyone
• Getting Out of DEP/Future Soldier Program
• Divest “Your Body” from the War Machine
• Know about Groups doing Youth Demilitarization Nationally
• Misc. Social Media images
• Social media Campaign Resources
• Winning The Peace: A National High School Intervention 

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Revised  FC 10/09/2023

Gary Ghirardi / NNOMY – In my years working as a communications consultant to counter-recruitment organizations, now approaching twenty years for the summer of 2021, I have experienced personally and observed the organizing and activism of groups formed by historical peace churches make prolonged and concerted efforts to intervene against the militarization of our youth by departments of defense.

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth itself is a creation, in part, as a project of the American Friends Service Committee’s National Youth & Militarism Program¹, a Quaker organization that helped organize NNOMY as a network at a conference in Philadelphia in 2003 along with ten other national and regional peace organizations.

In the intervening years, that network grew at its peak in 2011 to over 140 groups nationally and regionally.  In recent (post Obama) years the focus of as many as 65% of these groups has shifted to other issues while at the same time the programs of the military in our public schools have expanded.

One of the historic peace churches most active in direct counter-recruiting activism is the Church of the Brethren and their organization, On Earth Peace² which organized the Stop Recruiting Kids campaign with its expansive social media campaign on multiple platforms. On Earth Peace also sits on the NNOMY steering committee as an observing member.

Other historic peace church contributors that have made efforts to intervene against the militarization of youth have been Quaker member groups such as War Resisters’ International in London and Truth in Recruitment in California. These efforts have been some of the strongest representatives of the push-back on programs of the Department of Defense in the United States and the Ministry of Defence in Britain designed to recruit youth into military service.

Español / Edward Hasbrouck / Resisters.info - On January 8, 2021 the National Coalition For Men, a men’s rights organization represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Constitutionality — now that women are allowed in all military combat assignments — of the law which requires men but not women to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft.