Mar.-Apr. 2003/ Nonviolent Activist Magazine - War Resisters League
Asif ullah -
Ostensibly a training program, JROTC—the U.S. Army’s Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps—is actually a recruiting device for the Army. Unlike the college ROTC program, which actually trains participating cadets to be officers when they graduate, JROTC “trains” high school students only to be privates, exactly as they would be if they never joined the program at all.
In the winter of 2001/2002, ROOTS (Revolution Out Of Truth & Struggle), the War Resisters League’s youth program, decided to launch a major campaign to counter JROTC. Chosen after many meetings and discussions, the campaign, as members of ROOTS saw it, would serve as one of the most concrete and grassroots forms of doing antiwar work.
To begin with, ROOTS focused on researching the ins and outs of JROTC: the history, the players involved, the demographics of those being targeted, the number of established and prospective units, and the costs. Since then, ROOTS has worked across the country to reduce the effectiveness of JROTC as a recruiting tool in the hope of some day ending the program entirely.
The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
Articles
June 29, 2008
Nick Kreitman -
Reviewing Five Years of Counter Recruiting in Chicago
Counter recruitment is shorthand for a strategy by the peace movement to make the military withdraw from the occupation in Iraq and other countries through impacting the enlistment levels of willing soldiers. Countering military recruitment involves dissuading people who might interact with the recruiters from doing so and removing the public presence of military recruitment altogether.
Over the past five years of counter recruitment in Chicago there have been roughly four areas of struggle; confronting the military presence inside high schools, the military recruitment at public events, recruitment at universities and confronting military recruitment centers directly. Unfortunately there have been few moments to pause and allow ourselves to review our accomplishments and setbacks. Hopefully those engaged in counter recruitment and those who want to know more will be helped by this work which looks to outline some of the questions that need to be asked in order to help benchmark our progress.
Before discussing the individual arenas where counter recruiters have acted in Chicago, we have to acknowledge the fact that there will probably never be reliable statistics published on our efforts. Most likely the military will never keep statistics on counter recruitment, and if some government agency did receive a budget to track counter recruitment there would be a number of serious issues about reliability. This dearth of information on the regional and national levels however, does not prevent us from collecting information and drawing conclusions about our efforts at the city level. Although the need to collect data of more quantity and quality from actions is universal to the social justice movement, it is particularly necessary in our case because such data could help us choose between a number of possible strategies towards ending the war.
Originally published in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Scott Harding - School of Social Work University of Connecticut / Seth Kershner - Simmons College -
In an effort to counteract the growing militarization of schools, military counter-recruitment (CR) has emerged as an effective grassroots movement across the United States. Led by a small number of local activists, CR utilizes community organizing methods to confront the structures supporting military enlistment as a viable career option. Despite operating with limited resources, counter-recruitment has secured key legal and policy victories that challenge the dominant social narrative about military service. Three examples of counter- recruitment are profiled to illustrate the different tactics and strategies used for successful organizing within a culture of militarism.
español - 01 Mar 2006 — warresisters
War Resisters International -
Introduction
Although the United States does presently not enforce conscription, its present practice of recruitment for the Armed Forces and of keeping personnel within the forces once recruited gives reasons to concern from a human rights perspective. The focus lies on recruitment of the one hand, and on the difficulties to get out of the military once enlisted on the other hand. It will become obvious that a so-called "volunteer force" is not without human rights problems.
This report is a preliminary report, compiled by War Resisters' International, to highlight some of the human rights problems associated with the Armed Forces of the United States of America. This report is far from complete, and we also refer to the report submitted by Conscience and Peace Tax International (CPTI), especially regarding registration for the draft according to the US Selective Service System.
September 12, 2011 - NJYouthUnited Org - http://njyouthunited.org/wp/student-teacher-unity-is-the-only-way-forward/
BullenInaBible -
Early this summer, while students and many teachers were scattered to the winds on break, many away on pre-planned vacations, NJ Governor Christie and about half the Democratic state legislators led by State Senator Stephen Sweeney and the entire set of Republican legislators were busy indeed.
The bipartisan anti-teacher and public worker putsch occurred in June, when the New Jersey State Legislature passed a law that threatens the retirement security and health benefits of public employees. Under the bill, teachers will pay more into their retirement pension, and will get less when they retire. In terms of health benefits,the average teacher will be paying thousands of dollars more for their healthcare. The bill translates into a huge paycut for our teachers.
Further, Governor Christie and the Democratic legislature plan on taking up the issue of Education ‘reform’ this fall. New Jersey has some of the best public schools in the nation, consistently ranking in the top five of all states using various measures. The schools where students do tend to struggle – places such as Trenton, Newark, and Atlantic City – are the result of extremely high poverty not poor teaching. The proposed bills will make it easier to fire more experienced teachers and will allow school districts to evaluate teachers based largely on student’s standardized test scores.
From Draft NOtices, July-September 2006
Pat Elder -
The pressure is on. You’ve got a lot of things you want to do in your life and all too often, you’re going to have to pass a test to get what you want.
High school students across the country are greeted with this message when they log on to the March2Success.com Web site hosted by the U.S. Army. March2Success, a popular, Web-based, 30-hour course designed by Educational Options, The Princeton Review, and Kaplan, Inc., is ostensibly a program that provides training in test-taking strategies and problem-solving skills and teaches students how to improve their math and English knowledge.
The program, however, is actually a thinly veiled military recruiting tool. Like the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and the Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps (JROTC), two widely prevalent programs in the nation's high schools, March2Success is about recruiting for the armed forces.
The Army freely admits there are several advantages to providing this online service to students. First, it drives traffic to the Army’s recruiting Web site, www.goarmy.com, and generates leads for recruiters to pursue. Students are prompted to indicate if they want to be contacted by a recruiter; Army graphics and propaganda are omnipresent. March2Success offers a state-of-the-art product to schools and students who rarely have access to free online instruction. The program helps to strengthen the relationship between Army recruiters and school staff. After all, school "penetration" and "ownership" are cited in military manuals as tasks for all school-based recruiters.
