Matt Guynn -

It’s not necessary to go to Washington for a protest to significantly engage key issues related to the War on Terrorism. Try going to a local coffee shop or any other public place where you can strike up a conversation with youth or young adults about the choices and paths that the young people in your community see in front of them.

I tried this recently, when I began talking with a camouflage-fatigued young man next to me in the airport.  He was in his third year in the US Army, about to be shipped to Iraq next week.  “Why did you join?”  “My town (in central Oregon) was boring.”  The refrain from young people in many communities across the United States is that there is nothing to do: Nowhere to get a job (or a job that anyone wants).  Little help available for education. Few paths toward a life of meaning and wellbeing. Too little accompaniment, mentorship or assistance.

Dear Parents,

  español - 

Not so long ago, joining the military was a way out and a way up for lots of young Americans. It helped them grow up, get a start in life, maybe learn a skill, defend their country, and be part of a noble cause.

If you have kids today, recruiters will be around to see them. Maybe we already have, saying that familiar story.

But today, less and less of it is true. I hate to say it, but that's the fact.

For one thing, where's the noble cause? Let's face it: the latest war was based on lies. Too many troops there don't even have the armor they need. The top US leaders are now trying to justify torture and ignoring the Geneva convention. Terror fears are up, not down.

Meantime, the dangers keep increasing. The war's official death toll is bad enough, and it's shameful the way high officials try to hide all those caskets coming home.

But it's more than that: for every dead soldier, up to ten are badly wounded. And lots more suffer serious psychological damage: PTSD, Gulf War Syndrome and more. Deployments are longer and tougher. Stop-loss keeps thousands of troops in the military long past their release dates. Naturally, all this is very tough on families - domestic abuse is much higher.

And what about all those benefits? Enlistment bonuses are up, but overall benefits are down, especially for those who get wounded or suffer PTSD. Besides, military job training really doesn't help all that much in civilian life. And veterans' benefits? They can't cut them fast enough.

The word about all this is spreading, so recruiting is getting harder. As it does -- I hate to say it, but more recruiters are telling more and more, well, lies. It makes me ashamed, but the reports keep piling up. It got so bad by May of 2005 that we had a total recruiter stand down to spend a whole day studying recruitment rules. Didn't make much difference, though.

  español - 

August 30, 2009 / Andy Kroll / Mother Jones -  When Arne Duncan stepped down as the head of the Chicago Public Schools to become the secretary of education in January, the school district he left behind had little to brag about. While Duncan served as its chief executive officer, CPS received mostly average or below average rankings in “The Nation’s Report Card,” a Department of Education assessment of the country’s largest urban school districts. Its high school graduation rates lingered at around 50 percent, well short of the national average of 70 percent. And since 2004, CPS has failed as a district to meet No Child Left Behind‘s “adequate yearly progress” standards. In one area, however, Chicago’s schools stood out: In large part to Duncan’s efforts, they were—and remain—the most militarized in America.

Nearly 10,500 of Chicago’s 203,000 sixth- through twelfth-graders participate in some kind of military program on campus, from joining the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps to enrolling in Pentagon-sponsored JROTC academies. As the district’s CEO (and previously as deputy chief of staff to his predecessor, Paul Vallas), Duncan oversaw the controversial move to bring full-fledged military academies to the Windy City. The district’s first, the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville, opened in 1999, and three more followed during Duncan’s tenure. Today, Chicago has six military high schools run by a branch of the armed services. Six smaller military academies share buildings with existing high schools. Nearly three dozen JROTC programs exist in regular high schools, where students attend a daily JROTC class and wear uniforms to school one day a week. And at the middle school level, there is a JROTC program for sixth, seventh- and eighth-graders.

Sam Diener -

JROTC, a high school program to militarize youth in high schools, has already invaded almost 3400 schools. Peacework has learned that Congress passed a little-noticed measure in the 2009 National Defense Authorization bill to expand the number of JROTC schools to 3700 schools by 2020. To do this, the military will have to open at least 45 new JROTC units per year (Some schools drop the program each year, most often because of low student participation rates. In 2006, for example, Santa Barbara high school dropped its JROTC program due to high costs and low participation rates. Veterans for Peace members helped create a Peace Academy in its place.)

J

June 30 2009 / BBVM / Truthout - For the past four years, I have observed the military occupation of the high school where I teach science. Currently, Chicago’s Nicholas Senn High School houses Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). I use the term “occupation” because part of our building was taken away despite student,parent, teacher and community opposition to RNA’s opening.

Senn students are made to feel like second-class citizens inside their own school, due to inequalities. The facilities and resources are better on the RNA side. RNA students are allowed to walk on the Senn side, while Senn students cannot walk on the RNA side. RNA “disenrolls” students and we accept those students who get kicked out if they live within our attendance boundaries. This practice is against Chicago policy, but goes unchecked. All of these things maintain a two-tiered system within the same school building.

This phenomenon is not restricted to Senn. Chicago has more military academies and more students in Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps than any other city in the US. As the tentacles of school militarization reach beyond Chicago, the process used in this city seems to serve as a model of expansion. There was a Marine Academy planned for Georgia’s Dekalb County, which includes 10 percent of Atlanta. Fortunately, due to protest, the school has been postponed until 2010. Despite it being postponed, it is still useful to analyze the rhetoric used to rationalize the Marine Academy. Many of the lies and excuses used to justify school militarization in Chicago and Georgia may well be used in other cities as militarism grows.