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January 14, 2020 / Jacqueline Luqman / The Real News Network - Last week and this, Black Twitter was aflood with funny memes that seem to make light about how black people aren’t included in the “We’re going to war with Iran” sentiment because the push for this war wasn’t about black people or what black people wanted. But all jokes aside, are black and Latino and native and poor white people really sitting on the sidelines of America’s military actions, or are they more involved in them than they realize or would even like to be?

Here to talk about all the ways that black people, brown people, and poor people actually are the people most targeted by military recruiters, which puts them right in the cross hairs of military action, is Erica Caines. Erica is a local organizer in Baltimore and is the founder of Liberation Through Reading. You can find that on #liberationthroughreading on Twitter. Erica, thank you so much for joining.

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May 1, 2008 / War Resisters' International - With a seemingly endless war on terrorism gnawing away at the possibility for a lasting peace many activists in the United States are finding that they are drawn to a form of activism that deals with the relationship that young people have to militarism. The work is called, counter military recruitment or counter-recruitment for short, and it primary focus is to demilitarise a nation by attempting to first demilitarise the minds of its youth.

Often maligned and misunderstood by those outside of the peace & justice movement counter-recruitment has a roughly thirty year history which began shortly after the end of the US involvement in Vietnam which led to the suspension of the military draft. The ending of the draft meant that the military needed to adapt in order to recruit people into the “all volunteer” service and this heralded in the wide variety of incentives and recruitment tactics used to entice people to enlist. Many of these are still in use to this day and the primary concern with military recruitment is that young people aren’t getting all the information they need from military recruiters to make an informed decision about enlisting. While it may seem difficult to comprehend that young people in the US are able to be deceived by military recruiters, the reality is that militarism is that which can cloud the minds of masses. In this respect, many young people never question the sales pitch the men and women in uniform use to recruit them.

Knowing that militarism is the leverage used to sell the military, counter military recruitment is a direct response which counters the perceptions of the military as a sacred cow, or a pillar of our society, and that which keeps us free. Counter recruitment activists often work behind the scenes to change school policies on military recruiter access to young people rather than holding high profile campaigns and demonstrations. The core message associated with counter-recruitment is that one should be able to make an informed decision especially if it is a life altering decision that they are bound to for eight years of their life. Thousands of people and hundreds of groups are now engaged in this work, but a quick look at the past reveals that this was not the case thirty years ago.

 Trump makes obvious dictatorial potentials that have long been growing

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Oct 08, 2025 / Patrick Mazza  / The Raven -  History is catching up with the United States. The center of the most globe-spanning empire in history, empire is now coming home to its own shores.

The scenes of troops in the streets, with people being seized and hauled off to camps, ordered by a would-be strongman who acts as a law unto himself, have been witnessed in many countries. We have seen it all too often. Some notable examples have been Chile, Brazil, Guatemala, Iran and Indonesia, spurred by U.S. covert actions to preserve the power of domestic oligarchies beholden to U.S. economic interests. Now we see the same brute assertions of absolute power coming to the U.S., for much the same reasons.

Empires can pursue the most dictatorial policies in their colonial reaches while preserving liberal democracy in their domestic metropoles. In fact, the wealth provided by empire allows this. But when things tighten up, and competition for limited resources increases, liberal democracy fades and the velvet glove comes off the iron fist.

The House won’t get to vote on this proposal to end Selective Service.

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September 9, 2025 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - Early this morning, after overnight behind-the-scenes discussions, the Rules Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to propose a rule for House floor consideration of this year’s National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) that leaves the proposal for attempted automatic registration of young men for a possible military draft in the version of the NDAA to be debated and voted on by the full House, and prevents any debate or vote on the “automatic” registration proposal or the alternate proposal to end draft registration.

The House Rules Committee recommended “making in order” for House floor debate and vote almost 300 amendments to the NDAA, but not the bipartisan amendment to replace the provision to try to automate draft registration with a provision to repeal the Military Selective Service Act, end draft registration, and abolish the Selective Service System. (Scroll down here for the list of amendments submitted to the Rules Committee and those made in order for floor debate and votes.) There was no public discussion by the Rules Committee of any of the proposals with respect to Selective Service.

De jure segregation, the backdoor draft, and elite immunity are part of a recurring cycle of American inequality. As the U.S. threatens new war in Iran, history again points to who will bear the cost—and who will benefit.

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June 28, 2025 / Sharon Kyle / LA Progressive - From housing discrimination to military recruitment, from school segregation to foreign policy, some issues in American life may seem disconnected—mere fragments of a chaotic system. But upon closer examination, these seemingly unrelated policies and practices are bound by a common root: the deliberate consolidation of power by a wealthy, white ruling class. 

From the very inception of the United States, a privileged elite has engineered laws, institutions, and cultural narratives to preserve its dominance—initially through racialized land seizures and redistribution, the brutal system of chattel slavery, and exclusionary immigration policies; later through Jim Crow segregation; and today through more insidious mechanisms like militarized borders, discriminatory policing, mass incarceration, exploitative labor practices, and the weaponization of poverty. At the core lies structural white supremacy—an evolving, interlocking system of racial and class oppression that resists democracy, adapts with time, and refuses to cede power. 

Today, as the Trump administration escalates tensions with Iran following the bombing of that nation’s nuclear facilities, we once again stand at the precipice of war. If military conflict erupts, it will be poor and working-class Americans—especially people of color and rural whites—who will be the first to serve, fight, and die. They are overrepresented in the armed forces but not by coincidence, by design. Economic hardship, lack of opportunity, and targeted recruitment strategies ensure that the burden of war continues to fall on those already most oppressed by the system.