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NNOMYnews 1056: March 2021 - Resisting Women's Draft Registration

NNOMYnews 1056: March 2021 - Resisting Women's Draft Registration

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NNNovember 2023  


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NNOMY News: March 2021 - Resisting Women's Draft Registration

Hello ,


The United States Government is on the verge of requiring women from 18 to 26 years of age to register, like men, for the selective service. The Military Draft. This will be mandatory with the threat of penalties for non-adherence to this demand. The threat of penalties can potentially include huge monetary fines and even imprisonment. In some states of the country, in order to be issued a drivers license, you must register.

The American public is largely ignorant of this legislation and will likely react after the fact of its implementation. The government held public hearings around the country allowing for input by citizens, but largely as a formality, with no intent to consider any reasonable objections to this proposal.

The media, as usual, when confronted with any issue relating to the security state or military affairs, went silent or promoted stories in favor of this amendment, supporting it on the basis of gender equality.

Below are the groups and activists who have spoken out against extending selective service registration to women, and are promoting that voices of opposition speak out in resistance in-person by video testimony.

The basic call is for the abolition of selective service registration, for both women and men, on the basis that it represents a violation of recognized international human rights standards.

Let us hope that more voices will rise in opposition to this coersive registration for more soldiers for more wars before and after this flawed policy is enacted.

#SelectiveService #NoDraftWomen #EliminateTheDraft #WomenForPeace

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The Time for Opposition and Resistance is Now: Likelihood of Legislation to Expand Draft Registration to Women

March 2021 / Rick Jahnkow / Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft Draft NOtices -  Based on developments in the courts and the political views expressed by President-elect Biden and many members of his leadership circle, there is a strong possibility that draft registration could be adopted for women and imposed on them as early as 2022. Some members of Congress have promised to introduce the necessary legislation in 2021, and Joe Biden has indicated he favors it.

At a minimum, the Selective Service System is already showing signs of waging new informational campaigns to boost male draft registration compliance (prosecution as a method of compelling compliance proved ineffective and was abandoned in the 1980s). The informational campaigns could be a sign that SSS anticipates a surge in the non-compliance numbers if women are ordered to register.

It is possible that in 2021, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) will reintroduce his earlier bill to repeal the Selective Service law and shut down registration, but his effort to do so in 2020 garnered little support or attention in Congress.

 


Activists fought the US military draft for decades —
they may soon have to again

May 19 2020 / Robert Levering / Waging Nonviolence - As if there weren’t enough to worry about these days, women soon may be required to register for the military draft.

You may not have heard about this development because of the avalanche of COVID-19 news. In late March, a national commission urged Congress to mandate that all women between 18 and 25 enroll with the Selective Service System, the agency that oversees the military draft.  

Congress may well ratify this proposal. Many prominent figures in both parties endorse the idea from Hillary Clinton to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. If the past is any guide, however, we can expect activists to resist. During the Vietnam War, a massive draft resistance movement forced the government to eliminate the conscription system altogether. When Jimmy Carter reintroduced the current registration system in 1980, a powerful anti-draft movement hobbled the government’s efforts to implement it.

 


 

How Men's Rights Groups Use the Rhetoric of 'Equality' to Punish Women

True justice is served by fixing institutions and policies—not by making policy equally harmful to all genders.

 

March 12 2019 / Kathi Valeii / Pacific Standard - Last month, (February 2019) a federal judge in Texas ruled that drafting only men for military service was unconstitutional. The National Coalition for Men (NCFM), the plaintiff in the case, considers the win a step toward gender equity, but not for the reasons you might think. In a press release announcing the legal victory, the NCFM says that it considers conscription for men "an aspect of socially institutionalized male disposability." The draft, according to the NCFM, is evidence of society-wide discrimination against men.

 


 

Opponents of Military Conscription Call for ‘Full and Fair’ Hearing Before Congress Decides Whether To Expand Selective Service to Women – or To End It

March 11 2021 / Edward Hasbroucki / Antiwar Blog - As Doug Bandow reported on Antiwar.com, military conscription is a bad idea that just won’t die – and right now it’s under active consideration in Congress.

 

Two years ago, Doug Bandow and I were both invited to testify before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS), which was appointed to study (and give Congress political cover for its decision on) whether to finally end Selective Service registration after forty years of failure, or to try to get women as well as men to sign up to for a draft "just in case" the government wants to fight so large, so many, so prolonged, or so unpopular wars that it can’t recruit enough volunteers.

A lawsuit pending in the Supreme Court (the government’s response is due April 14th) is likely to lead to a ruling that the current male-only draft registration requirement is unconstitutional. That leaves Congress with two choices: End registration or expand it to women as well as men.

But as I learned when some of the records of internal NCMNPS deliberations were finally released by the National Archives after the NCMNPS was disbanded (I’m reluctantly suing the Archives to stop their plan to destroy the rest of the records of the NCMNPS before the public can see them), the NCMNPS never seriously considered the possibility of ending registration, despite being unable to come up with any realistic scenario to justify it.


 


 

Watch the ‘Draft Women? Hell No!’ presentation

May 29, 2020 / CodePink - Divest from the War Machine / Arianna Standish, Truth In Recruitment, Rivera Sun, CODEPINK, Edward Hasbrouck, Resisters.info, Bill Galvin, Center on Conscience and War

A bill introduced to Congress is trying to expand draft registration to women . . . but a network of peace activists, experienced draft resisters, antiwar feminists, and draft-age youth are working to not only stop it, but to abolish the draft for all genders.

 

Take action! Tell Congress not to expand draft registration to women, but to abolish it for everyone:
worldbeyondwar.org/repeal

 

ADDITION: Podcast: Congress leaning towards drafting women for next war / Courage to Resist

 


 

Rebuttal to Groups Supporting Female Draft Registration

December 12, 2016 / Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft / Draft NOtices -  - In July 2016, a letter in support of draft registration for women, signed by 16 organizations, was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. The joint letter was coordinated by the national American Civil Liberties Union and was sent on ACLU letterhead. Its signers included, among others, the Service Women’s Action Network, American Association of University Women, Human Rights Watch, NAACP, National Center for Lesbian Rights, and National Organization for Women. Their goal in urging the extension of draft registration to women was very narrow: advancing the cause of gender equality.

The fact that groups like the ACLU have historically opposed military conscription in the U.S. made the letter all the more frustrating to those who have been trying for decades to end draft registration and terminate the Selective Service System. In response to the ACLU-coordinated letter, COMD and a number of other organizations wrote and sent the following statement to various signers of the ACLU-coordinated letter.

 


 

(Click on the image ABOVE to Share on your Facebook Page and paste what you copied BELOW into where it says “Say Something About This”. Then click the blue bar in the form that says “Post to Facebook”. You're done and thank you for sharing!)

Selective Service Registration should be abolished for men and women as a tenet of Basic Human Rights. Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:


All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

It is a violation of our basic human rights that our government should be able to
sequester our bodies into war and put us at risk of killing others or being killed.


 Read more at:

 https://wri-irg.org/en/statemnt/vienna92.htm   |

 

Or Take Action at:

https://worldbeyondwar.org/repeal/

 


 


Feminists Against The Draft, have organized a group action out of Amherst College in Massachusetts, and are soliciting testimonies of draft age women that are stating their opposition to a mandatory draft registration for women by the Selective Service Administration of the United States government. They are stating in their campaign that they are, "Raising awareness about the military draft & opposing any attempts to expand it!"

 

The Feminists Against The Draft, group is also requesting other women, and men,  Make their own video statements in opposition to extending draft registration and tell others to share their statements and post them to social media. If you have a TikTok account, post your video in the comments at:

 

https://www.tiktok.com/@feministsagainstthedraft/video/6945172745126677766?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

 

#selectiveservice #feminist #antiwar #leftist #libertarian #wewontgo #womeninthedraft


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