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Chico Peace & Justice Center’s Counter Recruitment 2012

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    Charles Withuhn | Fair View High School | Chico Youth Action | Chico Peace & Justice Center | Counter-recruitment activists | Counter Recruitment in High Schools

Charles Withuhn - Thursday, February 02, 2012 - Counter-recruiters at Fair View High School, Chico, California

Chico Youth ActionUnder the banner “Chico Youth Action”, Chico Peace & Justice Center’s counter recruitment campaign hit the road again.  For the first time in years, (how many is in dispute), a group of Chico activists put together a program and got on a local high school campus.  A couple of Thursdays ago, Chuck Greenwood, Charles Withuhn, Steve Tschudi, and Butte College student, Courtnie Burns, our only youth, braved the rain, and set up shop on the Fair View High School campus.  Armed with 5 – 2’ x 4’ professionally designed panels on matching white easels, four sets of brochures, four sets of flyers and chocolate cup cakes, many thanks to Linda Furr, we interacted with, perhaps as many as 50 high school juniors and seniors.

It is remarkable how persuasive the smell of chocolate cup cakes can be in getting the attention of teenagers.  We arrived about 11am and set up at the entrance of the cafeteria.  You couldn’t have planned a better spot for catching the students as they came and left the lunch room.  And at lunch time that is a popular spot.  We would offer passing students a brochure or a cup cake, and before you know it, we were getting them information about military life that they had not heard from the evening news, their radio show, or recruiter.

It is incredible what we dug up.  You know, Chico California has a major recruiting store front, with a big fancy back lit sign.  A boy can join the military, go from Chico to Iraq and be more likely to die by his own hand than in combat.  A girl, from Chico, can join the military and have a 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted and a 9 in 10 chance of being sexually harassed.  Vets are more likely to be homeless or commit suicide than their civilian counterparts, and young vets have a higher unemployment rate.

We now know from the Pentagon, itself that we no longer go to war for moral or reasons of self defense.  To quote a Pentagon paper of 1991, “Our objective is to maintain access to the region’s oil.”  We must admit that we have crossed a line.  We now go to war for merely economic considerations.  Does this mean our men and women of the military have become just mercenaries for multi-national companies, companies that have allegiance not to County, but only profit?  So now, counter recruitment, for me, has become a moral response to these circumstances in which we find ourselves.  As Vaclav Havel put it, “a genuine, profound and lasting change for the better…can no longer result from the victory of any particular traditional conception, but …from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and each other, and to the universe.”

By the end of the lunch hour we were happy with the response we got from school officials and students alike.  We felt like we had connected with many students who might have considered the military.  We raised questions, opened eyes, and handed out cup cakes.  All was good.  We folded up our exhibit and went back to our lives encouraged by the connections we had made.

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The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) is supported by individual contributions and a grant by the Craigslist Charitable Fund - 2021 Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. NNOMY websites are hosted by The Electric Embers Coop.

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  • Home
  • Who are we?
    • National counter-recruitment network forming (2003)
    • Committee and Staff
    • Contact NNOMY
    • Register for full resources access
    • NNOMY Newsletter Archive & Subscription Form
    • NNOMY on Social Media Networks
      • Twitter Followers
    • Subscribe Counter-recrutment activists list
    • Donate to NNOMY
  • What is militarization?
    • How can we counter it?
    • Why does NNOMY matter?
    • The Militarization of U.S. Culture
    • School Militarization
      • By Policy
        • JAMRS
        • No Child Left Behind
      • By Program
        • ASVAB Testing
        • Delayed Entry Program
        • DOD STEM
        • JROTC
        • Mission: Readiness
        • Shooting Ranges
        • and Lead Contamination
  • Resources
    • Classroom Resources
      • Before You Enlist 2018
      • Documentaries/Films
      • Peaceful Career Alternatives
      • Peace Pill Videos
      • Researching Pop Culture & Militarism - Selene Rivas
      • Video Reports
    • Considering Enlisting?
    • Counter-recruitment
      • 2018/9 Back-to-school-Counter-recruitment Kit
      • 2017 VFP Workshop
      • Equal Access
      • Guide to High School Leafleting
      • Opt Out/Student lists
      • Organizing Option 8
      • Recruiter Access
      • School Policies
      • Tabling Alternatives
      • Webinars
    • Educating Activists
      • Glossary of Terms
      • NNOMY Reader
      • Pamphlets/Reports
      • Peace Activism
        • Careers in Peacemaking and Social Change
        • Cultural & Art Activism
        • Cultural & Art Activism / NYC
      • Recent Trends in Military Recruitment
      • Toolkits/guides
      • Webinars
        • Webinars: Countering Military Recruiting in Schools During the Pandemic
        • Workshop - Full Spectrum Counter-Recruitment
    • Downloads
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    • NNOMY Blog
      • Pat Elder: Military Recruiting in the United States
      • Edward Hasbrouck: Registration Resistance
      • John Judge on Counter-recruitment
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      • Advanced site search
  • Groups & Actions
    • National Directory of Youth Demilitarization Groups
      • NNOMY Groups in Photos
    • Add Your Group
    • Campaigns
      • Divest Your Body Campaign
      • Desinvierta su campaña del cuerpo
      • School Marksmanship Training
      • Winning The Peace
      • VFP/Counter-recruiting
      • Women's March on the Pentagon
        • War: A Women's Issue
        • La guerra: un asunto de mujeres
      • Campaign: A National Call
      • Education for Peace
        • My Education for Peace PDF
    • On Facebook
      • Stop Kids Going to War
      • De-militarizing Youth
      • Sergeant Solomon
      • The Counter-Recruitment Team
      • Demilitarize Our Schools Group
    • NNOMY 2018 Strategy Summit Report
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