The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

January 2019 / Miranda Groux / The Resistance Center - With recruiters viewed as a commonplace in high schools, we can’t deny the fact that our public schools are militarized. The normalization of violence and conflict threatens students everywhere in the US. No student should face the risk of falling victim to the dangers of war at school. Now more than ever, our children need an active counter-recruitment movement.

For years, the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) has lead the conversation by uniting more than 80 demilitarization and counter recruitment organizations across the country. Representatives from 8 of these organizations serve on NNOMY’s Steering Committee. As of January 2019, The Resistance Center is pleased to be represented on the Steering Committee.

NNOMY serves as a national networking body that brings together national, regional, and local peace organizations to oppose the growing intrusion of the military in young people’s lives. As the , “NNOMY is integral in bringing counter-recruitment and demilitarization groups together to help the nation understand that providing youth with peaceful and viable alternatives to achieve success in life is an important sign of a civilized and democratic society.” NNOMY strategically outlines what individuals, organizations, foundations, and the media can do to limit recruiter access in schools.

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The reasons that the Women's March on the Pentagon is a women's march are many. Not only is there a historical precedent for a women-led antiwar march, women from all walks of life, from countries that have both been victims of and aggressors in conflict, from past generations or those living today, are adversely affected by war at far a greater rate than men. These claims are supported by statistics though those same statistics and realities of war are often swept under the rug or excused as necessary collateral damage. It is time for all victims of war to be acknowledged and for the victimization of women to end.

In 2004, Common Dreams reported that "women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of conflict and war as well as 80% of the 40 million people in world who are now refugees from their homes." But the harm done to women due to conflict does not simply stop there. For generations, women have been traded as goods, their bodies treated as commodities or objects free for the taking, not only during actual combat but simply when they are at or in the vicinity of a military base.

Irene Khan of Amnesty International states that "women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean and 'defeat' entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women."