The partial list below of people who follow NNOMYpeace on Twitter reveals the extent of thoughtful people that support demilitarizing our schools and our youth.
They include activists from the peace and religious communities, scholars and teachers, progressive politicians, social justice organizations both domestic to the USA and international, artists, and people just tired of endless wars:
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NNOMYnews is the newsletter of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. NNOMYnews reports on the growing intrusions by the Department of Defense into our public schools in a campaign to normalize perpetual wars with our youth and to promote the recruitment efforts of the Pentagon.
NNOMYnews also features reports on the saturation of militaristic themes in our entertainment, sports, and gaming offerings that have an influence on our society and on the impact of the military on our environment and health.
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We look forward to you joining with the many of us who are concerned about the threats of cultural militarization in our schools and communities that is threatening a civilian based democracy.
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View Back issues below of the monthly NNOMY Newsletter and educate yourself about how U.S. cultural militarization impacts our schools, youth, and our society.
Also support The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth by Donating to our work.
Below are at list of NNOMYnews by edition number, date, and topic: (Click on the date to open the newsletter)
Back Issues | Upcoming
2024
NNOMY News 1073: Fourth Quarter 2024 - TBA
NNOMY News 1072: Third Quarter 2024 - TBA
NNOMY News 1071: Second Quarter 2024 - TBA
NNOMY News 1070: First Quarter 2024 - TBA
2023
NNOMY News 1069: Fourth Quarter 2023 - Counter-recruitment after October 7 | Back to Top
For counter-recruitment, looking worn from years of groups aging out and COVID eliminating access to students, the year finished out with a devastating war in Israel revealing military service in the worse of lights and associable to American Militarism by recruitment aged youth that view the support of the United States contributing to the devastation of the Palestinian people in Gaza on their social media.
GenZ is not qualifying for or buying the pitch of military recruitment like previous generations did and where GenAlpha factors in is the next question for the future of counter-recruitment activists. Alpha's are claimed to,
"above all, believe helping people is the number one priority for 12-15s (61% say this according to GWI). Plus, over half want to protect people from bullying and for everyone to be treated the same, fueling long-lasting attitudes that create a safer world for all."
One thing that seems more clear for young enlistment aged youth inside the United States has been US foreign Policy propaganda, and how contradicted it is and remains apart from the truth on the ground from the war justifying rhetoric of the US State Department.
Joe Biden has cinched those doubts with a two faced policy of funding a 21st century ethnic cleansing of Palestine for its security partner Israel and at the same time dissimulating for the American People that Israel has gone to far.
As can be expected, Israeli resistance is growing in the ranks of its military as witnessing of atrocities finds public voice and world visibility and the left/right divide grows in the country while the settler population is allowed unrestrained violence and occupation on Palestinian lands at the same time.
Compounding this moment is the war producing nature of nationalism, revealing the cost exerted upon dwindling public resources for health, education, and housing. Billions go to support a war largely benefitting American immigration into illegal housing settlements on Palestinian lands while American citizens at home struggle with rapidly escalating homelessness.
Can we say that militarism is the necessity method to maintain the nation-state, especially that type which is now openly identified as settler colonialist? Post October 7th may well be a turning point for the world in how we understand state violence and see our youth retreating from participating in it. This should also open an opportunity for the counter-recruitment community to examine their methodologies of speaking to youth during and after a cataclysmic event ushering in a paradigm shift in public sensibilities towards war making.
In the fourth quarter NNOMY News presents articles that signify the changes now influencing values being challenged going forward and hopefully initiates a deconstructing against historically held perceptions about securitization and militarization confronting the reality of state violence for the US recruitment aged youth and guiding them to choose different courses for their lives than contributing to the damage to lives and a sustainable planet of misplaced nationalisms. #seculartalk | @resistersinfo | @veteransforpeace | @wearenotyoursoldiers | @comdsd | @nnomypeace | @afsc
NNOMY News 1068: Third Quarter 2023 - Stopping War Where it Begins: In Schools | Back to Top
Many cultures teach the nation-state as defined by the loyalty of its citizenry to protect it against real or imagined enemies. Much of this ideology is imparted to children in schools through state-supportive naratives built often around magical ideas that the sanctity of the state is divinely sanctioned by our gods, whether those supreme entities be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. The lessons imparted in our educational systems within the liberal economic conception of the "democratic" states of the "west", are that the natural freedoms of the priviledged permit them the right to impose service upon average citizens to defend the political or commericial interests of their wealth when powerful interests are threatened by competing states. These appeals are couched in nationalistic rhetoric to defend the nation.
Unfortunately, much what remains hidden in these lessons for children and youth, who are soon to be adult members of their respective nations, is that much of what binds the suprastate nationalism together are private financial interests whether they be mated to extractive industries or in industries that support the defense of the nation itself. The irony of much of these industries are that they are not bound to any single national country themselves and are often multinational in scope as are their investors who benefit from this wealth creation.Who pay the price in sacrifice are the relatively powerless citizenry.
The Third Quarter NNOMY news visits again the subject of the military indoctrination built into our educational system, from kinder to college, that reinforces both the mythological and practical narratives that serve the wealth of the nation. In this moment of escalating wars in Ukraine against Russia and with Palestine struggling with their own national autonomy within Israel, we broach the subject of how many ways we teach our children to accept the inevitability of war and the necesity of spending the commons to finance the costs of engaging in them, even at the risk of our own collective demise.
NNOMY News 1067: Second Quarter 2023 - Why is the military struggling to recruit? | Back to Top
" The percentage of Americans of service age who are eligible to serve in the armed forces is the lowest it’s ever been. It dropped from 29 percent in recent years to 23 percent last year. Fewer young Americans meet the military basic fitness standards, and more young Americans have used controlled substances. While marijuana is legal in twenty-one states plus the District of Columbia, its use is still disqualifying when it comes to joining the military. The decline in the percentage of Americans eligible to serve in the military has become accompanied by a declining interest in service. Just 9 percent of Americans of service age say they want to serve, down from 23 percent a few years ago. A mix of factors looks to be a work. A robust job market reduces the economic incentive to join the military. The political right has raised concerns of “wokeism,” while the political left has raised concerns about far-right extremism among service members. And the military’s well-documented problems in curbing sexual harassment and assault, epitomized by the murder of Army solider Vanessa Guillén, has likely discouraged many young women from wanting to join the military" - CFR
NNOMY News 1066: First Quarter 2023 - Forced JROTC on the Nation's Poorer Students | Back to Top
A series of articles from the New York Times from the summer of 2022 up to the winter of 2022 - 2023 has led to much national and regional press on the issue of Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps abuses in our national public school system of the United States. Those NYC articles, in turn, led to a handful of senators and congress members establishing a congressional investigative committee to call up the Pentagon to answer to student sexual abuse claims against JROTC instructors in their JROTC units.
Other issues also included militarized curriculum in JROTC textbooks, National Rifle Association support for shooting ranges in high schools and most pronouncedly the increasing mandatory placement of freshman students into JROTC corps as a replacement for physical education classes in poorer communities that lack other opportunities, post high school, like college.
While Counter-recruiters had successfully challenged and overturned mandatory JROTC in the Chicago Public School district after a multi year lobbying effort of the district, other schools nationally have been adopting forced placements of students without parental or student consent while the Pentagon asserts that the program is voluntary. With lagging military recruitment for military recruiters having to face systemic changes in the recruiting environment post COVID-19, it is clear that that these mandatory school placements are a strategy to increase military recruitment in the commons of our public schools, with a coercive approach sidestepping national and state laws restricting such demands on our nation’s most vulnerable families and violating basic human rights.
Below are a specific selection of articles that have occurred in the intervening 9 months addressing the concerns and struggle around maintaining a citizen based educational commons and even an article from over seventy years ago where the University of California was facing .the question of forced ROTC upon college students receiving an education at a state sponsored school.
2022
NNOMY News 1065: Fourth Quarter 2022 - The Wages of U.S. Militarism Upon Us | Back to Top
For the last NNOMY newsletter of 2022 we present the dichotomies that counter-recruitment activism finds itself in a still looming and uncertain pandemic culture where our lives and the state of our schools and youth are disrupted. The military’s recruitment efforts likewise find themselves in a dilemma with sagging recruitment numbers and youth not qualifying to meet the standards to be accepted into military service. On the flip side, there appears to be a generational shift going on with GenZ more aware of the pitfalls of military service and concerned about existential issues like climate change and beginning to connect the dots between our resource dependent economies and the devastation extracting them are exacting on our planet’s life forms and natural environments. This concern is not universal however, but between non-compliance with recruitment standards for some and a critical eye towards US wars and conflicts around the world from others, NNOMY is seeing a resurgence of articles questioning the narratives of militarists and nationalism. How this leaves youth demilitarization activism in the lurch is also evident with groups having had a now nearly three year absence from school access and groups either aging out after a nearly thirty year run of counter-recruitment activism and an uncertain generational disconnect with a digitized generation now the object of military recruitment efforts. An upside to NNOMY going into 2023 is the possibility of a potential wave of counter-reaction by young students to conservative attempts to reign in progressive influences in their communities and lives. One of the question in front of us all as we head into the next year is whether the potential for counter-militarism in our culture is a universal instinct across the country and world as youth increasingly are asking for relief from the inconsistencies in the culture between the rhetoric of governments and the circumstances they face in their present lives as they look towards an uncertain future.
NNOMY News 1064: Third Quarter 2022 - Student Loan Forgiveness Threatens Pentagon's Recruitment Efforts | Back to Top
President Biden’s ridiculously small concession to student loan forgiveness has kicked off another tempest in a teapot as the Pentagon stresses that the, already lagging, military recruitment quotas will suffer more because of it, discouraging young people to find educational financial support inside the military. Could anything be more revealing about the level of hubris within the Military Regimes of the United States than to suffer a paltry support to our nation”s youth’s education against the Trillions of dollars blindsided American Citizens allow to be coerced by this endless system of wasteful overreach and political corruption? The upside to this latest development is that it has shone a light on the Pentagon’s Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program operating in thousands of American public schools revealing the antiquated , racist, misogynistic, and militaristic intent it serves to implant on our most vulnerable youth and in a place where it should not even be tolerated in a civilian society. This quarter’s NNOMY news focused on the latest articles that have come out of this debacle reaching as high in the media food chain as to initiate a congressional investigation. Plus more….
NNOMYnews 1063: Apr - June 2022 - Teaching "Cultural Militarization | Back to Top
Besides the investments that are not made in productive or cultural sectors therefore reinforcing what Susan Sontag calls the “brutality of America”, militarism is an ideology and a set of practices which has invaded America in every sector of its economic, political and cultural life. The military-industrial complex has reinforced a culture of war. Nick Turse analyses this phenomenon in his book entitled The Complex; How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. From universities where up to 70% of research is funded by the Pentagon to Hollywood where many movies are co-produced or funded by military experts to the links between Big Oil and the military, Turse tracks down all the ramifications of the militarization of America. He gives long lists of companies working for the Defense Department which depend on military funding, and examples of military waste of resources. In a militarized society even useless weapons that are not needed or at times not even requested by the armed forces are produced while millions of children live in starvation or below the poverty line. - Pierre Guerlain
NNOMYnews 1062: Feb - Mar 2022 - Public School Release of Student Information to Military at 20 | Back to Top
Concurrently, in the last 20 years, we have seen a national military counter-recruitment movement diminish in its scope and urgency as groups have “aged out”, not feeling a connection with the succeeding generations of youth and a normalization of militarism in our culture that has made previous concerns for Defense Department over-reach into the civilian society much less urgent and visible. This issue of the NNOMY news, Public School Release of Student Information at 20, explores the challenges and opportunities for change for the next generations to develop an awareness of the implications of expanding militarism for their futures and their world." Concurrently, in the last 20 years, we have seen a national military counter-recruitment movement diminish in its scope and urgency as groups have “aged out”, not feeling a connection with the succeeding generations of youth and a normalization of militarism in our culture that has made previous concerns for Defense Department over-reach into the civilian society much less urgent and visible. This issue of the NNOMY news, Public School Release of Student Information at 20, explores the challenges and opportunities for change for the next generations to develop an awareness of the implications of expanding militarism for their futures and their world."
NNOMYnews 1061: Dec 2021 - Jan 2022 - Youth Demilitarization Looking Forward | Back to Top
As we begin a new year, still in Pandemic Mode, we add another year to the pandemic of continous militarism in our schools, schools at every level of education, with Pentagon programs like expanding Department of Defense STEM/STEAM, JROTC, and military recruiters playing video games online with minors to sell them on endless war. All this supports aggressive military recruiting. We are also seeing the beginnings of another round of youth activists connecting the dots and pushing back and saying enough to militarized policing, environmental destruction, and an expanding presence of Department of Defense investments and research funding in their schools. As we enter 2022, it has never been as important as now to activate to expose the scope of militarism in our society; in entertainment offerings, corporate news propaganda, in sports representations, and in our schools. Let's get back into our high schools with concerned teachers, parents, and students, with counter-recruitment strategies to promote alternatives to militarism for building our futures. It will be more difficult during and after the pandemic to get our messages out but it must be done to promote a sustainable world for our futures. It is yes or yes. And help the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth this year with a donation to support our national organizing effort to demilitarize our schools. Make a tax deductable donation at The Alliance For Global Justice.
2021
NNOMYnews 1060: Oct - Nov 2021 - Witnessing for Peace | Back to Top
In this moment of our continuous war economy, groups that push back against the cultural militarism that permeates our society are facing difficult decisions. Peace activists and their organizations are experiencing existential challenges that threaten their continuation while trying to relate to a rapidly changing landscape consumed by digital media distractions and a flailing political structure that more resembles a reality television show every successive season. In the last two decades for activism against war and militarism, whether from mass demonstrations from millions of people globally in 2003 or a handful of people protesting in front of a military recruitment center, those who profit from war, respective of the prosperity for the few or the declining standard of living for the many, are not open to negotiation. Militarization and the justifications for our wars and their enormous expenditures and personal sacrifices are interchangeable and largely meaningless to those who profit. Constant and protracted witnessing to the moral and ethical contradictions of our war economy are our historical response to war makers and still an important role we perform reminding those who can be awakened enough to understand our addiction to war and become influencers themselves for peace. Equally important, activist efforts are there to remind the vast majority who have become normalized to our system of violence for profit, that there is a discontent within the system and powerful arguments against it, whether they are willing to listen or not. Our children and youth are being indoctrinated into a permanent war culture more clearly than ever before and the resources allocated to this banal evil is increasing as our groups pushing back against the militarizing of young minds are diminishing. In the NDAA budget for 2022 military programs like JROTC seek to double the amount of corps programs in our public high schools from 3500 to over 6000. Counter-recruitment activists provide an alternative narrative to challenge military recruiters in public schools because speaking out against our captive war economy and its human costs to our future generations must be done; bottom line. It is time to inspire another generation to take up counter-recruitment activism in schools and online and to innovate ways to keep it relevant and accessable to the same youth that the military has access to. Below are examples of those who have struggled and provided witness against the abuses of our cultural militarism in the last year of 2021.
NNOMYnews 1059: Aug - Sept 2021 - Militarizing Our Children | Back to Top
Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid. It turned out, however, that Congress — in its rare moment of concern for the next generation — had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst..
NNOMYnews 1058: June - July 2021 - A Look Back at Council for a Strong America's Mission: Readiness | Back to Top
In 2009 a group of retired military generals formed a "non-governmental" project called "Mission: Readiness" to invoke national alarm that our children were growing up physically unfit to meet the requirements to qualify for military enlistment. Their group, "Council for a Strong America," maintained that this was a "national security issue" and then embarked on organizing interventions into our public pre-school classrooms to promote remedies to the nation. Those children from 2009 in preschools are now of recruitment age and to what result the efforts of these retired generals has been successful is unclear, but what is clearer is that what should have been under the purvue of the National Institute of Health to the exclusion of the Pentagon has gained little community redress and pushback. In this issue of NNOMYnews we re-publish a chapter from the book. War and the Body: militarization, practice and experience by the authors Joseph Burridge and Kevin McSorley that remains the single most extensive analysis of this program and the "banal militarism" that they conclude this program represents.
NNOMYnews 1057: April - May 2021 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 | Back to Top
"The FY21 NDAA comes at a pivotal time in our nation’s history. For the sixtieth consecutive year, Congress will enact timely, important, and essential legislation to fulfill its critical constitutional obligation to “provide for the common defense”and allow on our nation’s military to continue to represent the best that America has to offer: Our leadership and values.
"Our Values? Got that right!
NNOMYnews 1056: March 2021 - Resisting Women's Draft Registration | Back to Top
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.
NNOMYnews 1055: February 26 2021 - Historic Peace Church Peace Activism | Back to Top
Historic Peace Churches have played a consistent and continuing multi-generational role in those movements and within their own organizations that have confronted war and the conscription of youth into those wars. The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth was born, beginning in 2003, when the American Friends Service Committee, a secularized social justice organization of the Religious Society of Friends hosted a gathering in Philadelphia.
In this month’s NNOMYnews for February 2021, we recognize some of those efforts of Peace Churches and the activism and sacrifice that came out of their pacifist principles.
From the website of the Peace Church Alliance: “ “Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites have been called "Peace Churches" for our shared commitment to non-violence. We don't own these conversations—but we fearlessly hold them—and actively seek to bend the arc of the dialogue toward equity and peace.
Yesterday, we fought for abolition and propelled the Underground Railroad. Today, we invite other individuals and communities to join as Peace Alliance Partners as we work together for "Positive Peace." - https://www.peacechurches.org
NNOMYnews 1054: January 18 2021 - The Culture of JROTC | Back to Top
The Junior Reserves Training Corps (JROTC) program is slated to nearly double in the amount of units spread out among our national public high schools. With ample direct and anecdotal evidence of multiple types of abusive behavior located in the culture of JROTC, it is a stretch for the Pentagon to uphold their claim that the program promotes any reasonable definition of building good character and citizenship .
Military conceptualizations of honor and duty and the citizenry's compliance to all things military combined with a country addicted to violence in work and leisure are too often blinded to the dangers that young people face in programs that promote military values as the defining measures of good citizenship. At a minimum it is time for activist organizations, concerned citizens, and legislators to withdraw their support of allowing the JROTC expansion in our schools in the next years that are in the planning stages and organize to limit these programs at current levels or even call for a reduction.
NNOMY Feature: January 10 2021 - Revisiting Our Outrage | Back to Top
"Revisiting Our Outrage," is a look back to activist reports and news stories in reaction to the Bush era Iraq war mobilizations, and the resultant school demilitarization activism and resistance that took place before we descended into the fog of protracted cultural militarization in the following years. The reports listed below also measure the distance that we have traveled that transformed a counter-recruitment movement into a ongoing proactive peace practice.
2020
NNOMYnews 1053: December 15 2020: Military influencers in our public education | Back to Top
Young people who lacked the resources and scholarship to pursue a college or university education were increasingly predated by military recruitment as the Department of Defense recruitment budgets increased and their "supply" of willing and qualified recruits diminished in preceding years. As we head into 2021 following a year of pandemic, with likely an additional year of returning to normal in our country, many will face terrible job shortages and the offers of a military enlistment could reverse the recent past unwillingness to consider a military career. Influencers and militarized influences permeate our culture. Military recruitment advertising is inserted into sports, movies, and video games. From school teachers and counselors, to parents desperate themselves under financial hardships brought about by the pandemic will motivate enlistments as well. Our militarized culture is about to go into overdrive
1052: November 17 2020: Recruiting Soldiers and Society for Permanent Wars | Back to Top
By both design and circumstances, the United States of America is captive to its assigned role as world enforcer of free market capitalism. With military commands now assigned to each sub-continent of the planet, our military industrial intelligence complex has monetized its permanent war economy with arms sales coerced upon its client states under the false rubric of keeping the world free for unrestricted commerce.
How that all will work out for the people and the planet is never clear in the endless rhetorical back and forth of its collapsing democracy and corporate controlled political culture. It is immersed in a morass of militarism normalized since its enculturated victory in WWII and has allowed its own self inflicted fable to permeate every aspect of its commercialized commons.
From a consolidated and complicit media to sports events and every expression of entertainment celebrating our military, the U.S. citizenry is bombarded with this spectacle of uniformed violence now consuming 7 1/2 hours weekly of over 40% of its male youth in ritualized virtual killing understood as harmless play in first-person shooter video games.
We have now made virtual killing a legitimized sport and have employed "experts" to convince any concerned sectors of our society that it is actually a healthy retreat from the pressures of our lives.
As the U.S. population reels under a poorly managed pandemic and businesses and jobs are lost and eliminated in a faltering main street economy, the military see's their recruitment opportunities increase as more young lives get directed into a bloated military serving as an international occupation force ensuring resource access to our industries.
All what is said here is unrecognizable to nearly all of the U.S. citizenry.
1051: October 17 2020: 2020 Elections + Antiwar Politics | Back to Top
As the U.S. Presidential Elections consume all the media and cultural oxygen in the last days of October 2020, the theme has emerged among the two viable party candidates of who is more anti-war. Likely this theme is a cover for the military keynesianism that constructs our economy for both mainstream parties to not explain why we prioritize the majority of discretionary tax funds for military appropriations and not more important civilian needs.
Additionally, this reality show election season distracts us from the hard economic conditions of declining opportunities that many youth are facing.
In this pandemic moment, the opportunities emerging for military recruitment efforts by the United States Department of Defense should not be ignored. The recruitment appeals to youth in the newly minted virtual recruitment outreach strategies being deployed by the Pentagon have a cost to the national psychological health of our youth. Eighty percent of young men in the United States are involved in militarized gaming, online and off, where recruitment appeals are now present on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitch. One important opportunity available to us as counter-recruitment groups is to increase the breadth and consistency of our social media presentations and outreach on accurate Delayed Entry/ Future Soldier information as potential recruits change their minds and need reassurances and counseling on how to get out. It is an opportunity to save lives and an effective counter-recruitment practice in COVID-19 times when our entry to schools is limited or non-existent..
1050: September 14 2020: Training Kids to Kill | Back to Top
The United States is immersed in war logic and the imagery of violence and this is purposeful to drive our militarized culture. Like a decades long slow boil, our citizenry is largely normalized to it and either ignores this catastrophe or embraces it in thoughtless and repetitive jingoism. All of this effects our youth negatively and as their video game culture consumes multiple days of their lives in an orgy of violent and contextually militarized "play" they become desensitized to real violence and positioned to accept permanent war as a justifiable reality of life.
1049: August 19 2020: Combat soldiers, PTSD, and Moral Injury | Back to Top
With the United States involved in permanent wars in the post 9/11 era fighting supposed continuous terrorism around the world and with the US now seemingly entering a new cold war with russia and china, veterans are increasingly experiencing higher rates of PTSD, toxic exposure injuries, and claims of the effects related to moral injury.
1048: July 13 2020: Militarized eSports and Military Recruitment | Back to Top
In this moment of the Coronavirus, the Pentagon's recruiting efforts at national public high schools have stopped as schools are closed in the traditional peak time for recruiters as school ends for the summer. Looking to expand the military recruitment efforts online, the military has turned to engaging in online gaming, much of it military themed, and increasing their outreach on other platforms where youth are to be found like social media.
1047: June 15 2020: Delayed Entry Program in the Age of Covid-19 | Back to Top
Changes in the Delayed Entry Program / Future Soldier Program during the Covid-19 pandemic accommodate strategies for distance military recruitment and enlistment. These changes further position those enrolled in DEP to feel further obligated and trapped against changing their minds to enlist due to expanded advance payments and training before boot camp in a moment when there is mass unemployment and economic distress.
1046: May 11 2020 - Learning Peace in Times of a Pandemic | Back to Top
This pandemic month we visit different voices around our network talking peacemaking with social distancing. We are featuring the voices of students in peace clubs writing to us, activists from peace groups talking together in webinars, and on Zoom, and others concerned about how should be our society post Covid-19 and post militarism as well.Tracy High School Peace Club
1045: April 13 2020 - Military Recruitment in Post Covid-19 America | Back to Top
As the Planet Earth confronts a global pandemic, the United States' Military Recruiting Commands adjust to the challenge of isolating their recruitment efforts to virtual military recruitment, now encouraged by the massive national unemployment reality in the country. While most of the citizenry hang on to an uncertain reality for their lives going forward in the remaining 2020 year, and maybe extending into 2021 as well, the Department of Defense takes advantage of the vulnerability of our youth as they try to find a place where they can havea place to provide an income, health benefits, and even food. This is a perfect storm for the Military Industrial Complex that see's its fortunes expand while the civilian sectors retract into recession.Army moves to 100% virtual recruiting as COVID-19 continues to spread
1044: March 17 2020 - Toxic reasons to not enlist | Back to Top
A campaign by the Earth Democracy Project of the U.S. Section of the Women's International League for
Peace & Freedom, has given an additional argument to Truth in Recruitment activists which is the fact of
military contamination health risks on U.S. military bases nationally and globally.
1043: February 29, 2020: NNOMY Essentials | Back to Top
This issue of NNOMY News we re-introduce essential issues around counter military recruitment activism in updated versions.
One of the primary functions of the NNOMY network is to provide reliable information and we are in the process of updating
many of our core content issues. Check them out below:
1042: February 15, 2020: Countering Military Recruitment in California | Back to Top
California has the gratest amount of youth demilitarization groups in the United States. California also is the state with the most
defense spending. This issue of NNOMY News, we feature some of those groups that contribute to informing our youth with a fuller
narrative of what it means to serve in the military and directing young people to alternative careers that are not in the armed forces.
1041: February 1, 2020: Visiting Counter-recruitment Groups around the Internet | Back to Top
This issue of NNOMYnews, we visit Counter-recruitment groups from the NNOMY community of activists and check-in to see
what they are sharing on their social media.
1040: January 18 2020: The New Face of Military Recruiting | Back to Top
The new face of military recruiting looks a lot like the old face issue, wise, only it is gauging what gains the attention
of Generation Z which means the virtual world of computer gaming. The new esports approach of the Department of
Defense is turning better leads and generating greater interest than the traditional high school recruitment strategies of
years prior without the problems of community regulation and counter military recruiting interference. The U.S. Army's
"What's Your Warrior'" campaign is right out of the video game playbook. The question is what does this mean for
Counter-Recruitment activists going forward into the new decade.
1039: January 3, 2020 Looking Back at Counter-recruitment and NNOMY | Back to Top
In advance of the next NNOMY newsletter themed, January 18 2020: The New Face of Military Recruiting, NNOMY takes a
look back at counter military recruitment practice and issues in the past decade to review where we have been as we
anticipate a new decade ahead for counter recruitment activism. A revealed cyber strategy of the Pentagon recruiting
command's plans to generate military recruits from Generation Z and those youth that have grown up in a world of virtual
realities will confront our struggle forward.
2019
1038: December 20, 2019: Militarism and Migration | Back to Top
1037: December 7, 2019 Human Rights and Militarism | Back to Top
1036: November 25, 2019 Mission: Readiness - Citizens or Soldiers | Back to Top
1035: November 8, 2019 ASVAB Data Mining in America | Back to Top
1034: October 25, 2019 Teaching invasion: The Army JROTC "Raider Nationals" | Back to Top
1033: October 12, 2019 Confronting militarism at your High School | Back to Top
1032: September 28, 2019: Theme: Climate Justice and Militarism | Back to Top
1031: September 15, 2019: Theme: Intersectionality and Cultural Militarism | Back to Top
1030: August 30, 2019: Theme: Military CO's and Resisters | Back to Top
1029: August 16, 2019 Climate Justice and Militarism | Back to Top
1028: August 2, 2019 How Militarism controls Our National Sports in America| Back to Top
1027: July 22 2019 Religious Militarism in America | Back to Top
1026: July 5 2019 How Militarism controls Our Political Culture in America | Back to Top
1025: June 23 2019 Peace Veterans talk to our Youth | Back to Top
1024: June 8 2019 Guns in Our Schools | Back to Top
1023: May 24, 2019 Student Activism in High Schools | Back to Top
1022: May 10 2019 The militarization of STEM | Back to Top
1021: April 26 2019 Domestic Violence in the Military | Back to Top
1020: April 12 2019 Divest from the War Machine | Back to Top
1019: March 29 2019 | Back to Top
1018: March 15 2019 | Back to Top
1017: March 1, 2019 | Back to Top
1016: February 15 2019 | Back to Top
1015: February 1 2019 | Back to Top
1014: January 18 2019 | Back to Top
1013: January 4 2019 | Back to Top
2018
1012: December 21 2018 | Back to Top
1011: December 17, 2018 | Back to Top
1010: November 23 2018 | Back to Top
1009: November 9, 2018 | Back to Top
1008: October 26 2018 | Back to Top
1007: October 12 2018 | Back to Top
1006: September 25 2018 | Back to Top
1005: September 14 2018 | Back to Top
1004: August 31 2018 | Back to Top
1003: August 10 2018 | Back to Top
1002: July 27 2018 | Back to Top
1001: July 13 2018 | Back to Top
Upcoming
1070: First Quarter 2024 - Military Recruitment in the Time of Permanent War
1071: Second Quarter 2024 - NNOMY: A 20 Year Review
1072: Third Quarter 2024 - TBA
1073: Fourth Quarter 2024 - TBA
Update: 01/07/2024 GG
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The NNOMY Opinion section is a new feature of our articles section. Writing on youth demilitarization issues is quite rare but we have discovered the beginning articles and notes being offered on this subject so we have decided to present them under an opinion category. The articles presented do not necessarily reflect the views of the NNOMY Steering Committee.
Activists Demilitarizing Our Public Schools
The NNOMY CAMPUS page is a resource for activists wishing to understand how to more effectively intervene in our public schools against the increasing influence of Pentagon programs to indoctrinate our youth for war. A series of webinars are being planned on different successful strategies to effect policy changes in school districts that better protect student privacy from military recruiters, to organize access to counter-recruit on campus, and to monitor the activities of military personnel on public school campuses. Topics are listed by series and subject. NNOMY webinar based workshops are a more effective method to instruct how to proceed with curbing the number of youth that make the choice to join into military service, or do so with a more informed picture of what this service will entail. This page will be updated periodically as additional webinars are conducted and new materials are produced to support these trainings. NNOMY will maintain these educational resources with the most up-to-date information and informed opinions as possible in order to keep the practice of national counter'recruitment efforts viable into the future.
| Available Webinars: |
The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible. - Chris Hedges (From his article: The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism, 2011)
Revised 04/17/2016
Though the United States of America shares with other nations in a history of modern state militarism, the past 78 years following its consolidation as a world military power after World War II has seen a shift away from previous democratic characterizations of the state. The last forty years, with the rise of the neo-conservative Reagan and Bush (2) administrations, began the abandonment of moral justifications for democracy building replaced by bellicose proclamations of the need and right to move towards a national project of global security by preemptive military force. Even with the return of eight years of the, so called, Liberal Obama administrations we saw the further erosion of long held human right protections with the suspension of habeas corpus and the increased usage of extra-judicial drone bombing killings of claimed combatants in multiple conflicts worldwide. Now with the Trump and Biden administrations, these programs have increased unbeknownst to the general public as the mainstream media silenced and normalized perpetual wars.
In the process of global military expansion, the US population has been subjected to an internal re-education to accept the role of the U.S. as consolidating its hegemonic rule internationally in the interest of liberal ideals of wealth creation and protectionism.
The average citizen has slowly come to terms with stealthily increasing campaigns of militarization domestically in media offerings; from television, movies, militarized video games, and scripted news networks to reinforce the inevitability of a re-configured society as security state. The effect has begun a transformation of how, as citizens, we understand our roles and viability as workers and families in relation to this security state. This new order has brought with it a shrinking public common and an increasing privatization of publicly held infrastructure; libraries, health clinics, schools and the expectation of diminished social benefits for the poor and middle-class. The national borders are being militarized as are our domestic police forces in the name of Homeland Security but largely in the interest of business. The rate and expansion of research and development for security industries and the government agencies that fund them, now represent the major growth sector of the U.S.economy. Additionally, as the U.S. economy continually shifts from productive capital to financial capital as the engine of growth for wealth creation and development, the corporate culture has seen its fortunes rise politically and its power over the public sector grow relatively unchallenged by a confused citizenry who are watching their social security and jobs diminishing.
.jpg "Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team members, some armed with assault rifles, preparing for an exercise")
How increasing cultural militarization effects our common future will likely manifest in increased public dissatisfaction with political leadership and economic strictures. Social movements within the peace community, like NNOMY, will need to expand their role of addressing the dangers of militarists predating youth for military recruitment in school to giving more visibility to the additional dangers of the role of an influential militarized media, violent entertainment and play offerings effecting our youth in formation and a general increase and influence of the military complex in all aspects of our lives. We are confronted with a demand for a greater awareness of the inter-relationships of militarism in the entire landscape of domestic U.S. society. Where once we could ignore the impacts of U.S. military adventurisms abroad, we are now faced with the transformation of our domestic comfort zone with the impacts of militarism in our day to day lives where we are witnessing militarized police forces in all our cities.
How this warning can be imparted in a meaningful way by a movement seeking to continue with the stated goals of counter-recruitment and public policy activism, and not loose itself in the process, will be the test for those activists, past and future, who take up the call to protect our youth from the cultural violence of militarism.
The "militarization of US culture" category will be an archive of editorials and articles about the increasing dangers we face as a people from those who are invested in the business of war. This page will serve as a resource for the NNOMY community of activists and the movement they represent moving into the future. The arguments presented in this archive will offer important realizations for those who are receptive to NNOMY's message of protecting our youth, and thus our entire society, of the abuses militarism plays upon our hopes for a sustainable and truly democratic society.
NNOMY
Please consider becoming a supporter of The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth
And our work to demilitarize our schools and youth.
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Revised / 11/04/2023 - GDG
NNOMYpeace has organized the following resources for our own staff of activists to promote our campaigns on different social media platforms. Many are formatted for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds.
We also welcome those activists inside our network of groups doing Truth in Recruitment and Counter-recruiting activism to utilize there resources for their own social media channels.
If you are not a group associated to NNOMYpeace, and would like to utilize these resources on your own channels, we encourage your groups to integrate to NNOMY on our National Directory of Youth Demilitarization Groups to help support the national community of youth demilitarization groups to know you and the scope of your activism. You can share your information to list your group by submitting an organizational form at the following LINK.
We have distributed the following graphics by campaign. Click on the categories below to see those that support different campaign themes by NNOMY
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The Divest “Your Body” from the War Machine graphics are campaigning resources for social media for the Divest campaign that NNOMY is collaborating with CodePink. NNOMY focuses on asking youth to "Divest of their Bodies" from military service with the war machine. These are strictly to be utilized with counter-recruitment only and not with TIR.
These social media resources are to be utilized with the "Winning the Peace" campaign in cooperation with the palm cards developed by War Resisters League and the support website created for smart phones, "What Everyone Should Know Before Joining the Military / Lo que deberías saber entres de enrolarte en las Fuerzas Armadas (FF.AA.) ," to answer questions for youth about what military service really involves for them.
These social media resources focus on groups nationally and regionally that take part in some form of youth demilitarization activism. That can include themes such as Truth in Recruitment or Counter-recruitment activism or participate in outreach to schools as veteral or antiwar speakers. Those using them should be cognizant of the limits that your location and context present before you decide to select the appropriate images and appeals for your use.
The Misc. social media image resources category are designed around various appeals encompassing general counter-recruitment messages and antiwar themes. They should be utilized judiciously with attention paid to the moment and situation of which they are applied. Some of these may be themed along specific important dates in the peace calendar of on specific subject relating to militarization especially those themes that effect youth. Those found in this category are not specific to a campaign.
Back to School Against War & Militarism! Get the 2018-19 Back-to-school Kit for Counter-recruiting and School De-militarization Organizing from The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth and find out how you can help keep our youth safer and send a message to school officials and your government... military recruiters should be monitored in local high school and minor-aged youth deserve a balanced narrative on military service! Act Now to activate in your child's public school against Pentagon intrusions into our community youth.
The "Eliminate Selective Service for Everyone" campaign category addresses the antiquated Selective Service system and the demand for its elimination. With the issue of women now being qualified for combat duties including fighting, the issue has been brought before the congress and senate of the United States to require women to register, like men, in the years when young adults are typically drafted into the services to fight wars if the draft needs to be re-initiated in the event of a national crisis where there are not sufficient troops to meet the troop requirement.
This campaign, "Eliminate Selective Service for Everyone," asks for the elimination of this demand based on it being a violation of basic and internationally recognized human rights protocols including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The "Costs of War" campaign category came from the Watson Institute for International Affairs website of Brown University in Providence, RI. This institute has made their research into the economic, social, political, and human costs of U.S. wars their research focus. Their mission statement explains the following:
The Costs of War Project is a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2010. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the related violence in Pakistan and Syria. There are many hidden or unacknowledged costs of the United States’ decision to respond to the 9/11 attacks with military force. We aim to foster democratic discussion of these wars by providing the fullest possible account of their human, economic, and political costs, and to foster better informed public policies.
This campaign, "Costs of War," asks for the public to be aware that our post 9/11 foreign policy has an effect on the U.S.'s international relations that are increasingly coming under question domestically and internationally and how those policies align with the stated goals of the U.S. State Department and its allied governments..
NNOMY Peace produces workshops to assist groups in understanding the tactics of military recruiters in the school and the community and create community and strategies for groups envolved in youth demilitarization efforts.
NNOMYpeace produces printable and viewable resources to support the practice of Truth in Recruitment and Counter-recruitment activism.
News reports from the groups associated to the NNOMY Network including Social Media.
Reports from counter-recruitment groups and activists from the field. Includes information about action reports at recruiting centers and career fairs, school tabling, and actions in relation to school boards and state legislatures.
David Swanson is the author of the new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Dennis Kucinich. In addition to cofounding AfterDowningStreet.org, he is the Washington director of Democrats.com and sits on the boards of a number of progressive organizations in Washington, DC.
Charlottesville Right Now: 11-10-11 David Swanson
David Swanson joins Coy to discuss Occupy Charlottesville, protesting Dick Cheney's visit to the University of Virginia, and his new book. - Listen
Jorge Mariscal is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and the son of a U.S. Marine who fought in World War II. He served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego.
Matt Guynn plays the dual role of program director and coordinator for congregational organizing for On Earth Peace, building peace and nonviolence leadership within the 1000+ congregations of the Church of the Brethren across the United States and Puerto Rico. He previously served a co-coordinator of training for Christian Peacemaker Teams, serving as an unarmed accompanier with political refugees in Chiapas, Mexico, and offering or supporting trainings in the US and Mexico.
Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. He can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Pat Elder was a co-founder of the DC Antiwar Network (DAWN) and a member of the Steering Committee of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, (NNOMY). Pat is currently involved in a national campaign with the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom project, Military Poisons, investigating on U.S. military base contamination domestically and internationally. Pat’s work has prominently appeared in NSA documents tracking domestic peace groups.
Documents:
audio Pat Elder - National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth
NNOMY periodically participates in or organizes events(e.i. conferences, rallies) with other organizations.
News articles reposted about NNOMY. Includes news reports about our work with associated groups and conferences.
The Counter-recruitment Essentials section of the NNOMY web site covers the issues and actions spanning this type of activism. Bridging the difficult chasms between religious, veteran, educator, student, and community based activism is no small task. In this section you will find information on how to engage in CR activism in your school and community with the support of the knowledge of others who have been working to inform youth considering enlisting in the military. You will also find resources for those already in the military that are looking for some guidance on how to actively resist injustices as a soldier or how to choose a path as a conscientious objector.
John Judge was a co-founder of the Committee for High School Options and Information on Careers, Education and Self-Improvement (CHOICES) in Washington DC, an organization engaged since 1985 in countering military recruitment in DC area high schools and educating young people about their options with regard to the military. Beginning with the war in Viet Nam, Judge was a life-long anti-war activist and tireless supporter of active-duty soldiers and veterans.
In the 1970's the Selective Service System and the paper draft became unworkable, requiring four induction orders to get one report. Boards were under siege by anti-war and anti-draft forces, resistance of many kinds was rampant. The lottery system failed to dampen the dissent, since people who knew they were going to be drafted ahead of time became all the more active. Local draft board members quit in such numbers that even I was approached, as a knowledgeable draft counselor to join the board. I refused on the grounds that I could never vote anyone 1-A or eligible to go since I opposed conscription and the war.
At this point the Pentagon decided to replace the paper draft with a poverty draft, based on economic incentive and coercion. It has been working since then to draw in between 200-400,000 enlisted members annually. Soon after, they began to recruit larger numbers of women to "do the jobs men don't want to". Currently recruitment quotas are falling short, especially in Black communities, and reluctant parents are seen as part of the problem. The hidden problem is retention, since the military would have quadrupled by this time at that rate of enlistment, but the percentage who never finish their first time of enlistment drop out at a staggering rate.
I began bringing veterans of the Vietnam War into high schools in Dayton, Ohio in the late 1960s, and have continued since then to expose young people to the realities of military life, the recruiters' false claims and the risks in combat or out. I did it first through Vietnam Veterans Against the War/Winter Soldier Organization, then Dayton Draft & Military Counseling, and since 1985 in DC through C.H.O.I.C.E.S.
The key is to address the broader issues of militarization of the schools and privacy rights for students in community forums and at meetings of the school board and city council. Good counter-recruitment also provides alternatives in the civilian sector to help the poor and people of color, who are the first targets of the poverty draft, to find ways to break into the job market, go to a trade school, join an apprenticeship program, get job skills and placement help, and find money for college without enlisting in the military.
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https://nnomy.org/popcultureandmilitarism/
Selene Rivas presents for the International Week of Action Against the Militarisation of Youth a series of brief articles exploring how the U.S. citizenry has been normalized to accept a permanent state of militarism through popular culture: Movies, video games and comic books. From Monday, November 20th and continuing through Sunday the 26th of November, 2017, a new segment of this series of short articles will be featured each day. Select from the articles below. You can find out more about the Week Of Action at War Resisters' International.
Conscription of young people to fight old people's wars is one of the ultimate expressions of ageism, and for me, resistance to an ageist draft was first and foremost a component and continuation of the struggle for youth liberation. The religious and authoritarian justifications for conscription and war are remarkably similar to the religious and authoritarian rationales for violence against children and for slavery. - Edward Hasbrouck
In 1980, after a five-year hiatus, the U.S. government reinstated the requirement that all young men register for military conscription with the Selective Service System. In 1982, Hasbrouck was selected for criminal prosecution by the U.S. Department of "Justice" (specifically, by William Weld and Robert Mueller) as one of the people they considered the most vocal of the several million nonregistrants for the draft. As one of 20 nonregistrants who were prosecuted before the government abandoned the enforcement of draft registration, Hasbrouck was convicted and "served" four and a half months in a Federal Prison Camp in 1983-1984. The high-profile trials of resistance organizers proved counterproductive for the government. These trials served only to call attention to the government's inability to prosecute more than a token number of nonregistrants, and reassured nonregistrants that they were not alone in their resistance and were in no danger of prosecution unless they called attention to themselves.
Articles:
Resources:
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NNOMY
The National Network Opposing
the Militarization of youth
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