9/06/2024 /Copilot & NNOMY - Many schools across the United States are involved in data collection for military recruitment purposes. For example, over 13,000 schools encourage students to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, with results sent directly to military personnel¹. This data helps identify potential recruits.

Additionally, some state education leaders are proposing data-sharing agreements with the Department of Defense to include enlistment and service data in state-specific longitudinal data systems². This means that more schools could potentially be involved in data collection for military recruitment.

If you’re concerned about this practice, there are resources and organizations, like the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY), that provide information and support for counter-recruitment efforts³.

Review of Breaking the War Habit: The Debate over Militarism in American Education, by Seth Kershner, Scott Harding and Charles Howlett (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022)

Rachel Waltner Goossen / Issue 2023, vol. 77 / Mennonite Life - Depending on one’s zip code, an American teen may have a high likelihood of attending a public school with Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a federally funded program aimed to introduce students to U.S. military culture. At present, some 3,500 public high schools across the United States offer JROTC classes, with clusters especially in Southern states and in large urban districts. According to a 2022 New York Times study, troubling evidence is emerging that more and more high schools are mandating JROTC for large swaths of freshman students, even though by law these military classes are elective, not compulsory. Not surprisingly, some students and parents are pushing back against school officials, asserting – and winning – arguments that they have a right to public education without military-focused requirements.

The new volume Breaking the War Habit, a collaborative effort by a trio of U.S. peace historians, provides fascinating historical context for these present-day conflicts in districts around the country. Dating back to the new nation’s formation, rejecting school militarism has been “part of a long American tradition of opposition to military meddling in civil affairs,” which included James Madison’s and other founders’ concerns for the separation of powers, as well as limits on military authority (16). By the 1830s, as the Massachusetts educator and theorist Horace Mann began working out key principles for American public education, antimilitarist sentiments were widespread. Mann, the most influential of 19th-century U.S. educational reformers, proclaimed that young people must be “educated to that strength of intellect which shall dispel the insane illusions of martial glory” (5).

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) is a vital network that brings together national, regional, and local counter-recruitment and peace groups to resist the increasing influence of the military in young people’s lives. As it celebrates its 20th anniversary, let’s delve into its journey and impact.

NNOMY has been at the forefront of advocating for youth rights and challenging the Pentagon’s encroachment into schools and communities. Counter-recruitment came out of the anti-draft movement from the Vietnam war. (1) The U.S. war in Vietnam triggered the most tenacious anti-war movement in U.S. history, beginning with the start of the bombing of North Vietnam in 1964 and the introduction of combat troops the following year. Over the next decade, hundreds of thousands of young people become radicalized in a largely nonviolent, diverse and sometimes inchoate popular culture of war resistance, employing tactics ranging from comical street theatre to industrial sabotage. Students, government officials, labor unions, church groups and middle class families increasingly opposed the war as it climaxed in 1968, forcing a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces. Anti-war activities, particularly large-scale resistance to military conscription, forced an end U.S. combat operations in Vietnam and a suspension of the draft by January 1973.(2)

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) was founded in 2004 after the national counter-recruitment conference “Stopping War Where it Begins” in Philadelphia. It’s a network of peace organizations that opposes the militarization of schools and young people in the USA. Their mission is to stand up against the growing intrusion of the military in young people’s lives, particularly in disadvantaged communities where the Pentagon’s influence is felt most acutely. NNOMY plays a crucial role in advocating for youth empowerment and opposing involuntary JROTC placement in schools, which some argue may violate constitutional rights. If you’re passionate about these issues, NNOMY is a valuable resource for information and activism. (3)

July 8, 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - A new report released 18 June 2024 by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) provides a remarkably candid window into the flawed and dangerous thinking of military strategists who support continual “readiness” for an on-demand military draft, even while they claim — perhaps truthfully — not to prefer a draft, even as Plan B, but only as Plan F for “Fallback” in case of prolonged total war. (Thanks to longtime anti-draft activist Eric Garris of Antiwar.com for bringing this report to my attention.)

The CNAS report is intended to show supporters of the current bipartisan mainstream U.S. foreign policy and military consensus why the U.S. should step up planning and preparation for a draft as a tool of deterrence. But for those outside that consensus who think current U.S. policy is already bellicose enough, especially those who assume that opposing draft registration and other steps toward readiness for a draft should be a low priority for antiwar activists because the U.S. will never again (or at least not soon) activate a draft, the CNAS report provides an important lesson in how preparedness for a draft is itself a tool of war, even in “peacetime”.

Friday, 14 June 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's blog - A proposal to expand registration for a possible military draft to young women as well as young men is moving forward again this year in Congress, along with a seductively simple-seeming but in practice unfeasible proposal to switch from the current system in which young men are required to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) to a system in which the SSS tries to identify and locate everyone eligible for a future draft and automatically register them based on other existing Federal databases from the Social Security Administration, IRS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, etc.

Today both the U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee and the full U.S. House of Representatives approved different proposals to expand and/or make it harder to avoid the requirement for men ages 18-26 to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft.

The proposals for changes to Selective Service registration were approved during consideration of the Senate and House versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, a “must-pass” annual bill that typically runs to more than a thousand pages.

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a version of the NDAA that would expand Selective Service registration to include young women as well as young men. This version of the NDAA will now go to the floor as the starting point for consideration and approval by the full Senate.

Also today the full House of Representatives approved a different version of the NDAA that would make Selective Service registration automatic while keeping it for men only.

A House amendment proposed by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a West Point graduate and Army veteran, which would have replaced the provision to make draft registration automatic with a provision to repeal the Military Selective Service Act, was not “made in order” by the Rules Committee to be considered or voted on by the full House. There was no separate House floor vote on the proposed change to Selective Service registration, only a single vote on the entirety of the NDAA as a package.

The SASC markup was conducted in closed session, and only a summary of highlights of the version adopted by the SASC was released. It’s not clear whether the SASC version also includes the provision in the House version of the NDAA to try to make Selective Service registration ‘automatic’ or only the provision to expand the registration requirement (with which compliance is currently low) to young women as well as young men. A spokesperson for the SASC told The Hill today that the full text of the Senate version of the NDAA won’t be released until sometime in July.