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NNOMYnews - First Quarter 2024
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Sunday, 1 February 2026 / Gary Ghirardi - For the first quarter of 2024. a new look for the NNOMY newsletter, more down to basics in a era of escalating war business . At hand, are changes for NNOMY like for the rest of the world in a time of mounting securitization, collapsing governmental adherance to civil rights and more corporate militarization influencing the spending priorities of our legislators. This environment is impacting our schools with more Pentagon funding at all levels of schooling to push back against falling recruitment numbers with increasing efforts to sell the military to our youth. |
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UConn Scholar Chronicles History and Debate over Military Recruitment in American Schools |
October 17, 2022 / Ziba Kashef / Breaking the War Habit:
The Debate Over Militarism in American Education – co-authored by School of Social Work Associate Professor and Ph.D. Program Director Scott Harding – is the second book in a series from the University of Georgia Press about children, youth, and war. In the following Q&A, Harding and one of his co-authors, Seth Kershner, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, discuss their research and recommendations for change.
In the book, the authors analyze what they view as the militarization of schools in the United States and trace the 100-year effort to prevent the military from infiltrating and influencing public education. Examining the hidden history of resistance to the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in higher education and the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) in high schools, including the development of “military counter-recruitment,” is of special interest to Harding and Kershner. They have published extensively about counter-recruitment over the past decade, aiming to understand and highlight those who have challenged the privileged status of the military in U.S. education settings. They recently spoke with UConn Today about their work, and the issues it raises.
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California Selective Service Bill Set for Hearing in Sacramento April 9th |
March 10, 2024 / Edward Hasbrouck / Antiwar.com Blog:
A bill to automatically register draft-age applicants for California driver’s licenses with the Selective Service System (SSS) has been set for its first first hearing in Room 1200 of the State Capitol Annex “Swing Space” building, 1021 O St. in Sacramento (2 blocks south of the Capitol) in Sacramento at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9, 2024, before the Senate Committee on Transportation. Only in-person testimony will be accepted, with no remote testimony or livestream, but written testimony can be submitted until April 1, 2024.
The hearing on April 9th will be only the first of several, if the bill moves forward, but will set the tone for debate on the bill.
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An Experiment with Involuntary JROTC Placement and Microsoft Copilot Ai |
National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth - NNOMY.ORG
The Microsoft Copilot online artificial intelligence program was utilized to write a story based on three requests to not be placed into the high school based Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps program from a students objection, a parental objection, and finally a legal challenge in court with the plaintiff represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. The outcomes are curious in that they appear to reflect some kind of conditioned learning on the part of the Copilot program that favors the military all the way up to a legal challenge.
Each of the stories is based on the question asked to the program listed in red text before the output answer given by the artificial intelligence.
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Demilitarizing Civilian Life: Counter Recruitment at East Boston High School |
June 24, 2023 / Nancy Goldner / Racial / Justice and Indigenous Solidarity Shortly after we began passing out the palm cards to students hurrying into school, the security guard came out and asked us to move, at least across the street. We let him know, in a friendly manner, that we knew it was our right to be on the sidewalk, we weren’t blocking the entrance, and that we were not going to relocate across the street. He went back in the school and then a large, friendly- appearing man came out and introduced himself as the school principal. He remained at the entryway for quite a while, greeting students and sometimes interacting with us.
The principal was puzzled about why we would want to discourage students from participating in the Junior Reserve Officer Training (JROTC) program. We explained that we thought public schools should not be recruiting students for military service as a part of their high school experience. He said “We’re not recruiting.” He said that he only knew of five or six students who had actually joined a branch of the U.S. military after graduation. This was a surprising statement, given the estimates that a significant percentage of students who participate in JROTC later enlist in the military. |
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Latinos Lured to the Military |
September 15 2023 / Reynaldo Leaños Jr. /Texas Observer Espinoza, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines, died in the waning days of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan when suicide bombers blew themselves up near the Kabul airport on August 26, 2021. Twelve other service members, about half of them Latino, and more than 150 Afghans perished in the attack.
Born just months before the war began, Espinoza was one of the last to die when America’s longest war came to an end. He was 20.
Espinoza is one of an estimated 7,000 American service members who lost their lives in the post-9/11 wars that include Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project. Another 30,000 of these service members and veterans later died by suicide.
For decades, the U.S. military has targeted communities of color for recruitment. Latinos, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, make up about 18 percent of the active duty force. The numbers are even higher in the Marine Corps, in which Hispanics make up 24 percent of active duty members. Latinos are already the largest demographic group in Texas, and will account for most of the country’s population growth—60 percent—through 2050. A 2022 report from the Department of Defense showed Latinos were the fastest-growing segment of the military.
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Sonia Santiago dedicates her life to educating for peace |
February 19 2024 / Sandra Torres Guzmán / Primera Hora Educating for peace was converted into a life mission by psychologist Sonia Margarita Santiago Hernández, who dedicated her time and effort to educating the people about the effects of war conflicts through the Madres anti-war organization.
It is the lesson she got from her parents who, from a young age, instilled in her a charitable feeling for the common causes that affect the well-being of the communities, a path that continued when she entered the university and then into her adulthood.
Born in Naranjito and resident in Dorado for more than three decades, Sonia Margarita recalls her humble origin when “my parents strengthened me within the Catholic Church with a profound feeling of Christian charity in praxis, meaning that it was not a question of going every Sunday to mess while what we did”.
“It was the experience of life, what it is to be Christian. For example, in activities to support people without a home or people who need our support in any way”, related the daughter of Ángel Santiago Aponte and Aurora Hernández Ortega.
Her entry into the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras in 1966 coincided with the Vietnam conflict (1955-1975), a cause that motivated her to join a committee "to resist mandatory military service."
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Restrictions on JROTC Introduced in 2024 Defense Authorization Act |
January-March 2024 / Rick Jahnkow / Draft NOtices The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was passed by Congress on December 14 will introduce a number of changes in the military’s high school Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. The most significant of these changes are a result of concerns that were prompted by two front-page exposés published last year by the New York Times. One of the articles focused on the high rate of sexual abuse claims lodged against JROTC instructors; the other revealed that thousands of students at schools around the country were being placed in the program involuntarily.
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DoD STARBASE: Early Grooming for Military Recruitment |
January-March 2024 / Seth Kershner / Draft NOtices
Beginning in 2022 the New York Times began publishing an astonishing series of investigative articles on Junior ROTC -- the most sustained and critical coverage of high school militarism in recent memory. As this issue of Draft NOtices points out, the articles led to congressional action to ensure much needed oversight of high school military training. Since Junior ROTC is the crown jewel of the Pentagon’s school militarism apparatus, it’s understandable that counter-recruiters concentrate their limited resources on combating it. But a narrow focus on JROTC overlooks the many other ways the Dept. of Defense plants its flag in schools. Draft NOtices last reported on DoD STARBASE in 2015, and this article attempts to reacquaint readers with the program that annually brings militarism to nearly 80,000 elementary school students.
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The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth | Office: Tuesday and Thursday 12pm to 6pm
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