The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

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Chicago signals end to forced enrollment in military-run classes following investigation

Alex Ruppenthal

  español - 

An investigation found that Chicago Public Schools students at small, majority Black and Latino high schools were funneled to JROTC. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)May 18, 2022 / Alex Ruppenthal / Chalkbeat Chicago - Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools students at predominantly Black and Latino high schools were forced to participate in what is supposed to be a “voluntary” military-run training program, according to a new report released Wednesday detailing an investigation by the district’s watchdog. 

The practice of automatically enrolling students in JROTC, or the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, has drawn scrutiny for steering teens from under-resourced schools toward military careers and away from other educational or job opportunities. 

The probe by CPS’s Office of Inspector General was prompted by a Chalkbeat investigation that found that over the past two years, nearly all freshmen at 10 CPS high schools were automatically enrolled in JROTC, a daily class led by military instructors covering military science, leadership development and citizenship. JROTC students are required to dress in military uniforms weekly, march in drills, and adhere to the program’s grooming standards, the OIG stated.

Automatic enrollment has continued this year at five high schools that are majority-Black or Latino, CPS data show. 

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Marginalized students pay the price of military recruitment efforts

Roberto Camacho

With pandemic restrictions easing, military recruiters are returning to high school campuses while anti-recruitment efforts struggle

A Kaimuki High School student learns more about the Air Force Reserve from members of the 624th Regional Support Group during the school’s career fair at Kaimuki High School, Honolulu, Hawaii, Jan. 27, 2017. Eleven Airmen from the 624th Regional Support Group volunteered alongside the local recruiting station in support of the fair, which provided career guidance to more than 800 Hawaii students. Located on Oahu and Guam, and a component of the Air Force Reserve, the 624th Regional Support Group's mission is to deliver mission essential capability through combat readiness, quality management and peacetime deployments in the Pacific area of responsibility. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Theanne Herrmann)April 18th, 2022 / Roberto Camacho / Prism - The U.S. military utilizes a number of different recruitment methods to garner new enlistments, but their target audience has consistently remained the same: high schoolers, particularly young men from low-income and rural areas. Eighteen is the youngest age one can join the military without parental permission, but the armed forces still regularly market military propaganda in schools. Although the military does enjoy support within the public system, a grassroots movement of students, teachers, parents, and organizations has led efforts to reduce military recruitment presence and activities on high school campuses.

“We face an uphill battle not only because of the prominence of militarism in our society but [also] because there has been a lack of foresight by progressive people who aren’t thinking about what can happen 10 years down the line,” said Rick Jahnkow, former program coordinator for the nonprofit Project on Youth & Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) and a current member of the organization’s board of trustees.

The U.S. military has been an all-volunteer service since the end of the draft and the Vietnam War in 1973, making aggressive recruitment efforts essential to maintaining its 1.3 million-member active-duty global military force. Military recruitment in public schools isn’t new, but the level of access the military has to students and their information has increased alarmingly over the past several decades. Notably, recruiters got a significant boost when then-President George W. Bush signed the “No Child Left Behind” Act into law in 2002—under Section 9528 of the act, schools can lose their federal funding if they fail to allow military recruiters the same level of access to students and their private information as they do to other recruiters from community colleges and universities.

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Teaching Against Cultural Militarization

Gary Ghirardi

 https://nnomy.org/teachpeace

Introduction

In the United States of America, we are a people at war with the world and ourselves


June 2022 / Gary David Ghirardi & Various Sources / NNOMY - It is the summer of 2022 and the country is reeling with the school shooting of 19 LatinX children in an elementary school in Texas. Multiple shootings before and after are all added together with un-answered questions as to the root causes on the nightly news while the spectacle of it all to the millions of viewers becomes another kind of murder against our collective imaginations.

The reality of what is wrong is invisible in plain sight in a country experiencing endless wars. internally and externally, that define a culture immersed in a “cultural militarization."

We only have to ask ourselves to encompass what such a concept could mean and then we can start collecting the pieces that are all around us, in our politics, our foreign policy, all the endless enemies that we are taught to hate, foreign and domestic, that end up aligning our people to submit to our endless wars.

Some of our wars are engaged by proxy countries funded by money we provide to them as allies who are then directed to buy the weapons we manufacture and sell them. The money provided is often represented as foreign aid and assistance or is owed back to us again as loans.

In our national production of movies, television series and war based video gaming, our imaginations are stoked with militarized or securatized entertainments imposed by consultants from military contractors and the Pentagon itself all folded into each other like the batter of a cake that we readily consume believing it is necessary to do so for our safety and security.
 

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