The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

With 6 percent of its land occupied by military bases, Hawai‘i is our most densely militarized state. But young activists are rejecting recruiting efforts and military influence.

  español - 

April 17, 2024 / Saliha Bayrak / The Nation - Pete Doktor was lost. Living in Southern California, with the end of high school approaching, he wanted to be a musician, but had no idea how he would pay for music school. His father, a World War II veteran with a wealth of stories on fighting fascism, told him the military was offering money for college.

Doktor had no intention of joining right away, but decided to take a qualification exam. The recruiters started pressuring him, asking if he was too “scared” to enlist and telling him that experience as an army medic would help him later find work. The idea of being able to find such stability and fulfill his “kūleana”—the Hawaiian word for responsibility—was eventually enough to persuade him.

But when Doktor left three years later and started searching for jobs, employers told him the basic first aid training he received was not nearly enough to find work in medicine. He felt misled. “[The military] has an arsenal of things to use to trap people wherever they’re most vulnerable or desperate,” he said.

Motivated by this dissolution, he instead sought to reconnect with his mother’s side and teach English in Okinawa, once a sovereign kingdom in the Pacific that became a military colony of Japan. His next move was to Hawai‘i, where he would learn demilitarization from the Kānaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians, and “fight the global military empire.” For over 10 years, he worked to ensure that the most vulnerable of his students did not become prey to military recruiters as he once was.

  español -

April 23, 2025 / Edward Hasbrouck / Edward Hasbrouck's Blog - The Selective Service System has confirmed that, as of this week, personnel from the so-called Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have arrived at the SSS and have been given access to the SSS database of men registered for a possible military draft.

Today an SSS spokesperson provided me with this official response to my questions about DOGE and SSS records:

---

A DOGE representative visited our Agency this week. We’ve established a great working relationship. They asked us about our data and requested access, which we gave in compliance with the President’s Executive Order on Establishing and Implementing the Department of Government Efficiency.

---

The SSS spokesperson also told me that no new computer matching programs involving SSS registration records have been carried out (yet) by DOGE. But it’s not clear whether the SSS would even know what DOGE has done with SSS data, once DOGE has gotten access to it and possibly exfiltrated it. DOGE and the SSS have operated computer matching programs that appear to violate the Computer Matching Act, so there’s little reason to expect that either would provide the required advance notice of new uses of SSS data.