Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, November-December, 2004


— Jorge Mariscal
    

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, known as the DREAM Act, has received strong support from Latino activists across the country. Throughout the month of September, numerous groups staged rallies and fasts in over fifty cities. What advocates and the media have ignored are the potential consequences of the military service component of the proposed legislation.

According to the latest version of the bill sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL), immigrants who entered the country five years or more before the bill's enactment and before they were 16 years old would receive provisional U.S. residency.

Permanent residency would be granted if, within six years of obtaining conditional residency, the immigrant graduates from a two-year college, completes two years in a bachelor's degree program, performs 910 hours of volunteer community service, or serves in the U.S. armed forces for two years.

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From Draft NOtices, September - October, 2004


— Jorge Mariscal
    

The controversy surrounding presidential candidate John Kerry's service in Viet Nam raises a number of difficult issues for peace and antimilitarism activists.

Fueled by television attack ads featuring U.S. Navy Swift boat veterans who claimed Kerry lied about what he did in Southeast Asia as a Navy officer, the controversy exploded in the media in mid-August. On August 20, the Washington Post exposed links between the anti-Kerry vets, the Republican Party, and long-time Bush operatives. On August 21 William Rood, a former officer who served with Kerry, corroborated Kerry's account of how he won a silver star and disputed the claims made by the anti-Kerry group.

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From Draft NOtices, September-October, 2004



— Lorraine Demi   

"Schools exist for the purpose of educating our children." This was the cry of John Cullen, spokesman for Parents Against Military Recruiting on Campus, at a recent Claremont Unified School District Board meeting in California. Cullen founded the parents group last year when his son came home from middle school talking about a man in uniform who was teaching kids about weapons of destruction, and he later learned that toy dog tags and pro-military posters were given to students as gifts. Cullen felt something is wrong with a school system that teaches children violence and weaponry, and inculcates militarism in people still too young to choose a career, let alone a violent career. He was concerned that the speeches and gifts were priming youth for military recruitment when they enter high school. Parents Against Military Recruiting on Campus aims to stop recruiters from selling the military to students, and to make parents aware of the fact that they can prevent their child's name from being sent to recruiters during the last two years of high school.

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Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS

When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:

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