Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2008

— Rick Jahnkow
    

A new bill in the California legislature could, if passed, set a major precedent at the state level for protecting students from aggressive military recruiting. Assembly Bill 2994, the Student and Family Privacy Protection Act of 2008, was introduced on February 22, 2008, by Assembly members Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) and Loni Hancock (D-East SF Bay).

AB 2994 would accomplish two main goals: (1) make it easier for students and parents to opt out from the contact lists that high schools must give to recruiters; and (2) put an end to the military’s practice of using the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test to extract detailed personal information about students.

The opt-out portion of the proposed law repeats language from a previous bill that passed the state legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in October of 2006. It addresses the problem of schools not adequately informing students and parents about their right to withhold information when lists of students’ names, addresses and phone numbers are released to military recruiters. Because of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, federal law threatens schools with the loss of federal education dollars if they do not release such lists, but the same law also says that individual students and their parents must be given a chance to opt out.

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From Draft NOtices, April - June 2008

—Jorge Mariscal
    

“It's really hard to make the things you were doing in Iraq relevant to what an employer is looking for today.” — Army Cpl. Vicki Angell

It is a commonplace of American working-class culture that military service is a pathway into the middle class. The experience of World War II veterans fixed the myth of upward mobility in the national consciousness. Military service came to be seen as the way out of the “ghetto,” the “barrio,” and every other class-determined location where poverty and limited economic opportunity block hopes and aspirations. Today, military recruiters make the promise of “bettering oneself” the cornerstone of their high-stakes sales pitch to young people in search of a productive future.

Several new surveys of veterans, however, expose the shaky foundations of the myth of mobility. Late last year, Military.com, a Web site within the Monster Worldwide network, polled 4,442 veterans and active duty servicemen. During the same period, the Department of Veterans Affairs hired Abt Associates of Bethesda, Maryland to conduct a study of 1,941 recently separated service members (RSS) who had been discharged within the last one to three years.

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From Draft NOtices, April - June 2008

—Shelley Gutiérrez
    

“The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez” is a 2006 documentary that begins with Gutierrez's birth in the highlands of Guatemala during its civil war and ends with his death as a soldier in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The film opens with an anti-war memorial, in which a staged cemetery is erected next to images of the fallen soldiers. The camera focuses on José's picture, silently sending the message that he, like all the others, has a life story that cannot be captured by a single photograph among thousands. The film taps into many social issues facing immigrant communities, which is necessary for viewers to truly understand the significance of U.S. recruitment of non-citizens. While Gutierrez's life seems unique, part of what the documentary exposes is how far-reaching are the effects of U.S. foreign policy and military recruitment policies.

One strength of the film is that it reveals how José was clearly a very special and even heroic individual. Born during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, in which more than 200,000 indigenous people were killed, Gutierrez became an orphan at age nine, living largely on the streets of Antigua. Through all accounts, Gutierrez was a witty, motivated, and caring child who lived a rough life going back and forth between the streets and Casa Alianza, a shelter that took in street children. When Gutierrez decided there was no future for him in Guatemala, he made the decision to emigrate to the U.S., where he moved into foster care and completed high school. He then joined the military to fund a college education that he hoped would allow him to fulfill his life-long dream of becoming an architect. Unfortunately, as the film details, his aspirations where cut short in the opening days of the war in Iraq.

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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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