Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

: Seth Kershner; Articles Archive; 01 July 2016; Hits: 1835

Five Insights from FOIA Documents on Military Recruiting in Schools

From Draft NOtices, July-September 2016

— Seth Kershner

What’s the military footprint in your school district? How do you know? If we had access to hard data like the number of recruiter visits, wouldn’t it be easier to make the case for reform?

Over the past two or three years I have been filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the various recruiting services. I’ve received more than 2,000 pages of material so far, detailing the extent of school recruiting activities in all of New York state and Connecticut, as well as parts of California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

In the hopes of beginning a broader conversation about using the FOIA to support counter-recruitment campaigns, in this article I outline the five things that Draft NOtices readers may find most compelling about the data.

It’s worse than we thought. The data tell an alarming story about unregulated military recruiter access to students. In many cases, Army recruiters alone were visiting a particular school every other day, or more than 90 times over the course of a 180-day school year. To take one example, Springfield Central High School in western Massachusetts hosted Army recruiters on 93 separate occasions during the 2012-13 school year. Fitchburg High School, in the eastern part of the state, was the leader in this category with more than 100 visits from Army recruiters.

Visits target JROTC students. Recruiters for all military branches appear to have a special interest in reaching JROTC cadets. At a number of schools, half of a recruiter’s time on campus was spent in front of JROTC students. Years after DoD Memorandum 50 had supposedly been rescinded, severing the link between JROTC and recruiting, it seems that JROTC units still maintain close relationships with local military recruiters.

: Amanda Jordan-Starks; Articles Archive; 01 July 2016; Hits: 1734

Panama Papers and the Military-Industrial Complex

From Draft NOtices, July-September 2016

—Amanda Jordan-Starks

The Panama Papers followed in the footsteps of Wikileaks, Snowden and others to promote economic and political transparency in an increasingly militarized society. The massive data leak of 11.5 million documents from Panamanian-based law firm Mossack Fonseca covered a period of almost 40 years. The greatest controversy includes evidence that many companies and individuals around the world use 320,000 offshore accounts for suspected money laundering, arms and drug deals, and tax avoidance.

The Panama Papers enabled investigative reporters to “follow the money” with billionaire George Soros, who was revealed as having holdings in the Carlyle Group under a mostly secretive financial entity called the Quantum Group of Funds (QGF). The irony is that Soros is a premier donor of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, one of the principle groups leaking the Panama Papers. Carlyle has had deep ties to the military-industrial complex for decades, through weapons contracts and high-level security services. It has greatly profited from the War on Terrorism, and even the Saudi family of Osama bin Laden had holdings in the Carlyle Group for a time. Soros invests in many non-profits involved in regime change operations from Ukraine to Syria.

: Bill Galvin and Maria Santelli; Articles Archive; 01 April 2016; Hits: 1659

It Is Time to Abolish Draft Registration and Restore Full Rights to People of Conscience

From Draft NOtices, April-June 2016

— Bill Galvin and Maria Santelli, Center on Conscience & War

With the combat restriction for women in the U.S. Armed Forces now lifted, discussion of draft registration is back in the news, the courts, and the halls of Congress. But the problems with Selective Service System (SSS) registration go much deeper than gender equality. There is little political interest in bringing back the draft. Yet draft registration remains a burden upon our nation’s young men -- and now, potentially our young women, as well.

The extrajudicial penalties imposed upon those who choose not to or fail to register make life more difficult for many who already are marginalized, and they particularly target conscientious objectors who believe that registering with Selective Service is a form of participating in war. There is no opportunity to register as a conscientious objector. Legal protection for conscientious objectors was provided in the constitutions of several of the original colonies and was written into early drafts of what became the First and Second Amendments to the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution (Lillian Schlissel, Conscience in America). Instead of honoring and upholding these freedoms and protections, modern lawmakers have subjected non-registrants to laws that deny education, employment and other fundamental opportunities. These laws amount to an unacceptable burden on those individuals who cannot, in good conscience, register, and in fact serve to punish and marginalize those who are living their lives true to the very essence of our democracy.

With the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, draft registration ended as well. In 1980 President Carter reinstated registration to send a message to the Soviet Union, which had just invaded Afghanistan, that the U.S. could be ready for war at any time. This remains the law of the land today: virtually all males residing in the U.S. and all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 26 are required to be registered with Selective Service.