Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, January - March 2016

— Luis Villanueva


    

Despite what the U.S. and Mexican governments would have you believe, there is no democracy in Mexico. The proven complicity between the corrupt Mexican government and organized crime, 150,000 violent deaths in the last 8 years, thousands of missing people, hundreds of political prisoners, the displacement of entire rural communities by the military -- all of these horrors, which describe a country at war, are connected by one blaring event: the Merida Initiative.

The Merida Initiative of 2008, an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, supposedly establishes four basic goals: deter organized crime, maintain rule of law throughout the country, establish control at the border with Guatemala to prevent Central American migration, and create safe and secure communities within Mexico. Perhaps not surprisingly, the plan is being implemented through massive sales of U.S. military vehicles and weapons (to Mexico) and extensive American military training of the Mexican army. As a result, the consequences have been the exact opposite of the intended goals.

Historically, the possession of weapons has been strictly forbidden in Mexican society. In just a few years, Mexico went from 25th to 5th worldwide in importation of arms. The weapons passed from the U.S. military to the Mexican military are often later found in the possession of the drug cartels. After organized government confiscations of illegally possessed arms by citizenry, those arms are also later found in possession of drug cartels.

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From Draft NOtices, January - March 2016

— Susan Van Haitsma
    

In October 2015, the school board of the Austin Independent School District approved a policy doubling down on restrictions to military recruiter access. Our Austin truth-in-recruiting group, Sustainable Options for Youth (SOY), had successfully worked with our district in coalition with a student group in 2005-2006 for some recruiter restrictions and equal access for nonmilitary alternatives. In subsequent years, three local recruiters were charged in a series of serious abuses that led SOY to pursue a stronger policy. In a strange twist, this might not have happened had not one of the implicated recruiters contacted us.

The e-mail message arrived out of the blue in May 2014 from a former Marine Corps recruiter who had been charged in the sexual assault of a local 16-year-old high school student three years prior. He wrote to ask us to remove the newspaper story about it from our blog site, claiming that the charges had been “proven to be false and dismissed.”  He wrote that he was still in the Marines and that the story was making it hard for his family “to move forward.”  We had seen no follow-up in the press after the disturbing report had been published in November 2011, but we’d assumed that he’d been convicted of the crime. I shared the Marine’s message with our school district’s attorney to ask if he knew the status of the case. He replied that he didn’t know and suggested that I look up the records at the county courthouse.

The Marine wasn’t the only recruiter charged that year in the sexual assault of a student he had met at an Austin high school. In April 2011, an Army recruiter had been arrested after complaints from several prospective recruits led to the revelation that a local 17-year-old high school student had reported that the recruiter had sexually assaulted her in her home in September 2009. She had told his commander, but the commander had not notified the police, so the recruiter had been allowed to continue recruiting in Austin schools for another year and a half until his arrest. A full investigation was promised, but, again, we had seen no follow-up in the press. After receiving the Marine’s e-mail message, I wondered about this Army assault case. Had it been prosecuted?

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2015

— Isidro D. Ortiz, Ph.D.
    

Roberto Mendez LCPL-E — Marine Corps-Regular . . . Casualty was on Oct 27, 1968

This is part of the inscription on the Vietnam Memorial Wall for my childhood friend. Although I have never forgotten his death, I was reminded of his passing by the 45th anniversary of the largest protest against the war by Chicanos on August 29, 1970. The event was known as the Chicano Moratorium. It occurred in East Los Angeles, California, bringing together nearly 30,000 Chicanos in protest of the war. I was not at the Moratorium; however, combined with Roberto’s death, the protest further catalyzed my decision to become a conscientious objector.

The death of Roberto and those of many other Chicanos, the protest, and my decision to become a conscientious objector are small pieces of a chapter in the Vietnam War story that has been omitted in most discussions of the war.  So when some hear for the first time the elements of this chapter, they ask basic questions, such as: How many Chicanos and other Latinos participated in the military during the war? Why did Chicanos protest the war? How were Chicanos and other Latinos affected by the war? How many died in the war?

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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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