Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2022

— Lauren Reyna Morales

In July of 2022, the New York Times published an explosive report detailing widespread abuse of high school students at the hands of trusted, powerful adults. These adults gained access to their young victims in their schools, as instructors in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). JROTC is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces that partners with high schools across America. The U.S. Army JROTC website describes the program as “one of the largest character development and citizenship programs for youth in the world.” JROTC professes that their curriculum promotes leadership, character building, and community service for their young adult students.
 

The article “‘I Felt Trapped’: Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military’s JROTC Program” was the result of a thorough investigation performed by the New York Times. Research for the report included interviewing 13 victims, school employees, and a former JROTC instructor. “Thousands of court documents, investigative files and other records obtained through more than 150 public disclosure requests” were also examined. The findings of this wide-scope examination are shocking and plentiful. The investigation uncovered that in the last five years, at least 33 JROTC instructors have been criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving their students.

Various other instructors were also accused of sexual assault during this time, but never criminally charged. The Times findings show that there is one arrest in every 232 instructor positions — a rate that is severely more frequent than the civilian-teacher arrest ratio. Students have reported incidents of sexual assault at the hands of JROTC instructors “in classrooms and supply closets, during field trips or on late-night rides home, sometimes committed after instructors plied students with alcohol or drugs.” Victims interviewed in the article shared their unique experiences falling into the hands of this abuse. Geography and specifics may have separated them, but their stories followed roughly the same outline: A military veteran who led a JROTC course offered at their school posed himself as a mentor to gain their trust, exploit his power, and horrifically abuse them.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2022

 — David Morales

Recently, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO) was invited to speak with students at Lincoln High School in San Diego, California. It was among the first of our typical counter-recruitment classroom talks since the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The invitation came specifically from the Lincoln High chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán (MEChA). MEChA is a student organization with roots in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s that seeks to cultivate pride in one’s Chicanx/Latin American culture, promotes higher education, and instills a sense of responsibility to one’s community.

I was particularly excited to volunteer for this talk and to have the opportunity to share with these students. Thirteen years ago, when I was a MEChA member at Mission Bay High, it was both of our schools’ MEChA chapters that played a key role in a campaign to end JROTC weapons training in the San Diego Unified School District.

I was joined by Armando Pérez for the conversation at Lincoln H.S. Armando is an Army veteran who is now a middle school teacher in San Diego and a volunteer with Project YANO. We joined the students via Zoom — a novel way for us to engage in our outreach work as a result of the pandemic. We spoke to a group of approximately 15 students and 2 teachers. The week before they had watched the counter-recruitment video “Before You Enlist,” www.beforeyouenlist.org.

After introducing ourselves during the Zoom session, students proceeded to ask us some really direct questions that demonstrated their genuine desire for this important information and conversation. As always, the most valuable contribution came from Armando and his ability, as a veteran, to speak from first-hand experience.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2022

— Rick Jahnkow

In 2003, I wrote a critique of the U.S. anti-war movement that included a reference to the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day.”For those of you unfamiliar with the film, it’s about a TV reporter, played by Bill Murray, who is sent to cover the traditional observance of a groundhog’s emergence from its burrow on February 2nd. According to legend, if the animal does not immediately return to its den, it will portend an early arrival of spring.

In the film, the journalist wakes up the next day and discovers he is trapped in a time loop that keeps returning him to February 2nd. When he gets up every morning and goes about his business, he encounters the same people starting their day the same way as before. Unlike those around him, he is conscious of the time loop and knows exactly what to expect each day. Despite his awareness of the cycle, he can’t figure out how to stop it, and each morning begins again with Groundhog Day.

The context for my reference to the film in 2003 was the beginning of yet another devastating war launched by the U.S. and its allies. The peace movement, then, was like the Bill Murray character, having witnessed many similar beginnings of U.S. warfare during the previous 50 years, and yet still unable to prevent their repetition.

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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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