From Draft NOtices, October—December 2009
–Arlene Inouye.jpg)
As a third generation Japanese American, I didn’t have much of a connection to Japan. It seemed much too expensive for a visit, and like others of my generation, my life was in America. However, in my late forties I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship for a month in Japan along with a team of 12 educators from throughout the United States. It was an opportunity for me to discover my cultural heritage and understand my life experience as a Japanese American woman. One of the moments that impacted me the most was standing on ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, imagining the 175,000 children and adults killed in an instant from the atomic bomb. I also had an “ah-hah” moment after seeing photographs of the young boys in Japan who were sent to war -- they looked nothing like the images that were depicted in America. Going to Japan put in context the experience of my family, which was forcibly incarcerated in the camps at Manzanar during World War II, and it gave me an understanding of who I am and where I’ve come from.
Five years later I began the Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism in our Schools (CAMS). I was employed as a Speech and Language Specialist at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles and saw first-hand how military recruiters work in the inner-city schools. I felt compelled to take action and began an organized effort reaching out to nonprofit organizations, school communities and the teachers’ union, UTLA.
CAMS developed a multi-tiered approach to addressing militarism in the schools, including an Adopt-a-School Project at 50 high schools in the Los Angeles area. We also organized at the district level by monitoring and passing district policies that addressed student privacy, the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), equal access and JROTC. Through UTLA, a progressive union, we brought information and education around militarism through resolutions, workshops, conferences, dialogue and organizing strategies. We later became one of the founding organizations of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY).
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
- Rick Jahnkow
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San Diego Schools Temporarily Suspend Military Access to Student Lists
From Draft NOtices, October—December 2009
–Rick Jahnkow
The San Diego Unified School District has frozen the military’s access to student lists this fall while it takes steps to address parent and student complaints over the way the district is handling releases of data to recruiters.
The controversy arose when students who belong to the Education Not Arms Coalition (ENAC) began receiving enrollment forms for the 2009-2010 school year that were already partially filled out by computer. The form includes this question for parents: “Is it okay to release your child’s information to military recruiters?” Boxes are then provided to check either “yes” or “no.” Students receiving these forms noticed that, in most cases, the “yes” box was already checked.
After documenting 28 instances of forms pre-marked to release student information to recruiters, ENAC sent a letter to the school district asking that no student information be released to the military until letters could be sent to every secondary students’ home asking if they wanted to opt out of the release. Because the original enrollment form was only circulated in English, ENAC asked that the letters be translated into other languages. Also, ENAC asked that the form be modified in the future to clearly state that students and parents must check the “no” box if they do not wish information to be given to recruiters.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools receiving federal funds to release the names, addresses and phone numbers of secondary students to the military, unless they have opted out of the release. The law does not, however, authorize schools to decide for parents and students whether or not they will opt out, which is what San Diego Unified was doing with the pre-marked enrollment forms.
- Gilbert E. Field
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Involving Military Veterans in Counter-Recruitment Efforts at Schools
From Draft NOtices, October—December 2009
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Why in the world would you want to bring military veterans to a counter-recruitment event at a local school? Couldn’t this be counter-productive to your efforts? And if you are a veteran, why would you want to do counter-recruitment work?
Like anyone else, veterans come in all shapes, sizes and political beliefs. As a result of their service, whether it was in Vietnam in the 1960s or Iraq since 2003, many veterans have come to see the folly of war as an instrument of national policy. National groups like Veterans For Peace (now 8,000 strong) encourage their members to volunteer at counter-recruitment events as part of their education and outreach to young people who may be considering signing up for the military.
Having a veteran or two at the table brings credibility to the group, instant cultural commonality with many students/teachers, and better dealings with recruiters or “hostiles” who may also be at the event. How so?
Military veterans have unique authority because they have been where the students hope to go if they enlist. They have dealt with and been misled or lied to by the recruiters, experienced the “joys” of basic training, questioned what they were doing while serving, gone through the challenging process of discharge, and had medical issues dealt with or ignored when they got out or got older. On the other hand, some veterans had a very rewarding experience if they were lucky and were properly led, and they can provide wise counsel here as well. Many older veterans just now understand how the government may have used their honorable patriotism to support and execute terrible foreign policy, and sharing this awakening makes them particularly valuable. Because they’ve “been there,” when the questions get specific, they can share insight as no one else can.
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:
