Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, July-September 2023

- Davíd Morales

 There is no doubt that teachers are key participants in the struggle against militarism in schools and society. Over the years, counter-recruitment efforts have benefited from teachers who sympathize with our mission to provide young people with an alternative point of view about military enlistment so that they can make an educated decision about their future. Teachers have invited our organization, Project YANO (Youth And Non-Military Opportunities), to their middle and high school classrooms to present students with facts about the realities of military life and war. They have helped mobilize students to speak out against predatory military recruitment practices at school sites and, thus, have played a role in successful campaigns for policies that have removed JROTC shooting ranges from campuses, restricted methods recruiters use to target students, and curbed the involuntary enrollment of students in JROTC.

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2023

- Lauren Reyna Morales

   Fiscal year 2022 marked a period of record low recruitment levels for the United States Armed Forces. All military branches struggled to reach their benchmarks. The Army alone missed recruiting goals by about 15,000 new soldiers, coming up 25 percent short for the fiscal year. To put the recruitment “crisis” into perspective, the military has not experienced such a problem enrolling new members since 1973, when the draft officially ended. So, why isn’t Generation Z interested in joining the military? The answer to that question depends on whom you ask.

 Many conservative officials and veterans have claimed the military going “woke” has turned today’s youth off from enlisting. Proponents of this rationale blame diversity, inclusion, and racial bias trainings adopted by the armed forces as a cause for declining recruitment numbers. According to Military Times, Thomas Spoehr, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation, lamented, “Is anyone surprised that potential recruits -- many of whom come from rural or poor areas of the country -- don’t want to spend their time being lectured about white privilege?” And former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed this viewpoint in an opinion column for Fox News last September. He asked, “How can we ask young men and women who have decided to risk their lives for America, even die for America, to affirm that our country is inherently racist?”

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2023

- Davíd Morales

  On February 9, 2023, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) sent a letter to the trustees of the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) calling on them to halt the involuntary enrollment of students in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Program (JROTC).

  Project YANO felt compelled to write the letter because of a recent New York Times investigation that revealed thousands of high school students were being involuntarily enrolled in JROTC at schools across the country. San Diego Unified was specifically mentioned in the Times report as one of the districts where data suggest that this practice has been occurring, particularly at high schools in which the majority of students are students of color.

 Project YANO’s letter follows a similar expression of concern sent to the district by members of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild. In their letter to the district, Task Force attorneys cited section 51750 of the California Education Code, which states:

The governing board of any school district maintaining a secondary school may establish in the school classes in military science and tactics complying with the laws of the United States made and provided with reference to Reserve Officer Training units in educational institutions.

No student enrolled in any such school shall be required to enroll in any course in military science and tactics.

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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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