Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, July-September 2015

— Rodrigo de la Rosa
    

More and more cities have begun to pave the way toward economic justice by supporting the nationwide initiative of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR, have committed themselves to this goal within the next few years. In states such as Texas, where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, this change would more than double income in households earning less than $15,000 per year. Although the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour began as a fast food worker campaign, it has now been implemented in many other service sector jobs and has ultimately become a working-class campaign. In California, where the minimum wage is currently $9 per hour, a single mother or father earns $17,280 per year; that’s $6,570 below the poverty level for a single person without dependents. In San Diego the campaign to earn $15 an hour has been going for a little over a year and has already gained an outstanding amount of support.

This campaign not only advocates for economic justice, but it will also have an impact on military recruitment, because the most powerful factor that drives people in working-class communities into the ranks of the military is POVERTY.

High school students in low-income communities have programs such as JROTC that serve as a gateway and recruitment tool for the military. Military recruiters conduct more class visitations and attend more career fairs than college recruiters in low-income schools. Meanwhile, programs such as JROTC and military recruiters are much less present in schools in affluent communities.

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2015

—Rick Jahnkow
    

California’s large population has one of the lowest Selective Service registration rates in the country. This would make a future return to the draft less likely because so many men (yes, it’s still male-only) would be beyond the government’s reach. For the seventh time, however, Selective Service is asking the California state legislature to boost registration compliance by making it mandatory and automatic in order to receive a California driver’s license. The last such proposal failed less than a year ago.

Proposed this time by Assembly member Cristina Garcia (D-Downey), Assembly Bill 82 seeks to use DMV records to automatically register males with Selective Service when they apply for a license or license renewal. Its first hearing was scheduled for the Assembly Transportation Committee on Monday, April 6, 2015. Based on past patterns, there is a good chance the bill will make it past this first committee, in which case an avalanche of letters to legislators will be needed to stop it again.

If anyone did not know, even immigrants -- regardless of their legal status -- are supposed to register for a possible future draft. So this time around, Selective Service and its allies are trying to win over Democratic votes for the bill by exploiting the plight of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Their tactic is to tell legislators that a large number of undocumented people who are failing to register with Selective Service by age 26 are being permanently barred from receiving college financial aid and possible citizenship. And if those legislators truly care about the welfare of these young people, they should pass AB 82.

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From Draft NOtices, April-June 2015

—Amanda Jordan
    

Student debt is an important deterrent that keeps students from considering social justice work after college. Rather than investing time or intellectual curiosity in social justice and peacemaking, after graduation my peers focus on “paying dues to The Man” rather than fighting him.

However, this has not always been so. Many people can remember when the University of California and other public colleges had almost token tuition costs. The high number of students protesting the Vietnam War and engaging in other social activism in the 1960s and 1970s stimulated a response from the Right to quell student demonstrations and commitments -- in the form of high tuition.

Since 1978, the cost of tuition in higher education has surged 1,120 percent, according to Bloomberg Business. Compared to the rising costs for medical care and food, and taking into account inflation, higher education costs are completely out of proportion. For-profit schools, which are increasingly popular, spend a disproportionate amount of money on marketing as compared to actual educating. Both public and private schools are spending more money than ever on administrative and facility costs, taking away tenured academic positions and replacing them with administrators and part-time professors.

The effects of student loan debt ripple throughout the wider economy. High student debt creates a culture of fear among Millennials, making us cautious toward risk and therefore slower to buy homes or make other large purchases. Even more prominent is the idea that graduates should not pursue what interests us intellectually, instead focusing all of our energy into an occupation that makes the most impact on our student loan debt.

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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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