Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2012

– Rick Jahnkow
    

Some of us who do community organizing have strong doubts about the effectiveness of the ballot box as a way to achieve meaningful change. This is especially the case when we’re called upon to help elect politically progressive candidates to national and state offices controlled by two entrenched political parties, in a system that is dominated by big-money campaign contributors.

Simply put, the higher up you go in the electoral food chain, the more difficult it is to push government institutions toward breaking with the status quo. Even the most well-intentioned progressive candidates who manage to get elected to a state or national office find that it is extremely difficult to remain in office without seriously compromising their principles. And even if they do stay in their seats, it is extremely difficult to form the majorities needed to enact truly progressive changes.

The shortcomings of this electoral approach are underscored when you consider the fact it has now been 50 years since the beginning of the political movements of the 1960s, yet we are still struggling over many of the same issues that caused the social upheavals of that period — such as undeclared wars and wars of choice, discrimination, economic inequality and environmental destruction.

Of course, some important changes have occurred since the 1960s, and I would not devalue those achievements. But it is also disheartening that after so many decades, right-wing politics keep coming back with a vengeance, and we still don’t have progressive political majorities in government or the general public that are capable of stopping those regressive cycles.

The dynamics of local electoral politics, on the other hand, are very different from the state and national levels. Local elections offer us not only a viable chance to establish progressive majorities, but also an opportunity to place such majorities in a position where they can have a direct impact on people’s lives, and in the case of school board races, where they can additionally play a critical role in effecting change on a societal scale.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2012

– Davíd Morales
    

[Note: This article is a condensation of an academic research paper. The names of the district, schools, communities, and interview subjects used in this study have been changed in order to preserve their privacy.]

In recent years, JROTC, or the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, has reached an advanced level of proliferation throughout public high schools in the United States. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Pentagon’s failure to meet its recruitment quotas in the past have led to an increase in the number of JROTC units across the country. This expansion has been significant in urban, inner-city, and low-income schools. The military science course offered as an elective, or sometimes in lieu of physical education, in public high schools has proven to be an efficient recruiting tool. Although the Department of Defense (DoD) and school districts across the country state otherwise, it has been documented that over 40 percent of students who go through the JROTC program enlist in the military at some point in their lives.

The educational system in the U.S. finds itself in a critical condition — historically disenfranchised students are more underserved than ever before. Many underrepresented students of color and working-class students in urban environments lack equitable educational opportunities at their schools and, as a result, are pushed into the military. This study investigated how students at three high schools in a large and diverse district in southern California are tracked into the JROTC program.

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2012

– Miriam Clark
    

Reports of sexual assault within the military are rising! Victims are primarily women but include some men. Over the last decade, exposés in special television reports, magazine articles and radio shows have offered personal testimonies and estimates of the high frequency of sexual assaults, but no significant changes have resulted.

In Washington D.C. last month, attorney Susan L. Burke filed a case against current and former secretaries of defense alleging ongoing violations of the plaintiffs’ civil rights. The suit has been filed on behalf of nineteen former and current U.S. military service members.

According to Burke, “After being raped or sexually assaulted by uniformed colleagues, these survivors reported the crimes. . . . Instead of their perpetrators being punished, the victims were intimidated, isolated, and retaliated against.”

There are four previous cases pending in federal district or circuit courts.

A key problem is permitting the “chain of command” (i.e., a single individual) to control which sexual assault allegations are fully investigated and prosecuted. The military has not eliminated the ability of a single officer to prevent a victim from accessing the military’s judicial system. The reality is that this officer may well be a sexual predator himself.

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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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