Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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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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From Draft NOtices, July-September 2022


Once again, a legislative proposal has been made to require women to join men in registering with the Selective Service System for a possible future military draft. As of this writing, it is contained in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2023. The bill must now go to the full Senate for a floor vote.

The House Armed Services Committee’s draft of the 2023 NDAA does not include the Senate committee’s language regarding registration of women. There is still a possibility that such a provision could be added as an amendment during the upcoming House floor debate on the bill. Even if such an amendment is not added at that point, it could still happen when the House and Senate versions go to a joint conference committee to iron out any differences. The resulting bill would then go back to the full House and Senate for approval.

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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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