There never was a good war or a bad peace. ~Ben Franklin
Truth in Recruiting | Tulsa Peace Fellowship's counter-recruitment update/digest for May 2009
Truth in Recruiting
Tulsa Peace Fellowship's counter-recruitment update/digest for May 2009
lead story
Youth Need Your Help To Get Recruiters Out
quote:
"My school has an immense problem with military recruitment - they are here every day, in the classrooms, in the lunchroom."
~Jenny E., student requesting the "We are Not Your Soldier" tour, with participants from Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW)
related story:
San Francisco School Board makes good on its three-year Promise to Kick JROTC to the Curb
--program costs the school district a total of about $1 million a year
--eleven instructors of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the soft-sell military recruiters inside schools, were sent pink slips
quote:
"We need people to teach us right from wrong, not to shoot for our government. ...What is the JROTC doing for my community? Nothing."
~teenage member from HOMEY (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth), an anti-gang group in the Mission. Students from an anti-gang group spoke out at the S.F. school board meeting, against the JROTC program
related story:
Two Cities in Humboldt County Block the Military from Recruiting Anybody in Town under the Age of 18
--the law has the backing not just of a few City Councilors, but of thousands of voters who went to the polls
--the two cities used the ballot box as a counter-recruitment tool
quote:
"The Humboldt County laws appear to be the most direct counter-recruitment effort mounted by a city's electorate anywhere in the nation."
related story:
Rochester, N.Y., School District Defies NCLB: Will not share students' private information automatically
--Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., introduces a bill in Congress giving back power of consent to the parents
--Under the proposed bill, parents would have to consent before schools could release children's information to the military
quote:
"Parents have an obligation and right to control their children's private information,"
~Mike Honda, Democratic Representative from California
related story:
Tulsa County Democratic Party votes for the repeal of NCLB
--other counties in Oklahoma Congressional District 1 follow suit
contrast with the most militarized school system in the nation:
Nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has militarized Chicago Public Schools system (CPS)
--op/ed from Frank Belcastro
quote:
"The military's culture of uniformity and follow-orders, no-questioning discipline, important as it may be for an army, hardly aligns with academic values."
alternatives to bootcamp:
Peace Education Institute, in Oklahoma City, announces 2009 summer camps schedule
--residential camp that takes place at St. Francis of the Woods Retreat Center in Coil, OK.
--youths will receive 20 hours of non-violence training provided in the workshop entitled: "Creating a Culture of Peace."
page one:
featured op/ed
Media Can Now Cover Coffins Coming Home -- But What About the OTHER Missing War Photos?
by Greg Mitchell
file under: signature injury of Iraq occupation
Returning troops getting tested for brain injuries
--risks of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are greatest in occupation zones
--most are due to pressure waves from being near bomb blasts
quote:
"These are the most difficult, thorny wounds of war."
~Jason Forrester, director of policy at Veterans for America, an advocacy group
Iraq Vet in Pennsylvania Murders Was Radically Changed by War and PTSD
quote:
"Ten's usually commit suicide; nine's often kill somebody."
~Dr. Phillip Leveque, a combat veteran of WWII, explaining how PTSD cases rated on a scale of 1 to 10
Poverty Draft in Full Swing: The Nation's Economic Downturn Has Helped Army Recruiting
--U.S. Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks
--U.S. Army plans to cut 1,100 active-duty, Reserve and contract recruiters over the next two years
fact:
The Army annually granted hundreds of waivers for felons in recent years, reaching a high of 511 in 2007
file under: grassroots opposition worldwide to neo-con hijacking of U.S. foreign policy
Mothers Against War Lay Out 7-Point Program in Opposition to any 'Surge' in Afghanistan
quote:
"Recognize that ultimately, decisions about what happens in Afghanistan should be made in Afghanistan, not Washington."
~MADRE, international women's human rights organization
sidebar:
Military allegedly pressured medical personnel to downgrade soldiers' PTSD diagnoses
file under: Military-Industrial-Congressional complex
Ten excellent reasons not to join the military:
c.. You May Be Injured
d.. You May Not Receive Proper Medical Care
e.. You May Suffer Long-term Health Problems
f.. You May Be Lied To
file under: psychotic sub-culture
U.S. Soldier Who Killed Herself--After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
--the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson
fact: She had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners being tortured.
page two:
file under: our monsters in Iraq
Iraq rape-slaying trial begins: former Army soldier charged
--crimes were dramatized in a feature-length film: "Redacted" (2007)
file under: the military no place for a woman
Book tells of female US soldiers raped by comrades
--follow up on prevalence of sexual assault in U.S. military, especially since drop in entrance standards
file under: The phenomenon of the fake POW
Numbers Claiming POW Benefits Exceed Number of POWs
--nothing new, just a reminder that nothing's sacred
quote:
"The P.O.W. Network says most phonies are just braggarts puffing at the local Kiwanis luncheon or preening for women in bars, but many have received significant benefits while trading off their borrowed valor."
file under: fragging case
US soldier says he saw Sgt. chase, shoot superior officer and fellow Sgt: 2 dead
--likely to go to court-martial
file under: what? you mean there are rules against murder on the battlefield?
US Army sergeant convicted of murdering four Iraqi detainees: faces life imprisonment without parole
--Master Sgt John Hatley acted as "judge, jury and executioner" of four men, captured in the Baghdad area in the spring of 2007
quote:
"A complete breakdown of discipline and crimes that are among the worst of a soldier"
~Captain Derrick Grace, prosecuting, in reference to damning evidence against Hatley, and two other soldiers
follow-up
Attack on USS Cole left 17 Sailors Dead: Compensation Payments to be made from Terrorism Risk Insurance Act
backpage
file under: environmental disasters caused by the U.S. Army
U.S. Military Dumped 2,500 tons of Chemical Munitions Off Coast of Hawaii
--more than 16,000 bombs containing lethal mustard, cyanide, lewisite, cyanogens and chloride were dumped into the sea
file under: Reasons not to join up #2 "You may get hurt"
U.S. Army Likens Soldiers to Pigs, Rats, in Cannon-Fodder Experiments
--pigs dressed in body armor and strapped into Humvees were blown up, for research purposes say mad military scientists
--George Orwell reminds us that some are more equal than others
file under: After the party, the hangover
US to spend $6 billion on Cold War weapons cleanup
follow-up: DoD spends $4 billion a year on public relations
Pentagon Closes Office Accused of Issuing Propaganda Under Bush
--Orwell would be pleased
epigraph for this issue of "Truth in Recruiting":
"Maybe we weren't in Iraq on a humanitarian mission"
~Iraq veteran, Benjamin Lewis, ex-Marine, speaking out against the continued Iraq occupation by the U.S. Armed Services
related group:
The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
"Advancing human rights is the work of many joining hands"
http://www.uusc.org/learn_by_doing
Tulsa Peace Fellowship's counter-recruitment update/digest for May 2009
lead story
Youth Need Your Help To Get Recruiters Out of Their Schools
In the wake of protests of 6 years of the Iraq occupation, we are receiving requests from students and teachers to bring the We Are Not Your Soldiers Tour to their schools. We can't get to them without your help! Donate today to bring Iraq & Afghanistan veterans into high schools across the country.
Thousands of students need to be reached in the next two months, encouraged to not join the army and to forge a student movement to get recruiters out of the schools as part of halting all the wars.
This tour is needed to reach these youth now.
Barack Obama announced in March that he is sending 4,000 troops to Afghanistan in addition to the 17,000 troops he announced in February. This is not change! This is an escalation of a crime against humanity. What are these troops being sent to do? What are the youth being recruited for? The murder, rape, and torture of innocent men, women, and children; to kick down doors and terrorize families... all so that the U.S. can tighten its stranglehold on the land, resources, and shipping routes of Middle East.
Where will these troops that Obama is sending come from? The military recruiters have budget of billions to recruit youth who are in high school now. They roam the hallways and lunch-rooms, call students at home, and set up at malls where kids hang out. The military cannot fight this expanded "war on terror" in Afghanistan without this fresh cannon fodder. Military recruiters now have almost unlimited access to reach high school students because the "No Child Left Behind" law ties funding for schools to whether recruiters can get to students.
Most of the schools have been predominently Black and Latino and almost all of them have been working class - exactly the students that the recruiters are targeting. When recruiters come into their school, students need to know exactly what they are being recruited for. Not freedom, not democracy, and not better "career options."
Speakers on the tour give students reasons not to go into the military, and help organize collective resistance to recruiters' lies by spreading visible mass resistance to joining this military as a part of stopping this war of terror for empire.
Classroom presentations include a short presentation by a World Can't Wait youth organizer and an Iraq and/or Afghanistan war veteran, a 10-minute video clip of testimony by Iraq veterans from the March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings about what they witnessed and perpetrated and footage of high school students protesting military recruiters along with an open discussion. At the end we conduct a short survey to give us a sense of what young people are thinking.
This takes funding. As a movement of the people we rely entirely on your support. Speakers are ready, students want us to come, and we are ready to organize another even stronger round especially with the latest intolerable surge in Afghanistan.
Donate generously so that World Can't Wait can continue this tour reaching thousands more students before the end of this school year with the truth of what they are being recruited for
To learn more about the tour, watch videos, and meet the vets visit http://wearenotyoursoldiers.org
Sincerely, Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait
P.S. This tour and the Iraq Vets that are a part of it are extremely precious in a time where so many have given up the fight to stop these wars. Support them - spread the resistance - donate generously today
World Can't Wait - info@worldcantwait.org
305 W. Broadway #185, NY, NY 10013
tel 866.973.4463
Send checks or money orders, payable to "World Can't Wait":
World Can't Wait
305 W. Broadway #185
New York, NY 10013
For sponsorship level donations, or if you wish to make stock donations please contact our development director Samantha Goldman samantha@worldcantwait.org, 347-581-2677.
To make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more in support of WCW's educational activities, please make checks out to "The Alliance for Global Justice," a 501(3)(c) organization, and designate "for WCW" in the check memo line.
From a New York City teacher after the tour:
At the time the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour visited, my students were preparing to take the New York State Regents exam. Many of my students have failed the exam at least two times. As their last shot before making the decision to drop out or get a GED, I was concerned that failing the regents exam would encourage some of my students to join the military instead.
Matthis Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Elaine Brower, member of the World Can't Wait, hosts of the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour, presented a compelling excerpt of the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Eyewitness Accounts" testimonials which summoned the visual and emotional interest of otherwise unresponsive youth. Matthis engaged the students with his own personal recollection of the military. He asked important questions, revealing truths of the racism of the war on Iraq, and connected to the personal lives of the students, while Elaine Brower offered the perspective of a mother, a point of view many of my students are sensitive to having been raised by only their mothers.
After the World Can't Wait presentation, it was apparent that my students were affected. The next day one student showed me a poem he wrote about a young boy from the ghetto enlisting in the military and dying, another asked for a World Can't Wait T-shirt, and yet another, who had wanted to join the military, handed me a recommendation form for a vocational school. Others are still lost forever to the military but the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour offered the education American youth really need and that more teachers need to be more conscious of.
Request for the tour from a student:
My school has an immense problem with military recruitment - they are here every day, in the classrooms, in the lunchroom. At least 1/4 of our graduates join the military, as this is a fairly rural community and people don't believe they have many options.
I want to request details of the tour, and how to arrange a visit, what it would cost, etc. The school has agreed to permit it (grudgingly), but it would not be an easy audience.
Any information you could send would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Jenny E.
related story:
JROTC under fire in S.F. schools
By Lauren Smiley
Published on April 07, 2009
Photo: Students from an anti-gang group wait to speak against the JROTC program, at school board meeting. Photo credit: Gabriela Hasbun
Eleven instructors of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps shuffled into the school board meeting in late March like men on death row who might be handed an 11th-hour pardon. Hopeful skeptics. Just two weeks before, the San Francisco Unified School District had sent them pink slips — proof that the school board was making good on its three-year threat to kick them to the curb.
The message, passed by a 4-3 school board vote in 2006, was this: Hell, no, you can't have a program run by retired sergeants and colonels in the peacenik capital of the Left Coast. Sorry, our kids will not goose-step around the courtyard in uniforms. As things stand now, the instructors must dismantle their programs at seven high schools in June. It's the first time anywhere in the country that JROTC has been kicked out of a school district solely on ideological grounds, according to Paul Kotakis, the program's national spokesman.
It has been a quintessential only-in-San Francisco battle — the military ambassadors playing the rogues, and the lefty progressives as the establishment — and one that will not die. At that March board meeting, two commissioners (both of whom have taken pains to reassert their liberal antiwar credentials despite supporting the program) introduced a resolution to bring JROTC coughing back up on shore. That day's Examiner had indicated that the new post-election lineup on the school board might provide the four votes needed to do just that.
Graying antiwar activists filed in, wearing the regalia of the left: a "Give Bush the Boot" T-shirt, "Military Out of Our Schools Now" pins, a camouflage combat jacket of a Marine who said he was out of jail for refusing to go to Iraq.
It would be a long wait. The meeting started 45 minutes late because of the tardy arrival of board president Kim-Shree Maufas, the mother of a former JROTC cadet and a skeptic of the program. With the JROTC measure scheduled for a first reading — no vote — far down in the agenda, Maufas denied a commissioner's request to move the public comment earlier in the meeting to let the kids get home, as has been done at nearly every meeting they've attended. (Ma had also requested earlier that day that the item be taken out of order, a courtesy for high-ranking officials.)
With the JROTC instructors in the lobby on edge and grumbling about "disrespect" and "delay tactics," even school district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe interpreted Maufas' move as a political statement: "I don't think this is so much a message to the kids, but to the other commissioners about whether this should have been brought up again."
Maufas finally called public comment at 9:55 p.m., three hours into the meeting.
Teenagers from HOMEY (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth), an antigang group in the Mission, offered a rebuttal: "We need people to teach us right from wrong, not to shoot for our government. ...What is the JROTC doing for my community? Not nothing," one said to loud applause from the activists in the room
The anti-JROTC contingent is convinced the program is a rotten tool of recruitment into a military that, if not creating cannon fodder for America's wars of imperialism, pumps out "yes sir" automatons who don't question the military like they do.
In the mid-'90s, the school board banned the air rifles used in target practice and the decoy ones used in drill competition, leaving the cadets to twirl the politically safer poles instead. You could say San Francisco's program has been neutered: JROTC lite. The program changed "uniform day" from the once-a-week requirement to just once a month after school. Galileo moved drum practice inside the school to appease neighbors, who'd complained for years. Mission halted uniform day altogether this year. The physical conditioning team at Lowell abandoned the camouflage uniforms that had long elicited the middle finger and catcalls from passing cars. ("We know they're the real idiots," one student said about the taunts.)
The JROTC program has been in the crosshairs since at least the '80s, but opponents didn't have the votes to phase out the program until 2006, when school board president Dan Kelly, a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and Commissioner Mark Sanchez wrote the resolution that the program was an "inappropriate extension of the nation's military into the civilian sphere."
Then there's the depletion of the ranks. Participation was hit hard by the board's decision last summer to revoke the classes' physical education (PE) credit, down from 1,600 students three years ago to around 600 now. The decision forced the district to hire nine new PE teachers to handle the increased class load. At the same time, the district continues to split the average $84,500 salary of the 12 JROTC staffers with Cadet Command, the Virginia-based body that oversees the 1,645 Army JROTC programs in the country and all but one in San Francisco. The instructors additionally receive a retirement pension from the Army; all in all, they earn the same as if they were still on active duty at their age and rank. The program costs the district a total of about $1 million a year.
Chief in the opponents' case against JROTC is that the program is a recruiting tactic, a practice the school board banned on district campuses in 1991, until the federal No Child Left Behind Act a decade later mandated that the military must be granted the same access to students as other postgraduate options. The opposition points to congressional testimony that a high percentage of JROTC graduates eventually join the armed services nationwide: 40 percent, according to a House Armed Services Committee report in 1999.
JROTC creates a "brand loyalty" to the military among kids who otherwise wouldn't have thought of the armed services as an option. Even if they don't enlist right after graduation, once they hit a tough job market or find college classes harder than expected, they'll think back on the good times and constant promotions in JROTC, says Pablo Paredes of the American Friends Service Committee, who does counter-recruiting in schools.
Critics think creating role models with military trappings is dangerous. "I think it's entirely inappropriate to have someone in the military in front of such impressionable 14-year-olds," says ex-Commissioner Mark Sanchez, an eighth-grade teacher.
If JROTC loses, what will take its place? The district is developing other leadership programs, such as four-year training for students to become first responders to earthquakes or natural disasters in conjunction with the city's Department of Emergency Management.
While still largely in denial, the "instructors" have faced the reality of having to find new jobs.
http://sfweekly.com/2009-04-08/news/jrotc-under-fire-in-s-f-schools/
Humboldt County cities restrict military
Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Arcata, Humboldt County -- This picturesque community among the redwoods, once dubbed "the Berkeley of the north" for its reputation for unabashed liberalism, has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the federal government.
Over the years, its civic leaders have declared this city a sanctuary for military resisters to the Persian Gulf War and barred local enforcement of the Patriot Act. If they had had enough pull, President George W. Bush would have been impeached at least once.
Now Arcata is at it again, with a law blocking the military from recruiting anybody in town under the age of 18. And this time, the law has the backing not of a few City Council activists, but of thousands of voters who went to the polls in November.
On the same day, voters in Eureka, a historically politically staid city a dozen miles away, surprised everybody by approving an identical measure. In Eureka, "Support the Troops" ribbons far outnumber the "U.S. Out of Humboldt" bumper stickers more common in Arcata.
The anti-recruiting measures appealed to Humboldt County's spirit of self-reliance and self-determination, which harks back to the Gold Rush. Tucked behind a wall of towering redwoods and lacking a railroad link to the Bay Area until 1914, its population was largely cut off from the rest of California. Today, Highway 101 provides relatively quick access to the urban centers to the south, but the sense of a Redwood Curtain dividing the county from the rest of the state has never completely faded.
"The fact that Eureka followed suit tells me it's more about independent thinking," said Laura Middlemiss, who was born and raised in Arcata, raised three kids there and felt that recruiters calling her kids at home went too far.
"The reason this measure passed in this region is that people don't want to be told what to do."
A court hearing is scheduled in Oakland on June 9 on the government's demand that the cities' laws be overturned for seeking powers constitutionally granted to the federal government. The cities are claiming that the United States is party to international treaties prohibiting the recruitment of children under 17 - which they argue include activities such as talking about the benefits of military service. Currently [according to municipal law] contact with recruiters may begin at any age. The treaties, the cities argue, hold equal standing to the supremacy clause [of the U.S. Constitution], an argument that Allen Weiner, a Stanford Law School lecturer, who is not connected to the suit, called novel.
"If they were to have a chance, that would be the one place they have a chance," he said. Enforcement of the laws is on hold for now, pending the court hearing. Recruiters are still operating in their small offices.
Characteristically anti-war cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, have tried to battle military recruitment. But nobody can recall a case where a city used the ballot box as a counter-recruitment tool, an act that has broader significance.
"It touches on a couple of core issues that really relate to the foundation of government," said Allen Weiner, a senior lecturer at Stanford Law School. "The questions of what areas belong to the federal government, and what areas belong to the state."
The anti-recruiting law was the inspiration of former Arcata City Councilman Dave Meserve, who gained national attention after his 2002 election by spearheading a first-in-the-nation law making compliance with the USA Patriot Act illegal. In late 2007, Meserve began thinking about ways to re-engage his town against the war. He hit on military recruiting, which he saw as a link between war overseas and everyday life at home, and he decided that instead of going to the same activists or to the council, he'd go to the ballot.
"You don't get anywhere by getting the same 30 people out to the demonstration. You don't get anywhere talking in all the cliches against war, against imperialism," he said.
The measure, which Meserve wrote to focus on the naiveté of youth, easily qualified for the November ballot in Arcata, and then qualified in Eureka, after a last-minute petition drive by Winfield "Win" Sample, a World War II veteran turned Orwell-quoting pacifist, who brought Arcata's measure to Eureka.
"Somebody had to start it," shrugged Sample, an outspoken man who hands out business cards bearing an Edward Abbey quote - "A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government."
When the polls closed on Nov. 4, the measure had won easily in both towns.
"I was of course happy with 73 percent in Arcata," Meserve said. "But 57 percent in Eureka just blew me away."
San Francisco's school board has battled against JROTC, and Berkeley's City Council issued a letter - since rescinded - calling local Marine recruiters "unwelcome intruders." But the Humboldt County laws appear to be the most direct counter-recruitment effort mounted by a city's electorate anywhere in the nation.
The Department of Defense refused to allow interviews with Humboldt County recruiters, citing the lawsuit.
According to data by the National Priorities Project, Humboldt County youths enlist in the Army at a rate of about 1.5 per 1,000 15- to 24- year-olds - a rate a tad higher than California as a whole, and about on par with the national average.
Activists take notice
Win or lose, for Meserve, the election demonstrated that activists can be more effective by reaching out to mainstream voters instead of putting all their resources into rallies or symbolic resolutions - a message that is spreading among activists from Berkeley to back east.
"Activists around the country are certainly looking at this and saying, 'Hmmm, maybe we can do something like that here,' " said Sam Diener, editor of Peacework Magazine in Cambridge, Mass.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/MNE6176...
further detail:
The Arcata Youth Protection Act
This text is an abridged version of the Arcata law passed in November 2008. Eureka passed an identical measure.
No person who is employed by or an agent of the United States government shall, within the City of Arcata, in the execution of his or her job duties, recruit, initiate contact with for the purpose of recruiting, or promote the future enlistment of any person under the age of eighteen into any branch of the United States Armed Forces.
Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent any person from voluntarily visiting a military recruitment office or specifically initiating a request to meet with a recruiter.
Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent individuals who are not employed by or agents of the U.S. government from encouraging people under the age of eighteen to join the military.
Any military recruiter who violates this Ordinance, as well as his or her commanding officer, shall be held responsible for said violation. Both shall be deemed guilty of an infraction and shall be subject to the penalties stated in the Arcata Municipal Code.
Source: www.smartvoter.org
Congress to debate role of recruiters in schools
Redo of federal education law sparks debate over military recruiters' access to students
Kevin Freking, AP News
Apr 24, 2009
Mary Adams doesn't want her daughter hearing pitches from military recruiters as she completes her high school education.
"They promise them all kinds of benefits without telling them of the risks," said Adams, a registered nurse whose daughter is a sophomore at a high school in Rochester, N.Y.
When approving the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, lawmakers inserted language requiring high schools that receive federal money to meet certain requirements regarding military recruiting.
Congress will consider reauthorizing the education law later this year. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., wants Congress to change how schools handle student contact information so military recruiters do not have automatic access to it. He said parents in his district are frustrated that recruiters are contacting their children at home.
Under Honda's bill, parents would have to consent to releasing their children's information to the military. Currently, parents have to ask that the information be withheld, and Honda said many parents are unaware they have that option.
"Parents have an obligation and right to control their children's private information," said Honda, who taught high school biology and was a principal before entering politics.
The National Education Association and the National PTA have supported Honda's legislation in previous years. Honda said he feels the bill has good prospects this year because of Democratic gains in the House and Senate and the change to a Democratic administration.
Of the Army's 80,000 enlistments for active duty during the 2008 fiscal year, about 14,000 — or nearly 18 percent — were high school students.
In Rochester, in 2005, the Board of Education approved a policy that said contact information would not be shared unless parents approved. But only a small percentage of parents sent in approval letters.
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/04/24/congress-to-debate-role-of-recru...
>From the facebook pages of Rep. Honda (CA-15) – a former teacher, principal and school board member:
My legislation to address disparities in our schools:
The Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act
Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 2:06pm
Today I re-introduced legislation in Congress to overhaul the country's education system and finally address the disparities in America’s schools. My Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act attends to the President's concern regarding, in Obama's words, the "relative decline of American education," which is "untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy, and unacceptable for our children."
Despite our best efforts, our children are not receiving an equitable education. There are vast disparities between the education provided by schools in different school districts, counties and states. Our current funding formulas are outdated, relying on factors such as average daily attendance, average costs for "regular" students, percentage of low-income students and concentrations of low-income students, special education students and English language learners. Funding formulas are based on a number of factors not necessarily correlated to the individual needs of the children in the school, and they vary from state to state.
The Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act creates a national commission charged with gathering public opinions and insights about how government can improve education and eliminate disparities in the education system. Importantly, the Commission’s composition would change the nature of the debate. Comprised of parents, teachers and experts on equity, civil rights, education policy, school finance, economics, and taxation — not merely state and federal legislators — the reform road map would be written by all users and beneficiaries of America’s education system.
This is a national problem demanding a national conversation. If fostered effectively, I believe that this dialogue can have a direct and positive impact on our nation’s economy and capacity to lead in the 21st century.
The bill has not yet been posted on Thomas, but you can view the bill text on my website and read what leading education organizations have said about the bill.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=26404007&ref=profile#/no...
sidebar:
Tulsa County Democratic Party votes for the repeal of NCLB
Democrats in other counties in Oklahoma Congressional District 1 follow suit
At their County Convention, held on 4th April 2009, the Tulsa County Democratic Party (TCDP) voted to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Similarly, Democrats in Washington County (Oklahoma), also voted to repeal the legislation, which has been accused of being too favorable to militarism in this country. The resolutions passed at the county level will be considered again at the upcoming convention of the Oklahoma Congressional District 1 Democrats and after that, once again at the State Convention of the Oklahoma Democratic Party (ODP).
Although the legislation as it stands includes onerous obligations placed on school districts to fork over information about unsuspecting students to the federal government, so that the Department of Defense can send out military predators to recruit them for the military, the TCDP's objections to the legislation are more about "unfunded mandates" in education and "federal mandates" in state-run education, than about curtailing the presence of military recruiters on school grounds, or restricting military predators' access to private information about students. Unlike other school districts in the country where students and/or their parents have to "opt in" to being recruited by the military, in the Tulsa Public Schools system students and/or their parents have to "opt out" of such recruitment. Few parents are aware of their right to exclude their child's private information from the roster of kids whom the military considers fair game for recruiting.
Recruiters target the young, the impressionable, and the uncritical, in their monthly attempt to make quota, as expected of them by the Department of Defense (DoD). A student can enlist as early as 17 if his or her parent will grant consent. But recruiters target even younger students. Meanwhile, there are ethical reasons for not militarizing schools, and legal reasons for not transforming children into "child soldiers."
Duncan's military vs. school values
Date: 4/12/09 10:41:06 PM Central Daylight Time
Letter to the Editor, April 12, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama named as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools system (CPS). Today, the flagship projects in CPS are its five military academies, affiliated with either the Army, Navy, or Marines. Cadets can practice marching on an academy's drill team and learn the proper way to fire a weapon on the rifle team.
Officials like Duncan and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley justify the need for the military academies by claiming they do a superlative job teaching students discipline and providing them with character-building opportunities. Without a doubt, teaching students about discipline and leadership is an important aspect of being an educator. But is the full-scale uniformed culture of the military actually necessary to impart these values?
A student who learns to play the cello, who studies how to read music, will learn discipline too, without a military-themed learning environment. In addition, encouraging students to be critical thinkers, to question accepted beliefs and norms, remains key to a teacher's role at any grade level. The military's culture of uniformity and follow-orders, no-questioning discipline, important as it may be for an army, hardly aligns with these academic values.
Frank P. Belcastro
fpbelcast@gmail.com
285 North Grandview Avenue
Dubuque, IA 52001
tel 563-588-1044
Peace Education Institute (OKC) announces 2009 summer camps schedule
by: peacearena
Thu Mar 05, 2009
The summer peace camps program offered by The Peace Education Institute is now in its third year of providing young people an opportunity to explore ideas and issues, to expand their knowledge of history, and to develop cooperative, community-building skills that will serve them throughout life.
* Peace Challenge Camp (for rising 5th & 6th graders) will be July 27-31.
This is a residential camp that takes place at St. Francis of the Woods Retreat Center in Coil, OK. It has a maximum enrollment of 16 students. The 5 day camp starts with a visit to the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum and then a trip to St. Francis of the Woods. The kids live in cabins of 4 campers, a teen helper and adult counselor. Throughout the weeks, they live and work together in this small team, including cooking and cleaning their home space. The curriculum focuses on non-violence as the preferred method for problem-solving. There is a lot of art and some team challenges that are scattered around the campus. Guest speakers include people who have experienced violence and have overcome the need for retribution and bitterness.
The cost of this camp is $200.00. Scholarship assistance is available.
* Peace Makers in Action (for rising 9-12 graders)
The High School Peace Camp is located at 3131 N. Penn Ave., Oklahoma City, OK. Monday-Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Vegetarian lunches are provided.
This summer, the youths will receive the full 20 hours of nonviolence training provided in the workshop entitled: "Creating a Culture of Peace: Nonviolence for Personal and Social Change."
There is plenty of time for creativity in this camp. Bands form, photography groups emerge, etc.
The cost of this camp is $100. Scholarship assistance is available.
For details about the camps or to register, visit www.PeaceEducationInstitute.org, or call 405-204-6479.
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For the full May edition of “Truth in Recruiting” see the PDF file, or the archived file on yahoogroups
Tulsa Peace Fellowship's counter-recruitment update/digest for May 2009
lead story
Youth Need Your Help To Get Recruiters Out
quote:
"My school has an immense problem with military recruitment - they are here every day, in the classrooms, in the lunchroom."
~Jenny E., student requesting the "We are Not Your Soldier" tour, with participants from Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW)
related story:
San Francisco School Board makes good on its three-year Promise to Kick JROTC to the Curb
--program costs the school district a total of about $1 million a year
--eleven instructors of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the soft-sell military recruiters inside schools, were sent pink slips
quote:
"We need people to teach us right from wrong, not to shoot for our government. ...What is the JROTC doing for my community? Nothing."
~teenage member from HOMEY (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth), an anti-gang group in the Mission. Students from an anti-gang group spoke out at the S.F. school board meeting, against the JROTC program
related story:
Two Cities in Humboldt County Block the Military from Recruiting Anybody in Town under the Age of 18
--the law has the backing not just of a few City Councilors, but of thousands of voters who went to the polls
--the two cities used the ballot box as a counter-recruitment tool
quote:
"The Humboldt County laws appear to be the most direct counter-recruitment effort mounted by a city's electorate anywhere in the nation."
related story:
Rochester, N.Y., School District Defies NCLB: Will not share students' private information automatically
--Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., introduces a bill in Congress giving back power of consent to the parents
--Under the proposed bill, parents would have to consent before schools could release children's information to the military
quote:
"Parents have an obligation and right to control their children's private information,"
~Mike Honda, Democratic Representative from California
related story:
Tulsa County Democratic Party votes for the repeal of NCLB
--other counties in Oklahoma Congressional District 1 follow suit
contrast with the most militarized school system in the nation:
Nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has militarized Chicago Public Schools system (CPS)
--op/ed from Frank Belcastro
quote:
"The military's culture of uniformity and follow-orders, no-questioning discipline, important as it may be for an army, hardly aligns with academic values."
alternatives to bootcamp:
Peace Education Institute, in Oklahoma City, announces 2009 summer camps schedule
--residential camp that takes place at St. Francis of the Woods Retreat Center in Coil, OK.
--youths will receive 20 hours of non-violence training provided in the workshop entitled: "Creating a Culture of Peace."
page one:
featured op/ed
Media Can Now Cover Coffins Coming Home -- But What About the OTHER Missing War Photos?
by Greg Mitchell
file under: signature injury of Iraq occupation
Returning troops getting tested for brain injuries
--risks of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are greatest in occupation zones
--most are due to pressure waves from being near bomb blasts
quote:
"These are the most difficult, thorny wounds of war."
~Jason Forrester, director of policy at Veterans for America, an advocacy group
Iraq Vet in Pennsylvania Murders Was Radically Changed by War and PTSD
quote:
"Ten's usually commit suicide; nine's often kill somebody."
~Dr. Phillip Leveque, a combat veteran of WWII, explaining how PTSD cases rated on a scale of 1 to 10
Poverty Draft in Full Swing: The Nation's Economic Downturn Has Helped Army Recruiting
--U.S. Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks
--U.S. Army plans to cut 1,100 active-duty, Reserve and contract recruiters over the next two years
fact:
The Army annually granted hundreds of waivers for felons in recent years, reaching a high of 511 in 2007
file under: grassroots opposition worldwide to neo-con hijacking of U.S. foreign policy
Mothers Against War Lay Out 7-Point Program in Opposition to any 'Surge' in Afghanistan
quote:
"Recognize that ultimately, decisions about what happens in Afghanistan should be made in Afghanistan, not Washington."
~MADRE, international women's human rights organization
sidebar:
Military allegedly pressured medical personnel to downgrade soldiers' PTSD diagnoses
file under: Military-Industrial-Congressional complex
Ten excellent reasons not to join the military:
c.. You May Be Injured
d.. You May Not Receive Proper Medical Care
e.. You May Suffer Long-term Health Problems
f.. You May Be Lied To
file under: psychotic sub-culture
U.S. Soldier Who Killed Herself--After Refusing to Take Part in Torture
--the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson
fact: She had been "reprimanded" for showing "empathy" for the prisoners being tortured.
page two:
file under: our monsters in Iraq
Iraq rape-slaying trial begins: former Army soldier charged
--crimes were dramatized in a feature-length film: "Redacted" (2007)
file under: the military no place for a woman
Book tells of female US soldiers raped by comrades
--follow up on prevalence of sexual assault in U.S. military, especially since drop in entrance standards
file under: The phenomenon of the fake POW
Numbers Claiming POW Benefits Exceed Number of POWs
--nothing new, just a reminder that nothing's sacred
quote:
"The P.O.W. Network says most phonies are just braggarts puffing at the local Kiwanis luncheon or preening for women in bars, but many have received significant benefits while trading off their borrowed valor."
file under: fragging case
US soldier says he saw Sgt. chase, shoot superior officer and fellow Sgt: 2 dead
--likely to go to court-martial
file under: what? you mean there are rules against murder on the battlefield?
US Army sergeant convicted of murdering four Iraqi detainees: faces life imprisonment without parole
--Master Sgt John Hatley acted as "judge, jury and executioner" of four men, captured in the Baghdad area in the spring of 2007
quote:
"A complete breakdown of discipline and crimes that are among the worst of a soldier"
~Captain Derrick Grace, prosecuting, in reference to damning evidence against Hatley, and two other soldiers
follow-up
Attack on USS Cole left 17 Sailors Dead: Compensation Payments to be made from Terrorism Risk Insurance Act
backpage
file under: environmental disasters caused by the U.S. Army
U.S. Military Dumped 2,500 tons of Chemical Munitions Off Coast of Hawaii
--more than 16,000 bombs containing lethal mustard, cyanide, lewisite, cyanogens and chloride were dumped into the sea
file under: Reasons not to join up #2 "You may get hurt"
U.S. Army Likens Soldiers to Pigs, Rats, in Cannon-Fodder Experiments
--pigs dressed in body armor and strapped into Humvees were blown up, for research purposes say mad military scientists
--George Orwell reminds us that some are more equal than others
file under: After the party, the hangover
US to spend $6 billion on Cold War weapons cleanup
follow-up: DoD spends $4 billion a year on public relations
Pentagon Closes Office Accused of Issuing Propaganda Under Bush
--Orwell would be pleased
epigraph for this issue of "Truth in Recruiting":
"Maybe we weren't in Iraq on a humanitarian mission"
~Iraq veteran, Benjamin Lewis, ex-Marine, speaking out against the continued Iraq occupation by the U.S. Armed Services
related group:
The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
"Advancing human rights is the work of many joining hands"
http://www.uusc.org/learn_by_doing
Tulsa Peace Fellowship's counter-recruitment update/digest for May 2009
lead story
Youth Need Your Help To Get Recruiters Out of Their Schools
In the wake of protests of 6 years of the Iraq occupation, we are receiving requests from students and teachers to bring the We Are Not Your Soldiers Tour to their schools. We can't get to them without your help! Donate today to bring Iraq & Afghanistan veterans into high schools across the country.
Thousands of students need to be reached in the next two months, encouraged to not join the army and to forge a student movement to get recruiters out of the schools as part of halting all the wars.
This tour is needed to reach these youth now.
Barack Obama announced in March that he is sending 4,000 troops to Afghanistan in addition to the 17,000 troops he announced in February. This is not change! This is an escalation of a crime against humanity. What are these troops being sent to do? What are the youth being recruited for? The murder, rape, and torture of innocent men, women, and children; to kick down doors and terrorize families... all so that the U.S. can tighten its stranglehold on the land, resources, and shipping routes of Middle East.
Where will these troops that Obama is sending come from? The military recruiters have budget of billions to recruit youth who are in high school now. They roam the hallways and lunch-rooms, call students at home, and set up at malls where kids hang out. The military cannot fight this expanded "war on terror" in Afghanistan without this fresh cannon fodder. Military recruiters now have almost unlimited access to reach high school students because the "No Child Left Behind" law ties funding for schools to whether recruiters can get to students.
Most of the schools have been predominently Black and Latino and almost all of them have been working class - exactly the students that the recruiters are targeting. When recruiters come into their school, students need to know exactly what they are being recruited for. Not freedom, not democracy, and not better "career options."
Speakers on the tour give students reasons not to go into the military, and help organize collective resistance to recruiters' lies by spreading visible mass resistance to joining this military as a part of stopping this war of terror for empire.
Classroom presentations include a short presentation by a World Can't Wait youth organizer and an Iraq and/or Afghanistan war veteran, a 10-minute video clip of testimony by Iraq veterans from the March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings about what they witnessed and perpetrated and footage of high school students protesting military recruiters along with an open discussion. At the end we conduct a short survey to give us a sense of what young people are thinking.
This takes funding. As a movement of the people we rely entirely on your support. Speakers are ready, students want us to come, and we are ready to organize another even stronger round especially with the latest intolerable surge in Afghanistan.
Donate generously so that World Can't Wait can continue this tour reaching thousands more students before the end of this school year with the truth of what they are being recruited for
To learn more about the tour, watch videos, and meet the vets visit http://wearenotyoursoldiers.org
Sincerely, Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait
P.S. This tour and the Iraq Vets that are a part of it are extremely precious in a time where so many have given up the fight to stop these wars. Support them - spread the resistance - donate generously today
World Can't Wait - info@worldcantwait.org
305 W. Broadway #185, NY, NY 10013
tel 866.973.4463
Send checks or money orders, payable to "World Can't Wait":
World Can't Wait
305 W. Broadway #185
New York, NY 10013
For sponsorship level donations, or if you wish to make stock donations please contact our development director Samantha Goldman samantha@worldcantwait.org, 347-581-2677.
To make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more in support of WCW's educational activities, please make checks out to "The Alliance for Global Justice," a 501(3)(c) organization, and designate "for WCW" in the check memo line.
From a New York City teacher after the tour:
At the time the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour visited, my students were preparing to take the New York State Regents exam. Many of my students have failed the exam at least two times. As their last shot before making the decision to drop out or get a GED, I was concerned that failing the regents exam would encourage some of my students to join the military instead.
Matthis Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Elaine Brower, member of the World Can't Wait, hosts of the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour, presented a compelling excerpt of the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Eyewitness Accounts" testimonials which summoned the visual and emotional interest of otherwise unresponsive youth. Matthis engaged the students with his own personal recollection of the military. He asked important questions, revealing truths of the racism of the war on Iraq, and connected to the personal lives of the students, while Elaine Brower offered the perspective of a mother, a point of view many of my students are sensitive to having been raised by only their mothers.
After the World Can't Wait presentation, it was apparent that my students were affected. The next day one student showed me a poem he wrote about a young boy from the ghetto enlisting in the military and dying, another asked for a World Can't Wait T-shirt, and yet another, who had wanted to join the military, handed me a recommendation form for a vocational school. Others are still lost forever to the military but the "We Are Not Your Soldiers" tour offered the education American youth really need and that more teachers need to be more conscious of.
Request for the tour from a student:
My school has an immense problem with military recruitment - they are here every day, in the classrooms, in the lunchroom. At least 1/4 of our graduates join the military, as this is a fairly rural community and people don't believe they have many options.
I want to request details of the tour, and how to arrange a visit, what it would cost, etc. The school has agreed to permit it (grudgingly), but it would not be an easy audience.
Any information you could send would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Jenny E.
related story:
JROTC under fire in S.F. schools
By Lauren Smiley
Published on April 07, 2009
Photo: Students from an anti-gang group wait to speak against the JROTC program, at school board meeting. Photo credit: Gabriela Hasbun
Eleven instructors of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps shuffled into the school board meeting in late March like men on death row who might be handed an 11th-hour pardon. Hopeful skeptics. Just two weeks before, the San Francisco Unified School District had sent them pink slips — proof that the school board was making good on its three-year threat to kick them to the curb.
The message, passed by a 4-3 school board vote in 2006, was this: Hell, no, you can't have a program run by retired sergeants and colonels in the peacenik capital of the Left Coast. Sorry, our kids will not goose-step around the courtyard in uniforms. As things stand now, the instructors must dismantle their programs at seven high schools in June. It's the first time anywhere in the country that JROTC has been kicked out of a school district solely on ideological grounds, according to Paul Kotakis, the program's national spokesman.
It has been a quintessential only-in-San Francisco battle — the military ambassadors playing the rogues, and the lefty progressives as the establishment — and one that will not die. At that March board meeting, two commissioners (both of whom have taken pains to reassert their liberal antiwar credentials despite supporting the program) introduced a resolution to bring JROTC coughing back up on shore. That day's Examiner had indicated that the new post-election lineup on the school board might provide the four votes needed to do just that.
Graying antiwar activists filed in, wearing the regalia of the left: a "Give Bush the Boot" T-shirt, "Military Out of Our Schools Now" pins, a camouflage combat jacket of a Marine who said he was out of jail for refusing to go to Iraq.
It would be a long wait. The meeting started 45 minutes late because of the tardy arrival of board president Kim-Shree Maufas, the mother of a former JROTC cadet and a skeptic of the program. With the JROTC measure scheduled for a first reading — no vote — far down in the agenda, Maufas denied a commissioner's request to move the public comment earlier in the meeting to let the kids get home, as has been done at nearly every meeting they've attended. (Ma had also requested earlier that day that the item be taken out of order, a courtesy for high-ranking officials.)
With the JROTC instructors in the lobby on edge and grumbling about "disrespect" and "delay tactics," even school district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe interpreted Maufas' move as a political statement: "I don't think this is so much a message to the kids, but to the other commissioners about whether this should have been brought up again."
Maufas finally called public comment at 9:55 p.m., three hours into the meeting.
Teenagers from HOMEY (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth), an antigang group in the Mission, offered a rebuttal: "We need people to teach us right from wrong, not to shoot for our government. ...What is the JROTC doing for my community? Not nothing," one said to loud applause from the activists in the room
The anti-JROTC contingent is convinced the program is a rotten tool of recruitment into a military that, if not creating cannon fodder for America's wars of imperialism, pumps out "yes sir" automatons who don't question the military like they do.
In the mid-'90s, the school board banned the air rifles used in target practice and the decoy ones used in drill competition, leaving the cadets to twirl the politically safer poles instead. You could say San Francisco's program has been neutered: JROTC lite. The program changed "uniform day" from the once-a-week requirement to just once a month after school. Galileo moved drum practice inside the school to appease neighbors, who'd complained for years. Mission halted uniform day altogether this year. The physical conditioning team at Lowell abandoned the camouflage uniforms that had long elicited the middle finger and catcalls from passing cars. ("We know they're the real idiots," one student said about the taunts.)
The JROTC program has been in the crosshairs since at least the '80s, but opponents didn't have the votes to phase out the program until 2006, when school board president Dan Kelly, a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, and Commissioner Mark Sanchez wrote the resolution that the program was an "inappropriate extension of the nation's military into the civilian sphere."
Then there's the depletion of the ranks. Participation was hit hard by the board's decision last summer to revoke the classes' physical education (PE) credit, down from 1,600 students three years ago to around 600 now. The decision forced the district to hire nine new PE teachers to handle the increased class load. At the same time, the district continues to split the average $84,500 salary of the 12 JROTC staffers with Cadet Command, the Virginia-based body that oversees the 1,645 Army JROTC programs in the country and all but one in San Francisco. The instructors additionally receive a retirement pension from the Army; all in all, they earn the same as if they were still on active duty at their age and rank. The program costs the district a total of about $1 million a year.
Chief in the opponents' case against JROTC is that the program is a recruiting tactic, a practice the school board banned on district campuses in 1991, until the federal No Child Left Behind Act a decade later mandated that the military must be granted the same access to students as other postgraduate options. The opposition points to congressional testimony that a high percentage of JROTC graduates eventually join the armed services nationwide: 40 percent, according to a House Armed Services Committee report in 1999.
JROTC creates a "brand loyalty" to the military among kids who otherwise wouldn't have thought of the armed services as an option. Even if they don't enlist right after graduation, once they hit a tough job market or find college classes harder than expected, they'll think back on the good times and constant promotions in JROTC, says Pablo Paredes of the American Friends Service Committee, who does counter-recruiting in schools.
Critics think creating role models with military trappings is dangerous. "I think it's entirely inappropriate to have someone in the military in front of such impressionable 14-year-olds," says ex-Commissioner Mark Sanchez, an eighth-grade teacher.
If JROTC loses, what will take its place? The district is developing other leadership programs, such as four-year training for students to become first responders to earthquakes or natural disasters in conjunction with the city's Department of Emergency Management.
While still largely in denial, the "instructors" have faced the reality of having to find new jobs.
http://sfweekly.com/2009-04-08/news/jrotc-under-fire-in-s-f-schools/
Humboldt County cities restrict military
Matthew B. Stannard, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Arcata, Humboldt County -- This picturesque community among the redwoods, once dubbed "the Berkeley of the north" for its reputation for unabashed liberalism, has repeatedly thumbed its nose at the federal government.
Over the years, its civic leaders have declared this city a sanctuary for military resisters to the Persian Gulf War and barred local enforcement of the Patriot Act. If they had had enough pull, President George W. Bush would have been impeached at least once.
Now Arcata is at it again, with a law blocking the military from recruiting anybody in town under the age of 18. And this time, the law has the backing not of a few City Council activists, but of thousands of voters who went to the polls in November.
On the same day, voters in Eureka, a historically politically staid city a dozen miles away, surprised everybody by approving an identical measure. In Eureka, "Support the Troops" ribbons far outnumber the "U.S. Out of Humboldt" bumper stickers more common in Arcata.
The anti-recruiting measures appealed to Humboldt County's spirit of self-reliance and self-determination, which harks back to the Gold Rush. Tucked behind a wall of towering redwoods and lacking a railroad link to the Bay Area until 1914, its population was largely cut off from the rest of California. Today, Highway 101 provides relatively quick access to the urban centers to the south, but the sense of a Redwood Curtain dividing the county from the rest of the state has never completely faded.
"The fact that Eureka followed suit tells me it's more about independent thinking," said Laura Middlemiss, who was born and raised in Arcata, raised three kids there and felt that recruiters calling her kids at home went too far.
"The reason this measure passed in this region is that people don't want to be told what to do."
A court hearing is scheduled in Oakland on June 9 on the government's demand that the cities' laws be overturned for seeking powers constitutionally granted to the federal government. The cities are claiming that the United States is party to international treaties prohibiting the recruitment of children under 17 - which they argue include activities such as talking about the benefits of military service. Currently [according to municipal law] contact with recruiters may begin at any age. The treaties, the cities argue, hold equal standing to the supremacy clause [of the U.S. Constitution], an argument that Allen Weiner, a Stanford Law School lecturer, who is not connected to the suit, called novel.
"If they were to have a chance, that would be the one place they have a chance," he said. Enforcement of the laws is on hold for now, pending the court hearing. Recruiters are still operating in their small offices.
Characteristically anti-war cities, including San Francisco and Berkeley, have tried to battle military recruitment. But nobody can recall a case where a city used the ballot box as a counter-recruitment tool, an act that has broader significance.
"It touches on a couple of core issues that really relate to the foundation of government," said Allen Weiner, a senior lecturer at Stanford Law School. "The questions of what areas belong to the federal government, and what areas belong to the state."
The anti-recruiting law was the inspiration of former Arcata City Councilman Dave Meserve, who gained national attention after his 2002 election by spearheading a first-in-the-nation law making compliance with the USA Patriot Act illegal. In late 2007, Meserve began thinking about ways to re-engage his town against the war. He hit on military recruiting, which he saw as a link between war overseas and everyday life at home, and he decided that instead of going to the same activists or to the council, he'd go to the ballot.
"You don't get anywhere by getting the same 30 people out to the demonstration. You don't get anywhere talking in all the cliches against war, against imperialism," he said.
The measure, which Meserve wrote to focus on the naiveté of youth, easily qualified for the November ballot in Arcata, and then qualified in Eureka, after a last-minute petition drive by Winfield "Win" Sample, a World War II veteran turned Orwell-quoting pacifist, who brought Arcata's measure to Eureka.
"Somebody had to start it," shrugged Sample, an outspoken man who hands out business cards bearing an Edward Abbey quote - "A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government."
When the polls closed on Nov. 4, the measure had won easily in both towns.
"I was of course happy with 73 percent in Arcata," Meserve said. "But 57 percent in Eureka just blew me away."
San Francisco's school board has battled against JROTC, and Berkeley's City Council issued a letter - since rescinded - calling local Marine recruiters "unwelcome intruders." But the Humboldt County laws appear to be the most direct counter-recruitment effort mounted by a city's electorate anywhere in the nation.
The Department of Defense refused to allow interviews with Humboldt County recruiters, citing the lawsuit.
According to data by the National Priorities Project, Humboldt County youths enlist in the Army at a rate of about 1.5 per 1,000 15- to 24- year-olds - a rate a tad higher than California as a whole, and about on par with the national average.
Activists take notice
Win or lose, for Meserve, the election demonstrated that activists can be more effective by reaching out to mainstream voters instead of putting all their resources into rallies or symbolic resolutions - a message that is spreading among activists from Berkeley to back east.
"Activists around the country are certainly looking at this and saying, 'Hmmm, maybe we can do something like that here,' " said Sam Diener, editor of Peacework Magazine in Cambridge, Mass.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/MNE6176...
further detail:
The Arcata Youth Protection Act
This text is an abridged version of the Arcata law passed in November 2008. Eureka passed an identical measure.
No person who is employed by or an agent of the United States government shall, within the City of Arcata, in the execution of his or her job duties, recruit, initiate contact with for the purpose of recruiting, or promote the future enlistment of any person under the age of eighteen into any branch of the United States Armed Forces.
Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent any person from voluntarily visiting a military recruitment office or specifically initiating a request to meet with a recruiter.
Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent individuals who are not employed by or agents of the U.S. government from encouraging people under the age of eighteen to join the military.
Any military recruiter who violates this Ordinance, as well as his or her commanding officer, shall be held responsible for said violation. Both shall be deemed guilty of an infraction and shall be subject to the penalties stated in the Arcata Municipal Code.
Source: www.smartvoter.org
Congress to debate role of recruiters in schools
Redo of federal education law sparks debate over military recruiters' access to students
Kevin Freking, AP News
Apr 24, 2009
Mary Adams doesn't want her daughter hearing pitches from military recruiters as she completes her high school education.
"They promise them all kinds of benefits without telling them of the risks," said Adams, a registered nurse whose daughter is a sophomore at a high school in Rochester, N.Y.
When approving the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, lawmakers inserted language requiring high schools that receive federal money to meet certain requirements regarding military recruiting.
Congress will consider reauthorizing the education law later this year. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., wants Congress to change how schools handle student contact information so military recruiters do not have automatic access to it. He said parents in his district are frustrated that recruiters are contacting their children at home.
Under Honda's bill, parents would have to consent to releasing their children's information to the military. Currently, parents have to ask that the information be withheld, and Honda said many parents are unaware they have that option.
"Parents have an obligation and right to control their children's private information," said Honda, who taught high school biology and was a principal before entering politics.
The National Education Association and the National PTA have supported Honda's legislation in previous years. Honda said he feels the bill has good prospects this year because of Democratic gains in the House and Senate and the change to a Democratic administration.
Of the Army's 80,000 enlistments for active duty during the 2008 fiscal year, about 14,000 — or nearly 18 percent — were high school students.
In Rochester, in 2005, the Board of Education approved a policy that said contact information would not be shared unless parents approved. But only a small percentage of parents sent in approval letters.
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/04/24/congress-to-debate-role-of-recru...
>From the facebook pages of Rep. Honda (CA-15) – a former teacher, principal and school board member:
My legislation to address disparities in our schools:
The Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act
Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 2:06pm
Today I re-introduced legislation in Congress to overhaul the country's education system and finally address the disparities in America’s schools. My Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act attends to the President's concern regarding, in Obama's words, the "relative decline of American education," which is "untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy, and unacceptable for our children."
Despite our best efforts, our children are not receiving an equitable education. There are vast disparities between the education provided by schools in different school districts, counties and states. Our current funding formulas are outdated, relying on factors such as average daily attendance, average costs for "regular" students, percentage of low-income students and concentrations of low-income students, special education students and English language learners. Funding formulas are based on a number of factors not necessarily correlated to the individual needs of the children in the school, and they vary from state to state.
The Educational Opportunity and Equity Commission Act creates a national commission charged with gathering public opinions and insights about how government can improve education and eliminate disparities in the education system. Importantly, the Commission’s composition would change the nature of the debate. Comprised of parents, teachers and experts on equity, civil rights, education policy, school finance, economics, and taxation — not merely state and federal legislators — the reform road map would be written by all users and beneficiaries of America’s education system.
This is a national problem demanding a national conversation. If fostered effectively, I believe that this dialogue can have a direct and positive impact on our nation’s economy and capacity to lead in the 21st century.
The bill has not yet been posted on Thomas, but you can view the bill text on my website and read what leading education organizations have said about the bill.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=26404007&ref=profile#/no...
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Tulsa County Democratic Party votes for the repeal of NCLB
Democrats in other counties in Oklahoma Congressional District 1 follow suit
At their County Convention, held on 4th April 2009, the Tulsa County Democratic Party (TCDP) voted to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Similarly, Democrats in Washington County (Oklahoma), also voted to repeal the legislation, which has been accused of being too favorable to militarism in this country. The resolutions passed at the county level will be considered again at the upcoming convention of the Oklahoma Congressional District 1 Democrats and after that, once again at the State Convention of the Oklahoma Democratic Party (ODP).
Although the legislation as it stands includes onerous obligations placed on school districts to fork over information about unsuspecting students to the federal government, so that the Department of Defense can send out military predators to recruit them for the military, the TCDP's objections to the legislation are more about "unfunded mandates" in education and "federal mandates" in state-run education, than about curtailing the presence of military recruiters on school grounds, or restricting military predators' access to private information about students. Unlike other school districts in the country where students and/or their parents have to "opt in" to being recruited by the military, in the Tulsa Public Schools system students and/or their parents have to "opt out" of such recruitment. Few parents are aware of their right to exclude their child's private information from the roster of kids whom the military considers fair game for recruiting.
Recruiters target the young, the impressionable, and the uncritical, in their monthly attempt to make quota, as expected of them by the Department of Defense (DoD). A student can enlist as early as 17 if his or her parent will grant consent. But recruiters target even younger students. Meanwhile, there are ethical reasons for not militarizing schools, and legal reasons for not transforming children into "child soldiers."
Duncan's military vs. school values
Date: 4/12/09 10:41:06 PM Central Daylight Time
Letter to the Editor, April 12, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama named as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools system (CPS). Today, the flagship projects in CPS are its five military academies, affiliated with either the Army, Navy, or Marines. Cadets can practice marching on an academy's drill team and learn the proper way to fire a weapon on the rifle team.
Officials like Duncan and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley justify the need for the military academies by claiming they do a superlative job teaching students discipline and providing them with character-building opportunities. Without a doubt, teaching students about discipline and leadership is an important aspect of being an educator. But is the full-scale uniformed culture of the military actually necessary to impart these values?
A student who learns to play the cello, who studies how to read music, will learn discipline too, without a military-themed learning environment. In addition, encouraging students to be critical thinkers, to question accepted beliefs and norms, remains key to a teacher's role at any grade level. The military's culture of uniformity and follow-orders, no-questioning discipline, important as it may be for an army, hardly aligns with these academic values.
Frank P. Belcastro
fpbelcast@gmail.com
285 North Grandview Avenue
Dubuque, IA 52001
tel 563-588-1044
Peace Education Institute (OKC) announces 2009 summer camps schedule
by: peacearena
Thu Mar 05, 2009
The summer peace camps program offered by The Peace Education Institute is now in its third year of providing young people an opportunity to explore ideas and issues, to expand their knowledge of history, and to develop cooperative, community-building skills that will serve them throughout life.
* Peace Challenge Camp (for rising 5th & 6th graders) will be July 27-31.
This is a residential camp that takes place at St. Francis of the Woods Retreat Center in Coil, OK. It has a maximum enrollment of 16 students. The 5 day camp starts with a visit to the Oklahoma City Memorial Museum and then a trip to St. Francis of the Woods. The kids live in cabins of 4 campers, a teen helper and adult counselor. Throughout the weeks, they live and work together in this small team, including cooking and cleaning their home space. The curriculum focuses on non-violence as the preferred method for problem-solving. There is a lot of art and some team challenges that are scattered around the campus. Guest speakers include people who have experienced violence and have overcome the need for retribution and bitterness.
The cost of this camp is $200.00. Scholarship assistance is available.
* Peace Makers in Action (for rising 9-12 graders)
The High School Peace Camp is located at 3131 N. Penn Ave., Oklahoma City, OK. Monday-Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Vegetarian lunches are provided.
This summer, the youths will receive the full 20 hours of nonviolence training provided in the workshop entitled: "Creating a Culture of Peace: Nonviolence for Personal and Social Change."
There is plenty of time for creativity in this camp. Bands form, photography groups emerge, etc.
The cost of this camp is $100. Scholarship assistance is available.
For details about the camps or to register, visit www.PeaceEducationInstitute.org, or call 405-204-6479.
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For the full May edition of “Truth in Recruiting” see the PDF file, or the archived file on yahoogroups
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