COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Northern California Teens Scrutinize Billion Dollar Military
Recruitment Campaign Aimed at Youth
ACLU of Northern California, Yubanet
Aug 13, 2007
Students from 20 Northern Californian high schools will return totheir classrooms this fall with more than vacation stories. They will
be experts on military recruitment and service – having met with
veterans, recruiters, the San Francisco school board that phased out
the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), a conscientious
objector and toured Camp Pendleton Marine base, among other activities.
The week-long trip, which goes from August 5 to August 12, is the
ACLU of Northern California's Howard A. Friedman Youth Project's
twelfth annual trip. The ACLU activist class of 2007 says this trip
is very personal and have named it "The Truth Behind the Camouflage:
A Youth Investigation into the Myths & Truths of Military Recruitment
& Military Service." (A full list of trip activities is available on request.)
"Where I go to school, there's a lot of military recruiters," said
Aliesha Baldé, a 17-year-old student at Vallejo High School, who was
approached by recruiters several times. "The military recruiters
actually came to my home offering me all sorts of things, including
money for college. I want to go on this trip because I want to inform
my classmates about the truth behind the promises."
Eveline Chang, director of the ACLU-NC's Friedman Youth Project,
highlights the importance of this year's trip, in light of the armed
forces not being able to meet recruitment goals and California's
demographic realities. Compared to any other state, California has
the greatest number of youth between 15 and 24 years old. In
addition, California ranks second among the states where the army
finds the greatest number of new recruits, and Los Angeles County
ranks first among counties nationwide, according to the nonprofit
research organization National Priorities Project.
"California youth are at the epicenter," Chang explains, "because of
the state's demographics. We are especially concerned about the
reports of abuse and misrepresentations by military recruiters. Young
people are not getting the full story."
As the public debates the war in Iraq, last week the U.S. Army, as
reported in the Army Times, ordered a surge in recruiters to meet the
largest shortfall in Army recruitment in over two years and some of
the greatest recruiting challenges since the beginning of the
all-volunteer army.
Nationwide, while African-American recruits are in decline, Latino
recruits are on the rise, as is the so-called "green card soldier"
phenomenon, where permanent residency status is offered to those
willing to serve in the armed services.
California is on track to have a majority Latino population by 2042.
Chang says that one of the biggest challenges facing youth is the
military's huge advertising budget that glamorizes military service.
"When the amount the government spends on advertising for military
recruitment surpasses Nike's total advertising budget, we can
understand why youth face an uphill battle when trying to make
well-informed decisions."
According to the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
estimate, well over half of the federal government's total
advertising budget, more than $700 million, went towards military
recruitment advertising – a figure that surpassed Nike, Wal-Mart,
Mastercard, and Coca-Cola in a 2007 Advertising Age study. When
advertising is combined with recruitment support, the campaign to
find recruits for the armed services is well over a billion dollars,
says the CBO.
Seventeen-year- old Jacquieta Beverly who is part of the Friedman
youth project and recently graduated from Tennyson High School in
Hayward put it this way: "The first encounter I had with a recruiter,
they came on campus with this big Hummer. Our teachers at that time
were on strike, so I just didn't understand how the government has
all this money to spend on a war and on recruitment when our teachers
are on strike and our textbooks are all outdated."
Beverly adds: "It seemed the recruiters had the run of the campus;
they have access to classrooms and students in the lunch room. It got
to the point where it felt like they were harassing you. They would
follow you into the lunchroom offering to buy you snacks and stuff.
It felt like it was an invasion of your privacy."
"An overarching goal of this trip is for these students to be
resources on the realities of military recruitment and service to
their peers." Chang explains. After the trip, students will make
presentations in high schools throughout Northern California.
The diverse group of students, ranging from age 14 to 18, come from
high schools in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Berkeley,
Vallejo, Castro Valley, Chico, Hayward, Hercules, Orinda, Palo Alto,
Petaluma, and San Rafael.
"The ACLU-NC Friedman Project hopes to spark discussion of issues
that directly affect youth and create opportunities for young people
to lead the movement for change," adds Chang.
On August 12, the last day of the trip, students will present their
preliminary findings, which will be compiled in a report documenting
their personal writings, artwork and photographs.
The Howard A. Friedman First Amendment Project of the ACLU-NC was
founded in 1991 and works with teachers and students to engage youth
in making connections between the Bill of Rights and the issues they
face in their daily lives. ACLU-NC's Friedman Project has sponsored
eleven previous summer trips that have covered a wide range of topics
including economic justice, immigration, and juvenile justice.
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