COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Sides clash outside recruiting office in Mountain View
Don Kazak, Palo Alto Online
February 15, 2008
A new Army recruiting office in Mountain View was the scene of aprotest by about two dozen anti-war demonstrators Friday, who in turn
attracted a half-dozen people protesting the protestors.
The demonstration, sponsored by the Peninsula Peace and Justice
Center in Palo Alto, featured several members of the Raging Grannies
who carried signs, sang songs and chanted outside the recruiting
office in a shopping mall at Grant Road and El Camino Real.
The office was open for business but the doors were locked to keep
the demonstrators out.
There were no arrests, but there were two minor incidents. In the
first incident, a member of the Grannies poked a man with her finger
and then quickly left, witnesses said, when the man called the police.
In the second incident, a man walking by on the shopping mall
sidewalk brushed against Granny Gail Sredanovic, pushing her and
yelling, "Clear the sidewalk!" The man left and Sredanovic later
filed a report with the Mountain View police.
The protestors and counter-protestors engaged in mostly polite, but
sometimes heated, discussions about the war in the Iraq. The mother
of an Army sergeant working inside the recruiting office said that
one protestor was verbally abusive, calling her a crude name.
"Hate (President) Bush, hate the war, but don't hate my son," Janessa
Rhodes of San Jose said.
"I don't like Bush and I don't like the war in Iraq," she said.
Her son, Sgt. Sean Plunkett, served in Iraq and was now working in
the recruiting office.
"They don't have a choice," Rhodes said of her son and other Army
recruiters, noting they were assigned to work as recruiters.
Another counter-demonstrato r, Jean Browne of Santa Clara, carried a
large photograph of her daughter, an Air Force staff sergeant serving
in her third tour of duty in Iraq.
"We're very proud of her," Browne said.
The decision to hold a protest at the recruiting office was made
because "they're invading our schools" and "they're not telling the
truth" to young recruits, Sredanovic explained.
"They're told they'll get money for college but very few get the
maximum amount, and they have to serve extra time to qualify," she said.
"We don't hate the military for the awful things they do, because
they're under tremendous pressure," she added. "We have deep, deep,
deep concerns."
There were several people from Los Altos Voice for Peace at the
demonstration, holding a banner and placards.
"We objected to the war before it started," Ray Schuster of Los Altos
said. "Recruitment is needed to keep troop levels up. Starve the
beast in Iraq and maybe that will hasten the end of the war."
"The question is how to get out," Jim Nystrom said. A former Palo
Alto resident who lives in Sunnyvale, Nystrom carried a large
American flag and a placard calling for an increase in the defense
budget. His dog, Maggie, a black Labrador mix, was friendly to people
on both sides of the debate.
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