COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
So, Yes. The Marines are traitors to America-- our constitution, our rule of law and our humanity.
Monisha Bansal, CNSNnews
October 18, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station in Berkeley,Calif., has become a battleground for protesters. A "pro-troop"
organization rally on Wednesday was aimed at countering anti-war
protesters who have been demonstrating for the last three weeks.
Code Pink, a leftist anti-war group, began protesting the
nine-month-old recruitment center on Sept. 26. The group posted signs
saying "recruiters are traitors" and "recruiters lie, children die."
The group also sent a message to their supporters saying: "The
Marines have landed in Berkeley! We are shocked and infuriated they
have opened a despicable Officer Recruiting Station just blocks from
Berkeley High School, UCB and Berkeley City college. We are
determined to SHUT DOWN this recruiting station and we need your
help! Tell the Marines NO Military Predators in our town!!! Protect
our vulnerable youth!"
Capt. Richard Lund, who runs the recruitment stations, responded to
Code Pink with an open letter published in the Berkeley Daily Planet,
in which he stated: "While the protest that you staged in front of my
office on Wednesday, Sept. 26, was an exercise of your constitutional
rights, the messages that you left behind were insulting, untrue and
ultimately misdirected."
The women of Code Pink have since been a frequent presence at the
center, planning protests for at least once a week.
"A lot of the work that we've been doing to bring awareness to what's
happening with the war in Iraq is to do what we call 'truth in
recruiting,'" said Dana Balicki, national organizer for Code Pink.
She added that this is to shed light on the fact that it is
recruiters' "jobs to sell the military to young people."
"They have certain point quotas that they have to make, and
unfortunately, it is the young men and women of this country that are
needed to fill those quotas for recruitment," Balicki told Cybercast
News Service. "Recruiting centers, while they are not the masterminds
of the war in Iraq, they definitely share some responsibility for
continuing to garner support for the military."
But Danny Gonzalez, communications director for Move America Forward,
a conservative, pro-military organization, said, "We want to tell the
community and basically tell Code Pink that their tactics are
uncalled for in this situation."
"They are literally attacking the military and attacking the
recruiters," he said. "That is completely off the mark."
Move America Forward said around 300 "pro-troop" protesters turned
out at the center on Wednesday.
Balicki noted that the residents of Berkeley are opposed to the
recruitment center.
"There have been various resolutions adopted by the city council over
the years that have basically condemned the war in Iraq, saying that
Berkeley is not going to be a place that supports the war in Iraq or
supports any military aggression, or sending any more of our young
men and women to fight this illegal and immoral war," she said.
"The women of Berkeley felt that having a military recruitment center
open in the area is something that really the community at large
didn't support," she added.
"Even if the community around Berkeley doesn't want him to be here,
they really don't have a say in it -- it's his legal right and the
right of the U.S. military to establish a recruiting station here,"
Gonzalez told Cybercast News Service.
"The military leased this office from the land owner through legal
means, and therefore [Lund] has a right to be here and do whatever
recruiting activities he wants," he said.
Gonzalez also took issue with Code Pink, for calling Lund a traitor.
"If they want to stop the war, what they ought to be doing is
protesting Congress and the people who actually have the power to
change things, rather than the military recruiters who are simply
doing their jobs," said Gonzalez.
"Many of us feel that calling a recruiter a traitor was not
necessarily appropriate," responded Balicki, who noted that the Bay
Area Code Pink group is autonomous. "We feel like that is pointing a
finger at someone who is part of the system, instead of at the people
who are the architects of the system -- meaning the Bush administration."
"But I understand that people are frustrated right now and people are
upset," she said. "I think some of those emotions were unleashed at
the Berkeley recruitment center."
"The saddest story is that the sons and daughters of this country are
being turned into killers and the recruiter plays a part in that, the
Bush administration plays a part in that, our members of Congress who
continue to support the war and continue to fund it play a part in
that," she concluded.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen material relevant to the work of Eugene, Oregon’s Committee for Countering Military Recruitment that we think may be of use to others individuals and groups with similar goals.
Because our web site is public, personal comments about the articles and (frequent) corrections of reporters’ errors are also not included. If an article interests you, we encourage you to return to the Counter-Recruitment List Serve and put the article’s headline into the search line, which should bring up (often wise and useful) commentary and corrections. If you do not belong to the List Serve, it can be found at counter-recruitment@yahoogroups.com
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the articles on this site are posted without profit to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposed.