COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Thwarting the Recruiters
Kathleen Richards, East Bay Express
September 5, 2007
Fight the Pentagon with poetry? It sounds far-fetched, but harnessingyouth culture to spread antiwar messages is one tactic of the growing
"counter-recruitmen t" movement, a push by students and activists to
thwart military recruiters. They've stepped up efforts as the Iraq
War drags on, especially at high schools where No Child Left Behind
compels administrators to give the military student contact
information unless a kid officially opts out.
Now activists Aimee Allison and David Solnit have weighed in with
Army of None, a practical guide to counter-recruitment . The book
reveals facts about recruiters (they lie) and manipulative marketing,
and suggests countertactics. "Counter-recruitmen t addresses war and a
system that trains youth to think in a military style," says Allison,
who ran for Oakland City Council last year. "By nature it has to
address other inequalities like class and racism and immigrant
status, because those are the young people being targeted."
The new book talks about how to reach students, access school
campuses, and win allies among the teachers. It contains
photocopy-ready fliers, and, for the daring, instructions on how to
alter billboards, stencil discreetly, and avoid arrest.
But youth culture is key. "Marching, people singing, people giving
spoken word there's also been people who have developed street
theater; they make fun of the recruiter's message," Allison says.
"It's really about youth speaking for themselves." Events such as
poetry slams make the message more accessible, she says. The book
includes numerous spoken-word pieces.
Allison is no stranger to recruitment tactics. As an ambitious
Antioch teen, she was dismayed to learn her parents couldn't afford
to send her to Stanford. Instead, she turned to her high-school Army
recruiter who, she says, "put his arm around me and said, 'I believe
in you.' And that meant a lot to me."
But boot camp repelled her. A vegetarian and animal-lover, Allison
says she was taught to chant "Kill the people, burn the village." She
recalls a drill sergeant physically forcing a comrade to perform an
exercise where recruits take off their gas masks and inhale noxious
mustard gas. "You learn you have to do what they say," she says.
Later stationed at Palo Alto's VA Hospital, she worked with
paraplegics and quadriplegics. "I got a really, really hard lesson
about how veterans are treated when they come back from war," she
says. As her unit prepared for the first Gulf War, she got an
honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. She never did get
that $20,000 her recruiter promised for school she'd have made more
working at McDonald's, Allison notes. And when she talks to kids, she
reminds them they always have options. "Don't lock yourself into a
path," she said in a recent KPFA interview. "Work at McDonald's or
Taco Bell because you can always quit. It's harder to quit the military."
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