COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: War Protests: General
What Does an Anti-War Movement Look Like Today?
Celina R. De Leon, Alternet.org
August 7, 2006
Mass national protests didn't sway the Bush administration, so youngorganizers have focused on local counter-recruitment campaigns.
Marciella Guzmán was a politically conservative 21-year-old when she joined
the U.S. Navy as an information system technician in 1998. By the time she
left in 2002, she said she had become liberal.
Guzmán, now a counter-recruitment activist in Los Angeles, said that
she
lost respect for the military: "I didn't trust that we had enough
training
or manpower to go into Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time."
Despite rare glimpses of growing popular opposition to the war, such as
Cindy Sheehan or Medea Benjamin with "Bring Troops Home Now" signs on
national television, the mainstream media still does not provide a
consistent space for a critique of American foreign policy.
And while soldiers continue to desert the military, and 72 percent
think
that the United States should exit Iraq within the next year, the Bush
administration and Congress cannot seem to come up with a concrete
strategy
for addressing the growing chaos and deaths in Iraq.
Impatient with the current status quo, students, war veterans, anti-war
activists and soldiers and their parents across the country are
thinking of
new ways to get their message to the government and general public.
Realizing that mass national protests did not sway the Bush
administration
from staying the course in Iraq, many young organizers focused their
strategy on local counter-recruitment campaigns. And their work seems
to be
making an impact.
The Air National Guard missed its recruiting target by 14 percent last
year, and the Army missed its goal by 8 percent, its largest
recruitment
failure since 1979. Military recruitment costs have risen, totaling $3
billion of taxpayers' money each year, and will only get higher if the
Iraq
war continues and the ability to recruit young men and women to enlist
decreases. Right now, the Army's new recruitment tactics increasingly
include allowing young men and women with criminal records to enlist,
recruiting members of hate groups, easing restrictions on recruiting
high
school dropouts and raising the maximum recruitment age from 35 to 42.
Spreading the real story of military life
In 1998, Guzmán needed money to go to college and thought the military
would be a good way of getting that money. But when she stepped into
boot
camp, she realized she'd been sold on lies. Paperwork battles ensued
until
she finally received the higher wages and rank she was initially
promised.
Her first command was stationed at Diego García, a tiny island in the
Indian Ocean. "The U.S. military personnel basically lease the island
from
the British, and the only people who are allowed there are military
personnel and the workers there -- Filipinos who are brought to the
island," said Guzmán. "It was very difficult to see how the American
soldiers treated these people. The workers had poor benefits, they were
underpaid, and the military didn't respect them. That reminded me of my
family here. I'm Mexican-American, and it reminded me of the struggles
my
parents went through in this country. And so my ideology started to
change."
Guzmán's perspective finally shifted for good after she left the
military
in 2002 and went to the VA to receive treatment for the back problems
she
acquired during her service. She had to fight to get even the most
basic
treatment.
Now Guzmán spends what little time she has between work and school to
educate high school students about the realities of military service.
She just came out a month ago with the sexual assault she also suffered
during her service. A fellow servicewoman had shared her experience
with
sexual assault, which helped Guzmán come to terms with her own
experience.
It has been four years since Guzmán was last in the military and she
still
has not told her family about the incident.
"I want [young people] to question why it was allowed, and that it's
still
happening in the military, especially for women," said Guzmán. "And
what
they're going to get into [if they join the military]. I give them the
option: 'If you still want to go to the military, I will go with you to
the
recruitment office to make sure that they don't lie to you.' It takes
so
long to educate young people about the myths of the military."
And that's where recent counter-recruitment strategies like the Not
Your
Soldier initiative and STORY Collaborative come in.
"I do anti-war workshops all the time, and so often I have very intense
conversations with youth about the war in Iraq and everyone is like,
'It's
all about oil, it's all about money, it's all about power,'" said Steve
Theberge, youth and counter-recruitment program coordinator for the New
York-based War Resisters League. "I think young people often feel that
there's not much they can do about it. There's not a sense of
empowerment
or that energy or ability to make change. Not Your Soldier is about
taking
that political analysis that a lot of young folks have and translating
that
into possible action."
The War Resisters League, along with The National Youth & Student Peace
Coalition, the National Network Opposed to Militarization of Youth, the
American Friends Service Committee, and the League of Independent
Voters
have joined forces with the Ruckus Society to produce the Not Your
Soldier
initiative.
Not Your Soldier was first marketed through MySpace and through word of
digital mouth like emails and text messages. "It's an educating tool
that
they themselves can use and pass along," said Adrienne Maree Brown,
executive director of Ruckus Society, based in Oakland, Calif. (Full
disclosure: Brown serves on the WireTap advisory board.) Through Not
Your
Soldier, youth can participate in the anti-war and counter-recruitment
activities by visiting NotYourSoldier.org, watching the Flash movie
"Punk
Ass Crusade," the "Addicted to Oil" Flash movie, attending Not Your
Soldier
camps and going to concerts for revolutionary hip-hop band The Coup.
"We've recognized the need to go beyond training," said Theberge. "For
a
long time we've hoped that we would be able to provide training and
somehow
somewhere, somebody else was going to step up and organize on the local
level. We have to shift our tactics. A lot has changed, and
unfortunately
the anti-war movement hasn't."
Not Your Soldier also connects young people on an emotional level by
connecting them with men and women who have served in the war in Iraq.
Theberge said, "I can throw as many stats out there as much as I want.
I
can talk as much as I want about the war. But I think that, for many
people, hearing veterans speak is about as close as you can get." To
that
end, the group has put on three regional camps this summer and plan to
host
several more in the coming year.
"I think if you look at the anti-war movement, it's a lot of really
good
people, but it's not a lot of young people," Brown said. "A major
belief of
Ruckus is the impacted community has to be at the forefront of your
work.
We have to find ways for soldiers and students to be active components
of
their own liberation and guaranteeing their own rights."
Boots Riley, leader of the socially conscious hip-hop group The Coup,
is
currently on tour and talks about the Not Your Soldier initiative in
the
middle of every concert.
"I sometimes see people from the military coming to my shows and saying
that they're fans. And not just someone who is in the Army, but someone
deep in the military," Riley said. "There have also been military
recruiters. And after the show they're like, 'I really agree with what
you
say, but being a military recruiter is just my job.' And I'm like, 'I
guess.'"
Riley added that he's always found people against the war in his
audience.
"I'm talking about Old Smith, Montana. I'm talking about El Paso,
Texas.
I'm talking about Alabama. I'm talking about Ohio," said Riley.
"Everywhere
people were and are against the war. And these weren't just people who
were
coming to see a revolutionary hip-hop show."
Providing another option to enlisting
Riley can relate to the military option so many young people feel they
have
to take. Although he's been a progressive organizer since he was 14,
when
he thought he was going to be a father at age 17, he considered joining
the
military.
Riley's dilemma is one of the greatest challenges of the anti-war
movement,
according to Doyle Canning of smartMeme, a nonprofit collective of
long-term organizers, strategists, trainers and communications
professionals based in Burlington, Vt.
Canning said, "The U.S. military-industrial complex, for better and for
worse, is selling young people on the idea of economic opportunity. And
how
does the progressive community offer that opportunity? And how can we
actually do counter-recruitment -- like actually not just say, 'Hey,
the
recruiters are lying. Don't join the military'?"
In response, smartMeme has come up with a different strategy. They are
working to build a network of organizations -- nonprofits, for-profits,
institutions, businesses, farms and more -- that are willing to provide
another option to young people who feel that they have no choice but to
enlist. Canning said, "We have to ask [these young people], 'Why don't
you
come and become an intern at this progressive organization?'" And she
said
smartMeme is asking organizations, "Would you be interested in giving
an
opportunity to someone who is thinking about joining the military?"
Early in July, smartMeme gathered young Iraq veterans, students,
counter-recruiters and peace activists, all under the age of 30, for an
intimate retreat to discuss the anti-war movement at the historic
Highlander Center in Tennessee. The project, the STORY Collaborative to
End
the War in Iraq, is online and soon will be publishing its findings.
While
no concrete answers came out of the Collaborative, Canning views the
stories as the keys to gaining connection and momentum throughout the
movement.
"The stories are at the center of our strategy," she said. "Recentering
ourselves with our stories and realizing that we have such different
stories, and that we have different relationships with the war in Iraq
…
people of Arab-American backgrounds, people who live on the border and
who
see the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, and people from the
South, people from Oakland, people from all over, saying, 'Yeah, we
have
different experiences, and we have different stories, and we have
different
relationships with this war. But we were able to come together and find
some common ground.'"
Echoing the Ruckus Society's beliefs, Canning is clear that the
anti-war
movement needs new leadership: Those most impacted by the military's
recruitment and the poverty draft need to be empowered to work against
the
struggle that most affects them.
"When we're talking about counter-recruitment, we're talking about the
U.S.
military targeting low-income people and youth of color, and that's for
real. And so the role of traditionally white-led peace and justice
organizations is to work in solidarity with those communities in
resisting
U.S. militarism. And that needs to be a collaborative relationship in
order
to really support the leadership of young people of color in those
communities," said Canning.
Canning feels the anti-war movement should take notice of another
important
fact: Young people listen to young people. "That's the whole lesson of
MySpace," she said. "That's the whole lesson of all this huge viral
marketing stuff. It's about peer-to-peer networks. It's about who we
listen
to are people who we can relate with, people like us. And so how do we
incorporate that learning into our counter-recruitment work?"
Ruckus Society founder John Sellers is hopeful that the new direction
his
organization is taking to contribute to the counter-recruitment
movement is
going to produce results.
"Basically, in a year or two, it's very likely that [the anti-war
movement]
will be as dynamic as college campus activism during the anti-apartheid
movement. It's definitely spreading down to high schools, which is
critical
because that's where most recruitment comes from -- high school-age
young
folks from rural and urban backgrounds." He also likened the present
day to
the last time this country had a vibrant anti-war movement. "During
Vietnam, we had the draft. Now we have the poverty draft. But we think
that, by making all of the military recruiters miss their quotas,
that's
going to impact how Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney are going to view this
war
-- if they have less cannon fodder at their disposal."
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