Resistance to military recruiters grows

Students and their families in Massachusetts are increasingly resisting the Pentagon’s plans to use them as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.

“A whole bunch of troops are dying,” said Gwen Clairborne, a senior at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury, Mass., a predominantly Black community in Boston. Clairborne, who has “opted out,” was interviewed in a Nov. 13 Sunday edition Boston Globe front-page article headlined “Students rebuffing military recruiters: More high schoolers in state opt out of lists.”

Lidija Ristic, a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin, is a Serbian refugee and opponent of the U.S. war on Iraq. She says students in urban areas are specific targets of recruiters. “I think it’s horrible that they come here and try to recruit people,” said Ristic.

A growing statewide counter-recruitment movement has resulted in more than 5,000 high school students or their parents in five of the state’s largest school districts refusing to have their names and personal information released to military recruiters. Over the past year, approximately 18 percent of public high school students in Boston, Cambridge, Lowell, Fall River and Worcester have “opted out.” All of these cities are beset with economic, political and social crises, largely the result of the decimation of highly unionized manufacturing industries.

The 2002 “No Child Left Behind” Act dictates that the Pentagon automatically receives student information, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mails, unless parents or a student 18 or older submit an opt-out form.

Due to pressure from students, parents and anti-war organizations, approximately one-third of the 75 public high schools in northeastern Massachusetts have not yet given local military recruiters the fall semester lists with eligible student recruits. School administrators under pressure are now sending home notices about the opt-out provision, running ads on public television stations and including opt-out forms in school handbooks.

No doubt these victories are a direct result of actions by parents such as Martina Cruz, who has three children, two still in the public school system. Cruz is also a leader of Latinos United for Justice, a member of Merrimack Valley People for Peace and a board member of the Women’s Institute for Leadership Deve lopment. Cruz was elected to the Lawrence School Committee Nov. 8, largely on an anti-war and counter-recruitment platform endorsed by the Merrimack Valley Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. Law rence is where the historic women-led “Bread and Roses” textile mill strike took place in 1912.

After her election, Cruz said, “I will use my position to further educate and advocate against the use of our children as cannon fodder for the policies of the ultra-right and U.S. imperialist domination of the world. We need to recruit children for well-paying peacetime jobs and college, not war.”

Felicity Crush of the San Francisco-based Leave My Child Alone project says visitors to the project’s website have downloaded 37,000 copies of a form to opt out. “There’s momentum you can see,” said Crush. “As soon as people become aware of it, they start to take action.” (www.leavemychildalone.org)

Anti-war organizations have also made students and parents aware of the opt-out provisions through postcard mailing campaigns, teach-ins and protests such as the upcoming Dec. 1 “Rosa Parks National Day of Absence Against Poverty, Racism and War” actions. (www.troopsoutnow.org)

The National Priorities Project based in Northampton, Mass., has expanded its online database to include military recruitment statistics broken down by high school, zip code, county and state. Data is also available by race, ethnicity and gender. (www.nationalpriorities.org)

Greg Speeter, NPP executive director, says that “this data makes clear that low- and middle-income kids are paying the highest price. It’s young people with limited opportunities that are putting their lives on the line.”