Resistance to military recruiters grows
By
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Boston
Published Nov 19, 2005 11:15 AM
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.”
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