Socialist Alternative

By Laura Madsen, YAWR activist

This fall, anti-war activists will be launching the ARMY OF NONE campaign, to counter military recruiters in Twin Cities schools.

The military relies on youth as cannon fodder to continue its wars for oil and empire. Given the unpopularity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has massively stepped up its recruiting efforts in our schools and communities.

The Pentagon has a budget of $20.5 billion in 2009 for recruitment alone, double its 2008 budget and up from $4 billion in 2003. Recruiters use this massive amount of money for lies and dirty tricks to get kids to join. The “No Child Left Behind Act” forces schools to give students’ personal information to military recruiters and allows them into the schools. They promise money for college that two-thirds of applicants never receive, and job experience that is not applicable to civilian jobs.

Youth Against War & Racism (YAWR) and the Minneapolis community have been fighting back. In February, following several walkouts by thousands of students, the Minneapolis School Board voted to ban military recruiters from school hallways and cafeterias and restrict them to career centers. Most importantly, the resolution allows peace groups to table when recruiters come to a school to counter their lies and pro-war propaganda.

The resolution gives the opportunity to minimize the effect military recruiters have on students. However, this victory is only a small step to getting military recruiters out of schools altogether.

That is why activists have started the ARMY OF NONE counter-recruitment campaign. The goal is to set up anti-war tables in high schools every time the military comes. Through this we can reach thousands of Minneapolis students and have a better chance of countering the military recruiters’ lies.

For the ARMY OF NONE campaign to succeed, we need YAWR chapters set up in all the Minneapolis schools, to make sure every military table is countered with an anti-war table.

And the movement can’t stop in Minneapolis. We need to organize against military recruitment throughout the Twin Cities and beyond. The more schools that can be reached, the less soldiers there will be to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan or other wars for U.S. corporate and military domination of the globe.

If you are interested in getting involved in this campaign and volunteering to help table in schools, please contact us. We will be organizing counter-recruitment trainings and workshops all fall.

651-210-5342
Myspace.com/yawrMN
www.yawr.org