Counter-recruitment activists go back to school
Innovations to protect youth from the military's powerful recruitment system and privacy violations
By Becky Weber
D.C. Statehood Green Party

At seven a.m. on the first day of school in Portland, Me., School Committee member Stephen Spring was ready and waiting for students on the steps of Portland High School. He knew it was to be a significant day.

"I was kind of nervous," said Spring. "We stood out in front, told kids about the form. Nobody threw sticks and stones."

The opt-out form they distributed is designed to help families protect students from persistent military recruiters, who obtain personal details about all kids ages 16 and up, including e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicity, exit test scores and free lunch information. 

Section 9528 of the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to provide student information to military recruiters unless families sign an opt-out form. Schools that do not comply risk losing funding. There are no federal guidelines on how parents should be notified of their right to restrict personal information given to recruitment databases. Public awareness of Section 9528, let alone the opt-out option, is very low. 

For the first time, the opt-out information is now located on Portland's District Emergency Notification card. Spring estimates that at least three-quarters of Portland High students opted out in September. Last year, the policy subcommittee tried using an opt-in policy, but only a tiny percentage of students submitted forms.

Spring and the other two Greens on the Portland School Committee, Jason Toothaker and Ben Meiklejohn, are working to limit the number of days recruiters, who spent 28 days at Portland High last year, can be on campus.

"Recruiters more aggressively pursue lower-income students and students of color, relying on the assumption that these students see the military as their only option after high school graduation," said Toothaker. 

Panicked over not being able to afford Stanford University back in the 1980s, Aimee Allison was guided by the scores of military posters plastered around her high school; she found herself in the career center, which was manned largely by a military recruiter.

"I wanted to do something with my life, and I didn't want the fact that I didn't have money to stop me," says Allison. "[The recruiters] are there all the time. They're friendly. It's a time in your life that you need an adult, and the way they talk sounds like just what you need to hear. It was extremely appealing to me."

Now 35, Allison laughs when she says that combat service didn't even cross her mind. "I was very naïve. Nobody said you could go off to war. Part of counter-recruitment is asking the question: 'How would you feel if...?'"

Allison has been a conscientious objector, a high school teacher, a Green candidate for city council, and now is turning her experiences towards counter-recruitment efforts in the Bay Area. 

She recently counseled Wong Ken Moon, whose parents emigrated from China to ensure he would get a good education. His GPA, once at 3.7, dropped dramatically in his senior year. He began spending a lot of time with a Marine recruiter who was a regular fixture at his school.
"Marines don't die during the war," the recruiter told the boy. "The idiots in Army and Navy do."

Moon enlisted two weeks before graduation. When he changed his mind, the recruiter told him his parents could be deported if he didn't follow through, and he would be free to get out at any time so long as he showed up for boot camp-neither of which is true. Allison set Moon straight about the realities of delayed enlistment. 

"Counter-recruitment is a long-term thing, but I worked with this young man at a critical period," said Allison. "He's going to Laney Community College [this fall]. He could have been in Iraq by November, dead by December. This directly changed his life."

"The Green Party Peace Action Committee is very interested in promoting counter-recruitment," said Ann Wilcox, a D.C. Statehood Green who served on the Washington, D.C. school board. "We are sharing ideas and resources among those doing counter-recruitment in various parts of the country. Basically, we see counter-recruitment as not only promoting peace and nonviolence, but as a local project in which Greens can provide leadership in their areas. It is also a way to reach out to youth, which helps build the Green Party."

References:
www.gp.org/committees/peace/ 
www.aimeeallison.org 
http://springcares.org 

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