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NNOMY Feature: Revisiting Our Outrage

Hello ,

As a beginning of the year feature, NNOMY takes a visit back to the 2000's to remind us when the Iraq war motivated a confluence of activists extending from Boomers to Millennials into the streets to protest but also drove a counter-recruitment  "movement" decade in our public schools.

As we experience an international pandemic in 2020 we can be reminded that the Iraq War was an extended pandemic of perpetual war from 2003 to 2014 and led us into the current time where our wars have gone silent and are now normalized with our citizenry. 

"Revisiting Our Outrage," is a look back to activist reports and news stories in reaction to the Bush era Iraq war mobilizations, and the resultant school demilitarization activism and resistance that took place before we descended into the fog of protracted cultural militarization in the following years. The reports listed below also measure the distance that we have traveled that transformed a counter-recruitment movement into a ongoing proactive peace practice.
 
#counter-recruitment | #nnomypeace | #peacefulcareers | #revisitingouroutrage |  www.nnomy.org

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad": John le Carré on Iraq War, Israel & U.S. Militarism

25/12/2020 Amy Goodman / DemocracyNow! - The legendary British author John le Carré has died at the age of 89. In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, John le Carré was a fierce critic of President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In January 2003, he published a widely read essay called "The United States of America Has Gone Mad." John le Carré read the essay during an appearance on Democracy Now! in 2010.

Counter-Recruiting Cuts Military Down to Size

14/09/2005 / F. Timothy Martin / The Indypendent - Hundreds of parents, students and school board members are organizing groups around the country to protest aggressive military recruiting activities. Consider these recent actions:

On Aug. 30, a dozen people in Pittsfield, Mass. marched in the rain to protest high school recruiting in their community. The group handed out fliers advertising a public forum entitled ‘Is the Military Your Best Option?’On Aug. 29, Latino activists in San Diego launched a door-to-door campaign to inform Latino parents how military recruiters use information about their children. Latinos make up about one-third of the total recruits in Southern California.

‘Counter-Recruiter’ Seeks to Block Students’ Data From the Military

23/10/2008 Javier C. Hernandez / New York Times - A retired teacher and longtime peace advocate, Ms. Harris was tutoring 20 new enlistees in the art of "counter-recruitment," her personal crusade to block recruiters for the United States military from contacting New York City high school students.

She had assembled the group in her war room, a space near Union Square lent by a sympathetic organization, where plants and antiwar signs line the walls, in preparation for a blitz Thursday evening at parent-teacher conferences, where Ms. Harris and the others plan to stand on sidewalks outside school buildings armed with opt-out forms and their best sales pitches.

"You don't have a whole lot of time - that's the point," Ms. Harris told the volunteers, who ranged in age from college students to the Granny Peace Brigade, a New York group of older women started in 2005 to protest the Iraq war. "Don't be frustrated by that. They do stop."

Coalition of the Unwilling

25/10/2005 / Anya Kamenetz / Village Voice - One Saturday this summer, Monique Dols, a Columbia University senior and a national leader of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), saw again why she has been working so hard to reach potential military recruits. “We were handing out flyers for an event with the brother of a military resister,” Dols says of that day in Washington Heights. “Three 16-year-old [ROTC] cadets walked by in full military uniform. We started talking to them, and it turned out they were completely against the war. They had joined because it was an after-school program that provided structure and something for them to do. The priorities of a society that puts millions into military recruitment and continually cuts funding for after-school programs, that’s backward, and that’s the reality people are responding to.”

Not Your Soldier Day of Action

17/11/2005 / Mike Burke / National Youth and Student Peace Coalition - Not Your Soldier Day of Action erupts on over 40 campuses nationwide Students across the country to protest military recruitment in schools, call for end of war on Iraq

New York, NY – With a growing majority of the American public opposing the war on Iraq and President George Bush’s approval rating hitting an all time low, students and young people are joining forces with veterans, military families, clergy, and others for a national day of protest on International Students Day, November 17.

The Not Your Soldier Day of Action is the first nationally coordinated mobilization by young people against military recruitment in our schools. From New York to Los Angeles, Milwaukee to Austin, students are holding rallies, teach-ins, marches and walk outs with the theme of "Books Not
Bombs" to protest military recruitment practices and the war on Iraq. There will also be events in Puerto Rico, Mexico and Colombia.

Georgia: Peace Action Team, new faith-based counter-recruitment group

20/08/2007 / anscr / Americus Times-Recorder - PAT is a group of concerned Christians who have come together in Americus to explore and implement ways of equality, peace and justice for all.

The forum will be facilitated by Christina Repoley, peace education coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The local PAT is collaborating with AFSC to develop ways to inform high school students and parents about the degree of access military recruiters have in the public schools and the methods often employed to entice students to enlist. The forum will also help equip those interested in working with the public schools and young people to counter military recruitment and find viable alternatives to military service.

A 20-minute video — “Before You Enlist!” — will be screened at the forum that documents the risks and misconceptions of military life, explores conscientious objection, selective service registration and U.S. militarism around the world.

Group protests Marine recruiters in Berkeley

01/02.2008 / Kevin Fagan / San Francisco Chronicle - Emboldened by this week's show of support by the Berkeley City Council, anti-war protesters on Thursday cranked up their noisy effort to throw the U.S. Marine Corps recruiters out of town, but in the pounding rain it was hard to tell who won the figurative battle of wills.

The council voted late Tuesday to give Code Pink a designated parking space directly in front of the recruiting station, as well as a sound permit for once-a-week protests. It also approved a separate resolution calling the military recruiters "uninvited and unwelcome intruders" and declaring that the office - which opened quietly in December 2006 - is not welcome in the city.

"We were shocked when we learned last fall that this recruiting station showed up here," Joy said. "It's an affront to the city and the people of Berkeley, who have always supported peace."

Registration for this event is required by
Thursday Jan. 8.