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Teaching "Cultural Militarization"

Teaching "Cultural Militarization"

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NNOctober 2023  

"You are part of the national network of peace groups working to stop the militarization of schools and young people! "

 

 

1063: NNOMY News April. - June 2022 - Teaching "Cultural Militarization"

 

Hello ,

Besides the investments that are not made in productive or cultural sectors therefore reinforcing what Susan Sontag calls the “brutality of America”, militarism is an ideology and a set of practices which has invaded America in every sector of its economic, political and cultural life. The military-industrial complex has reinforced a culture of war. Nick Turse analyses this phenomenon in his book entitled The Complex; How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.  From universities where up to 70% of research is funded by the Pentagon to Hollywood where many movies are co-produced or funded by military experts to the links between Big Oil and the military, Turse tracks down all the ramifications of the militarization of America. He gives long lists of companies working for the Defense Department which depend on military funding, and examples of military waste of resources. In a militarized society even useless weapons that are not needed or at times not even requested by the armed forces are produced while millions of children live in starvation or below the poverty line. - Pierre Guerlain


#counter-recruitment | #nnomypeace | #peacefulcareers | #demilitarize |  www.nnomy.org

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Exclusive Preview: “The United States vs. Murder, Inc” #4 By Brian Salvatore | December 3rd, 2018

 

Teaching Cultural Militarization

06/09/2022 / Gary Ghirardi / NNOMY - It is the summer of 2022 and the country is reeling with the school shooting of 19 LatinX children in an elementary school in Texas. Multiple shootings before and after are all added together with un-answered questions as to the root causes on the nightly news while the spectacle of it all to the millions of viewers becomes another kind of murder against our collective imaginations.

 

The reality of what is wrong is invisible in plain sight in a country experiencing endless wars. internally and externally, that define a culture immersed in a “cultural militarization.

 


How Militarism Teaches Our Children That Violence Is Normal

01/10/2019 / Erin Steuter, Ph.D.; and Geoff Martin, Ph.D./ National Council on Family Relations - The rise of violence and the gun culture in the United States and Canada cannot be separated from the rise in militarism, which is the belief that a country must maintain a strong military capability and must use, or threaten to use, force to protect and advance national interests. Militarism may appear to be a response to the external world, but it has significant internal social consequences. Retired Army Lt. Col. and military historian Andrew Bacevich (2005) pointed out that U.S. residents are enthralled with military power, and he warned that this can “endanger our security at home” (p. 225). He defined a “culture of militarism” as a situation in which the political leadership’s first response is to any challenge is to consider military force. The government counts on significant public support and uses popular-culture symbols to cultivate it. After 9/11, it became normal for patriotic fervor to once again be communicated through toys and entertainment.


 


 

Op-Ed: Schools Aren’t Safe Now and They Weren’t Safe Before

Oct 14 2021 / YA-YA Network - On July 1, without the knowledge of many parents, the city implemented a budget cut of nearly $2.7 billion to the Department of Education over the next five years. The Mayor, together with the City Council, issued a hiring freeze on educators and social workers, cut over $700 million from the DOE for 2021 alone and left no budget for an opening strategy that would meet basic safety precautions. In the months before the finalization of the budget, students, parents, educators and school staff urged city government to support them in meeting the extraordinary needs of the public health crisis – to which they were met with the aforementioned cuts. Comparatively, the NYPD budget was left mostly unchanged, with the City going as far as increasing NYPD headcount in schools.

 


Unconventional Combat: Intersectional Action in the Veterans’ Peace Movement

2021 /  Michael Messner  / Unconventional Combat - Unconventional Combat illuminates the generational transformation of the U.S. veterans’ peace movement, from one grounded mostly in the experiences of White men of the Vietnam War era, to one increasingly driven by a younger and much more diverse cohort of “post-9/11” veterans. Michael Messner uses participant observation with two organizations (Veterans For Peace and About Face) and interviews with older men veterans as the backdrop for the book’s main focus, life-history interviews with six younger veterans—all people of color, three of them women, one a Native Two-Spirit person, one a genderqueer non-binary person. The book traces these veterans’ experiences of sexual and gender harassment, sexual assault, racist and homophobic abuse during their military service (some of it in combat zones), centering on their “situated knowledge” of intersecting oppressions.."

 


 

 

Afghanistan and the U.S. Learning Resource

2021 / Various Sources  / NNOMY - Background and Resources for Students - For the 2022 -2023 school year, social studies teachers are thinking of how they can include a teaching resource for the 21st anniversary of 9/11 in their curriculum.  Attached you will find a brochure on Afghanistan, and a ready-made curriculum worksheet for students. This was produced for the twentieth year aniversary of the event that changed the country and world and the "Afghanistan and the U.S. worksheets covers all the essential issues about the war that initiated the post 9/11 War on Terrorism.

 

 


 

Understanding the Russia and Ukraine War Learning Resource

2022 / Various Sources  / NNOMY - - "For Students: A brief look at the war in Ukraine with Russia explaining the events that led up to the war and the issues from each side of the conflict including NATO. Document prepared for classroom use by The National Network Opposing the
Militarization of Youth in collaboration with Codepink San Pedro.

 


 

 Mission Creep: The Militarizing of America

March 1996 / Sam Smith / Progressive Review - Throughout history and around the world, involvement by the armed forces in civilian law enforcement is one of the trademarks of a repressive regime. Yet the administration's proposals would chip away at the wall that separates the two and, by that action, greatly enhance the power of the presidency. In the wrong hands, the results could be devastating to freedom.

Much of the military's intrusion has been accomplished without public notice. For example, the Pentagon has greatly expanded JROTC programs. Last year, the American Friends Service Committee found retired military personnel teaching approximately 310,000 students, ages 14 and up, in about 2200 high schools (with another 700 on the docket). As the AFSC pointed out:

Public schooling strives to promote respect for other cultures, critical thinking and basic academic skills in a safe environment. In contrast, JROTC introduces guns into the schools, promotes authoritarian values, uses rote learning methods, and consigns much student time to learning drill, military history and protocol, which have little relevance outside the military.

It pays off, though, for the Pentagon. Although the JROTC denies it is engaged in recruiting, 45% of all cadets completing the program sign up, mostly as enlisted personnel. AFSC also found that JROTC programs are more often found in schools with a high proportion of non-white students -- now providing 54% of all cadets -- and in non-affluent schools.

 


Peace Week for Fleet Week Los Angeles 2022

March 31 2022 / Gary Ghirardi / NNOMY -  I received an invitation from Rachel Brunke, a newly joinedsteering committee member of NNOMY and an organizer for Codepink San Pedro, to come up from our office in San Diego and participate in their Peace Week activities during the Memorial Day weekend. Getting out of the The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth office and making it up to the Navy’s Fleet Week at Los Angeles Harbor was an eye opener on a few important levels.

Fleet Week is five days of celebratory militarism all packaged over Memorial Day with out a sign of the purpose of that day of remembrance for those who fought as combatants in US wars and lost their lives. Fleet Week is a window into the comfortable relationship the military enjoys with all types of corporate sponsors including the Fox Network, Princess Cruises, Wells Fargo Bank, UPS, Delta Airlines, Clear Channel and many more plus  governmental entities like the City of Los Angeles and of course The United States Government.

The festivities include Navy ship tours, live entertainment, exhibits and displays, food trucks, live competitions and aerial demonstrations with jet fighter and attack helicopter fly-overs; it is a city fair of war without mention of the suffering that war causes to all involved.

A peace action is planned to run concurrently as a counter event held every year at what the organizers named Peace Park located across the boulevard in front of the Battleship Iowa museum. With local peace group push back by Codepink San Pedro, Military Families Speak Out and the Veterans for Peace Chapter Jim Brown Chapter, the park is actually its own commemorative site from Labor struggle days in the 20’s and 30’s and originally was the location of a dock workers bar where the workers gathered and organized.‍


“White Light/White Heat” - by Mr. Fish

 

Teaching Chris Hedges: America’s Gun Fetish

June 5 2022 / Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report - Guns made my family, lower working-class people in Maine, feel powerful, even when they were not. Take away their guns and what was left? Decaying small towns, shuttered textile and paper mills, dead-end jobs, seedy bars where veterans, nearly all the men in my family were veterans, drank away their trauma. Take away the guns, and the brute force of squalor, decline, and abandonment hit you in the face like a tidal wave.

 

 


 

In view of multiple school shootings in the United States:
Removing JROTC Marksmanship Training from High Schools

Project YANO - There is a very practical reason for a campaign that focuses on eliminating marksmanship training rather than JROTC itself. Groups in many parts of the country have tried the latter and learned that the lobbying force that mobilizes in support of JROTC is so successful at intimidating school officials that it makes it virtually impossible to succeed, even in the most anti-war, politically progressive cities (e.g., San Francisco tried and failed twice). In cases where school districts have removed existing JROTC units, it has been done without public campaigns and for one of two reasons: either due to budget cuts or a units failure to meet the minimum enrollment requirement for the program.

 

Calling narrowly for the removal of rifle training and shooting ranges is an achievable goal because it focuses on one of the most egregious aspects of JROTC and does not directly threaten the existence of a JROTC unit. School board members might profess support for JROTC, but they also do not want to appear to be giving students mixed messages about guns and violence. It is difficult to defend the contradiction between having a zero-tolerance policy on weapons and teaching students to become skilled shooters, even when supporters of marksmanship training claim it is merely a sport. If parents wish to teach their children gun safety or enroll them in shooting competitions, they are free to do so on their own. It doesnt have to be brought into the school environment where it can affect other students, like Nikolas Cruz, who learned his shooting skills through JROTC marksmanship training. He used these skills when he brought an assault rifle to Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, and massacred 17 students and staff.


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