The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

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July-August 2011 / Erica R. Meiners and Therese Quinn / Monthly Review - Jesse is a sweet-looking fifteen-year-old whose serious face lights up when he talks about the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) uniforms, which he likes because they are warm.¹ Jesse is a freshman at Chicago’s Roberto Clemente High School, who enrolled in JROTC because “We only have two options, ROTC and gym.” After half a semester, he received his report card, the grade he was receiving in his physical education class was a D: “I got a bad grade. Everybody got the same grade—a ‘D.’”

The teacher told Jesse that he gave these low grades because students were running around and were not wearing their uniforms. “But that’s what he told us to do, play sports, and we didn’t have our uniforms,” Jesse points out. Jesse did not want to fail, he said, so he decided to switch. “I had two or three friends in ROTC and they said they had better grades, and I thought, if they’re doing great, I can do great.”

Matt Guynn -

It’s not necessary to go to Washington for a protest to significantly engage key issues related to the War on Terrorism. Try going to a local coffee shop or any other public place where you can strike up a conversation with youth or young adults about the choices and paths that the young people in your community see in front of them.

I tried this recently, when I began talking with a camouflage-fatigued young man next to me in the airport.  He was in his third year in the US Army, about to be shipped to Iraq next week.  “Why did you join?”  “My town (in central Oregon) was boring.”  The refrain from young people in many communities across the United States is that there is nothing to do: Nowhere to get a job (or a job that anyone wants).  Little help available for education. Few paths toward a life of meaning and wellbeing. Too little accompaniment, mentorship or assistance.