https://nnomy.org/nnomynews/
NNOMYnews is the newsletter of the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth. NNOMYnews reports on the growing intrusions by the Department of Defense into our public schools in a campaign to normalize perpetual wars with our youth and to promote the recruitment efforts of the Pentagon.
NNOMYnews also features reports on the saturation of militaristic themes in our entertainment, sports, and gaming offerings that have an influence on our society and on the impact of the military on our environment and health.
Please consider subscribing to this important bulletin and staying informed by filling out the subscription form to the right.
We look forward to you joining with the many of us who are concerned about the threats of cultural militarization in our schools and communities that is threatening a civilian based democracy.
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Go to: 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022
View Back issues below of the monthly NNOMY Newsletter and educate yourself about how U.S. cultural militarization impacts our schools, youth, and our society.
Also support The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth by Donating to our work.
Below are at list of NNOMYnews by edition number, date, and topic: (Click on the date to open the newsletter)
Back Issues | Upcoming
2022
NNOMYnews 1062: Feb - Mar 2022 - Public School Release of Student Information to Military at 20 | Back to Top
Concurrently, in the last 20 years, we have seen a national military counter-recruitment movement diminish in its scope and urgency as groups have “aged out”, not feeling a connection with the succeeding generations of youth and a normalization of militarism in our culture that has made previous concerns for Defense Department over-reach into the civilian society much less urgent and visible. This issue of the NNOMY news, Public School Release of Student Information at 20, explores the challenges and opportunities for change for the next generations to develop an awareness of the implications of expanding militarism for their futures and their world." Concurrently, in the last 20 years, we have seen a national military counter-recruitment movement diminish in its scope and urgency as groups have “aged out”, not feeling a connection with the succeeding generations of youth and a normalization of militarism in our culture that has made previous concerns for Defense Department over-reach into the civilian society much less urgent and visible. This issue of the NNOMY news, Public School Release of Student Information at 20, explores the challenges and opportunities for change for the next generations to develop an awareness of the implications of expanding militarism for their futures and their world."
NNOMYnews 1061: Dec 2021 - Jan 2022 - Youth Demilitarization Looking Forward | Back to Top
As we begin a new year, still in Pandemic Mode, we add another year to the pandemic of continous militarism in our schools, schools at every level of education, with Pentagon programs like expanding Department of Defense STEM/STEAM, JROTC, and military recruiters playing video games online with minors to sell them on endless war. All this supports aggressive military recruiting. We are also seeing the beginnings of another round of youth activists connecting the dots and pushing back and saying enough to militarized policing, environmental destruction, and an expanding presence of Department of Defense investments and research funding in their schools. As we enter 2022, it has never been as important as now to activate to expose the scope of militarism in our society; in entertainment offerings, corporate news propaganda, in sports representations, and in our schools. Let's get back into our high schools with concerned teachers, parents, and students, with counter-recruitment strategies to promote alternatives to militarism for building our futures. It will be more difficult during and after the pandemic to get our messages out but it must be done to promote a sustainable world for our futures. It is yes or yes. And help the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth this year with a donation to support our national organizing effort to demilitarize our schools. Make a tax deductable donation at The Alliance For Global Justice.
2021
NNOMYnews 1060: Oct - Nov 2021 - Witnessing for Peace | Back to Top
In this moment of our continuous war economy, groups that push back against the cultural militarism that permeates our society are facing difficult decisions. Peace activists and their organizations are experiencing existential challenges that threaten their continuation while trying to relate to a rapidly changing landscape consumed by digital media distractions and a flailing political structure that more resembles a reality television show every successive season. In the last two decades for activism against war and militarism, whether from mass demonstrations from millions of people globally in 2003 or a handful of people protesting in front of a military recruitment center, those who profit from war, respective of the prosperity for the few or the declining standard of living for the many, are not open to negotiation. Militarization and the justifications for our wars and their enormous expenditures and personal sacrifices are interchangeable and largely meaningless to those who profit. Constant and protracted witnessing to the moral and ethical contradictions of our war economy are our historical response to war makers and still an important role we perform reminding those who can be awakened enough to understand our addiction to war and become influencers themselves for peace. Equally important, activist efforts are there to remind the vast majority who have become normalized to our system of violence for profit, that there is a discontent within the system and powerful arguments against it, whether they are willing to listen or not. Our children and youth are being indoctrinated into a permanent war culture more clearly than ever before and the resources allocated to this banal evil is increasing as our groups pushing back against the militarizing of young minds are diminishing. In the NDAA budget for 2022 military programs like JROTC seek to double the amount of corps programs in our public high schools from 3500 to over 6000. Counter-recruitment activists provide an alternative narrative to challenge military recruiters in public schools because speaking out against our captive war economy and its human costs to our future generations must be done; bottom line. It is time to inspire another generation to take up counter-recruitment activism in schools and online and to innovate ways to keep it relevant and accessable to the same youth that the military has access to. Below are examples of those who have struggled and provided witness against the abuses of our cultural militarism in the last year of 2021.
NNOMYnews 1059: Aug - Sept 2021 - Militarizing Our Children | Back to Top
Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid. It turned out, however, that Congress — in its rare moment of concern for the next generation — had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst..
NNOMYnews 1058: June - July 2021 - A Look Back at Council for a Strong America's Mission: Readiness | Back to Top
In 2009 a group of retired military generals formed a "non-governmental" project called "Mission: Readiness" to invoke national alarm that our children were growing up physically unfit to meet the requirements to qualify for military enlistment. Their group, "Council for a Strong America," maintained that this was a "national security issue" and then embarked on organizing interventions into our public pre-school classrooms to promote remedies to the nation. Those children from 2009 in preschools are now of recruitment age and to what result the efforts of these retired generals has been successful is unclear, but what is clearer is that what should have been under the purvue of the National Institute of Health to the exclusion of the Pentagon has gained little community redress and pushback. In this issue of NNOMYnews we re-publish a chapter from the book. War and the Body: militarization, practice and experience by the authors Joseph Burridge and Kevin McSorley that remains the single most extensive analysis of this program and the "banal militarism" that they conclude this program represents.
NNOMYnews 1057: April - May 2021 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 | Back to Top
"The FY21 NDAA comes at a pivotal time in our nation’s history. For the sixtieth consecutive year, Congress will enact timely, important, and essential legislation to fulfill its critical constitutional obligation to “provide for the common defense”and allow on our nation’s military to continue to represent the best that America has to offer: Our leadership and values.
"Our Values? Got that right!
NNOMYnews 1056: March 2021 - Resisting Women's Draft Registration | Back to Top
The United States Government is on the verge of requiring women from 18 to 26 years of age to register, like men, for the selective service. The Military Draft. This will be mandatory with the threat of penalties for non-adherence to this demand. The threat of penalties can potentially include huge monetary fines and even imprisonment. In some states of the country, in order to be issued a drivers license, you must register.
The American public is largely ignorant of this legislation and will likely react after the fact of its implementation. The government held public hearings around the country allowing for input by citizens, but largely as a formality, with no intent to consider any reasonable objections to this proposal. The media, as usual, when confronted with any issue relating to the security state or military affairs, went silent or promoted stories in favor of this amendment, supporting it on the basis of gender equality. Below are the groups and activists who have spoken out against extending selective service registration to women, and are promoting that voices of opposition speak out in resistance in-person by video testimony. The basic call is for the abolition of selective service registration, for both women and men, on the basis that it represents a violation of recognized international human rights standards. Let us hope that more voices will rise in opposition to this coersive registration for more soldiers for more wars before and after this flawed policy is enacted.
NNOMYnews 1055: February 26 2021 - Historic Peace Church Peace Activism | Back to Top
Historic Peace Churches have played a consistent and continuing multi-generational role in those movements and within their own organizations that have confronted war and the conscription of youth into those wars. The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth was born, beginning in 2003, when the American Friends Service Committee, a secularized social justice organization of the Religious Society of Friends hosted a gathering in Philadelphia.
In this month’s NNOMYnews for February 2021, we recognize some of those efforts of Peace Churches and the activism and sacrifice that came out of their pacifist principles.
From the website of the Peace Church Alliance: “ “Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites have been called "Peace Churches" for our shared commitment to non-violence. We don't own these conversations—but we fearlessly hold them—and actively seek to bend the arc of the dialogue toward equity and peace.
Yesterday, we fought for abolition and propelled the Underground Railroad. Today, we invite other individuals and communities to join as Peace Alliance Partners as we work together for "Positive Peace." - https://www.peacechurches.org
NNOMYnews 1054: January 18 2021 - The Culture of JROTC | Back to Top
The Junior Reserves Training Corps (JROTC) program is slated to nearly double in the amount of units spread out among our national public high schools. With ample direct and anecdotal evidence of multiple types of abusive behavior located in the culture of JROTC, it is a stretch for the Pentagon to uphold their claim that the program promotes any reasonable definition of building good character and citizenship .
Military conceptualizations of honor and duty and the citizenry's compliance to all things military combined with a country addicted to violence in work and leisure are too often blinded to the dangers that young people face in programs that promote military values as the defining measures of good citizenship. At a minimum it is time for activist organizations, concerned citizens, and legislators to withdraw their support of allowing the JROTC expansion in our schools in the next years that are in the planning stages and organize to limit these programs at current levels or even call for a reduction.
NNOMY Feature: January 10 2021 - Revisiting Our Outrage | Back to Top
"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.
2020
NNOMYnews 1053: December 15 2020: Military influencers in our public education | Back to Top
Young people who lacked the resources and scholarship to pursue a college or university education were increasingly predated by military recruitment as the Department of Defense recruitment budgets increased and their "supply" of willing and qualified recruits diminished in preceding years. As we head into 2021 following a year of pandemic, with likely an additional year of returning to normal in our country, many will face terrible job shortages and the offers of a military enlistment could reverse the recent past unwillingness to consider a military career. Influencers and militarized influences permeate our culture. Military recruitment advertising is inserted into sports, movies, and video games. From school teachers and counselors, to parents desperate themselves under financial hardships brought about by the pandemic will motivate enlistments as well. Our militarized culture is about to go into overdrive
1052: November 17 2020: Recruiting Soldiers and Society for Permanent Wars | Back to Top
By both design and circumstances, the United States of America is captive to its assigned role as world enforcer of free market capitalism. With military commands now assigned to each sub-continent of the planet, our military industrial intelligence complex has monetized its permanent war economy with arms sales coerced upon its client states under the false rubric of keeping the world free for unrestricted commerce.
How that all will work out for the people and the planet is never clear in the endless rhetorical back and forth of its collapsing democracy and corporate controlled political culture. It is immersed in a morass of militarism normalized since its enculturated victory in WWII and has allowed its own self inflicted fable to permeate every aspect of its commercialized commons.
From a consolidated and complicit media to sports events and every expression of entertainment celebrating our military, the U.S. citizenry is bombarded with this spectacle of uniformed violence now consuming 7 1/2 hours weekly of over 40% of its male youth in ritualized virtual killing understood as harmless play in first-person shooter video games.
We have now made virtual killing a legitimized sport and have employed "experts" to convince any concerned sectors of our society that it is actually a healthy retreat from the pressures of our lives.
As the U.S. population reels under a poorly managed pandemic and businesses and jobs are lost and eliminated in a faltering main street economy, the military see's their recruitment opportunities increase as more young lives get directed into a bloated military serving as an international occupation force ensuring resource access to our industries.
All what is said here is unrecognizable to nearly all of the U.S. citizenry.
1051: October 17 2020: 2020 Elections + Antiwar Politics | Back to Top
As the U.S. Presidential Elections consume all the media and cultural oxygen in the last days of October 2020, the theme has emerged among the two viable party candidates of who is more anti-war. Likely this theme is a cover for the military keynesianism that constructs our economy for both mainstream parties to not explain why we prioritize the majority of discretionary tax funds for military appropriations and not more important civilian needs.
Additionally, this reality show election season distracts us from the hard economic conditions of declining opportunities that many youth are facing.
In this pandemic moment, the opportunities emerging for military recruitment efforts by the United States Department of Defense should not be ignored. The recruitment appeals to youth in the newly minted virtual recruitment outreach strategies being deployed by the Pentagon have a cost to the national psychological health of our youth. Eighty percent of young men in the United States are involved in militarized gaming, online and off, where recruitment appeals are now present on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitch. One important opportunity available to us as counter-recruitment groups is to increase the breadth and consistency of our social media presentations and outreach on accurate Delayed Entry/ Future Soldier information as potential recruits change their minds and need reassurances and counseling on how to get out. It is an opportunity to save lives and an effective counter-recruitment practice in COVID-19 times when our entry to schools is limited or non-existent..
1050: September 14 2020: Training Kids to Kill | Back to Top
The United States is immersed in war logic and the imagery of violence and this is purposeful to drive our militarized culture. Like a decades long slow boil, our citizenry is largely normalized to it and either ignores this catastrophe or embraces it in thoughtless and repetitive jingoism. All of this effects our youth negatively and as their video game culture consumes multiple days of their lives in an orgy of violent and contextually militarized "play" they become desensitized to real violence and positioned to accept permanent war as a justifiable reality of life.
1049: August 19 2020: Combat soldiers, PTSD, and Moral Injury | Back to Top
With the United States involved in permanent wars in the post 9/11 era fighting supposed continuous terrorism around the world and with the US now seemingly entering a new cold war with russia and china, veterans are increasingly experiencing higher rates of PTSD, toxic exposure injuries, and claims of the effects related to moral injury.
1048: July 13 2020: Militarized eSports and Military Recruitment | Back to Top
In this moment of the Coronavirus, the Pentagon's recruiting efforts at national public high schools have stopped as schools are closed in the traditional peak time for recruiters as school ends for the summer. Looking to expand the military recruitment efforts online, the military has turned to engaging in online gaming, much of it military themed, and increasing their outreach on other platforms where youth are to be found like social media.
1047: June 15 2020: Delayed Entry Program in the Age of Covid-19 | Back to Top
Changes in the Delayed Entry Program / Future Soldier Program during the Covid-19 pandemic accommodate strategies for distance military recruitment and enlistment. These changes further position those enrolled in DEP to feel further obligated and trapped against changing their minds to enlist due to expanded advance payments and training before boot camp in a moment when there is mass unemployment and economic distress.
1046: May 11 2020 - Learning Peace in Times of a Pandemic | Back to Top
This pandemic month we visit different voices around our network talking peacemaking with social distancing. We are featuring the voices of students in peace clubs writing to us, activists from peace groups talking together in webinars, and on Zoom, and others concerned about how should be our society post Covid-19 and post militarism as well.Tracy High School Peace Club
1045: April 13 2020 - Military Recruitment in Post Covid-19 America | Back to Top
As the Planet Earth confronts a global pandemic, the United States' Military Recruiting Commands adjust to the challenge of isolating their recruitment efforts to virtual military recruitment, now encouraged by the massive national unemployment reality in the country. While most of the citizenry hang on to an uncertain reality for their lives going forward in the remaining 2020 year, and maybe extending into 2021 as well, the Department of Defense takes advantage of the vulnerability of our youth as they try to find a place where they can havea place to provide an income, health benefits, and even food. This is a perfect storm for the Military Industrial Complex that see's its fortunes expand while the civilian sectors retract into recession.Army moves to 100% virtual recruiting as COVID-19 continues to spread
1044: March 17 2020 - Toxic reasons to not enlist | Back to Top
A campaign by the Earth Democracy Project of the U.S. Section of the Women's International League for
Peace & Freedom, has given an additional argument to Truth in Recruitment activists which is the fact of
military contamination health risks on U.S. military bases nationally and globally.
1043: February 29, 2020: NNOMY Essentials | Back to Top
This issue of NNOMY News we re-introduce essential issues around counter military recruitment activism in updated versions.
One of the primary functions of the NNOMY network is to provide reliable information and we are in the process of updating
many of our core content issues. Check them out below:
1042: February 15, 2020: Countering Military Recruitment in California | Back to Top
California has the gratest amount of youth demilitarization groups in the United States. California also is the state with the most
defense spending. This issue of NNOMY News, we feature some of those groups that contribute to informing our youth with a fuller
narrative of what it means to serve in the military and directing young people to alternative careers that are not in the armed forces.
1041: February 1, 2020: Visiting Counter-recruitment Groups around the Internet | Back to Top
This issue of NNOMYnews, we visit Counter-recruitment groups from the NNOMY community of activists and check-in to see
what they are sharing on their social media.
1040: January 18 2020: The New Face of Military Recruiting | Back to Top
The new face of military recruiting looks a lot like the old face issue, wise, only it is gauging what gains the attention
of Generation Z which means the virtual world of computer gaming. The new esports approach of the Department of
Defense is turning better leads and generating greater interest than the traditional high school recruitment strategies of
years prior without the problems of community regulation and counter military recruiting interference. The U.S. Army's
"What's Your Warrior'" campaign is right out of the video game playbook. The question is what does this mean for
Counter-Recruitment activists going forward into the new decade.
1039: January 3, 2020 Looking Back at Counter-recruitment and NNOMY | Back to Top
In advance of the next NNOMY newsletter themed, January 18 2020: The New Face of Military Recruiting, NNOMY takes a
look back at counter military recruitment practice and issues in the past decade to review where we have been as we
anticipate a new decade ahead for counter recruitment activism. A revealed cyber strategy of the Pentagon recruiting
command's plans to generate military recruits from Generation Z and those youth that have grown up in a world of virtual
realities will confront our struggle forward.
2019
1038: December 20, 2019: Militarism and Migration | Back to Top
1037: December 7, 2019 Human Rights and Militarism | Back to Top
1036: November 25, 2019 Mission: Readiness - Citizens or Soldiers | Back to Top
1035: November 8, 2019 ASVAB Data Mining in America | Back to Top
1034: October 25, 2019 Teaching invasion: The Army JROTC "Raider Nationals" | Back to Top
1033: October 11, 2019 Confronting militarism at your High School | Back to Top
1032: September 28, 2019: Theme: Climate Justice and Militarism | Back to Top
1031: September 14, 2019: Theme: Intersectionality and Cultural Militarism | Back to Top
1030: August 30, 2019: Theme: Military CO's and Resisters | Back to Top
1029: August 16, 2019 Climate Justice and Militarism | Back to Top
1028: August 2, 2019 How Militarism controls Our National Sports in America| Back to Top
1027: July 22 2019 Religious Militarism in America | Back to Top
1026: July 5 2019 How Militarism controls Our Political Culture in America | Back to Top
1025: June 23 2019 Peace Veterans talk to our Youth | Back to Top
1024: June 8 2019 Guns in Our Schools | Back to Top
1023: May 24, 2019 Student Activism in High Schools | Back to Top
1022: May 10 2019 The militarization of STEM | Back to Top
1021: April 26 2019 Domestic Violence in the Military | Back to Top
1020: April 12 2019 Divest from the War Machine | Back to Top
1019: March 29 2019 | Back to Top
1018: March 15 2019 | Back to Top
1017: March 1, 2019 | Back to Top
1016: February 15 2019 | Back to Top
1015: February 1 2019 | Back to Top
1014: January 18 2019 | Back to Top
1013: January 4 2019 | Back to Top
2018
1012: December 21 2018 | Back to Top
1011: December 17, 2018 | Back to Top
1010: November 23 2018 | Back to Top
1009: November 9, 2018 | Back to Top
1008: October 26 2018 | Back to Top
1007: October 12 2018 | Back to Top
1006: September 25 2018 | Back to Top
1005: September 14 2018 | Back to Top
1004: August 31 2018 | Back to Top
1003: August 10 2018 | Back to Top
1002: July 27 2018 | Back to Top
1001: July 13 2018 | Back to Top
Upcoming
1063: NNOMYnews April - May 2022 - Teaching "Cultural Militarization"
1064: NNOMYnews June - July 2022 - TBA
1065: NNOMYnews Aug - Sept 2022 - TBA
1066: NNOMYnews Oct - Nov 2022 - TBA
1067: NNOMYnews Dec 2022 - Jan 2023 - TBA
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The National Network Opposing
the Militarization of youth (NNOMY)
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