Arecibo, Puerto Rico August 20, 2023 Statement: Young veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who suffers from his mental faculties due to his incursion into the wars, is accused of taking his father's life in events that occurred in May , 2022

August 08, 2023 / Sonia Santiago Hernández / Mothers Against the War - Christian González Martell is a 39-year-old Puerto Rican young man, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who deprived his father of his life on May 30, 2022 during a psychotic episode. . At the first hearing on September 14, the judge determined that he was not prosecutable at the time. Despite this, he has been subjected to several hearings in court. His trial will begin on September 21st.

His family had tried to get him treated at the Veterans Hospital in Rio Piedras upon his return from the military.. His mother, Romilda Martell, tells us that Christian has multiple mental health diagnoses: schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and others, result of his participation in wars. The treatment of him at the Veterans Administration was substandard and irresponsible. They only assisted him sporadically and virtually. He exhibited extreme paranoid behavior, poor judgment, hallucinations. Mrs. Martell asked for support and adequate treatment for her son, to no avail. Today she awaits trial for murder.

We have several veterans incarcerated: Orlando Rivera, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, in 2014 murdered 2 people on the Tuque de Ponce beach, while he was jogging. Doña Carmen Delgado was one of the victims. As she opened an umbrella , he murdered her with a pistol and continued jogging..His family had taken him to the Veterans Hospital on several occasions. They told him that there were no psychiatric beds and that he should go to a civilian hospital. Soldiers and veterans are prohibited from talking about war actions. It is difficult for them to receive therapies in civilian clinics... The Veterans Hospital did not follow up. He was sentenced to 97 years in prison.

Esteban Santiago, a young Puerto Rican veteran, is imprisoned for life in a jail in Florida. He murdered 5 people at the Ft. Lauderdale airport

in 2017. His family had taken him to receive treatment at the Veterans Hospital in PR when they noticed his incoherent and aggressive behavior after having fought in Afghanistan. That hospital did not treat him responsibly.

Twenty veterans commit suicide daily. Forty percent of the two and a half million soldiers who have participated in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan have a mental health diagnosis, mainly Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

US Peace Prize Awarded to NNOMY

Michael Knox, US Peace Prize, US Peace Memorial  - The 2023 US Peace Prize has been awarded to National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) “For National Efforts to Stop U.S. Military Influence on Young People, Saving Lives Here and Abroad.”

The US Peace Prize was presented on September 19, 2023, at the Peace Resource Center of San Diego by Michael Knox, Chair and Founder of the US Peace Memorial Foundation. In his remarks, Dr. Knox said, “National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth shields young lives from some of the strongest influences of militarism. Your work not only saves U.S. lives by dissuading young people from joining the military - it also saves the lives of people in distant countries who they could harm once they were part of the U.S. war machine. NNOMY positively impacts countless young adults, and its nationwide efforts involve the contributions of many stellar antiwar figures and organizations. The US Peace Prize is a prestigious honor that will help call attention to and reinforce your important work for peace.”

The award was accepted by Rick Jahnkow, the organization’s Steering Committee Representative, and several network members. Mr. Jahnkow responded, “NNOMY is grateful for receiving this award and the recognition it will, hopefully, bring to the urgent need to counter the militarization of young people. Protesting war once it begins is never enough; if we are ever going to have a truly effective peace movement, it must include proactively reaching out to and engaging with younger generations in order to groom them to become activists for peace, instead of war. It is this long-term vision that NNOMY brings to the peace movement.”

    https://nnomypeace.net/barbaraharris

 The steering committee and staff of The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth wish to send our condolences to the family, friends, and activist collaborators of Barbara G Harris on her recent passing after a long illness in New York City. Barbara served as a valuable member of the NNOMY Steering Committee and provided informed guidance for our network's projects and campaigns since her joining our organizing committee in 2014 as a representative of the Granny Peace Brigade of New York City. 
NNOMY Steering Committee and staff

My own story of Barbara was visiting the Manhattan apartment of her and her husband, Gerald, on a visit to see family in Brooklyn. Beyond our kind reception for a visit in their dining room, where we shared an afternoon refreshment and conversation, was a small room that was Barbara's space that was a kind of history in pictures and memorabilia representing her 50 plus years of activism for peace, woman's rights, and the environment. She explained some of the things on the walls to my wife, Sandra, and I felt Barbara's history and commitment to activism from her school years through adulthood. It was a special place for me to share that likely few have experienced and it stood as a humane and personal reflection upon her. Barbara was a rare example of an activist and advocate in NYC schools countering the deceptive military recruiter narrative of the benefits of joining into war and doing the important work of youth demilitarization.

Below are a series of excerpts, and links to read the rest, of articles about her activism in our schools reaching out to youth to promote with them a future for peace and not a personal legacy of war.
Gary Ghirardi - NNOMY Communications Staff 

A Laredo high school graduate became a Marine, with tragic results.
This piece was produced in collaboration with Latino USA. Please visit their site for the audio version of this story.


September 15, 2023 / Reynaldo Leaños Jr./ Texas Observer - he house on Sabana Lane in Laredo is a repository of memories. Military posters, American flags, crosses, and photographs hang on the wall, each of them a piece of David Lee Espinoza’s story that ended in Afghanistan.

“This was his cross he was wearing when he passed, and I wear it,” said his mother, Elizabeth Holguin, grabbing the necklace in her hands. “I always feel like he’s around me.”

Espinoza, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marines, died in the waning days of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan when suicide bombers blew themselves up near the Kabul airport on August 26, 2021. Twelve other service members, about half of them Latino, and more than 150 Afghans perished in the attack.

Born just months before the war began, Espinoza was one of the last to die when America’s longest war came to an end. He was 20.

Espinoza is one of an estimated 7,000 American service members who lost their lives in the post-9/11 wars that include Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project. Another 30,000 of these service members and veterans later died by suicide.

For decades, the U.S. military has targeted communities of color for recruitment. Latinos, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, make up about 18 percent of the active duty force. The numbers are even higher in the Marine Corps, in which Hispanics make up 24 percent of active duty members. Latinos are already the largest demographic group in Texas, and will account for most of the country’s population growth—60 percent—through 2050. A 2022 report from the Department of Defense showed Latinos were the fastest-growing segment of the military.

Across the U.S., anti-war veterans and their allies are working together in an effort to stop the U.S. military from reaching its recruitment goals, writes Ruben Abrahams Brosbe.

July 27, 2023 / Ruben Abrahams Brosbe / Consortium News - March 20 marked the 20th anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The war took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, with some estimates of Iraqi casualties putting the number at over 1 million. More than 4,600 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq during and after the invasion, and thousands more have died by suicide.

Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, the U.S. military is facing its worst recruitment crisis since the end of the Vietnam War. The Defense Department’s budget proposal for 2024 outlines a plan for the military to slightly cut back on its ranks, but to reach its projected numbers, it will still need to embark on a heavy recruitment push.

Across the country, anti-war veterans and their allies are working together in an effort to stop the U.S. military from reaching its goal.

We Are Not Your Soldiers is a project of New York City-based nonprofit World Can’t Wait. The organization sends military veterans into schools to share honest stories of the harm they have caused and suffered. In doing so, they hope to prevent young people from signing up.

“I wish I had somebody who told me when I was young,” says Miles Megaciph, who was stationed in Cuba and Okinawa with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1992 to 1996. “The experiences I’ve lived, as painful as they are, and as much as I don’t like to relive them, are valuable to help future adults not live those experiences,” Megaciph told me.

“We wanted to get to the people who were going to be the next recruits,” says Debra Sweet, the executive director of World Can’t Wait. When We Are Not Your Soldiers launched in 2008, the experience was often intense for veterans.