Whose Army?: The Fight Against Military Recruitment

What if someone were to offer you stability, employment, a college education, community, personal development and a chance to see the world? What would you say? What if in your community, there were no jobs, the public schools sucked, you did not have enough money for college and your future was uncertain? Would this influence your decision? This scenario gets played out everyday across the country between young people and military recruiters.

What if someone were to offer you stability, employment, a college education, community, personal development and a chance to see the world? What would you say? What if in your community, there were no jobs, the public schools sucked, you did not have enough money for college and your future was uncertain? Would this influence your decision? This scenario gets played out everyday across the country between young people and military recruiters.

Military recruiters by the thousands are sent into schools and communities to lie, persuade and coerce young people into signing up for the military. Billboards are posted showing men and women making a difference and serving their country. They make promises of jobs, stability, education and sense of belonging that many young people want. They convince young people that war is bloodless, that bombs are precise and that there are few casualties and wounds.

This deliberate advertising scheme is part of what is called the poverty draft. The poverty draft is a policy that targets young people in low-income communities for military recruitment. The military uses the rampant poverty and uncertain future of working class young people as a way to entice them into military service. The poverty draft has a racist edge to it. The military specifically targets schools and communities that have large populations of African American and Latino/a youth.

Under-funding Our Schools

Two things create the poverty draft. First, is the purposeful and deliberate under-funding of our public schools, jobs for youth and other social programs to give money to corporations, the wealthy and the military. The Bush Administration claims there is no money for programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and employment programs, yet there is always money for his tax breaks for the rich and to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a budget breakdown by the War Resisters League, our government currently spends nearly $991 billion dollars on the military while at the same time only spends $73 billion on education. This includes money for both public schools and higher education.

Bush has also cut funds for youth jobs. Programs that once would employ young students over the summer and provide incentives for businesses to hire youth are gone. Today young people are unable to find good-paying jobs. The jobs that are left are service sector jobs that pay low wages and are non-union. These “McJobs” were once a place for high school students to make some extra money. Instead, these dead-end, low wage jobs have become the only employer in poor communities.

By pulling money from education, social services and jobs for young people Bush has put our future on an uncertain path. Young people don’t know what type of job they will have, don’t know how they can pay for college and don’t know if they can make a future for themselves. This precarious situation is what the military uses to find new recruits.

Military Advertisement

The second part of the poverty draft is aggressive recruitment campaigns to lure young people into the military. The military spends nearly $3 billion dollars a year on recruitment advertisement. They use things from youth culture like video games, cars, music and concerts as way to approach young people and make military service seem “cool” and “sexy”. They use targeted advertisements in youth magazines, at theatres and on billboards to attract young people. They send out recruiters to lurk around malls and shopping centers to harass young people into signing up.

No Child Left Behind

Schools, that should be a place of education and not war, have been invaded by the military, too. The passage of No Child Left Behind opened the door to military recruiters. NCLB mandated that public schools turn over the names of students to military recruiters if they wanted to be eligible for federal dollars. Until activists began educating young people that they could remove their names from the list, schools were giving their names away to the military.

Junior Reserve Officer
Training Corps

Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) is another part of the militarization of our schools. School districts use JROTC programs as a way to find new teachers and as a place to put students because of a lack of classes. The instructors in the JROTC programs do not have a teaching degree and do not provide skills students need to build a future. The JROTC programs are advertised as a way to save schools but are in fact a massive financial burden. According to the JROTC website, there are currently there are 1,562 JROTC units in operation with an enrollment of over 274,000 students. Local school districts pay $152,000 a year for each JROTC unit. School districts could be using this money to buy textbooks, hire new teachers and fix up our schools.

ASVAB

Another program that the military uses to recruit students with is the Armed Services Vocational Assessment Battery Test (ASVAB). The ASVAB test is given out in 14,000 schools across the country to gauge a student’s vocational interests. They can use student interest and aptitude in different areas as ways to talk to them about the military. Students are told the test is mandatory for them to take. School administrators push poor students and students of color to take the test, while wealthy and white students study for the ACT and SAT.

The Profits of War

Choosing military service is literally a life or death situation for young people. There have been over 2,000 American men and women killed in Iraq, countless Iraqi civilian deaths and over 15,000 wounded. With 58% of soldiers killed in Iraq were between the ages of 18 and 25, it is clear that the lives of young people are being snuffed out the line in order to pay the price of Bush’s war.

With odds like these, why are we pushing young people into war? Because corporations make a profit from war. This is what is known as “war profiteering”. Corporations like Lockheed Marten, General Electric, Halliburton and Boeing are tied to the military through contracts to do work. The federal government pays each of these corporations to perform different tasks for the military ranging from building bombs and fighter jets to “reconstruction”. If there were no more wars and a smaller military, these corporations would lose their multi-billion dollar contracts that are a major source of money. These corporations have a vested interest in seeing more wars and continued military grow.

There is an Alternative

If we want to end the poverty draft and stop the military from preying on working class young people and youth of color, we must create real alternatives to military service. We must fully fund our public schools and colleges so that every person has access to quality education. We need job fairs, college recruiters, more guidance counselors and other resources that allow students to build a positive future for them that does not require them to serve in the military.

We need more money for college grants so that college graduates can make a living after graduation and not have large student debt. Congress needs to pass the Student Aid Reward Act (STAR) that would give more than $17 billion in need-based student financial aide. We need more money for college recruitment and retention programs for working class youth and youth of color. By providing these services, young people will no longer have to make the decision on whether or not it is worth possibly being killed in order to pay for college.

We must rebuild our communities so there is quality housing for everyone and union jobs that pay a living wage. We must build job training and recruitment centers so that people can gain the skills they need to find employment.

We must end Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The longer Bush keeps us in Iraq and Afghanistan the more foot soldiers he will need.

We must end war profiteering. We need to repeal Bush’s tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy that steal money and resources from our schools and communities. We must bring an end to military contracts for corporations so that war is no longer profitable or desirable for big business.

By rebuilding schools and communities and bringing end to Bush’s wars, we can begin to build a future that does not require military service to get a job and an education. We can build a future where war is no longer profitable for greedy corporations and the wealthy. We can build a future where the military can no longer use poverty as a recruitment tool. We can begin to build a real future for us.