"We Are Not Your Soldiers!" Speaking Tour in Bay Area Dec. 8-12

What?

A nationwide effort, to reach high school students with the truth about military recruiters and the wars that they are recruiting for, and give them the arguments and tools to talk to their peers. We are looking for teachers and students to help arrange classroom presentations and school assemblies which would include:
•a short presentation by a World Can’t Wait youth organizer and either an Iraq/Afghanistan war veteran or a military family member.
•an open discussion.
•a 10-minute video clip of testimony by Iraq veterans from the March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings about what they witnessed and perpetrated.
•footage of high school students protesting military recruiters.
•a short survey that students would take to give us all a sense of what they think.

Who?

Iraq Veteran Phil Aliff: Phil served in the US Army from 2004-2008 as a corporal with the 10th Mountain Division. After doing a tour in Iraq from 2005-2006, Aliff started the first active duty chapter of Iraq Veterans Against The War at Fort Drum. He spoke at Winter Soldier, a national event of Iraq Vets testifying to the crimes they witnessed when there were in Iraq & Afghanistan. Phil was a part of leading protests against the Bush program on college campuses, on the streets and outside the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He was featured on the radio show Democracy Now, speaking about the need for those in the military to resist the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Emma Kaplan: Youth & Student Coordinator, World Can’t Wait. Emma’s great grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. She has organized demonstrations against the Bush torture policy, military recruiting centers, and police brutality. She has spoken to youth at concerts, in classrooms and on campus, calling on this generation to take responsibility for the crimes their government is committing in their names. Most recently she participated in the protests in Olympia Washington where people formed human blockades to prevent stryker vehicles from being sent to Iraq.

Why?

Over 1 million Iraqis have been killed, according to John Hopkins University, 2006 and over 4 million have been forced to flee their homes. Almost 5,000 US military have been killed in combat; with tens of thousands of grave injuries. Hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan have been killed in recent months by U.S. bombing raids on wedding parties, and US Special Forces have recently killed civilians in Pakistan and Syria. Iran and other countries are projected targets of the global War on Terror begun by the Bush administration. The war crime of torture is being carried out by U.S. forces under the direction of the highest levels of government.

Where are they going to get these troops to fight (and die) for all this?

They are in high school now. In high schools across the U.S. military recruiters are given free reign to prey on the youth. They pull up in their hummers, walk right into classrooms and give presentations that make war seem like a video game. They stalk students at school and at home, making false promises and even (as has been documented recently on Democracy Now!) threatening students with jail time if they decide not to enlist. In particular they target poor and rural youth, inner city youth of color and immigrant youth (with promises of citizenship). In fact, all this is mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act which requires high schools to give students’ personal information over to the military.

The military reportedly has a new recruiting approach: “Obama will get the US out of Iraq.”

However, many people don’t know that Obama is planning to keep 50-80,000 troops in Iraq, send 10,000 more troops to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and increase the overall size of the US military by 92,000 more soldiers. Obama has been an enthusiastic supporter of the No Child Left Behind Act. When asked in one presidential debate, "Will you vigorously enforce a statute which says colleges must allow military recruiters on campus and provide ROTC programs?" Obama said “yes.”

It becomes clear that if we want the crimes of our government to stop, we must bring into being a movement of resistance against them. And stopping military recruiters from preying on our youth is a key element of putting a stop to this.

Many people know that recruiters lie. They lie about the job skills training and education benefits that enlistees will never receive. Recruiters don’t tell youth about the one third of female GI’s that report being raped while in the service, or the post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide rates of the returning veterans. The U.S. armed services will spend over $5 billion dollars in 2008 for recruiting. According to the ACLU, “The U.S. military’s recruitment policies, practices, and strategies explicitly target students under 17 for recruitment activities on high school campuses.”

But what this tour aims to expose is an even bigger lie. What are youth being recruiting to do? Is the U.S. military of 2008 spreading freedom and democracy? What does it mean to be “patriotic” and “support the troops”? How can you prioritize the lives of people in one country, or the world? Is the military the place to be if you’re looking to “have an experience,” “get some discipline and structure,” “give your life a purpose,”? Or is joining the military harmful to oneself and to people throughout the world?

These are the questions the tour will explore with high school students. We want to learn from the students and we know we will have many different points of view in the audience. We look forward to stirring up some debate which all too often gets doesn’t happen, in the name of being “balanced” and avoiding controversy.

If you find this situation unacceptable and think that schools should be places of learning and not cheap labor depots for the U.S. military, then help bring this tour to your school! Help bring this tour to your campus and be part of awakening the consciousness and activism of a new generation struggling to figure out what to do with their lives.