From Draft NOtices, November - December 2002
— Molly Morgan
San Diego area activists have been busy this fall encouraging high school students to think about the government's proposed war against Iraq and providing them with information not available to them via the corporate media. This action grew out of the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice in coordination with San Diegans to Stop the Violence Against Iraq, using COMD's leafleting experience as a model. Activists wanted to focus on providing high school students information to balance the barrage of militarism they receive from TV, radio, video games, movies, and the military in their schools. As has been reported previously in Draft NOtices, the Pentagon has been focusing on high school and even middle and elementary school children with increasing intensity in order to indoctrinate them before they become voting citizens.
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
From Draft NOtices, September-October 2002
- Rick Jahnkow
Every now and then we hear people talk about wanting to bring back conscription. Sometimes it comes from conservatives and militarists who would like to see a larger military force so they can expand U.S. bases abroad and conduct warfare in more places simultaneously.
We also hear it from liberals, and even a few leftists, who are under the impression that conscription would be doing a big favor for disadvantaged youths or would lessen the chances of war by spreading the burden for maintaining our bloated military establishment and overly aggressive foreign policy to more middle-class people. They even make the argument, sometimes, that we need a draft to keep us from drifting toward Prussian militarism and a Hitler-type dictatorship.
- Glen Motil
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Socialization Messages in Schools and the Culture of Militarism
From Draft NOtices, September-October 2002
- Glen Motil
Our illegitimate vice president, Dick Cheney, is lying to us again. He is lying in order to frighten us into supporting a U.S. military invasion and occupation of yet another nation. The socialization message that Cheney is sending to our children as they get ready to begin another year of school is that violence is an acceptable means of solving our "problems" in the world and that it is okay to be dishonest to achieve that goal. Cheney is arguing that killing thousands of people (a majority of whom are civilians) and destroying the infrastructure (including homes and personal property) of a nearly defenseless state is not only a legitimate way of handling our foreign affairs, but that it is a moral way of living in and being a part of the international community. This is a fine example of Mr. Cheney's character.
Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS
When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:
