From Draft NOtices, October—December 2008
— Jorge Mariscal
Strolling across the convention center with her granddaughter, Dolores Huerta, whomade history with Cesar Chavez more than 40 years ago, received an occasional greeting from those who recognized her. But most of the well-dressed Latino and Latina 20- and 30-somethings hurried past her on their way to free salsa lessons sponsored by Ford or free beer provided by Miller Lite.
Like the dozens of recently arrived immigrants and long-time permanent residents on their way to the free workshops on citizenship, they had no idea that they had just rubbed elbows with one of the major figures of U.S. labor and civil rights history.
If Barack Obama symbolizes “post-civil rights” politics, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference held in San Diego in mid-July embodied a post-Chicano Movement universe in which unions, mass mobilizations, and social critique are relics of a long-gone era.
The NCLR Expo was a corporate-funded orgy of mainstream Hispanic identity and culture. Outside the convention center, misguided Minutemen and others angry about the immigration mess clung to the deluded belief that NCLR was a “leftist” or “separatist” organization. Inside the building, representatives of every branch of the military, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security belied the right-wing paranoia.
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
From Draft NOtices, October—December 2008
As reported in the July-September Draft NOtices, the San Diego Unified School District announced in May that it was investigating complaints voiced by students who had been involuntarily placed in military science courses (i.e., JROTC), a violation of the California Education Code. There were also complaints about students being recruited into the program with false promises that it would help them meet college entrance requirements. There are 13 secondary schools in the district with JROTC.
After waiting all summer and hearing no report on the investigation, a small group from the Education Not Arms Coalition attended the September 9 San Diego school board meeting and asked for a report on the investigation. School board members refused to comment, but district superintendent Terry Grier said that a report could be obtained from one of the area superintendents, Nellie Meyer.
The next day, Meyer contacted a coalition representative and stated that she interviewed some of the students who had complained and had found their accounts credible. Consequently, a directive was presented to principals at their monthly meeting, advising them to ensure that students were not placed into JROTC without first gaining parental consent. She said the directive would be presented at a second principals’ meeting and that we could request a copy of the directive from the district’s legal office.
- Rick Jahnkow
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Surprise Attempt to Force Military Training into High Schools Fails — for Now
From Draft NOtices, October—December 2008
— Rick Jahnkow
On September 17, 2008, the U.S. Senate was presented with an amendment to the 2009 military authorization bill that would have forced high schools to accept military training. The amendment would have accomplished this by denying all federal funds to any school district that did not allow the various military branches to establish, maintain or operate a unit of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). Each military branch has its own JROTC program.
The amendment was introduced by Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and was buried among over 250 other amendments proposed for the 2009 military authorization bill. The method of attaching such amendments to major pieces of legislation is the way Congress passed laws in the 1990s that require colleges and universities to grant access to military recruiters and permit the establishment of college ROTC units. Those laws, which were later upheld by the Supreme Court, paved the way for an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that is now forcing school districts to give recruiters access to secondary school students.
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:
