ASVAB is Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. It is actually a test for placement in the military, and the recruiter will be given your contact info if your school does not opt out.

Sammamish-Issaquah|Local Event

ASVAB (for seniors only at this time)

Press Release Desk, NeighborOCT13

Event Details

Issaquah High School, Issaquah, WA, 98027

Event listing from Issaquah High School: Wednesday, October 13 (all day)

ASVAB (for seniors only at this time) October 13, 2021 Add to: Outlook,  ICal,  Google Calendar ASVAB (for seniors only at this time) as an option for state testing requirements.  A student must score a 31.  If you are interested in taking the ASVAB.  It will be given on October 13th while the 10th and 11th grade students take the PSAT.  There is only room for 25 students.  Here is the link to sign up:  https://forms.gle/5x21jNFVgQYrikud6 Below is some helpful information we’ve broken down into what to expect before the test, the day of the test and after the test.  The test takes about 2 hours to complete. BEFORE THE TEST Following are resources for students who would like to learn more, including practice tests and tips on how to reduce test anxiety.   Test Preparation: You don’t have to do any lengthy preparation. How much you have learned through the years will probably make the most difference in your results. However, if you are looking for practice, you can find practice tests and additional resources at https://www.asvabprogram.com/student-program. Test Anxiety? If you have anxiety over taking tests, read the tips from the testing experts on how to manage test anxiety at https://www.princetonreview.com/college-advice/test-anxiety. DAY OF THE TEST Before Arrival:  No Food: No food will be allowed due to both testing and mask requirements, so eat a big healthy breakfast.  What to Bring: Bring a mask. A mask must be worn at all times. Bring pencilsArrival:  Students need to plan to arrive on campus on or before 10:00am.   Late students will not be permitted to test.   After arriving students will head to the LIBRARY and be assigned a seat.During the test:  Students must be seated by 10:00am.   Pencils and scratch paper will be provided.   No calculators or cell phones allowed, and cell phones must be turned off and put away.  Students must remain masked and in their seat for the duration of the test.  Limited breaks will be available. AFTER THE TEST Test Scores: Test scores will be available about a week later.  Interested

Posted in militarism, Recruiting, Washington state Tagged with: , ,

Militarized public schools and universities support the endless wars of the USA

Slide presentation for Amy Hagopian’s and Evan Kanter’s “War and Health” class at the University of Washington.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: , , ,

Dissenter Anti-militarist Training March 13

Tomorrow, March 11, is the LAST DAY to apply for our training! 

Sign up today for Dissenters’ Anti-Militarist Organizing 101 Training happening THIS Saturday on March 13 to get trained up in what we’re fighting for and our plan to #DefundWar and win a just future. You’ll learn:

  • All about militarism, war, policing and abolition 🌊
  • How to organize direct action campaigns against militarized institutions on your campus & community 🌊
  • How to build resilient & healing movement culture 🌊
  • About our role in the fight for collective liberation 🌊
  • … and more! 

➡️ SIGN UP: bit.ly/dissenterstraining ⬅️

  • The training is open to all young people, but we will be prioritizing slots for BIPOC students. 
  • Saturday, March 13 from 2 PM – 6 PM ET // 11 AM – 3 PM PT
  • Accessibility: We will have Live Closed Captioning.

🌊 THIS Saturday: Learn About Our Movement’s Plan to Win: Join Dissenters Anti-Militarist Organizing 101 Training from 2 PM – 6 PM ET. This virtual training is for young people who want to organize with Dissenters. 

Spread the word and tell a friend to sign up before registrations close tomorrow! Hope to see you this Saturday.

Onward, toward liberation,

Alex + Dissenters Training Committee

P.S. Have you watched our Dissenters Movement video? Check it out and follow Dissenters on FacebookTwitter and Instagram


Dissenters is a new, national anti-militarist youth organization fighting to divest from war & policing and invest in life-giving institutions. Join us.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: , , ,

Delayed Entry Program- You don’t have to go!

Posted in Uncategorized

From Soldier to Peace Activist

Seattle Fellowship of Reconciliation presents Dan Gilman on
From Soldier to Peace Activist
Sunday, February 16, 2020, 6:30-8:30 p.m.,
at Woodland Park Presbyterian Church, 225 N 70 St, Seattle – Near #5 bus.
All are welcome!  Free, an offering will be taken.  Info 206-789-5565 or wwfor@wwfor.org

Dan Gilman, past President of Seattle Veterans for Peace, will talk about his journey from soldier to peace activist, and about his current peace activist work.  He will talk about counter-recruiting, letting young people know the side of military service that the recruiters don’t reveal,  and his recent focus on preventing a U.S. war on Iran.  Dan is one of the organizers of the monthly first Tuesday Antiwar Demonstration at the Seattle Federal Building.

Dan is a retired union organizer with a 30 year career of representing service workers in Seattle.  He is a graduate of Franklin High School.  Dan was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967 and was in the America War in Viet Nam in 1969.  After returning from the military he finished his college education and went on to graduate school.  He lives in Seattle.  He is married and has a daughter in grad school in Chicago. 
 
 

Posted in Uncategorized

Boeing is building nuclear weapons.

These 28 companies are building nuclear weapons

ICAN and its partner organization Pax have released a report with full profiles of 28 companies connected to the production of nuclear weapons. http://www.icanw.org/action/these-28-companies-are-building-nuclear-weapons/

May 2, 2019

The full report is here: https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/producing-mass-destruction-private-companies-and-the-nuclear-weapons-industry/

NB from Stuart Parkinson, of Scientists for Global Responsibility: The report only covers covers companies involved in the production of the missiles and warheads – not the submarines and aircraft that carry them. Hence – for example – Rolls-Royce and Babcock, which are part of the UK consortium building the Dreadnought submarines, are not (yet!) included in the list.

We note that the Secretary of Defense, Pat Shanahan, was employed at Boeing and was on the Board of Regents at UW during the decision-making time frame for some of these weapons. How did his point of view influence the University of Washington?

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: , , ,

Reward for high school that bars military recruiters!

Pentagon Claims 1,100 High Schools Bar Recruiters; Peace Activists O 

Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:53 am (PDT) . Posted by: 

“David Swanson” davidcnswanson 

Contact: David Swanson david@davidswanson.org 202-329-7847, Pat Elder
pat@studentprivacy.org 301-997-3963

*Pentagon Claims 1,100 High Schools Bar Recruiters; Peace Activists Offer
$1,000 Award If Any Such School Can Be Found*

By David Swanson and Pat Elder

According to statements in February by the Secretary of the Army
<https://taskandpurpose.com/schools-resist-army-recruiting>, various U.S.
high schools are barring military recruiters from access to students.
The Secretary
of the Navy
<https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/pentagon-complains-about-the-1-100-us-high-schools-that-ban-military-recruiters>
this past December said that public school boards are keeping military
recruiters out of 1,100 high schools.

The two of us are offering a $1,000 prize (details below) to any public
U.S. high school that can identify itself as fitting this description.

Peace activists who struggle to gain admittance to high schools to present
the case against military enlistment have not in recent years encountered a
school that barred admittance to the military. The military has not
publicly named a single example from its claimed list of 1,100 public high
schools.

In fact, federal law requires schools that receive federal funding under
the Every Student Succeeds Act to allow in military recruiters if they
allow in college or job recruiters.

The possibility exists that the Pentagon is being as honest here as it was
about Iraqi WMDs, and that recruiters’ difficulties
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/fewer-americans-serve-military-pentagon-panic>
in recent years are not due to schools’ policies, but rather to the low
unemployment rate and the unpopularity of participating in endless brutal
wars that serve no clear purpose, increase hostility toward the United
States, and leave participants at heightened risk of death, physical
injury, brain damage, PTSD, moral injury, violent crime, homelessness, and
suicide.

It is also possible that one or more high schools have barred military
recruiters but are reluctant to publicly advertise the fact in the highly
militarized culture of the United States. If so, those schools deserve our
thanks and the reassurance that we are doing everything we can to develop a
more peaceful culture.

A third possibility is that there really are hundreds of high schools out
there protecting their students from military recruiters and proud to say
so. For those schools, here are the details of the award we are offering:

Post online a 2-minute video with the tag #recruiterfreeschool explaining
why your school keeps out military recruiters. If more than one video is
submitted, we will choose the best one. We will award that school $1,000 to
help organize a peace day of educational activities, and we will further
volunteer our services to speak, recruit speakers, recruit additional
sponsors, provide resources, and create a peace-jobs fair.

— 
*David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is
director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org.
Swanson’s books <http://davidswanson.org/books> include *War Is A Lie
<http://warisalie.org/>*. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org
<http://davidswanson.org/> and WarIsACrime.org <http://warisacrime.org/>.
He hosts Talk Nation Radio <http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41>. He
is a 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Swanson was
awarded the 2018 Peace Prize
<http://davidswanson.org/2018-peace-prize-awarded-to-david-swanson/> by the
U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. Longer bio and photos and videos here
<http://davidswanson.org/about>. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson
<http://twitter.com/davidcnswanson> and FaceBook
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Swanson/297768373319#>, and sign up
for:

Activist alerts
<https://actionnetwork.org/forms/activism-alerts-from-david-swanson?source=email&referrer=david-swanson>
..
Articles <https://actionnetwork.org/forms/articles-from-david-swanson>.
David Swanson news <https://actionnetwork.org/forms/david-swanson-news>.
World Beyond War news
<https://actionnetwork.org/forms/world-beyond-war-news>.
Charlottesville news <https://actionnetwork.org/forms/charlottesville-media>
..

Posted in Uncategorized

Students learn the hard way at the Washington Youth Academy in Bremerton

A photo journey through 22 weeks of tough military-style training for high-school dropouts and at-risk students. by Amanda Snyder, February 21, 2019, Seattle Times.

FALLING BEHIND AND skipping classes at Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup, 16-year-old Abbey McDermott needed a fresh start.

After her absences piled up, she was offered a choice: Attend the Washington Youth Academy and earn back credits, or face harsher consequences, up to and including expulsion.

She chose the academy.

“I was never an average student. I always had to push myself to be an average student,” McDermott says between drills at the Bremerton academy, where she was part of a group of 165 students who started the 22-week program in July. “I wanted to come here because I wanted to get away from all that and get the help I needed.”

The Washington Youth Academy is a division of the National Guard Youth Challenge program. It enrolls 16- to 18-year-olds from across the state who have dropped out of high school or are close to dropping out. The residential program uses military-style training, rigorous schooling and mentor relationships to help students earn credits and prepare for future employment or high school graduation.

Cadet Moore breaks focus to peer at his sergeant, who instructed them to stare forward until told otherwise during the first day of lunch at the Washington Youth Academy in Bremerton. Moore was called out for not doing so. (Amanda Snyder / The Seattle Times)

Mentors play a key role in helping students stay on track throughout the program, and after, in a 12-month “post-residential” program. Mentors are adult figures outside the students’ families, such as teachers, counselors or community members, who give guidance to students adjusting to home life after finishing the program.

Cadets can earn eight high school credits, but it takes tremendous effort to do so. (A full year of traditional high school is worth six.) Of the 145 students who completed the most recent program, 62 — or 43 percent — earned all eight.

The academy, opened in 2009, employs 75 trained staff members, including counselors, experienced military personnel, administrators, cooks and teachers (who are contracted through the Bremerton School District).

Each student attends the academy for free. The cost is estimated at $19,000 per graduate, according to Steven Friederich, a spokesman for the academy. Three-quarters of the academy’s budget comes from the U.S. Department of Defense, with the other fourth from the state in the form of funding from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The environment is strict and demanding. Students, dubbed “cadets” and divided into platoons, start their days at 4:45 a.m. with a wake-up call and an hourlong, strenuous exercise routine, followed by school classes.

Cadets have mixed feelings about graduating from the Washington Youth Academy and saying farewell to their friends, sergeants and teachers. (Amanda Snyder / The Seattle Times)

As the final month of the program wrapped up in December, cadets looked toward their futures with optimism. Most were excited to go back to school and kick their bad habits from before; others were getting ready for trade jobs, or planning to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces.

McDermott says she hopes to be more independent and well-mannered as she returns to Emerald Ridge this month. This is her fresh start.

——————

We can do better than this.

Posted in Uncategorized

THE ARMY, IN NEED OF RECRUITS, TURNS FOCUS TO LIBERAL-LEANING CITIES.

Undoubtedly, the Army is looking at cities such as Seattle because they want more technically-trained youth for the science and cyber skills needed to fight modern endless wars.

Seattle has since 2007 had in place school board policies that restrict military recruiters to the access they are legally (by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and later by the Every Student Succeeds Act) mandated to have. That’s right- only military recruiters have to be allowed in schools and to receive student contact information. The recruiters don’t like any restrictions, mild as t

THE ARMY, IN NEED OF RECRUITS, TURNS FOCUS TO LIBERAL-LEANING CITIES.

By Dave Philipps

  • Jan. 2, 2019

SEATTLE — Army recruiters in Seattle can earn a Friday off for each new soldier they enlist. But in a city with a thriving tech industry and a long history of antiwar protests, the recruiters haven’t gotten many long weekends.

“It’s no secret we’re a little behind,” Sgt. First Class Jeremiah Vargas, who heads the city’s recruiting station, told four recruiters at a morning pep talk in early December. With a week left to go in the 30-day reporting period, he wrote the station’s goal — eight recruits — on a white board, and then the current tally: two.

“What do we need to make mission?” he asked.

One recruiter responded with a shrug, “A miracle.”

The Army is not quite counting on miracles, but after falling 6,500 soldiers short of its goal nationwide for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, it is trying a new strategy that might seem almost as unlikely.

Rather than focus on more conservative regions of the country that traditionally fill the ranks, the Army plans a big push in 22 left-leaning cities, like Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, where relatively few recruits have signed up.

“We want to go into Boston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City,” Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, the head of Army Recruiting Command, said. “These are places with a large number of youth who just don’t know what the military is about.”

The approach may seem like hunting for snow in Miami. But Army leaders say that all they need to attract enlistees in those cities are a surge of recruiters and the right sales pitch.

The pitch they have used for years, playing down combat and emphasizing job training and education benefits, can work well when civilian opportunities are scarce. But it is a tough sell these days in a place like Seattle, where jobs are plentiful and the local minimum wage of $15 an hour beats the base pay for privates, corporals or specialists.

Instead, General Muth said, the Army wants to frame enlistment as a patriotic detour for motivated young adults who might otherwise be bound for a corporate cubicle — a detour that promises a chance for public service, travel and adventure.

“You want to do a gap year?” the general said. “Come do your gap year in the Army.” (Figuratively speaking, of course: Enlistees commit to serve for two to six years.)

For decades, Army recruiting has relied disproportionately on a crescent-shaped swath of the country stretching from Virginia through the South to Texas, where many military bases are found and many families have traditions of service. Young people there enlist at two to three times the rate of other regions.

By contrast, in the big metropolitan areas of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, young people are less likely to have a parent, teacher or coach who served in the military, which can be a major factor in deciding to enlist. And in those regions, many high schools openly discourage recruiters from interacting with students.

When the Seattle recruiters visit schools, they are sometimes met by antiwar “counter-recruiting action teams” who call attention to civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and the high rate of sexual assault in the military.

“Legally, the high schools have to let us in, but a lot of times, they’ll just ignore our calls,” Sergeant Vargas said. “A lot of schools don’t want us to talk to their kids. They want them to go to college, and see the military as a last resort.”

Parents can be just as leery. “They say ‘Thank you for your service, but stay away from my kid,’” said Capt. Carlos Semidey, the Seattle recruiters’ company commander.

Those cold shoulders were easy to ignore when the jobless rate was above 6 percent and the Army’s most dependable recruiter, Sgt. Hard Times, was driving high school graduates to enlist. But now, unemployment has fallen to 50-year lows.

“Whenever that happens, the Army faces recruiting challenges,” said David R. Segal, a sociologist who advises the military on recruiting. “But they have always doubled down on areas where they know they can get results. This is a 180-degree turn.”

The Army has begun redirecting its marketing toward digital-native urbanites and suburbanites who are eager for excitement. Out went the Army’s sponsorship of a drag-racing team; in are teams of soldiers who compete in mixed martial arts, CrossFit, and competitive video gaming, or e-sports.

Ads on network sports broadcasts are being scaled back in favor of targeted ads on Facebook and Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming gaming platform. Recruiters will soon be required, not just encouraged, to post on Instagram.

“Kids aren’t watching network TV any more,” General Muth said. “They are not at the mall. And they don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t know. But we know they want to serve their community, so we have to start that conversation with them.”

Unlike the Army, the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy were able to meet 2018 recruiting goals — in part because each requires less than half the Army’s numbers.

But squeezed by the same forces, all military branches must sweeten their enlistment deals, adding sign-up and retention bonuses and loosening medical standards on childhood conditions like asthma and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The Navy is even offering a “golden ticket” that allows some enlisted personnel to take a year off and return with the same job and rank.

The Army has had to change tactics before to fill its ranks, and it has sometimes stumbled. Toward the end of the draft in the early 1970s, the Army updated its slogan to say “The Army wants to join you,” and dispatched recruiters on motorcycles to hold “rap sessions” with prospects, talking about how the Army was loosening up on haircuts and early-morning formations, putting beer machines in barracks and teaching sergeants to not to be so square. The Marine Corps quickly made fun of the attempt at cool, and the campaign came to be reviled in the Army as well.

This time, the Army plans to focus on blue cities with traveling interactive exhibits that showcase Army careers in health care, engineering and computing. Its sky-diving team and its touring rock band will work to draw crowds, and top brass will speak at events promoting leadership and patriotism. The Army is also putting hundreds of additional recruiters in the field and increasing enlistment bonuses.

But some experts question whether the plans will make much of an impression on the target audience.

“They need to see that the Army is made up of people like them,” said Emma Moore, who studies Army recruiting at the Center for a New American Security, a research institute in Washington. She added, “Coders, engineers, women — there are a lot of people out there that the Army could use that don’t see themselves as having a place.”

The Seattle recruiters often feel as if they are getting nowhere. Two of them stood for hours at a recent job fair in the shadow of the Space Needle without getting a single prospect. An ultimate Frisbee coach with an engineering degree stopped to talk, but he said later that he did it mostly because they “looked a little lonely.”

At a high school event later in the day, students were happy to sign up to for a skateboard raffle, but none made an appointment to meet with a recruiter.

Even those who walk in to the recruiting station are not a sure bet. Myles Pankey, 19, fit the profile of a blue-city adventure seeker, showing up in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. A year after graduating from one of the city’s top high schools, he was working construction, which paid well but bored him. Following in his accountant father’s footsteps held no appeal, he said; he wanted a challenge.

“If I were you, I’d go infantry,” Sergeant Vargas told him. “There’s an $11,000 bonus right now if you can ship in a few weeks.”

They talked for more than an hour about opportunities in the Army, but Mr. Pankey said he felt pulled in many directions. His mother and father weren’t crazy about him enlisting, he said. His boss, a former Special Forces soldier, had talked up the experience, but another friend who had served in Vietnam called it a terrible idea. None of his high school friends had joined, so he’d be going on his own. He finally told the sergeant he would wait a week before making up his mind.

“I can get a good job here, but I want to serve my country,” Mr. Pankey said on his way out. “I guess I have some thinking to do.”

A week later, there was a slot open in the airborne infantry, with a $10,000 bonus. Mr. Pankey signed up.

Posted in antiwar, counter military recruiting, Seattle, Veterans for Peace, Washington, Washington state Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Taking a knee for racial justice- Bellingham, October 17, 2018

Posted in antiwar, capitalism, racism, sports Tagged with: ,