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
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