Play 3 minute audio welcome by Jack
Truher.
Find links to several welcoming peace groups at bottom of this web page.
Latest: March 5, 2005 Military recruiters are failing to meet their quotas for enlistees.
Military recruiters are invading high schools. Are you being recruited? Is a tour of military duty really good for you? Those utopian, opportunistic big shots in Washington would have have you believe that it is. But did they serve in their time? They didn't and they had good cause not to. The U.S. military mission is based on deceit, and has been for a long time. Enlistees in the Armed Forces are compensated very poorly for enormous personal risk. Don't be deceived.
Reference: Jack Owicki at the Palo Alto Unitarian Church clarified the meaning and relevant American history of Patriotism in these times at a recent meeting.
Here is a record of the most recent meeting on,
military "unrecruitment" and draft counseling
Organized by the UUCPA Peace Umbrella and the PPJC, the meeting featured an important conversation about military "unrecruitment" and draft counseling.
The Iraq War drags on, and pressure to renew the draft is growing on Capitol Hill. We learned how to inform others about the truths of war!
Sunday, July 18th, 12:00 to 2:00 PM, Fireside Room
sponsored by Palo Alto's PPJC & the Peace Umbrella Forum
Steve Morse was presenter in Palo Alto from the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors chapter in Oakland. He is the CCCO GI Rights Program Coordinator and provides training, resources, and support to organizations across the country who are part of the GI Rights Network. The CCCO's GI Rights Hotline provides comprehensive information on military discharges, grievance and complaint procedures and other civil rights.
Steve Morse covered the following:
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors supports and promotes individual and collective resistance to war and preparations for war.
The Peace Umbrella meets the first Sunday of each month This is a part of our series of UUCPA Peace Umbrella forums for discussing peace, justice, and current events. ALL ARE WELCOME!
For more info: peace-info@uucpa.org
On June 6th, 2004, an organizing meeting took place as announced by Peace Umbrella Forum and Think First. Both groups are working with others to position and involve alternate, reasoned voices for peace into Peninsula high schools and colleges. We would intend to balance and counter the well-funded and one-sided sales program of military recruiters in the schools.
June 6, 2004, meeting announcement,
Military "Unrecruitment" and Draft Counseling" Sunday, June 6th, 1:00 to 2:00 PM, Fireside Room, Unitarian Church in Palo Alto (505 E. Charleston near Middlefield)
Partial content of the June 6, 2004, meeting:
(1) Reports at this meeting described progress at placing alternate voices for peace in the schools, including some successful encounters already accomplished between students and peace activists in San Mateo County.
(2) Plans were made to encourage and assist in creation of Peace Clubs in many local schools. These Peace Clubs, if appropriate, would be part of each school's clubs organization and controlled by students in accordance with other school clubs requirements, procedures, and supervision. Student Peace Clubs officers and members would find assistance and encouragement available from community peace activists. Student Peace Club organizers might invite various community peace activists to Peace Club times as resource persons, or for discussion, if and when Peace Club members so wish.
(3) An effort will be made to prepare an endorsement in principle by local members of congress. Some legislators have already shown interest in assuring that alternate points of view on military issues are available for students, whenever military recruiting is in progress on campus. With such endorsements in principle from legislators, community peace activists would be more persuasive with school administrators. Assured access for alternate voices in the schools has been neglected in law, while the "No Child Left Behind" legislation demands that military recruiters have access to high schools, and to high schoolers (unless parents intervene by withdrawing "parental consent").
(4) Beyond persuasion gained by individual legislator endorsement in principle, federal legislation for the purpose of fair access to schools and students by peace activists needs to be explored by peace groups with legislators.
Further implementation, along these lines, will be continued on June 7th, 2004 at 7:30 pm at the Foundation for Global Community, 222 High Street. More below:
Vets for Peace Discuss Military Recruitment
High school students and their parents may be particularly interested to hear two members of Veterans for Peace, George Johnson and Diane Rejman, who will warn about methods used to persuade high school students to enlist after graduation.
A short film on "Military Myths" will be shown, along with information about the "Delayed Enlistment Program" for college-bound students and how young people can build a file to demonstrate their conscientious objection to war. Local draft counseling options will also be discussed.
Some topics for discussion: CCCO and our programs (Military Out of Our Schools, Third World Outreach, and GI Rights Hotline) -draft registration: what the requirements are, consequences of non-registration, and on helping youth get out of the DEP (Delayed Enlistment Program.
The program is free, but a donation of $5 or more to the Vets for Peace national bus tour will be accepted.
Director of Outreach, Foundation for Global Community
222 High Street, Palo Alto CA 94301-1040 USA
dmytels@globalcommunity.org ------- www.globalcommunity.org
Background, Previous Meeting Record, Links follow:
Counter-recruiting training of April 10, 2004 described:
War resistance and military counter-recruiting was the subject of a training meeting held in Palo Alto on April 10, 2004. Sponsored by WILPF and PPJC, as described below, similar counter-recruiting is addressed specificially by a series on Peer Counselor Training Workshops as described at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) website.
The purpose of the Palo Alto meeting was to provide "a practical guide to counter-recruitment, including the basics of conscientious objection and delayed enlistment, the Outreach Peace Education model, how to build understanding between schools and social justice organizations, and discussion of successful past efforts". We learned about selective service laws and regulations, and how to escape planned military conscription. The meeting encouraged volunteer counter-recruiting at local high schools and counseling support for conscientious objectors.
more on Counter-recruiting meeting of April 10, 2004
Counter-Recruitment Workshop advises
High Schoolers against
military Delayed Enlistment Program
reported by Jack
Truher on April 30, 2004
Counter-Recruitment Workshop advises
High Schoolers against
military Delayed Enlistment Program
A couple dozen locals were drawn mid-day Saturday, April 10, 2004, to a workshop for potential counter-recruiting counselors. We were there to learn how to counter military pre-enlistment of vulnerable high-schoolers at risk from early commitment into the military Delayed Enlistment Program. We learned of related mechanisms for resisting American militarism.
This set of topics is of interest to us parents and grandparents and citizens generally. This serious and spirited half-day with a couple dozen people in the Palo Alto Unitarian Church on Charleston was inspiring. The talented and expert presenter was Elizabeth Stinson, Director of the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County, also a child and adolescent therapist and a conflict-resolution facilitator.
What did we learn? The utopian militarists are up to no good. Whoever is re-elected, there may well be a draft affecting decisions of our high school boys and girls. According to legislation in progress, highly trained specialists of both genders could be drafted well into middle age, including doctors and nurses and environmental specialists. These provisions are already written into congressional and senate bills now moving forward (HR-163, HR-3598, SB-89).
We learned that the existing pre-enlistment Delayed Enlistment Program feeds the military 98% of all their current enlistees. These former high schoolers have been deliberately and too often misinformed, plied with snow trips, fun zones, parties, and further enticed to sign-up under false pretenses with offers for free college and other illusory solicitations. We counter-recruiters can teach them a way to escape reporting for duty as military inductees even after their misguided, early sign-ups. After reporting for actual induction, reversal to freedom from military obligation is harder to escape, but it can often still be done.
There is work to do in counter-recruiting counseling and anti-militarism education at our local high schools. We'll investigate locally, and work out some approaches for an appropriate level of participation. Military recruiters, under law now, are authorized rights of access to impressionable high schoolers. Typically they set up tables monthly or more often at special events. We counter-recruiters can offer a simultaneous alternative by rightfully exercising those same rights of access on the same days and locations as the military recruiters.
We need to have a counter-recruiter table at every high school wherever and whenever military recruiters come onto a high school campus. We should develop a list of local points of contact for counter-recruiters at each high school. Where is that list? Where is the umbrella organization?
There is a lot to learn and share about draft resistance, counter-recruiting, conscientious objection, amid the coming resource wars that are already driving American military misadventures. There are ways to reverse abusive and deceitful recruiting processes, ways to reverse ill-informed and socially coerced pre-enlistments. There are ways to avoid misguided attempts by signed-up recruits at escape that can make their situations worse.
Military pre-enlistment of high schoolers is finally entrapment by misrepresentation, a modern form of being "Shanghaied".
In the days of sailing ships, it was a common waterfront practice to abduct or "Shangai" men by force or deceit onto outward-bound vessels to serve as merchant seamen. Shanghai, China was a typically-remote destination for these abductions from the mid-1800s and into the early 1900s.
Expect recurring efforts at reinstating the draft. House bill # 163 is language which would reinstate military conscription for all youth, ages 18-26. This legislation was presented in the House in January 2003. A similar bill could be introduced after the Presidental election.
See The Coming Draft, March 2004, and Nader Tells Youths to Brace for Draft , of April 2004.
Another writer argues that concerns about bill #163 are premature and unwarranted. Whatever the likelihood of implementation, keep informed.
Here's art from a student of the Hope Project, (High School Outreach for Peace Education), Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County.
links:
Peace Umbrella http://www.uucpa.org/peace_umbrella/pages/index.htm peace-info@uucpa.org Peninsula Peace and Justice Center http://www.peaceandjustice.org/ ppjc@peaceandjustice.org ThinkFirst of San Jose http://www.southbaymobilization.org/getinvolved/thinkfirst Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors http://www.objector.org/ info@objector. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom http://wilpf.org Peninsula Raging Grannies http://www.peninsularaginggrannies.org peninsula_raging_grannies@yahoo.com San Jose Peace Center http://www.sanjosepeace.org/ sjpc@sanjosepeace.org Mountain View Voices For Peace http://www.mvvp.org/ mvvp@mvvp.orgPeace Justice Center of Sonoma County - Counter Recruiting http://peaceandjusticesonomaco.org contact@peaceandjusticesonomaco.org peacentr@sonic.net Peace Action of San Mateo County http://www.sanmateopeaceaction.org smpa@sanmateopeaceaction.org Washington Truth in Recruiting (WaTiR) http://www.watir.org/about/history.htm info@watir.org American Friends Service Committee - Youth & Militarism http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/ MotherSpeak http://www.motherspeak.org/ PeaceWork - informational https://peacework.us peacework@truher.net
i.d. photo 1961 ---- contact Jack Truher
This page revised on March 5, 2005
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