Without Enough Soldiers...

Counter-recruitment organizing is the most practical way to tangibly resist United States policy that, while cutting funding for education, employment, and social programs, promotes war and empire. It exposes the relationship between, and acts to correct, both local and global injustices.

As counter-recruiter Rick Jahnkow of Youth And Non-Military Opportunities [6] (YANO) in San Diego puts it, "The argument is based on simple but compelling logic: The Bush administration and conservative-dominated Congress can continue to ignore antiwar demonstrations and other symbolic forms of protest, but they cannot ignore the fact that without enough soldiers, it is impossible to sustain a large, long-term occupation in a country like Iraq."

Since the advent of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, counter-recruitment work has run the gamut from one-on-one counseling sessions to street-side poetry slams to citywide lobbying efforts.

Antiwar activism is changing. The familiar sights and sounds of large protests are giving way to quieter, but far more resonant, one-on-one work in classrooms, career centers, and communities. Whenever you hear people decry the lack of large-scale protest in the United States, even as the latest polls show more than 60 percent of people are opposed to the current war in Iraq, remember that the model for effectively challenging war is taking a different shape.

People from all walks of life are finding inspiration and success in working locally to educate students and mobilize against military recruitment where it happens. We can see counter-recruitment asserting itself as a viable movement. Independently organized actions in Seattle [7], Austin [8], and Los Angeles [9], for example, contribute to a national context in which public schools around the country limit military recruiter access, a huge success by any measure. Schools and communities are now considering deeper questions about the increasing militarization of our culture and recognizing the need for schools to teach and weave peace into the minds and aspirations of our children.

We believe that a hundred thousand marching one day every six months is not as effective as one thousand people talking to students every day.

One Person At a Time

Once, during one of my regular visits to a small public high school near my house, I met Marissa, a young woman who was excited and fearful about life after graduation. Like many of the other students at her school, she was the daughter of a poor immigrant family and had come up through difficult circumstances.

But she was articulate, composed, bright, and ambitious. She wanted a better life and was willing to work for it. She'd taken the initiative as a middle-school student to find an alternative to the large, impersonal, and oftentimes violent high school in her district.

She'd embraced a self-directed internship program in psychology and had taken courses at the local community college. She'd been accepted into university. In a better world this young person would be rewarded for pulling herself up by her bootstraps and overcoming incredible odds to make a better future for herself and her community. She would have a full scholarship to pursue her dreams. Instead she was planning to join the military--they promised her $40K for college. She dreamed of becoming a psychiatrist and was promised a similar position in the Army. Marissa's decision to join was not based on politics or morality. It was a simple matter of economics.

Marissa takes me back nineteen years to when I was a young bootstrapper myself who believed that I could accomplish anything if I worked hard enough. When the recruiter sized me up, as they are trained to do, he saw a woman just dying to break out of her shell, to succeed. I joined the Army the spring of my senior year, when the ink on my acceptance letter to Stanford was still fresh. My parents couldn't help me pay for school, but the recruiter, who had a desk in the career center and had been my mentor, promised that the military would make my dreams come true.

When I looked into Marissa's eyes I saw myself, and I knew that the best way to discuss joining the military was to tell the story of my experience as a soldier. As we sat together that afternoon, I told her about how I never received the $20K in loan repayments that they'd promised me. I told her about how I didn't make the money I thought I would--that if I'd worked at McDonalds, I could have made more and at least been able to quit when something better came along. I told her about how they made me cut my hair short, remove my braces, cover my tattoo, and take off all of my rings.

I told her about chanting "Kill the people, burn the village" while marching over five miles with hundreds of other women, and about how that chant still runs through my veins to this day, even though I was raised by my family and church to believe that killing is wrong. I told her about how my hospital unit went to the Persian Gulf to deal with the over one hundred suicides by American soldiers that occurred in less than four weeks. And how poorly the government treats veterans, as I witnessed in the cramped hospital rooms in the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs medical facilities.

I told her how "Stop Loss" keeps soldiers in the service even after they have honorably served their time. How being deployed will interrupt her studies and how there are many soldiers headed to Iraq for the third time in four years -- imagine being a first-year college student at twenty-two. About how I met a young woman paralyzed at the age of twenty-three from a roadside bomb in Iraq and how she now has to sleep in the living room of her mom's house because her wheelchair doesn't fit through any other door.

I told her about how one in three young women in the military endures harassment, sexual abuse, and/or rape--and that I was one of them. About how my drill sergeant tried to take advantage of me. About what it's like to be a woman in a male world, where rank is everything and you can't have it. About what it's like to be a person of color (and half of the enlisted women in the military are African-American) in an oppressive system that feels the closest to slavery of all that I have experienced.

After all that, shared not in a preachy way but in a respectful "did you know?" kind of way, she had questions. Like, how could what you are telling me be so different from what I see in the ads--and from my talks with the recruiter? I explained that recruiters only give one side of the story because their goal is to get you to sign up. But, I continued, you need much more information to make the right decision for yourself. I told her that since I was in the military and am a veteran, I could help her to make an informed decision. Perhaps you should wait and do a bit more research before signing the bottom line? Perhaps we could go to the Foundation Center in San Francisco to look for more scholarships--I'll take you. Perhaps we can review the financial aid package again and see if you can pick up work study, or more loans. I told her, don't be afraid of loans--it's the best investment that you can make for yourself. I told her that despite joining the Army, I ended up paying for my Stanford education on my own. Just sent in my last payment in November of 2004, and I jumped up and down and screamed, "I did it!" to my dog.

This is what counter-recruitment looks like. A conversation. Some information. My arm around a young, confused person trying to do right. Some stories to balance out the $4 billion in slick ads that suggest to this young lady that the military can offer her freedom and a future. Our conversation ended the way they all do -- Marissa is going back to the drawing board (with my help) to find other ways to pay for school and to live her best life.