STOP-LOSS & WHAT IS TO BE DONE
STOP-LOSS & WHAT IS TO BE DONE
Stan Goff
May 20, 2005
Almost invariably after I publish a rant or re-post anything that charges up people’s capacity for outrage, I observe a two-fold and contradictory response. Half of that response is “Hell YEAH! This is outrageous!” The other half of the response is almost always, “But what can we mere mortals do?” I can only speculate about the American tendency, pronounced among progressives, to reflexively demoralize oursleves. Something to do with concurrently demobilizing ourselves so we don’t have to do anything except express outrage? So I am not ranting now. I am making a concrete suggestion for anyone who has been repining about not knowing what to do.
Anyone who has traveled in a U.S. airport lately has seen the proliferation of 50-something menin desert camouflage uniforms. This is an indicator of the recruitment and retention crisis in the U.S. military. More and more aging Reservists are being called up. The administration does not want a draft, because it would mobilize a whole new sector of the population against the war. The mojroty of Americans already report tha tthey think the war was a bad idea. In March, the Army raised the maximum age for recruits from 34 to 39 years old, to expand the personnel pool from approximately 60 million to 82 million. The Army’s basic training is now suffering an almost 30% shortfall. The Marines for the first time in an age has suffered serial monthly recruiting shortfalls. Reserves aznd National Guards are marely making half their quotas. Recruiters are under so much pressure that they are teaching prospects how to beat a piss test and how to forge a high school diploma. Recruting budgets for the armed serves went from $300 million a year to $600 million a year, which includes giveaway war-game DVDs, access to roving million-dollar game-vans, and forced federal access to high schools under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Essential military occupational specialties (MOS’s) are being cycled through Iraq with increasingly short breaks in between deployments, family crises are multiplying, divorce rates are rising, desertion rates are mounting, and recruitment standards are being scaled down.
This is the face of institutional degradation; and at the end of the road, wherever that is – as was the case by 1971 in Vietnam – the final outcome is a military that fails to function as an effective fighting force.
Now add the 9th Circuit Court of appeals, that just rendered the only value of the enlistment contract — as it applies to a discharge date — is to wipe the enlistee’s ass with the paper. That discharge date is now effectively meaningless. The military can keep enlistees indefinitely. Stop Loss, the Department of Defense policy that allows the involuntary extension of military service contracts – that is, delaying service members’ discharge dates – has become critical to blunt this precarious attrition. In Santiago v. Rumsfeld, a suit filed against DoD for Stop Loss, the 9th Circuit ruled this April that Stop Loss is valid. Not only did they rule that Stop Loss is valid, but Department of Defense lawyers included their own assertion – for “administrative convenience†– that Stop Loss could remaining effect for Emiliano Santiago, who had completed his eight year commitment only to be involuntarily extended and shipped back to Afghanistan, resetting his termination date to Christmas Eve, 2031! Santiago is already 27, which means the military has now asserted its authority to retain him in the military until he is 53 years old.
So what am I leading up to right now?
Every recruiting station in the country, and every high school in the country, is local. So anyone inclined to do anything about the Bush administration or the imperial adventure in Iraq can target these local institutions for counter-recruitment.
Every young person we convince not to go in hastens the arrival of that nodal point when the failure of efficacy for an increasingly broken military forces the ruling class to bring them home and end the occupation.
A good line I cribbed from the film, “The Firm,” is “It ain’t sexy, but it’s got teeth.”
The average Army recruiter (or Marine, or whatever) only brings in a handful of kids each month. Deny them two or three, and replicate this denial acorss the U.S., and we will materially contribute to disrupting the ability of the Bush administration and-or their successors from continuing in Southwest Asia. It’s not as pretty as a big demonstration on the mall in Washington DC, but it certainly demands the attention of the ruling clique a lot more than our expressive fury at a rally.
There are two pieces to this activity that anyone can do, and they are both rooted in our actual geographic communities. (Imagine that!)
(1) Force local high schools to send a separate and explicit letter to each family of a high school student informing them of their right ( buried in the fine print of the No Child Left a Dime Act) to “opt out” of the school giving the student’s contact information to military recruiters. Include an actual “opt out” letter with a return envelope, and ensure this information is separate and distinct from the rest of the beginning-of-school-year orientation mailings.
(2) Organize shifts to hover over recruitment offices with literature and information that the recruiters do not want these kids to see. Most importantly, now we can honestly tell these youngsters that their discharge date is the biggest lie the recruiter is telling them. Once they are in, the military owns them.
There is information on how to do all this at the Veterans for Peace site, the American Friends Service Committee “Youth and Militarism” section, and at Voices from the Wilderness. Any google-search of the word “counter-recruitment” will yield mad results.
Go forth. Break the machine!
peggy:
Yay, Stan! This is perfect. I would only suggest that high-schoolers themselves be encouraged to mobilize in this effort. If any reader of this blog is high-school aged, and if you have been annoyed by a recruiter, take the opportunity to do some counter-recruiting of the kind Stan suggests.
20 May 2005, 5:48 pmLeander:
The problem is one of communication - information if you wish. The American people are just not being told what the situation really is.
20 May 2005, 6:47 pmThe average American high-schooler has never opened a book in his/her life. That there are any recruits at all is the result of the combination of low American educational standards and media misinformation. Americans get their “representation of reality” from the movies - where everything is black and white, “good guys” and “bad guys”. In fact we have a nation of dummies. They will only wake up, if at all, as casualities climb and the draft is inevitably reintroduced. But even then I have my doubts. High-schoolers and college students are far less capable of critical thinking then they were in the 60s - once again blame a collapsing educational system and the brainwashing by a media dominated by the corporations and …
Stan:
Actually you are wrong. Counter-recruitment works, and we know that because it is already working all over the country with people who are not prepared to dismiss so easily.
While there is no doubt that our consumerist culture and our highly effective indoctrination media mystify the masses, that can never serve as an excuse for not working against all these forces.
I have grown tired of the incessant crying about the media and the schools. Capitalist society produces its own ruling class ideology. This shouldn’t surprise us, and it’s not just some moral failure. In fact, we should expect it to do just exactly that. Consciousness of this is not a license to flaunt out own “superiority” over those who are still mystified. Real consciousness implies real responsibility to do something about it.
I’m the first to tell anyone who will listen that American society is as befuddled and indoctrinated as 10th Century fiefdom, but when we point that out, we also have the responsibility to (1) point out that this is NOT a natural state, (2) remind people that with time this condition can and will change, and (3) encourage active resistance. Otherwise we are just making excuses for not doing anything and flaunting our good fortune (to have been exposed to other ways of seeing) as some innate personal superiority (which it ain’t).
I’m not picking on you personally, Leander. Since my invective rant on Galloway’s knockout at the Senate, I have received hundreds of supportive emails, but many of them accentuated my castigation of the American culture of intellectual flab, and failed to note that I said this WILL change. Not CAN change. WILL. Everyone seems more than willing to get mad for the pure cathartic pleasure of it, but there is less enthusiasm for doing the work that will make that inevitable change one that breaks to the masses instead of inaugurating a new American fascism.
As an irrascible commander of mine once told people, “Everyone wants to be Jesus, but nobody wants to die.”
This system is exposed, like the heel of Achilles, right now, big time. Overstretch in a losing war, all eggs in the miltiary basket, institutional crisis emerging, and this is the kind of strategic window of opportunity that opens for the left once in a lifetime. We can focus our limited numbers on a key activity (recruiting) and have a direct, material impact… accelerating the process of institutional decay and the political crisis that goes with it.
No point in even hiding that agenda. A Haitian comrade once told me, “People think we can make the revolution while the bourgeoisie is asleep. But the bourgeoisie never sleeps, so we have to make the revolution right in front of them.” Counter-recruitment doesn’t only have the advantage of being strategically incisive, it is a way for the left to connect with the parents of working class kids and with workng class youth. Hello?
We should always expect our enemy to act like our enemy. Then we can be clear that we have to act like their enemy… and act like an enemy with more smarts, more mental toughness, and more endurance than they have (since they have the resources).
20 May 2005, 9:01 pmPat Villano:
Great stuff, Stan. Especially regarding the demonstration of real opposition by a BRITISH MP instead of anyone in the Democratic party, with a few exceptions. (Can somebody please get rid of Hillary Clinton? Just looking at her is almost as infuriating as looking/listening to Bush.)
20 May 2005, 10:52 pmAs for your comments that things WILL change, of course you’re right. As i’m sure you’ve discussed in other columns, we are entering the Peak Oil era. Once access to cheap oil runs out (which is already obviously happening), the entire machinery of our economic system is going to gasp and wither. Life as americans now know it is finished, and we’ll have no choice but to shift to more localized economies. Transportation will radically change, which would seem to limit our large-scale ‘forays’ into foreign territory. Its gonna be very harsh, but all for the better.
We’re already witnessing massive recruitment reductions despite the piss-poor job of a corporate-owned media, and the flat-out lies told to kids to join up. I find that very inspiring. Despite dismal education levels in this nation, kids just ain’t that dumb, and its being proven. I’ll be spending some time at local high schools and the nearest recruitment center soon, with some literature of my own to hand out. Thanks, Stan.
peggy:
Although “the average american high-schooler” may never have opened a book, I will bet my house and car that more than half of American high-schoolers have opened the internet, and not only opened it but explored it assiduously. On the internet it is only a matter of seek and find, in a few seconds. If you say teenagers are not motivated to learn about the world by any means possible, I say you know neither teenagers nor the world. Are you, Mr.Grown-Up Guy, smarter or more curious than the “average american high-schooler”? Think again. Get in or get out.
20 May 2005, 11:34 pmgogol:
Socko! I only discovered you today through a reposting by Wolcott.
21 May 2005, 3:55 amMark Hartford:
“It’s the war stupid!” That should be the slogan for the US military recruiters’ stand down. The Army and Marines are having trouble recruiting people because they are being asked to fight and sometimes die in an illegal and immoral war of aggression.
It isn’t about patriotism or fear of being killed. Many of us have offered ourselves up to the military in the past as a responsibility we have to our country. Many of us enlisted in the past because of the educational opportunities promised us by recruiters. Many of us were offered the “choice” to join or go to jail for some trouble we were in.
Some young people continue to join for these reasons. It’s known by veterans and others as the “economic draft.” The rest of today’s young people that normally make up the difference for recruiters are no less patriotic then we were… just maybe a little smarter. They know a bad war when they smell one.
Stop the war, recruitment will go up. This is not a war to protect America. This isn’t about defending freedom or democracy. It is a war for oil. Continue the war, the rest of you parents better get used to the idea of your child or grandchild someday being drafted to fight a war most civilized countries have come to believe is tantamount to a war crime.
This is written today to honor the brave young men from the Columbus area who have died recently in Iraq.
DMZvet
_________________
21 May 2005, 9:53 amMark Hartford
US Army 1966-196
1/23rd Inf. 2nd Inf Div.
Korean DMZ 1966-1967
Stan:
Here is a very rough breakdown of numbers. Each month the Army wants to send 7,050 recruits to Basic Training. In February, when the shortfalls began to bite hard, they sent 5,114. There are approximately 7,500 recruiting offices in the United States. So they have to get an average of one recruit a month to keep things ticking along. Bigger, more metropolitan offices = more people. These offices are averaging one recruits (what?) maybe every six weeks. Denial of one person… just one… is devastating. Letters to local papers with web links on CR, leafletting high schools, getting the “opt out” letters, and conducting CR in front of recruitment offices with CREDIBLE information… these simple, safe, legal activities (though they require a commitment of time and energy) can, for the time being, hit the empire where it hurts.
21 May 2005, 1:00 pmMary Hough:
I love your straight talk…it is time to take action. There are other things we can do…stop buying newspapers at least one day a week, stop buying magazines, turn off the TV except for C-Span. We can let the media know, enough is enough of supporting this administrations wars at our expense. We could even try for an international media boycott. These people only understand money.
Support John Conyers, he has a blog now: http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000084.htm
21 May 2005, 5:24 pmConyers has 89 representatives willing to sign a letter asking Bush about the British memo. He is the only dem with a spine and they are going to go after him like Galloway.
Keep up the pressure on the dems…they deserve it for not taking a position on anything except me too …but I would do it different. Quit backing everything Bush wants to do.
Frank Castleman:
It appears to me, a conservative, that most of you have forgotten the reason we have a military. You instead vilify the recruitment efforts of the branches of service while expecting them to protect you. This is an incompatability that just doesn’t wash.
As for Galloway, his rhetoric doesn’t match the records produced. So who’s lying, him or the records? BTW, I have the same opinion of “our” Republican leaders has you seem to have of your Democrat leaders.
Thanks for letting me say my piece.
21 May 2005, 7:59 pmStan:
You’re welcome.
But let me say, just speaking for myself, that I am not a Democrat and never have been. So there is no “our” Democrats for some of us. Even when I didn’t know the system for what it was, I was always registered to vote as an independent.
The United States spends more on its military than all other militaries in the world combined (the DoD budget doesn’t show all that spending, much of it hidden in other agencies and programs). At the same time, we have over 800 military installations around the world. Most other coutnries have nothing more than their miltiary attache at embassies. We are protected by two oceans from any invasion — as if any country could invade a place this vast with an average of four firearms per household. I can’t bring myself to fear Canada or Mexico. The asymmetric strikes of 9-11 were (1) provoked by US foreign policy, and (2) could not have been stopped by the size of our conventional military.
The primary function of the US military is to preserve US *ruling class* dominance over other countries and the world system, NOT to protect Americans in the way that is generally and incorrectly understood.
Those of us who argue for hobbling the US military right now also understand that neither the world nor “we” are safer now than before the invasion of Southwest Asia; the facts actually show the opposite to be true. When the US government gives the withdrawal order, without leaving bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will stand down our efforts to assist the Bush administration in its crippling of the military as an effective fighting force.
21 May 2005, 8:13 pmGlenn Goldman:
It would be great if there was a central web-based resource for anti-war leaflets and other literature. Lots of people are isolated in small communities and don’t have the time or confidence to write compelling messages. Does anyone know of such a resource?
21 May 2005, 11:25 pmnathaniel heidenheimer:
I agree that the dems need to be attacked now almost more than the republicans. Just think of how much energy and money was waisted with their false opposites campaign in 2004. The time to publicly blast the dems out of the water is now, before they can rewaste another five hundred million dollars and five hundred million volunteer hours again in 2008 for a candidate who wants promises to raze a thousand iragi villages to raise corporate cash. False opposites are the most effective means of indoctrination. Therefor lets smasn the dems clay feet as early as possible. How? Hear in NYC we have established a free speech speak out at Union Square. The Police are constatntly taking our bull-horn, but I thing we have reached a point where the public sphere is so daily diminished that it needs to be regularly occupied so that this diminishment is plain to see. This happens when the police arrest us.
22 May 2005, 4:04 pmElliott Cheifetz:
Previous to the 2004 election I worked going door to door for ACT (America Coming Together) and I still feel dirty. To really rub it in I never got my last paycheck. And then of course I found out that George Soros, who was major funder of ACT, is part of the Carlyle group (according to the Wallstreet journal)!! The outright and complete betrayal by the Dems hurt but hopefully acted as a much needed wake up call for large portions of the public. So yeah, all power to Left-wing bashing of the Democrats! Maybe you guys are too busy doing things that actually matter to listen to Air America radio but a good deal of sickening Clintonphilia seems to go on there and it is very discouraging. Maybe the only exception on the line up is Mike Malloy’s show in which he calls Clinton “the best republican president we’ve had for some time.” He spends most of his show in measured outrage which I find cathartic to listen to, but not diminishing of energy to actually take action. As a college age student (not in college) I am somewhat apprehensive about actually going to school. I don’t want to just go through college and then after a couple years of struggling fall into a decent job which allows me some creative/financial freedom (though the idea that even that will be possible is in doubt). This website is definitely an inspiring source of political dialogue for me and since I happen to live about 5 blocks away from an army recruitment center I should be passing out leaflets within the next 24 hours. But the long term looks so bleak, even when the trends look positive. How do we accelerate those positive trends? After all, if the war profiteers failure is inevitable, then their failure isn’t really a personaly victory for humanity/the revolution/or whatever. Hastening the day of that failure is one kind of victory, but can’t there be others? What are we building, or growing, in the meantime to help make a better world for all of us? Sorry if that post was all over the place but I felt the need.
23 May 2005, 8:02 amhoward:
Check this site out for a list of local anti-recruitment efforts that are already up and running:
http://www.youthandthemilitary.org/orgs.htm
23 May 2005, 10:54 amOzzie Maland:
Chomski a few years back envisioned a Brazilianized USA in which the top 1% of the population, in economic terms, used the next 19% to provide all the necessities — gated communities connected by secured transportation lines, plus food, health care, etc. The bottom 80% would simply be excluded and left to survive in a state of nature. To get to this dystopia, robots would be key, and lo and behold, the military is now pressing for robotic replacement of live military forces. The research to get the military robots would transfer over
24 May 2005, 6:47 pmto enable robots to handle the marketing of consumer goods, so such research has a multi-purpose priority. The goal of interfering with recruitment of live military personnel may be short-sighted, although
I hold hopes for that and for preventing the Chomskian dystopia from materializing. Ozzie Maland
peggy:
Ozzie - If some portion of humanity were “left to survive in a state of nature,” that might not be so bad. But even the water under the feet of the poor has been expropriated by international corporate interests (see Coca-Cola Dasani). Fishing rights gone. Hunting rights gone. Foraging rights gone. All cultivable land gone to profit at the cost of subsistance. Massive die-offs of humanity are happening now. This is worse than dystopia. Ultimately some of the rich and protected may survive and even be happy for a while. But those ones are, imho, the dregs of the species. They will not be able to get along without the masses that they have exterminated.
25 May 2005, 5:31 ammet:
In Seattle, schools, parents and students are getting very involved in the counter-recruiting action. See
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/224957_recruit19.html
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/225552_protest24.html
Don’t sell teenagers short!
26 May 2005, 8:58 amStan:
Here’s a possible two-sided flyer from today’s CP:
May 26, 2005
Military Enlistment: or When a Contract Isn’t Contract
Santiago v. Rumsfeld
By JORGE MARISCAL
It is an axiom among activists working in the area of counter-recruitment that the enlistment contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. What this means in practical terms is that whatever a recruiter promises to deliver to a new recruit-specific jobs or assignment, length of service, benefits, or even citizenship-can be withdrawn or changed at any time.
Section C, Paragraph 9(b) of the enlistment contract states:
“Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces regardless of the provisions of this enlistment/reenlistment document.”
While this loophole is well known in counter-recruitment circles, it obviously is not something recruiters emphasize to young people and their families. Major David Griesmer, public affairs officer for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command based in Quantico, Virginia, for example, recently described the recruitment process to the San Francisco Chronicle:
“If you don’t like what you’re hearing, you can walk away. And I can tell you that everything is spelled out in a contract when the applicant signs.”
But the Pentagon’s stand down of all recruitment activities on May 20 was a warning flag signaling widespread recruiter deception and unethical conduct. More important, the recent case brought by a National Guard soldier against the Pentagon puts the lie to Major Griesmer’s claim and sheds new light on the true nature of the military enlistment contract, a contract that according to this recent court decision is no contract at all.
In Santiago v. Rumsfeld, the curtain concealing the realities of military service is pulled back to reveal the literal meaning of G.I. (government issue) or the soldier as property. Emiliano Santiago, the young Mexican immigrant who brought the case, was not a political activist and did not oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The son of migrant farmworkers, he enlisted in the Oregon National Guard for one of the more intangible reasons young people sign up-the lure of the uniform. He recalls his recruiter telling him that the National Guard would never leave the United States “unless there was World War III.”
For almost eight years, the recruiter’s partial truth held up for Santiago even though thousands of National Guard troops already had been sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. With only two weeks left in the Guard, Santiago was ordered to report to Fort Sill where his unit was prepariing for deployment to Afghanistan.
Because his term of enlistment was technically over Santiago decided to challenge the government. Currently more than a dozen soldiers affected by the so-called stop-loss policy have filed similar lawsuits. Between 40,000 and 50,000 active-duty, reserve, and National Guard personnel have had their terms extended under the policy since 2001.
Santiago and his attorneys lost the first round in the U.S. District Court in Oregon, and immediately appealed to the U.S. Ninth Circuit. On May 13, 2005, a panel of three judges upheld the lower court’s ruling and thereby validated the government’s position.
In their opinion, the judges invoked Title 10 § 12305(a) of the U.S. Code which reads in part:
“the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States.”
According to Santiago’s lawyers, such presidential power is granted only when Congress has declared war or a national emergency. President Bush declared a national emergency on September 14, 2001 but Congress has yet to do so. The presidential decree has been renewed each year since 2001 even though U.S. Code Title 50 § 1622 reads:
“Not later than six months after a national emergency is declared, and not later than the end of each six-month period thereafter that such emergency continues, each House of Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether that emergency shall be terminated..”
The Ninth Circuit Court’s decision underwrites the almost unlimited power of the executive branch in national security situations, affirming the government’s contention that “threre is no basis for the notion that principles of construction drawn from commercial contract disputes can be invoked to transform a vital federal statute into a dead letter, especially in the crucial area of the President’s power to command the military and protect this Nation’s security.”
Of greater interest to counter-recruitment activists are the arguments made about the legal status of military personnel. In both the district court case and the Ninth Circuit case government lawyers argued that contractual obligations did not apply in the Santiago case because upon entering the military the status of a “citizen” shifts to that of “soldier.”
Basing its argument on Bell v. United States (1961), itself based on an 1890 decision, the government stipulated: “Enlistment in the armed forces does not constitute merely a bargain between two parties, but effects a change of status by which ‘the citizen becomes a soldier.’” Under this new status, “common law contract principles yield to federal statutes and regulations.” The government further argued: “The terms of an enlistment contract certainly cannot circumscribe the authority of the Presidentto conduct the nation’s military policy.”
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling reiterated that the military enlistment contract “provides notice that changes in federal law-even if inconsistent with the written terms of the contract-would apply” given that “the contract itself specifies that unlisted contingencies may cause an alteration in the agreed upn terms.” In short, every recruit who signs an enlistment contract has just signed away his or her fundamental rights as a U.S. citizen.
Acknowledging the “disruption, hardship, and risk that extension of his enlistment is causing Santiago to endure,” the Ninth Circuit nevertheless upheld the original decision and in effect sent Santiago packing to Afghanistan. Post-trial comments by the Pentagon spokesmen denied that the purpose of stop-loss orders was to compensate for recent recruitment shortfalls.
Rather, argued Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, “It’s about teams I think most Americans would prefer that, even if they’re opposed to the war, that they fight together as teams.” Apparently, as Emiliano Santiago learned the hard way, the U.S. military is a “team” that recruits young men and women under false pretenses and then never allows them to quit. Santiago’s new estmated date of separation from the National Guard is December 25, 2031. The government has assured him that the date is simply an “administrative convenience.”
Jorge Mariscal teaches Chicano Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of Project YANO (San Diego), a counter-recruitment and anti-militarism organization. Visit his blog at: jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/ He can be reached at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu
26 May 2005, 2:44 pmPer Fagereng:
If I had the money I’d print up a million copies of General Smedley Butler’s “War Is a Racket — and hand them out at recruiting offices and high school campuses.
26 May 2005, 7:46 pmScott:
Stan,
Our local peace & justice group in Evanston, IL. (neighborsforpeace.org) worked with teachers and students at Evanston Township High School back in 2003 on the ‘No Child’ issue as it relates to parental consent and giving student info to recruiters.
I don’t know if this would work in other areas, but we succeeded in getting Evanston high school to send out an “opt-in” mailing instead of an “opt-out” mailing. Since the issue was student privacy and parental consent was required to disclose info, we argued before the school board that truly informed consent would be better served by requiring an opt-in form, instead of assuming consent in the absence of an opt-out letter.
Assuming a parent consents to the disclosure unless they send in the form saying no is a weak protection of privacy compared to requiring signed consent for the disclosure to take place at all. Obviously this made things more difficult for recruiters, a nice secondary gain alognside protecting students’ privacy.
But I don’t know if this small victory was due to laws and/or school board rules unique to my state and school district, or if it was based on language in the ‘No Child’ act, allowing this approach at other schools. Worth looking into though for those working on cunter-recruitment in schools.
Keep up the good work,
27 May 2005, 6:45 amScott
Audrey:
The Board of Education for the Detroit Public Schools has just (“just†as in the meeting might still be going on, but I left after our presentation) unanimously approved granting our local Truth-in-Recruiting / Alternatives to Enlistment organization “equal access†in the Detroit schools. It’s the 10th largest school district in the country, so this feels significant.
The meeting itself was fairly charged, as 430 teachers have received layoff notices effective this coming Tuesday, and there are all sorts of allegations revolving around the hiring process of a new superintendent. We were on the agenda, after months of other members in my group presenting to subcommittees of various sorts, and walked into news crews and the Detroit Public School Police refusing to let any more people enter the building. Eventually they decided to let people through the metal detectors into the lobby in a holding area to wait for empty seats.
So we found ourselves unexpectedly speaking to a large crowd that wasn’t there at all for a presentation on recruitment tactics or the stop-loss program, and there were some very angry people among them. Before we spoke, one guy was hauled out by police. At one point one of the board members moved to disband the superintendent hiring committee and cancel all the candidate interviews scheduled for tomorrow, whereupon another of the board members suggested he be disbanded. The person in charge had to keep banging the gavel and pleading with the public to at least stop yelling at them while they were reading the motions, so they could hear what they were voting on. That was our warm up act.
Our portion turned into a mini counter-recruitment action in and of itself. We had good feedback (spontaneous applause and nobody yelled at us), and I think it’s the only thing the board agreed on all night.
Things that seem controversial suddenly aren’t, I guess, when they are presented after items like a proposal for the school board to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars buying cars for the local Police Department while laying off teachers (approved), or half a million dollars on a surveillance system because people are stealing the metal from the outdoor bleachers.
Monday I spoke at a parent teacher meeting at one of the schools, and before me there was a man from DPS maintenance. Parents were asking him when the school would get electricity on the top three floors, and if they could fix the boys bathroom upstairs, because the ceiling had collapsed from leaks and so they couldn’t open the door all the way. Wednesday my superintendent was telling us about another local school, in a very affluent suburb, where class wars have openly broken out. In the way that mobs of students will yell their sports team names at pep rallies, students have taken to yelling “Renters†or “Owners†at each other. I’m not sure why I’m throwing that all in here, except that I’m just observing how differently we’re received when we’re moving around in those negative spaces.
14 December 2006, 11:13 pm