September 11 Digital Archive

Bushwick students buck military

Title

Bushwick students buck military

Source

born-digital

Media Type

article

Original Name

The much-touted No Child Left Behind Act contains a little-known provision that allows military recr

Created by Author

yes

Described by Author

no

Date Entered

2002-12-01

VTMBH Article: Edition

44

VTMBH Article: Article Order

2

VTMBH Article: Title

Bushwick students buck military

VTMBH Article: Author

John Tarleton

VTMBH Article: Publication

The Indypendent

VTMBH Article: Original Language

English

VTMBH Article: Translator

VTMBH Article: Section

news

VTMBH Article: Blurb

The much-touted No Child Left Behind Act contains a little-known provision that allows military recruiters to get the inside scoop on high school students. Some students are making their response to these aggressive campaigns very clear: Bring college recruiters, not military recruiters.

VTMBH Article: Keywords

VTMBH Article: Body

Luis Reyes is a senior at Bushwick Outreach Center in Brooklyn who wants to study journalism in college. He recently discovered that military recruiters had the inside scoop on him.

They know my interests and everything, says Reyes, 19. Im already getting all kinds of letters and phone calls and whatnot.

The militarys individually targeted appeal to Reyes hasnt worked to date. He still hopes to start college next fall at Hofstra University. However, the high pressure recruiting experienced by Reyes and many of his friends suggests what lies ahead for students as the military aggressively makes use of a little-known provision in the 670 page No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.

The provision in the much-touted education bill requires high schools to provide military recruiters access to facilities as well as contact information for every studentor lose their federal aid.

The military would choose to be in every school in every classroom in every community, if they could, because overkill is their way of doing things, says Rick Jahnkow, director of the Project on Youth And Non-Military Opportunities (YANO), a San Diego-based group founded in 1984.

The military currently enlists 350,000 people a year. Its recruitment efforts have become increasingly sophisticated, and relentless, since it switched from the draft to an all-volunteer force in 1973 at the end of the Vietnam War.

It spends hundreds of millions of dollars to advertise on television, radio, web sites, outdoor ads, and in youth publications. It also operates Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) programs in 3,500 schools, holds summer camp programs on military bases for disadvantaged youth, and provides guidance counseling, after-school tutoring and dropout recovery programs in some troubled inner city schools. Mobile recruiting stations also appear in shopping malls, at sporting events and inside theaters at showings of popular pro-military movies.

In Bushwick, getting the message out also means calling prospective recruits as early as 6 a.m. and showing up at their workplaces and outside their churches, according to Reyes and Jesus Gonzalez, 17, a junior at Bushwick Outreach.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, students or their parents can sign an opt-out form to prevent information from being released. In late September, the citys Department of Education mailed the forms to parents of over a quarter million high school students, giving them an Oct. 15 reply deadline. Reyes says most Bushwick Outreach students were unaware of the forms and were barraged by recruiter appeals soon after the deadline passed.

The students frustration at their loss of privacy boiled over on Oct. 23 when about 60 of them held a protest in front of nearby Bushwick High School. They demanded a reversal of the opt-out form, which would allow their information to be released only with their permission.

Its for us to decide if we want to give them information, says Gonzalez, who along with Reyes is also an organizer for the Youth Power Project at Make the Road by Walking, a Bushwick-based community organization. If we want to sign up, we can walk down to the recruiting station on Myrtle Avenue.

Commander Edward Gehrke, head of Navy recruiting in New York, poured more fuel on the fire by responding to the protest in a letter to the New York Daily News, stating that most Bushwick students were plagued by police and drug problems and wouldnt be eligible to enlist if they tried.

Its clear what the high people in the Navy and the military think about people of color in poor neighborhoods, Gonzalez says.

Captain John Caldwell, public affairs officer for the Marine Corps 1st Recruiting District, which encompasses New York City, says the military is simply trying to offer students another opportunity. They get tons of information from colleges when they are looking at going to school, he says. Were also providing information that would help them get an education and a job.

Yet these promises of education and training are misleading, critics say. The present-day GI Bill is fraught with loopholes and stringent conditions that cause many soldiers to lose their educational benefits. Most soldiers train on equipment that is obsolete or has no civilian counterpart, or they perform specific functions on one or two machines, leaving them with few real world skills.

Somebody who was a cook at McDonalds, who learns how to pick up a tray of prepared food, put in a heater, heat it up and wrap it, couldnt walk in the door of a regular restaurant and say I want to be a chef, says John Judge, a longtime anti-recruitment activist based out of Washington, D.C.

The Bushwick action has since inspired other youth activists in the city. Youth Bloc, a citywide network of high school-age activists, has decided to launch a campaign against No Child Left Behind as well as JROTC, which is currently active in about 100 high schools across the city. Youth Bloc activists plan to visit a high school a week in each borough except Staten Island, giving presentations or leafleting outside.

Its our generation thats going to be the cannon fodder, says Mike Gould-Wartoffky, a Youth Bloc member and senior at Hunter College High School. We want our generation to be in the front lines of the anti-war movement, not the war.

The Bushwick students look to hold more anti-recruitment actions, but say their first priority is having more options in life than Army, Navy Air Force or Marines. Bring college recruiters, not military recruiters, Reyes says. F the military. These kids want to go to college.

VTMBH Article: Line Breaks

1

VTMBH Article: Date

2002-12-01

VTMBH Article: Thumb

VTMBH Article: Article File

VTMBH Article: Hit Count

476

Citation

“Bushwick students buck military,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed November 26, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/1389.