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Uncle Sam on the
prowl
By Katherine Stapp
NEW YORK - A couple of months ago, Kim
Rosario found an improbable email message in her
mail inbox.
The mother of a United States
soldier, Rosario travels the country publicly
denouncing Washington's policies in Iraq, and is a
featured speaker at an upcoming rally in New
York's Central Park to mark the second anniversary
of the March 19, 2003, invasion.
"It was
from the military, asking if I've ever considered
a career in the navy," Rosario recalled. "I said I
might if you send my son back from Iraq!"
Unintended irony aside, she believes the
offer is a sign of the Pentagon's growing
desperation to counter dwindling recruitment
numbers - especially in the lower-income
communities once viewed as fertile ground.
Reflecting the skepticism felt by many
people of color toward the Iraq invasion, a study
commissioned for the US Army last August concluded
that "more African-Americans identify having to
fight for a cause they don't support as a barrier
to military service".
It added that
attitudes among youth in general toward the army
had taken a downhill turn. "In the past, barriers
were about inconvenience or preference for another
life choice," the study said. "Now they have
switched to something quite different: fear of
death or injury."
Five years ago blacks
made up 23.5% of US Army recruits. Today, they are
less than 14%.
Rosario and others are
quick to point out that the low numbers are not
for a lack of zeal on the part of military
recruiters. "I see them in the subways and the
streets, right around the time kids are coming
home from school," said Rosario, who has started
speaking at local high schools to urge students
not to enlist. "They target low-income
neighborhoods, and they use really young guys who
look like teenagers to hook them in."
Under President George W Bush's "No Child
Left Behind" plan, public high schools must
provide military recruiters with contact
information for every student or face a cutoff of
federal aid.
"Kids tell me that not only
do the recruiters call them at home, but they have
copies of their grades, and will say, 'So Johnny,
you're not doing very well in class. How are you
going to get into college?'" Rosario said. "There
is an opt-out form, but a lot of parents don't
know about it."
If the shortage of new
soldiers persists, many worry that the government
will be forced to reintroduce a compulsory
military draft for the first time since the
Vietnam War.
There are already signs that
the Selective Service System (SSS), as it is
known, is gearing up for business. By March 31,
the SSS boards in every state must certify to
Washington that they are ready to induct the first
batch of young men within 75 days.
"They're putting in place the mechanisms
to actually do a draft," said Dustin Langley, a
spokesman for the Troops Out Now Coalition
representing more than 400 labor, community and
human-rights groups.
"In the past the SSS
has basically been a mailbox. They haven't even
prosecuted people for not registering," he said.
"In their latest performance plan, they talk about
increasing efficiency, but it is more than that.
The report goes way beyond basic housekeeping.
"They need two sets of boots at home for
every one on the ground overseas. If you do the
math, it's clear that they can't maintain the
current level of the Iraq occupation - let alone
send troops anywhere else - without a draft. It's
impossible."
Community activists note that
youth of color are already being deployed at
higher rates than whites. Minority groups make up
35% of the military, and black servicemen and
women alone make up 20% of the total. That far
outstrips the percentage of blacks in US society,
where the figure is about 12%.
Nellie
Hester Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council, a
group that works for affordable housing, describes
the current situation as equal to "an economic
draft".
"Blacks and Latinos and people of
color are dying disproportionately in this war,
and they are mostly young people who joined
because they saw themselves as having very little
future in the US economy," she said.
"In
the Harlems throughout the United States, we have
seen the direct connection between the cuts in
social programs and the new US$81 billion that has
been appropriated for the war," Bailey said.
"Not to mention the unforgivable and
unimaginable permanent damage to the young men and
women coming back wounded and psychologically
scarred, and the ones who will never return to
their communities," she added.
As part of
the Troops Out Now Coalition organizing for March
19, Bailey also emphasized that the demonstration
planned from Harlem to Central Park would dispel
once and for all the notion that anti-war activism
has a white face.
"I am so tired of the
established anti-war movement pointing their
fingers at communities of color and saying,
'You're not doing your part'," Bailey said. "We
must have a principled united front against this
war, but there is a tremendous disconnect.
"United for Peace and Justice [UFPJ, a
major activist group] has not signed on and that
is a travesty," she continued. "They will no
longer be able to distance their agenda from
communities like Harlem and portray themselves as
a liberal organization."
UFPJ's national coordinator,
Leslie Cagan, told IPS that the situation was
"complicated". "Building alliances and
strengthening the multi-racial character of the
movement is a concern that we take very
seriously," she said. "At our recent national
meeting, more than half of the new steering
committee was people
of
color.
"We're not
trying to minimize the [Troops Out Now
Coalition's] contribution, they're certainly part
of the anti-war movement. We haven't said anything
negative about the Central Park rally, and in fact
many member groups of UFPJ will be there."
However, Cagan said that early outreach
materials drafted by the coalition include
language supporting the Iraqi resistance, which
was a significant political difference with UFPJ,
an umbrella coalition of 1,000 national and local
groups.
"It's not that we have a negative
position on the resistance, we just don't have a
position," she said.
Others told IPS that
regardless of who endorses the New York rally, new
alliances have been built among a broad spectrum
of communities and groups that will last well
beyond March 19.
"The success of the
coalition has been a wonderful, wonderful
surprise," said Nana Soul, a singer and activist
featured on a new anti-war compact disc by Black
Waxx records.
"We're trying to energize
people that normally wouldn't come out, first and
foremost, people of color," she explained. "Harlem
is the Mecca of black culture, and we felt it
would be very symbolic for us to start there."
The coalition is planning to file suit
early next week to demand the right to march down
New York's ritzy Fifth Avenue, which has been
declared off-limits by the city. Organizers note a
tradition dating back to the Vietnam War, when one
of the biggest local groupings was called the
Fifth Avenue Peace Parade.
They are also
still angry at decisions by officials to refuse a
Central Park permit to protesters during last
August's Republican National Convention, and to
block a Fifth Avenue march in February 2003, when
an estimated 10 million peace activists rallied
around the world.
"There has been an
ongoing pattern of denying, attacking and
restricting the right to political dissent,"
Langley said. "At some point, we have to draw a
line in the sand."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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