Tonight we took our message for Marquette University To Teach War No More to the streets once again. However, this time our reception was much better than ever before. Naturally, this time our audience was more open to our message, since they were members of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, PSJA, or peace and justice persons coming to hear Sister Helen Prejean (of “Dead Man Walking” fame) talk about the injustice of the death penalty in our society.
Our main message tonight was that ‘Marquette hosts the PSJA for three days on campus but the Army, Navy/Marines and Air Force for 365 days a year on campus.’ Our hope is that as people learn more about the moral issue of using schools, particularly Catholic ones, as military training bases they will wake up and demand demilitarization of our society. To find out if your local college or university is just a military partner school or actually hosts a military base on campus check out the Nonviolent Action web page.
We all knew about the JROTC, the high school program to recruit and train high school youth for the military. However last night our house guest told us about the Department of Defense’s Starbase youth program for grade school kids. The vision statement of Starbase is “To raise the interest and improve the knowledge and skills of at-risk youth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which will provide for a highly educated and skilled American workforce that can meet the advanced technological requirements of the Department of Defense.” The program takes youth to military bases and trains them in skills that “will nurture a winning network of collaborators and build mutual loyalty” of youth and military.
Already our culture is engrossed in violence, TV, video games, wars, guns, street violence and more. Now the military is dipping down to grade schools to prepare kids to kill or be killed. In the slippery road to demilitarization of our society what is next, pre-schools on military bases? Oh, we have that already. How young will the militarization of our society go?
Comments
J Bennett — 11 October 2009, 09:39
I just read an article in MOther JOnes about how the Militaary and the Pentagon collect and archive information about our youth. They have sites all over the internet masquerading as seemilngly innocuous site like how to prepare for tests,those cute little quizzes, etc. that collect informaton about individuals. When a recruitment official calls your son or daughter they already know more about them than you do. It’s disgusting and subversive to say the least. There is also and “opt out” of the No Child Left Behind provision that requires schools to relay demographic information to the Military. Unfortunately many schools don’t make this well known beause they loose federal money.
My advice is to turn off the TV, don’t purchse violent movies or video games, let your kids know they are being monitored, expain what that means in terms of thier future and the future of our country and the world.
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