By Abigail Kramer

As the body counts rise in Iraq and Afghanistan, military recruiters in the United States must contend with an increasingly formidable mission of their own: to convince the nation's young people to join the ranks of a military at war.

After falling short of recruitment goals in February and March of this year, with another miss expected for April, the increasingly desperate U.S. Army and Marine Corps have dumped more money and personnel into the pursuit of new cadets. But in high schools and colleges across the country, a growing counter-recruitment movement is fighting to keep potential soldiers at home and out of uniform.

One recent battle in the war over recruitment was waged March 9 and 10 at San Francisco State University, when the military rented a booth at the university's two-day spring career fair. Students Against War showed up the first day with more than 150 protesters to picket air force and army recruiting tables. According to SAW member David Carr, protesters staged a peaceful teach-in around recruiters' tables until they left.

When two activists returned to the student center to pass out flyers the following day, police forcibly removed them from the building. In a letter to activists, university officials wrote that the protesters – who face possible suspension from school, while SAW and other groups face unspecified sanctions – were removed because their activities disrupted a university-sponsored event.

It was a scene that's becoming increasingly common across the country, one that pits a military that uses federal policies to force access into schools against activists who oppose unjust wars, recruiting efforts aimed at low-income people of color, and the military's discrimination against homosexuals.

As Carr told the Bay Guardian, "All we were doing was exercising our right to voice our grievances against the government. Military recruiters are predatory, deceptive, and discriminatory. Under the university's own antidiscrimination bylaws, it's them who should be removed, not us."

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Berenice Morales is a young woman caught in the middle of the recruitment struggle. A 17-year-old junior at Philip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco, Morales is not sure what she wants to do after she graduates next year. She's worried about the future.

When navy recruiters came to her Career Education class a couple weeks ago, they offered a solution that seemed too good to be true. "They said that they give you free money and pay everything for school," Morales told us. "Plus you get a job faster when you get out because you already have experience. At first I was concerned about going to war, but they were like, 'Oh, it's not true that we take you to war.' Most people in the navy don't go to Iraq – it's just a small percentage." About 10 percent of the active-duty navy was forward-deployed as of April 18.

Counter-recruitment activists say recruiters routinely assure potential cadets that they are extremely unlikely to see combat. "They make promises they can't keep," says Aimee Allison, an Oakland City Council candidate and army veteran who became a conscientious objector during the first Gulf War. Allison is one of a growing group of former soldiers who speak to students about the realities of military service.

"Recruiters are telling young people a number of falsities," Allison told us. "For example, they'll go after Asian and Latino youth and tell them they will get citizenship. The irony is that it really only kicks in after the person is killed in battle."

The most common promise recruiters use to entice young people into service, according to Allison, is that the military will finance their college education. In fact, G.I. Bill participants have to pay the military $100 a month during their first year of service in order to be eligible for education benefits later. That $1,200 deposit is nonrefundable, even though a Rand Corp. study conducted in 2000 found that only 16 percent of enlisted personnel who complete four years in the military ever receive money for school.

Equally disingenuous, Allison says, are recruiters' promises of job training and career development. "They lie about the kinds of jobs [recruits] will get. The military doesn't have to make any promises – you might sign up to be a fighter pilot and end up being a mail clerk."

Several studies reinforce Allison's claim. According to researchers at Ohio State University, only 12 percent of male veterans and 6 percent of female veterans report making any use of skills learned in the military in subsequent civilian jobs. A Cornell University study found that the average post-Vietnam War era veteran earns 11 to 19 percent less than nonveterans from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds, and the Department of Veterans Affairs reported in 2001 that veterans make up a third of the adult homeless population.

By promising education funding and job training, counter-recruitment activists argue, the military creates what they call a "poverty draft," exploiting the needs of young people who have few other economic options.

"Obviously, all of these promises mean a lot more to somebody who doesn't have the opportunity to get a decent education and a good job," says Susan Quinlan of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. In the Bay Area, she says, "all high school students are getting some attention [from military recruiters], but low-income kids are getting it every week. They're coming into classrooms, collecting names, calling people at home ..."

Activists argue that youth of color are particularly vulnerable to exploitative military recruitment tactics. According to Mario Hardy, former third-world outreach coordinator for CCCO, "Quite simply, the armed forces target people of color for recruitment disproportionately; thus we die disproportionately."

In its current drive for new recruits, the military is spending unprecedented advertising dollars on marketing to communities of color. Advertising Age, an industry publication, reported in February that "the US Army is adjusting its marketing pitch to minorities as the war in Iraq hurts recruiting efforts among Hispanics and, especially, African Americans."

Military officials have long argued that this kind of outreach is beneficial for low-income and minority communities in need of the economic opportunities available through military service. "We have diversity programs for a broad spectrum of people," Craig Coleman, public affairs officer at the Navy Recruiting Office of San Francisco, told us. He said the idea is to ensure everyone "has the opportunity to benefit from the career options [provided by military service] and the chance to serve their country."

In reality, it's a case of people desperate for economic opportunity meeting a military that's become increasingly desperate for new blood. With more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers dead and 11,200 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, a growing number of enlistees are resisting their calls to active duty. The Army Reserve, once considered a relatively safe way to earn extra money or pay for college, has failed to meet a recruitment goal since December, garnering barely 50 percent of its target recruits for March of this year.

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As recruiters push harder to fill the military's depleted ranks, counter-recruitment activists aim to "teach students about pro-peace options for their futures," Susan Quinlan of CCCO told us. "As a society, we need to be providing young people options for education and job training that don't involve picking up a gun."

As part of its Military out of Our Schools campaign, CCCO brings veterans and war resisters into classrooms to dispel military recruitment myths and discuss alternative sources of education funding and job training. The organization has had success garnering classroom invitations from individual teachers and school administrations, but it can't match the efforts of recruiters who have near-unlimited access to students.

Under the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act, high schools are compelled to provide military recruiters with access to school grounds and student information, including the names, phone numbers, and addresses of all juniors and seniors who don't formally opt out of the requirement, a process that remains obscure and difficult in most school districts. Schools that fail to comply stand to lose millions of dollars in federal funding.

As a result, recruiters table at career fairs, visit classes, and roam school grounds collecting students' contact information. Potential recruits routinely receive phone calls at home, regardless of parent protest, and are pressured to schedule one-on-one meetings at recruiting offices.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) is backing a bill that would amend No Child Left Behind, making it easier for parents to block military recruiters from access to their high school-age children's information.

Counter-recruitment activists are engaging in a similar battle at colleges and universities, which are bound by the so-called Solomon Amendment, passed by Congress in 1996. The amendment says the Department of Defense can penalize colleges for prohibiting military recruiters or ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) units on campus by denying federal student financial aid and other funds.

Last year, the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights and other liberties groups brought a lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. As a result, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found the Solomon Amendment to be unconstitutional because it forces colleges to violate their own policies barring recruitment by employers that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Solomon Amendment still stands in other circuits, and the federal government is expected to appeal the Third Circuit Court ruling. This month the Board of Trustees at City College of San Francisco resolved to investigate the feasibility of filing a similar lawsuit in the Northern California Federal District Court.

Activists at other colleges are fighting the Solomon Amendment through direct protest of military presence on campus. In the past three months, recruiters have been picketed and in some cases forced off the grounds of schools from New York City to Seattle.

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