Norman Yee and JROTCBy Tim Redmond
Well, this is pretty fucked. I can't reach school board member Norman Yee, but the Examiner says he supports bringing back JROTC.
That's absolutely NOT what he told us when we endorsed him last fall.
Yee was the swing vote to end JROTC. The issue was phys ed credit, but the politics were clear: Voting to stop allowing kids to fulfill their gym requirement with JROTC would spell the end of the program. He did the right thing.
He later told us that if the issue were simply up or down on JROTC, he might have voted to save it, but it's clear that the JROTC program fails to meet state standards for physical education.
But here's the rub: Yee told us -- told me, personally -- that he wasn't going to bring this issue back up again, that as far as he was concerned it was done. Technically, he hasn't brought it up again -- Jill Wynns and Rachel Norton did. (BTW, lots of people criticized us for not endorsing Norton. I hope you now see why we didn't.) But if Yee votes to save the program, it will be a slap in the face to all the progressives who supported him.
JROTC, whatever its supporters say, is a military recruitment program. After our school board endorsements last fall, I got comments like this one:
No one's forcing your kids to join the JROTC. But not having a JROTC forces other kids not to join. That's wrong.
That's what all the supposedly liberal people who say they support JROTC talk about: choice. Why not let the students who want to be recruited by the Army on a public high school campus have the right to do that?
And here's what I -- the parent of two public-school kids -- have to say:
If I asked my kids if they'd rather have Pepsi or milk with their lunch, they'd say Pepsi in a second. My kids are still in elementary school, but most high school kids would say the same thing. The reason you take soda machines out of high schools is precisely so that kids DON'T have that choice. The reason you don't let 15-year-olds buy alcohol is that society has decided they aren't old enough to make that choice. Sometimes, you have to tell impressionable young people that certain things just aren't good for them.
You can't join the military until you're 18. That's because even the Pentagon has to accept that minors aren't ready to make those sorts of life decisions. (If it were up to me, I'd raise the age to 25.) If military recruiters want to solicit young people and rope them into that culture before they have enough sense to think twice about what they're signing on to, I sure as hell don't want to make it easy. And I don't want to let them do it in public schools.
Norman -- This is madness. Don't do it.
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Comments (14)
Hi Tim,
I couldn't agree more. Many of us at the SF DCCC asked him the same question and he assured us that if he was re-elected, we could trust him on this issue. If this story is true, I'm shocked that he is flipping like this without having a conversation with any of his supporters. I also called him and haven't heard back either.
Best,
Robert
Posted by Robert Haaland | March 24, 2009 04:55 PM
If you hadn't noticed the SF DCCC has left itself irrelvant. San Francisco values are not in line with an out of touch self interested cartel. When is the DCCC going to listen to regular folk in this city.
Posted by ChrisP | March 24, 2009 11:20 PM
What some fail to realize is that students that join JROTC must get their parents permission. These students are not blindly joining and no one is recruiting them to join. I personally joined because my older sister joined and I wanted to stay after school. JROTC is the program you need because youth are impressionable. 98% of the students in JROTC graduate from high school and go on to college. 75% of the students in JROTC are minority. JROTC does a better job of graduating minority students percentage wise than the SFUSD and that's a fact. I would rather these students graduate and go to college rather than run the streets.I think we can all agree on that.
Posted by Michael T | March 25, 2009 06:00 AM
Hi Tim,
Were you aware that student's that join JROTC must get their parents permission?
Did you know that 75% of the students in JROTC are minorities?
98% of the students in JROTC graduate high school and go to college. (The SFUSD can not even do that)
You can join the military at 17 with parental consent. Not 18. I am not sure where you are getting your information from. If you think personally the age of joining the military should be 25, then I will raise you and say people should not smoke or drink alcohol until 25. Over 450,000 people in the U.S. die do to alcohol and smoke related issues each year. I imagine you would not hate the military just the loss of life due to war? Since the war began over 30,000 service have died in total. Since the war 2.7 million have died from alcohol and smoking related issues. If we are worried about the well being of impressionable youth, I would maybe make sure they have enough sense to smoke or drink.
Posted by Michael T | March 25, 2009 06:30 AM
Tim
During his campaign last year, Norman Yee told me point blank that he opposed bringing back JROTC. I asked him that question when I ran into him on the campaign trail. He didn't qualify it. He said he was against bringing it back.
Yee is playing games with progressives. Another politician who can't be trusted to keep his word.
Posted by tommi avicolli mecca | March 25, 2009 07:42 AM
@ Michael T.
"75% of the students in JROTC are minority. JROTC does a better job of graduating minority students percentage wise than the SFUSD and that's a fact. I would rather these students graduate and go to college rather than run the streets.I think we can all agree on that."
wow, really? I think I'd like some clarification there about your equation of minorities and crime (or "run the streets"), please. It seems a little "black and white." Also, the whole subtext of using the military to keep those scary coloreds in line is pretty creepy as well.
Posted by Marke B. | March 25, 2009 08:47 AM
The most pernicious message that progressives are sending on the JROTC issue---that there's something immoral about a relationship with the country's military, that in fact our country's military is evil. A majority of city voters rejected that view last November. The school board should reinstate JROTC with full credit.
Posted by Rob Anderson | March 25, 2009 10:56 AM
@Marke B
Who said anything about African Americans? Why would you even use the term Colored? There is no subtext of using the military to keep anyone in line. I am a gay african american male that was in JROTC for 4 years, JROTC is about family, leadership, respect. JROTC is not the military. I am thankful I had JROTC, they pushed me toward college and I was the first male to go in my family. They never tried to recruit me.
Posted by Michael T | March 25, 2009 01:16 PM
@ Michael T.
I was using the term ironically, since that was the message I was getting from your post. It seemed to be conflating "minorities" (people of color usually, yes?) with crime or indolence -- if that's what you meant by "run the streets." I think there are options besides either graduating from college or running in the streets. I know a lot of people who would be classified as minorities who haven't graduated from college, yet still display all the characteristics you found in JROTC.
Posted by Marke B | March 25, 2009 01:55 PM
I don't think opposing JROTC is suggesting that the military is inherently evil. I think it's saying that military recruiters should stay away from kids under 18. And yes, military recruiters DO at times use sleazy tactics to convince kids to join up.
And as I've said many times, I refuse to believe that the best leadership program San Francisco can offer is one based on military values. We can do better.
Posted by tim redmond | March 25, 2009 02:23 PM
timid,
Again, you ignore half the story. What about the SERV program? Forget that it was my idea, take it on it's merits.
Students train (like the Swiss do) from early teens to respond in a disaster (they're responsible til they're 65) ... students train in disaster response as a lifetime mission and acquire appropriate skills from an early age.
Why didn't you mention SERV, Tim? Hell, it has the support of the entire School Board and you don't mention it. Only Fog City covers it as a possible replacement or combination program with JROTC.
Another good idea buried by a bum.
h.
Posted by h. brown | March 25, 2009 02:59 PM
h, lighten up. I have always supported SERV. It's a great idea, and in our school board endorsements we gave you credit for it, and I think the school board ought to go for it and make you the director.
Just kidding, h. About the director job, I mean. No way you want to be in that hot spot.
Posted by tim redmond | March 25, 2009 03:31 PM
Tim,
I'd take the job in a heartbeat and do it better than anyone in the City could do it. Here's my piece for Fog City a couple of days ago listing some of the skills we should be teaching.
h.
Combine JROTC/SERV/DHS
(City and SFUSD see win-win)
(3-24-09)
Pretty much everyone agrees that the City is headed for a disaster, natural or man-made and that we'll need some kind of para-military force in place for at least a short while to deal with it.
Pretty much everyone (cops to firefighters to Homeland Security) agrees that a potential life saving force can be created through the implementation of a program designed to train high school students (volunteer basis) as disaster response workers.
The major bone of contention here is whether the School District stays with their traditional JROTC classes, moves to a pilot program of SERV (Student Emergency Response Volunteers) or is able to craft a mix of the two. This last is my choice.
I spoke before last Thursday's meeting of the City and School District's Select Committee (3-19-09) during the last half hour of the hearing in which the District presented sketchy details of the SERV program. Listen to the words of the Deputy Director of the Mayor's Office of Emergency Response (Rob Dudgeon – one sharp cookie) ... hear what Dudgeon has to say about the Homeland Security aspects of such a program.
Basically he recognizes that no one in the United States has such a program and that he feels that it fits perfectly with the mission of DHS. That's the kind of thing you want to hear when you're looking at a set of courses such as the ones I've put together.
My purpose here is for the SFUSD to continue their resolution for re-instating the traditional JROTC curriculum until they've explored combining it with these SERV offerings.
1.Working with SFPD to train students to set-up protected perimeters around multiple disaster scenes.
2.Setting up tents for medical and communications triage and clearing and marking landing zones for helicopters. Set-ups include full maps of locale and firing up emergency generators for lights and computer access as needed by senior officers.
3.Identifying working water sources, hydrants to resevoirs, marking them and communicating locations.
4.Transporting rescue equipment from neighborhood storage modules to disaster sites.
5.Beginning a stream of on-site feed-back to Emergency Command Center via pre-formatted reports.
6.Moving manual pumps and hose carts to resevoirs nearest fire ground where water mains are broken and motorized equipment access is blocked.
7.Basic firefighting by SFFD trained students in areas where there are no professional personnel available.
8.Immediate rescue operations by SERV as needed and transport as possible to area medical and transport triage centers.
9.Directing citizens and their pets to safe areas for evacuation. Take names and enter survivors into pre-set data bases.
10. Shutting down all compromised utilities as indicated and transmitting task completions into pre-programmed central data system.
11. Remove bodies, bagging and tagging by address and name as possible. Maintaining a mobile morgue and creating and managing mass graves using lime and other disinfectants to prevent disease if necessary.
12. Rescue operations using equipment whether large (back hoe to manual ladders) or manual ('Jaws of Life' to pry bars).
13. Hands-on First Aid from setting broken bones to immobilizing and transport to MASH locations.
That's just a start. There's nothing that says that SERV and JROTC cannot be combined. It is certainly worth a try.
For Comments contact: h@ludd.net
Posted by h. brown | March 26, 2009 11:31 AM
I have been a PTA president at one public middle school and one high school in San Francisco.
At both schools, JROTC kids would clean the cafeteria, clean the fields, do all the grunt work after public events.
Who is going to do this grunt work next year if the JROTC is gone? I'll give you a call, Tim. Maybe you and some of your friends can come down and clean toilets, wash pots, and scrub floors like the JROTC kids do.
JROTC is very popular among immigrant families. These people are not dumb. No one is being brainwashed. The working-class knows what it wants, and it supports JROTC.
Its all about CHOICE.
Posted by Barton | March 29, 2009 12:30 PM