Nov.-Dec. 2005:
Question of A.N.S.W.E.R.
The Story of WRI
Waging Nonviolent Struggle
The Outsider
A Bear’s Life
Deep Commitment
Rearing Resistance
(Un)covering the War
The Lost Boys
Wobblies! A Graphic History
Why They Kill
Letters
Activist News
WRL News

Homepages:
War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

SUCCESSFUL NOT YOUR SOLDIER COUNTER-RECRUITMENT CAMPS

The Not Your Soldier Project, a collaboration between the War Resisters League Youth and Countermilitarism Program, the Ruckus Society, and a number of other national and local organizations, has been organizing a series of counter-recruitment training camps for high school students. The camps are intended to help youth build the skills necessary to organize against recruitment in their schools and communities. The workshops have covered a wide range of topics, from how to file for Conscientious Objector status, to Counter-recruitment 101 and the poverty draft. Many of the sessions have been skill based, exploring foundational organizing tools like direct action, campaign organizing, and using art in activist work.

Over a rainy Columbus Day weekend, more than 30 young people from across New England met at the historic Voluntown Peace Trust for a weekend of training, skill sharing, and community building. The weekend focused on building connections between youth, antiwar, and counter-recruitment activists. In addition, a number of adult allies and trainers participated in the weekend. Although people came from across the region, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were most strongly represented. The follow-up work has begun, and participants are already considering another regional meeting to further their work in the counter-recruitment movement.

The New England camp follows on the heels of the Northwest camp, which brought together 25 youth aged 13-22 from Oregon and Washington August 29-September 1. Since the Northwest camp, students have reported back on their counterrecruitment work in their communities, and they have been busy. They’re tabling at state fairs, church youth groups, and high schools. They’re meeting with their school administrators to develop clear opt-out forms, networking with local peace groups, attending peace vigils, creating workshops for their peers, and walking out of school to protest the war!

As this issue goes to press, organizers are preparing for the Southeast camp, being held just outside of Durham, NC. In addition, we are gearing up for the Not Your Soldier Day of Action on November 17, cosponsored with the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (www.nyspc.net).

The Not Your Soldier Project hopes to hold more camps in the spring, and is planning on a national counter-recruitment camp in the summer of 2006. For more information: www.notyoursoldier.org.

—Steve Theberge

With banners reading “War is Terrorism” and “War is Terrorism with a Bigger Budget,” members of the War Resisters League NYC went to the Pentagon in the early morning hours of September 26.

Although police knew of the action, they were not prepared for the arrival of stylish New Yorkers and well-dressed activists who pretended to have forgotten their Pentagon badges. In waves of six to ten, the activists blockaded the Pentagon’s metro and south entrances, forcing police to reroute sleepy employees. In all, police arrested more than 40, a third of whom were part of the WRL NYC affinity group.

A Reuters reporter who showed up at the Pentagon had his film seized by Pentagon police, and a CNN cameraman was prohibited from filming, but organizers were able to get press attention by calling in to Democracy Now! The action was mentioned in the Washington Post, Washington Times and the San Francisco Bay Chronicle, among others.

The WRL local group met for months beforehand to plan the action, train in nonviolent action, and build a solid affinity group. A number had been arrested as part of the Women’s Pentagon Actions of 1980 and 1981 and others were part of WRL’s “Day Without the Pentagon” actions in the 1990s.

The night before the action, the affinity group sat down with more than 60 others interested in acting at the Pentagon to go over the scenario. Participants included friends from Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts. Members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (formerly Voices in the Wilderness), Veterans for Peace, the Atlantic Life Community, and the Industrial Workers of the World were also present.

After being arrested by Pentagon police, the protesters were processed and released mostly with court dates in January for “disobeying a lawful order.”

Many went straight from Pentagon lockup to the White House to join the hundreds of activists occupying the sidewalk in civil disobedience. At least seven of those arrested at the Pentagon were also arrested at the White House, having decided that one arrest a day was not enough in this epoch of endless war.

—Frida Berrigan