End the racist poverty draft!
Military recruiters out of our schools!
By Laura Madsen
Bloomington Kennedy High, 10th grade

The “racist poverty draft” is the military’s conscious effort to recruit working class youth and youth of color for their war. The government knows that youth who face almost no way out of poverty are the ones to target for military jobs.

With the rising cost of tuition, most don’t have the means to make college an option. The average starting salary for college graduates is $30,000. If you don’t have a college degree you normally earn about $18,700 annually at $8.70 an hour. This gap widens each year since the college grads have more opportunities for advancement and have better health care coverage.

When the military comes along, promising college, career and travel, it is like a dream come true. Recruiters try to buddy up with students to win their trust. They feed them their empty promises of a better life in the military. But what is the reality? Two-thirds of soldiers returning home never see the money they expected. Instead of traveling around the world, they are sent to Iraq where they risk their lives everyday so the rich can profit off the exploitation of the Iraqi people. Over two thousand troops have died serving in Iraq, leaving their families and their kids in the exact same economic situation they were fighting to get out of.

If they make it back home safely, veterans, on average, make 11-18% less than non-veterans and are twice as likely to end up homeless.

No Child Left Un-recruited

The No Child Left Behind Act forces schools to hand over all of your personal information to recruiters: your school, GPA, test scores, address, phone number, and pretty much whatever else could be of use to them.

Recruiters use this information to target the kids with the least hopeful futures. The NCLB Act also takes its toll on already poor schools, threatening to cut funding to schools with low test scores. It would make much more sense to increase funding so we can have better supplies and smaller class sizes. These schools are prime recruiting grounds for the military.

Kick the recruiters out now! Government funding should not be used to bribe us into fighting their war. Inform your friends and family about what is really going on and start a Youth Against War and Racism group in your school today.

This is a war for imperialism, not for our benefit. Let’s redirect the billions of dollars destined to fund this war towards education and a bright future for all youth. College not combat!