Antiwar Activists Want Table at School Career Day

via CommonDreams:



Published on Sunday, August 17, 2008 by The Boston Globe
Antiwar Activists Want Table at School Career Day
by Christine Legere



At Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School, back-to-school preparations include a debate over whether antiwar activists will be allowed at the school’s annual career day, just as military recruiters are.

The effort is led by a Bridgewater-based group called Citizens for an Informed Community. Spokesman Vernon Domingo, a Bridgewater resident and Bridgewater State College geography professor, said the group simply wants to promote thought-provoking discussion.

“We’re local, we live here and work here, and we support this country,” said Domingo. “We’re patriotic in the sense that we want this country to be as good as it can be.”

Domingo, along with Bridgewater resident and former Massasoit Community College adjunct professor Raymond Ajemian, helped form Citizens for an In formed Community shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Since then, it has enjoyed some local success, for example, prompting Bridgewater Town Meeting to formally protest the federal Patriot Act in 2004, and, more recently, to call on Congress to get out of Iraq.

Citizens for an Informed Community is now looking to make some policy changes in the School Department that would allow the group to deliver its message at Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School. At least two other towns - Cohasset and Milton - have allowed antiwar representatives to attend career days.

Ajemian said the group has three goals: to secure the right to set up a table at the high school’s career days; and to get school administrators to better inform students of their right to opt out of the armed services vocational aptitude tests given at high schools, and of their right to block the military from getting personal information for recruitment purposes. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/17/11038/

Can't really call it a "career," but I certainly don't think the recruiters should be left unquestioned.

it may as well be a career.

Just mentioning that they'd be the only ones there who were questioning a career, not offering a specific one of their own.

But I think someone *should* be there to question that career. And I'm not disparaging the military, per se (although I don't like the way it's being used nowadays), just saying that people shouldn't go into it blind.

If they are giving information about a career, that's fair game.

In detroit, we got unanimous approval from the school board to represent "truth in recruiting" whenever recruiters are present. The rationale is that No Child Left Behind gives recruiters "equal" access to schools.

"Equal" does not mean sole. It means people with an opposing viewpoint have as much right to be there as they do.

A career table might include copies of the enlistment document, discussions of what is involved in the career, etc. Our group also provides information about alternative careers that allow a person to serve their country, like Americorps.

I hope they get it. If they don't, I'm sure we'll be hearing about it.

... guaranteed. :-(

Some in our local chapter continue to try to get permission to have a "truth in recruitment" table at Career Day in the high schools, but I don't think it has happened yet.

Hekate

These come to mind: American Friends Service, School of the Americas Watch, Witness for Peace, Oxfam, Amnesty Intl. I'm sure there are thousands.

year. Guess complaining does something sometimes. They responded very well and I'm proud of his school. :applause: