[m2c] Re: [apoc] Sister, Uncle Sam Wants You Too

[vanessahuang at riseup.net]

Thanks for posting this! Just wanted to update you all that there was a
misunderstanding in edits, and the last two sentences of the first section have
been taken out online -- the actual numbers of each racial group of young women
have dropped since 2002, but Native and API women's percentages have grown and
black and Latina percentages have dropped/remained steady. Sorry for the
confusion.

Quoting usman x <sandinista at shaw.ca>:

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> http://www.alternet.org/story/21897/
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> Sister, Uncle Sam Wants You Too
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> By Vanessa Huang, WireTap
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> Posted on May 2, 2005, Printed on May 3, 2005
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> When Rick Jahnkow speaks at youth conferences and visits classrooms with the
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> San Diego-based Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project
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> YANO), he asks for a show of hands from people thinking about joining the
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> military.
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> Over the past year, Jahnkow says, more and more young Latina women have been
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> raising their hands.
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> There are already over 11,500 young Latina women serving in active duty, a
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> significant part of the estimated 47,000 women of color currently in the
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> military. According to Pentagon spokesperson Ellen Krenke, women of color
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> make up 45 percent -- almost half of the young women in active duty.
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> Military recruitment numbers have gone down, in general, in the first months
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> of 2005. As a number of media sources have reported, African-American youth,
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> in particular, are staying out of recruitment offices. According to a recent
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> Department of Defense survey, African Americans -- who made up 24 percent of
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> Army recruits in 2000 -- today make up only around 14 percent of the same
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> group. The Army Reserves, which has traditionally seen higher numbers of
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> people of color, has also seen a significant drop.
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> The overall number of new female recruits has also dropped since the War on
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> Iraq began, but African-American and Latina women still make up around the
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> same percentage of the whole (between 26-29% and 11-12% respectively) as
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> they did in 2002. Meanwhile, the percentage of Asian-Pacific Islander and
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> Native women have grown from 4.2 to 5% and 1.9 to 2.4% respectively). And
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> while white women’s numbers are dropping, it appears that other young women
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> of color are making up for the difference. The numbers of Latina,
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> Asian-Pacific Islanders and Native women have all either remained steady or
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> grown since 2002.
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> At the Crossroads
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> Walidah Imarisha, the editor of AWOL and a board member of the Central
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> Committee on Conscientious Objectors, says she joined the
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> counter-recruitment movement because of her experiences growing up on
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> military bases. She says that women are rarely the focus of
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> counter-recruitment activism but wants to change that.
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> "The intersection of race and gender is so important," says Imarisha.
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> Usually we talk about race or gender, but not about both.” The issues that
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> young women of color face, she says, are "something we don’t even talk
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> about -- and a challenge for the counter-recruitment and anti-militarism
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> movements."
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> As the Pentagon is expected to step up its recruitment drive in the coming
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> months, organizers like Imarisha say that recruiters will increasingly
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> target young women -- especially young women of color, in particular.
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> "In addition to all the promises they make to everyone," Imarisha explains,
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> "recruiters play off young women’s fears of being trapped in the desperate
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> situations that a lot of poor women of color are [often] left in."
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> Social justice organizers have long identified the lack of options for young
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> people in poor and working-class communities of color. In neighborhoods
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> where schools are under-funded, young men are often faces with two choices.
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> Working in the "underground economy" (and going to prison) or seeking out
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> money for college (and to joining the military). Although it’s rarely
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> discussed, young women in the same neighborhoods have just as few choices.
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> Aimee Allison, now 35, is a conscientious objector who joined the military
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> when she was 17. As one of six children in a working-class African American
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> family, Allison’s parents were unable to send her to college, even though
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> she was accepted to a number of schools.
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> At the time, there were constant advertisements on TV about the GI Bill.
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> "When I was 17, $10,000 sounded like so much money," Allison recalls. "That
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> included a sign-on bonus and a loan repayment. I didn't know the details and
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> didn't think to ask." She talked with a recruiter who, like many recruiters
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> today, had an office at her high school. "He knew that I wanted to make
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> something of myself," she says. "He was really encouraging and said, ‘You
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> can do whatever you want with your life, if you join the military. I know
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> you want to be a doctor -- you can get training as a medic.'"
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> So she joined.
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> Today, Allison fears that more and more young women of color will be
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> choosing the path she did. To her, this should be no cause for celebration.
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> "There were a lot of things that happened to me in military training that
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> violated what it means to be a self-respecting woman and a self-respecting
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> African American," Allison says. For instance, the training she went
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> through -- including the songs she had to sing -- was from male-centered
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> frameworks that view "other people" in disrespectful ways, she says. Another
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> part of her training was learning how to follow orders without question;
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> this meant she had to unlearn what her parents had taught her -- that it is
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> wrong to treat people badly. She had to learn to stop expressing her
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> emotions, as crying or hugging were severely punished in boot camp.
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> In addition to what Allison faced, many women who join the military also
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> face sexual assault and sexual harassment. Nadine Naber, of the Radical Arab
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> Women’s Activist Network and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence --
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> which just launched a national counter-recruitment campaign -- says it is
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> essential to understand that this violence comes in the context of a long
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> history of the U.S. military’s cultural violence and patriarchy, and is not
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> a series of isolated incidences.
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> Transnational Solidarity
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> But the violence and trauma of the military does not end with young women
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> from the U.S. who enlist.
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> Allison urges young women who are thinking to join the military to be very
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> critical about how recruiters may be targeting them. Recruiters have
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> co-opted a feminist message, she says, appealing to young women’s desire to
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> achieve, to be independent, and take care of their families. "But when it
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> comes to military service, having the same options as men means being the
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> torturer, being the purveyor of violence, the person who victimizes other
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> women and families in other countries," she says. "We who believe that women
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> shouldn't be limited on the basis of gender should be openly questioning
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> whether we should be going down the same path as men in the military."
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> So Allison urges young women to ask themselves: What are you willing to kill
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> for? What are you willing to die for?
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> During her service as a medic, Allison had worked with veterans from the
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> Vietnam and Korean wars who were missing legs and other parts of their
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> bodies, and who were mentally and emotionally "fractured." She decided to
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> file for conscientious objector status after attending college. "I started
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> to look at the results of war -- [and what happens after] the cameras are
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> gone -- for regular people in this country and in the countries the wars
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> were fought in," she says. "I realized that as a woman, I could not accept
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> the military way of dehumanizing other people. All those people, even if
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> they live in a different country, matter to me."
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> Indeed, Mahsa Shekarloo of the Women’s Cultural Center in Iran says, to the
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> women in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, "there is nothing worse than
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> the oppressed becoming the oppressor" and seeing a black person from the
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> U.S. holding a machine gun to her child.
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> What this points to, according to Naber of INCITE, is the fact that although
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> there are issues of poverty, the prison industrial complex, police
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> brutality, and militarism within the U.S., American women still have a lot
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> of power in a war situation.
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> Naber says that counter-recruitment work is an exciting way to expand the
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> scope of women of color movements in the U.S.
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> "We do benefit from living in the U.S.," Naber says. "So American women of
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> color have the responsibility to say, 'No. We will not be used to kill other
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> women and children and destroy other communities.' It's kind of like saying
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> that no lives are more valuable than others." By saying no to Uncle Sam and
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> withdrawing their labor from the military, she says, women of color here can
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> build transnational solidarity with women in countries targeted by U.S.
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> militarism.
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> Building True Alternatives
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> In order for young women in poor and working-class communities of color to
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> resist military enlistment, however, counter-recruitment organizers like
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> Jahnkow of Project YANO recognize the serious need to focus on building
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> systematic alternatives.
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> Jahnkow says, the military promises young people of color societal status
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> they couldn't achieve in civilian society. "It's a reflection on young women
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> who are demanding more from society and feeling dissatisfied with the
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> response they get," he adds, "and then this is presented to them as
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> something they can’t get elsewhere."
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> In terms of specific alternatives, Jahnkow says that he can always point to
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> local job training programs, financial aid, AmeriCorps, and community-based
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> programs that develop skills, but "until we change the general priorities in
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> this country there’s going to be limits to what’s going to be available. In
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> some cases, young people may join [the military] because we don't present
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> real solutions for them. We have to think long term. The Pentagon certainly
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> does. They plan several generations ahead. We have to do that too."
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> © 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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> View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21897/
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> ---------------------
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> Prospero, you are the master of illusion.
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> Lying is your trademark.
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> And you have lied so much to me
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> (lied about the world, lied about me)
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> that you have ended by imposing on me
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> an image of myself.
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> underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior,
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> That ís the way you have forced me to see myself
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> I detest that image!  What's more, it's a lie!
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> But now I know you, you old cancer,
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> and I know myself as well.
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> - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest"
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> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre
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