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This continues my tale from my last post, about getting escorted off the military base.
First, the event was a career fair, put on by the inner-city school district. 8th graders were bussed to the military base, where people representing different careers sat at tables--except for the military recruiters who wandered among the kids, chatting them up.
Second, the military have not been making their recruitment goals (wonder why) and are really pushing hard. We have had some activities lately publicizing the fact that students don't have to give their names to military recruiters.
Third, our organization had been completely upfront with the school district about who we are (Peace Resources--that's the letter head) and what we'd be doing.
Here's the description from the people who were there initially:
"We had arranged weeks in advance to participate in the
Career Quest as Peace Resource volunteers; all my correspondence with the
organizers identified me as the Peace Resource career fair liaison. I don't think anyone could have anticipated that we would be banned from participating
because we wore shirts that said 'Peace is Patriotic' at a public school
function.In fact, early on [we] were interrogated about our
purpose and our handouts by an extremely belligerent man who was more
interested in his questions than in any kind of communication. Among
handouts on Outward Bound and other nonprofits and peaceful careers, we
offered handouts containing questions students should ask recruiters
before making a decision about enlisting. They were not anti-military.
The 'shoving' incident actually constituted one of us lifting up a
belligerent official's name tag in order to identify him.
We were told, 'This is a military base; if you want to talk about peace, go to the church.'"
The article in the paper quoted a school district official as saying she "had no idea of what kind of group this was or what literature they'd be distributing." That is obviously false, but we figure that it is CYA.
Now what? Well, to me at least, the goal is to reach the kids and be sure they know all the options. Maybe it won't be very effective, but right now it's the best thing we can think of. It seems to me it would be best for us not to respond although the article was misleading. The more negative publicity we get on this topic, the harder it will be to get to the students. We don't need to deal with the military directly on this--most of the time we need to work with the schools. So I feel that it's best not to respond to the article or the harassment. But perhaps we need to file a complaint to cover ourselves legally.
First, the event was a career fair, put on by the inner-city school district. 8th graders were bussed to the military base, where people representing different careers sat at tables--except for the military recruiters who wandered among the kids, chatting them up.
Second, the military have not been making their recruitment goals (wonder why) and are really pushing hard. We have had some activities lately publicizing the fact that students don't have to give their names to military recruiters.
Third, our organization had been completely upfront with the school district about who we are (Peace Resources--that's the letter head) and what we'd be doing.
Here's the description from the people who were there initially:
"We had arranged weeks in advance to participate in the
Career Quest as Peace Resource volunteers; all my correspondence with the
organizers identified me as the Peace Resource career fair liaison. I don't think anyone could have anticipated that we would be banned from participating
because we wore shirts that said 'Peace is Patriotic' at a public school
function.In fact, early on [we] were interrogated about our
purpose and our handouts by an extremely belligerent man who was more
interested in his questions than in any kind of communication. Among
handouts on Outward Bound and other nonprofits and peaceful careers, we
offered handouts containing questions students should ask recruiters
before making a decision about enlisting. They were not anti-military.
The 'shoving' incident actually constituted one of us lifting up a
belligerent official's name tag in order to identify him.
We were told, 'This is a military base; if you want to talk about peace, go to the church.'"
The article in the paper quoted a school district official as saying she "had no idea of what kind of group this was or what literature they'd be distributing." That is obviously false, but we figure that it is CYA.
Now what? Well, to me at least, the goal is to reach the kids and be sure they know all the options. Maybe it won't be very effective, but right now it's the best thing we can think of. It seems to me it would be best for us not to respond although the article was misleading. The more negative publicity we get on this topic, the harder it will be to get to the students. We don't need to deal with the military directly on this--most of the time we need to work with the schools. So I feel that it's best not to respond to the article or the harassment. But perhaps we need to file a complaint to cover ourselves legally.
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