by Marianne Arbogast
As the mobilization of troops to the Persian Gulf heightens the threat of war, peace groups around the country are mobilizing to support young people grappling with questions of conscience and military service. Their efforts include counseling for conscientious objectors (COs), outreach to young people who are targeted by military recruiters, and opposition to a new law that ties federal school funding to the schools’ release of information on high-school students for military recruiting purposes.
"There’s a lot more intensity around these issues," says Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator for the Center on Conscience and War (CCW) in Washington, D.C. "We’ve been getting calls to the GI Rights Hotline nonstop, and a lot more people are articulating reasons of conscience as their reason for wanting out."
The GI Rights Hotline, which CCW helps to maintain, was established primarily to work with people who became conscientious objectors after enlisting in the armed services. Although the process of obtaining a CO discharge is a lengthy one, the military has generally granted such discharges if applicants can show that their beliefs changed after they enlisted – not an uncommon experience, Galvin says.
The Center is also working to establish legal protection for military COs.
"We’re trying to get a bill introduced in Congress that would strengthen the rights of COs in all the branches of the military," he says. "What happened during the Gulf War was that the military instituted ‘Stop Loss’ orders, and essentially didn’t let anyone out for any reason. If you were a CO, your choices were go to war or go to jail."
For some COs, those may still be the choices. Although most mainstream churches – including the Episcopal Church – support the right to selective conscientious objection based on the belief that a particular military action is unjust, U.S. law only grants CO status to people who object to any and all wars. Sometimes, Galvin says, people who think they are selective COs come to realize that – in today’s world with today’s weapons – the conditions for what they would consider a "just war" would never be met.
"To people who still say there are wars they would fight, we say we’ll support you [in trying to obtain CO status] but you’ll probably lose. There’s a chance you’ll set a precedent and broaden the definition of the law, but you can’t expect that’s going to happen."
Civilian COs are also a concern – though less pressing, without a current military draft. Still, Galvin and other counselors urge young people who believe themselves to be COs to document and formally register their convictions now – particularly since, under current policy, persons called up in the event of a draft would be given only 10 days to apply for CO status. CCW maintains a register for COs; so does the Episcopal Church.
Although most activists consider reinstatement of a draft unlikely, they don’t dismiss the possibility. CCW is currently lobbying against a draft bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY). The bill – which, ironically, was intended to stimulate anti-war sentiment – would have disastrous consequences for COs, Galvin says, forcing them to serve in the military.
Other organizations are focusing their efforts on challenging military recruitment strategies.
"We do have a draft – it’s called an economic draft," says Oskar Castro, a program assistant for the Youth and Militarism program of the American Friends Service Committee. "Military recruiters disproportionately focus on communities of color and rural, poor white areas. Junior ROTC programs target the people who don’t usually go to college, who are economically and educationally disenfranchised."
To counter misinformation and undue pressure to enlist, the Youth and Militarism program is joining forces with the Blackout Arts Collective – a group that seeks to empower artists of color and raise social issues – in planning a road show featuring music, poetry and performance art for schools in low-income communities.
"Those young people traditionally have not had access to conversations about conscientious objection and selective service registration – or if they join the military and get a consciousness, what their rights are," Castro says. "We’re looking to go into communities of color and share why we exist, what the history of conscientious objection has been, and how we can be a resource." The tour is tentatively scheduled to be launched from Philadelphia in April.
Castro is also working to raise consciousness concerning a provision of the "No Child Left Behind" Act, signed into law on Jan. 8. The Act reauthorizes federal grants to schools in low-income areas for such purposes as lunch and after-school programs, but also mandates – as a requirement of grant elibility – that high schools turn over names and addresses of students to military recruiters. As the Act is written, parents must provide a written statement if they don’t want their child’s name included, though it is unclear how or whether they would even be notified.
Jackie Lynn, executive director of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF), says that she has encountered a lot of interest in organizing around the issue of high-school recruitment. She also notes that more than half of EPF members are clergy, so part of their effort will be "to provide background information so that clergy are more familiar with conscientious objection and the questions they need to be raising with young people.
"For EPF, this has been a primary issue over the past 60 years," Lynn says. "We were one of the groups that went to Congress and worked to pass the act that established conscientious objection. We’re on the brink of trying to organize more and more on this issue."