Wrap-up of Saturday's march and rally

Updated Wednesday, October 5

A mostly-complete list of those who spoke at the open-mic session at Republic Sq. Park and also at City Hall is at the bottom of this post.

Austin Indymedia has some excellent coverage of last Saturday's event, with great pictures. Also, here is the rough text of another speech, this time given by YAA member and high school student Ross Blair. It does a good job of summing up the reasons for the protest and continuing counter-recruitment activities.

I'm Ross Blair from the Youth Activists of Austin. As everyone here is aware there is an extremely disturbing trend in America today concerning its youth and military recruiters in our schools. YAA organized this protest because we are outraged that the millitary thinks of students as untrained soldiers instead of tomorrow'ss scientists, enginneers, and writers. They act as if schools exist for the express purpose of helping meet their recrutment quotas. As we have seen in the past few months recruiters are relying on increasingly unethical and socialy destructive methods of recruiting students. Such actions are unacceptable! We must protect our students, by demilitarizing our schools! We're here to demand that AISD and other schools serve the best intrests of their students and stop such aggressive millitary recruitment. We want schools to fight the No Child Left Behind Act's pro-recruitment agenda by limiting recruiter access to schools and protecting students contact information.

Though there is some debate in the counter-recruitment movement about whether recruiters should be given equal access or thrown out completely, but we shouldn't have to fight ourselves before we fight them. I hope this is only the beginning of a campaign that will successfully and quickly demilitarize our schools.

The Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarize Our Schools event was a modest success. By our count, one hundred people showed up to protest the lies that military recruiters are telling students here in Austin and all over the country, and their unreasonable access to students and their personal information.

At Republic Square Park under the shade of a big tree, the group gathered for an open-mic speak out, during which everyone from high-school students to elderly men and women shared their experiences with recruiters. A veteran of the Gulf War warned of false promises of benefits and the true horrors of war, a young high school student talked about the implicit racism of recruiters against poor Latinos and blacks, and a professor from UT expressed her outrage over the military's discrimination against homosexuals, and several more students got up to speak as well.

From the park we began our march down sixth street, looping down to Cesar Chavez and Austin City Hall, where the rally resumed. We chanted slogans like "College Not Combat" and "1234, We don't want your dirty war, 5678, Organize and Stop the Hate," and took up an entire lane.

Once at City Hall, we had several speakers, including Susan Van Haitsma from Non Military Options for Youth and Dave Bills of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and we closed out the event with some music. The local news station KXAN incorporated a lengthy segment on recruitment examining different sides of the issue into their coverage of the event.

The full transcript of the speech I gave, about recruiters and their deceptive marketing strategies, is here. An excerpt from the beginning:

The title of this event is Students Not Soldiers: Demilitarize Our Schools. We say that schools should be places where young people can go to learn, make friends, and figure out what they want to do with their lives, without being badgered by military recruiters who roam the halls and interrupt classes.

But even beyond that, we say that schools should places for truth. Not half-truths, not deceptions, and not lies (no intelligent design either).

Yet, the very presence of recruiters on the school grounds transforms schools into a marketing playground, where military service is sold by whatever means necessary. And recruiters are both compelled and unofficially encouraged to lie, cheat, and falsify documents in order to get students through the enlistment process.

Even setting aside all the lying and cheating, we're still left with basic recruiting techniques that are fundamentally dishonest. These techniques are, in essence, marketing strategies, and service in the military treated as a mere product that must be sold.

This was a good beginning of what could be a powerful counter-recruitment movement here in Austin. We at YAA will continue to attend AISD public meetings and to call for change. Our meetings are every Friday at the Maplewood Elementary School at 6:30, and you can always find Timothy or myself at the weekly anti-war vigil in front of the Capitol just before that on the same day.

Some of the speakers:

Andy Peterson - Garza student
Charlie Rose - Garza student and a mother
Cindy Beringer - High school teacher at Manor ISD and a member of ISO
Dave Bills - Gulf War veteran, Iraq Veterans Against the War
Alberto Gonzalez - parent of two students in AISD
Susan Van Haitsma - Nonmilitary Options for Youth
David Morris - Vietnam veteran, Austin Agsinst War
Tomas Heikkala - Vietnam veteran, Nonmilitary Options for Youth
Ross Blair - Waldorf student, YAA member
Ansel Herz - UT student, YAA and CAMEO member