Marines Use Tax Dollars to Counter Counter-Recruitment
Monday, August 6, 2012 at 3:03PM
Staff Sgt. James McFalin leads teachers participating in a four-day workshop at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, designed to counterbalance opposition to recruitment of high school students. (Photo: Don Bartletti)
Nearing exhaustion from two ground wars and student-faculty-parental opposition, the Marine Corps is spending $800,000 every year for 12 junkets by high school teachers to Marines Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, CA. The Marines host teachers at Parris Island, SC, as well. (Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2012)
The Pentagon's annual public relations was $4.7 billion in 2009 alone, according to the AP, or about three-quarters of the Los Angeles public school district's entire annual budget ($6.3 billion). In an information war at home, the Marines have been defending against relentless counter-recruitment campaigns by parents and teachers for the past decade.
Reader Comments (3)
$800,000 dollars to counter-counter-recruiters?! Can you imagine how little was spent since 2002 by CR activists, nationally, to challenge the recruiters?
I've been showing my students the drone attack on WikiLeaks and other such evidence of wrongdoing. What we need is a legal case challenging the law when it comes to approaching LEGAL MINOR CHILDREN. They are so impressionable at these ages and often lack strong male role models. As such, 'they are ripe for the picking.' We need to 'lawyer up' and sue the DOD on this abuse of our minor children. You have to have permission slips from parents just to go to a field trip--but the Pentagon can con our children without such permission. We also need to challenge any colleagues that go along with such propaganda. Whether these colleagues are pro-military or not--they must be reminded that we are talking about LEGAL MINOR CHILDREN. It is ironic that the Pentagon pontificates on 'honor'--yet they persist in attempting to con minor children---which represents the actions of a dishonorable group of cowards. We must remind our colleagues who are willing collaborators that cooperating with the Pentagon to influence under age children is just plain unethical conduct on their part. If colleagues refuse to walk away from this propaganda program aimed at children of poverty--then we must ostracize those same colleagues. Make them pariahs in the building. They either choose the children and their colleagues or they choose the Joint Chiefs--you can't choose both. Again, if our colleagues choose the military recruiters or cooperate with them in any way--they are disowned by the rest of us. We are fighting for our children's lives.
Jeanine Molloff - Student privacy protections as outlined in Federal FERPA laws have been violated by military recruiters in conjunction with school districts that are not protecting underage youth from organized appeals from the DoD. There is interest, at the moment. by a few ACLU offices, regionally. in challenging this but it would likely have to be a class action litigation tested at the state level first and would require plaintiffs, not an easy situation to assemble among poor and/or marginalized communities where the biggest violations have occurred. A FOIA request has recently been received on statistics around overall compliance in national high schools. The good news is more high schools are implementing "option 8" reporting policies requiring signed parental consent before any information can be sent to the Pentagon or that youth in their districts may be contacted with unsolicited appeals but the bad news is more schools are being pressed into questionable ASVAB testing and reporting back to the DoD. You can find out more about this with the current national campaign being organized at http://studentprivacy.org - Talk to Pat Elder about this if you want to know more how you can participate in putting pressure on the situation to protect the privacy of these vulnerable youth.