Anti-draft meet sets goal of 100,000 resisters

The Pentagon has a campaign underway to attract 100,000 new recruits to the U.S. Armed Forces. The No Draft No Way organization plans an anti-draft campaign to attract 100,000 young people to sign a statement pledging they won’t accept military conscription.

Kim Rosario

Organizers proposed this campaign at the No Draft No Way conference held April 16 in New York’s Greenwich Village. Most of the over 100 participants came from the New York region. Anti-draft organizers also came from a half-dozen nearby states and Canada.

The conference focused on the draft, but also featured speakers on other aspects of the anti-war and anti-military struggle. These included opponents of the “economic draft,” GI resisters, family members of people currently in Iraq or faced with orders to go there, veterans of the 1991 war on Iraq or the current occupation of that country, and student counter-recruiters. An organizer spoke of the movement in Canada to assist U.S. military resisters.

Karina Schechter with Gerry Condon.

Not everyone was sure a draft was coming. But all shared an appreciation of the dilemma the Pentagon faces because it is unable to recruit enough volunteers for Bush’s endless wars.

No Draft No Way organizer and Navy veteran Dustin Langley said, “The Selec tive Service board’s goal is to ensure that they could carry out a national mobilization—for the military and for national service— within 75 days of being ordered to by the president.” Langley says there “already is a draft,” referring to the offer of education and jobs from the military that should be available to civilian youth.

Carl Webb

Larry Holmes of the Troops Out Now Coalition remarked that “nothing gets people involved in activity like something that affects them personally,” like a draft, and that a “draft will be the nail in the coffin for endless war.” Holmes himself had been launched into political activism when he was drafted in the early 1970s and then refused to cooperate with the war against Vietnam.

Karina Schechter, a national organizer with the youth group FIST (Fight Imper ialism, Stand Together), said that “the military has invaded our high schools and colleges” and that it was “hard for parents to keep kids’ names off the Pentagon list.”

In a discussion group later, people pointed out that in 34 states, when young people get drivers’ licenses, their names and data are given to the Selective Service Board. And schools, obeying the so-called No Child Left Behind law, are turning over young people’s names to military recruiters.

The roots of resistance

What made the talks at this conference stand out was how experiences with the U.S. military of the speakers or their relatives had led them to first question and then oppose U.S. imperialism.

Co-chair Kim Rosario has a son in Iraq right now, and has become a spokesperson against the occupation, the draft, the economic draft and military recruiting at anti-war meetings and rallies all over the country.

City College student Justino Rodriguez was arrested with three others at a recent counter-recruiter protest. The four have won reinstatement on campus and currently are fighting criminal charges. His father, Carlos Rodriguez, was an Army professional and spent a year in Iraq, so the student says he “has the advantage of knowing the lies the government tells to get people to join the military.” He called on the movement to “support resisting GIs, grow the anti-war movement here and support the Iraqi resistance.”

National Guard member and military resister Carl Webb was himself a victim of the economic draft. Now he refuses to soft-pedal his principled opposition to the occu pation of Iraq. “I admire resister Carlos Mejía, who said he’d ‘rather do two years in prison than kill an innocent child in Iraq.’ But I’ll go one step further. I’d rather do two years in prison than kill anyone in Iraq.” Webb also openly states his political support for the Iraqis who fight to liberate their country from the occupation.

Gerry Condon is now helping to organize support for U.S. deserters in Canada. During the Vietnam War, after “volunteering three times: for the Army, for the paratroops and for the Special Forces,” Condon refused to go to Vietnam and instead deserted, spending three years each in Sweden and Canada. Condon, who works with seven declared resisters in Toronto, says Canada is again a viable alternative for GIs and draft resisters.

Other speakers included 1991 Gulf War resister Jeff Patterson, then a Marine corporal; eight-year Navy veteran Monique Code; and Pam Africa, a national leader of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and a representative of the MOVE Organization. Jesse Heiwa co-chaired and IAC co-coordinator Sara Flounders wrapped up the meeting.

For more information, contact www.nodraftnoway.org or call (212) 633-6646.