National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth

Last updated

National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) is a network of peace organizations that stand up against the militarization of schools and young people in the USA.

Contents

Background

NNOMY was founded in 2004 in the aftermath of the national counter-recruitment conference "Stopping War Where it Begins" in Philadelphia. [1] It is intended to be a decentralized and flexible structure that helps national, regional and local activists and organizations by promoting communication efforts and by stimulating collaboration between network members. NNOMY organizes actions and campaigns against militarism in order to raise awareness and to increase education on the topic.

The first steering committee included these organizations:

Other participating groups and organizations were Veterans for Peace, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Youth Activists/Youth Allies (NY City) and Los Angeles Coalition Opposed to Militarism in Our Schools. [1] Alliance for Global Justice and War Resisters League sponsor actions of the network. [3] [4]

Campaigns

A National Call: Save Our Civilian Public Education

This campaign was started in opposition to conservative forces in the Pentagon and of corporate influence on the learning environments of the K-12 and public universities. As a result of the campaign, in 2009, JROTC firing ranges at 11 high schools were shut down by the efforts of students, their parents and teachers. Similar successes were achieved later in Hawaii and Maryland. [5]

Divest “Your Body” from the War Machine

This project, organized in collaboration with CODEPINK, had the goal to remove invested assets from companies, which supplied and profited from militarization. The campaign wanted to provide broader opportunities to young people who look for community service alternatives to the military. [6]

School Marksmanship Training

In collaboration with the project YANO, NNOMY promoted the removal of marksmanship programs and shooting ranges from schools. Some of the accomplishments of the campaign are:

Winning The Peace

This was a national leafletting campaign, directed to acquaint youth with the reality of military enlistment and alternative opportunities to the military service. [8]

Veterans For Peace and Counter-recruiting

This project is for raising public concern about Pentagon's militarization efforts on youth by providing personal experience of veterans and other activists. [9]

Women's March on the Pentagon

The March was held on 21 October 2018 and opposed the Pentagon's influence on live of youth, especially its programs JROTC, Young Marines, DoD Starbase and DoD STEM. [10]

Related Research Articles

Seymour Melman was an American professor emeritus of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common security and peaceful resolution to international conflicts.

The Student Environmental Action Coalition(SEAC) was a student-run, student-led US national environmental group that originated in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the beginning it focused primarily on conserving, protecting, and restoring the natural environment, but later its member student environmental organizations took on a broader definition of the environment that includes racism, sexism, militarism, heterosexism, economic justice, and animal rights.

Joan Elizabeth Russow is a Canadian peace activist and former national leader of the Green Party of Canada from 1997 to 2001. She is also a co-founder of the Ecological Rights Association and the Global Compliance Research Project.

Veterans for Peace

Veterans for Peace is an organization founded in 1985. Initially made up of US military veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and other conflicts, as well as peacetime veterans and non-veterans, it has since spread overseas and has a active offshoot in the United Kingdom. The group works to promote alternatives to war.

Counter-recruitment refers to activity opposing military recruitment, in some or all of its forms. Among the methods used are research, consciousness-raising, political advocacy and direct action. Most such activity is a response to recruitment by state armed forces, but may also target intelligence agencies, private military companies, and non-state armed groups.

The American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) was an American pacifist organization established in response to World War I. The organization attempted to keep the United States out of the European conflict through mass demonstrations, public lectures, and the printed word. Failing in that effort with American entry into the war in April 1917, the Union battled against conscription, action which subjected it to state repression, and military intervention. The organization was eventually dissolved after the war in 1922.

Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) is an American independent grassroots network of students opposing the occupation of Iraq and military recruiters in US schools. It was founded prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and claims to be the largest campus-based antiwar organization in the United States.

The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) was a United States nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people avoid or resist military conscription or seek discharge after voluntary enlistment. It was active in supporting conscientious objectors ("CO's"), war resisters and draft evaders during the Vietnam War. Founded in Philadelphia in 1948 and dissolved in 2011, CCCO emphasized the needs of secular and activist COs, while other organizations supporting COs principally focused on religious objectors and/or legislative reform and government relations.

Youth for Human Rights International

Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) is a Los Angeles–based non-profit organization. Founded and largely staffed and financed by Scientologists, its stated mission is "To teach youth around the globe about human rights, thus helping them to become valuable advocates for the promotion of tolerance and peace."

Opposition to World War I

Opposition to World War I included socialist, anarchist, syndicalist, and Marxist groups on the left, as well as Christian pacifists, Canadian and Irish nationalists, women's groups, intellectuals, and rural folk.

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.

The Coalition Against Militarism In Our Schools (CAMS) now called the Coalition For Alternatives to Militarism in Our Schools is a non-profit group of educators, students, parents and community activists working against increased militarism in American public schools, formed in 2004 by some 50 of the 45,473 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, California. It serves as a clearinghouse for information on militarism and the effects of military on youth, student and parent activism, and is compiling a web library of peace and justice lesson plans. As of 2007, the group was in 50 schools in the Los Angeles area, providing member teachers with literature, speakers, films and books.

Student Peace Action Network

Student Peace Action Network or SPAN is the student wing of Peace Action. [1] It is also a coordinating committee member of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC). [2] SPAN works to end U.S. militarism, nuclear weapons, weapons trafficking, and “the complex webs of corporate and military power that perpetuate racism, damage the environment, deprive people of basic needs, and violate human rights.” [3]It currently has over 130 chapters and affiliates.

New Profile is a movement for transforming Israeli society into a "civilian" one. It is a voluntary organization that acts against the compulsory law of military enlistment and supports people who refuse to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. New Profile is a feminist organization and most of its activists are women. It was founded in 1998, among others by Rela Mazali.

Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps US military program

The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces in high schools and also in some middle schools across the United States and at US military bases across the world. The program was originally created as part of the National Defense Act of 1916 and later expanded under the 1964 ROTC Vitalization Act.

Margo Okazawa-Rey Japanese American academic

Margo Okazawa-Rey, is an American professor emerita, educator, writer, and social justice activist, who is most known as a founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and for her transnational feminist advocacy.

World Beyond War

World Beyond War is an anti-war organization with chapters and affiliates in about two dozen countries. The organization bills itself as "a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace." It is opposed to the very institution of war and not just individual wars. World Beyond War pursues the abolition of war through regional organizing along with global campaigns to close military bases and divest from corporations that profit from war and weapon sales.

Rela Mazali is an Israeli peace activist and writer. She is one of the leading figures in Israel's peace movement.

References

  1. 1 2 Jahnkow, Rick. "National Counter-recruitment Movement Enters New Stage". nnomy.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  2. "NATIONAL NETWORK FORMING TO OPPOSE THE MILITARIZATION OF YOUTH".
  3. "National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth". www.influencewatch.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  4. "Counter Recruitment". War Resisters League. 2007-11-05. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  5. "A National Call: Save Civilian Public Education". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  6. Ghirardi, Gary. "Divest "Your Body" from the War Machine". nnomy.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  7. YANO, Project. "School Marksmanship Training". nnomy.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  8. "Winning The Peace".
  9. "VFP/Counter-recruiting - The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)". nnomy.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
  10. Committee, NNOMY Steering. "Women's March on the Pentagon". nnomy.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.