Lunch Anyone?

Would you like your elementary school child to have lunch with a military recruiter?

Increasingly, military recruiters are targeting younger and younger children as they seek to fulfill the seemingly ever increasing needs of the U.S. military. Start 'em young you know? Endless war will do that.

Recently, High Country media outlets reported on the new Army recruiting office located on Greenway Road in Boone. We wonder what kind of access these recruiters will have to students in the area. We wonder what their recruiting techniques will consist of.

Did you know that there is a movement called Counter Recruiting? For some reason, information about this movement was left out of the stories covering the new Army recruiting office. How much local advertising do you think the Army recruiting office will purchase on High Country airwaves and in area newspapers?

There is a new book out called "Army of None." Here is what its about:

Uniformed U.S. Army Officers lunch with students in elementary school cafeterias. Army training programs including rifle and pistol instruction replace physical education in middle schools. Like never before, military recruiters are entering the halls of U.S. schools with unchecked access in an attempt to bolster a military in crisis.

However, even as these destructive efforts to militarize youth accelerate, so do the creative and powerful efforts of students, community members, and veterans to challenge them. Today, the counter recruitment movement—from counseling to poetry slams to citywide lobbying efforts—has become one of the most practical ways to tangibly resist U.S. policy that cuts funding for education and social programs while promoting war and occupation. Without enough soldiers, the U.S. cannot sustain its empire.

Army of None exposes the real story behind the military-recruitment complex, and offers guides, tools, and resources for education and action, and people power strategies to win.

Army veteran Aimee Allison has led school and community counter-recruitment activities over the last decade. She is a contributor to 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military. Global justice and antiwar organizer David Solnit is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World.