Students Protest Outside Military Recruiting Stations

[chlamor]

Monday, May 23, 2005

Students protest outside military recruiting stations

By MELANTHIA MITCHELL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SEATTLE -- Students from area universities, colleges and high schools rallied Monday outside a military recruiting station downtown, pounding on windows and demanding an end to U.S. operations in Iraq.

Protests also were staged outside recruiting stations north of Seattle and in the University District next to the University of Washington. Students called for an end to military recruitment in schools and said money spent on the war should be used to better fund all levels of public education.

The demonstrations downtown and in the University District each attracted three or four dozen protesters. There were no arrests.

"The youth of this city and the youth of this country are standing up against this war," Federico Martinez, 23, a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, said after the protests. "We want education to be the funding priority of the United States government, not the occupation of a sovereign nation."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Recruiting%20Stations%20Protests

[PartyPooper]

1. This is a start. But, we have a long way to go.

Just my 2¢

[Cobalt Violet]

3. I agree with that.

It has to start sometime.

[Straight Shooter]

2. It's the Sixties all over again. Youth always speaks truth to power.

I could not be happier to hear this news, chlamor. Thanks!

:woohoo:

[MO_Dem]

4. Hopefully,

this the beginning of the awakening

[IndianaGreen]

5. "Money for tuition not ammunition,"

Several dozen protesters circled outside Army and Marine recruiting stations in downtown Seattle. Students carried signs that read, "Money for tuition not ammunition," and "I want to learn to read not to kill."

<snip>

"Everybody's entitled to their own freedom of speech," said Porter, a recruiter for only five months. "I definitely stand up for what I believe in."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Recruiting%20Stations%20Protests

Military recruiters are nothing more than sexual predators in uniform! They prey on young people that have no jobs or are part of the working poor, and lure them into the military with promises of college money and cash bonuses. They fail to tell the truth about what price the recruits to be will have to pay for signing that military contract.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Protests are fun...

but they don't do squat. You dance and chant for an hour and then it's back to business as usual. We have one group here protesting, but the rest of us are trying to so something that might mean actual work, and be effective.

How about "Career Day" where Quakers and Mennonites set up booths next to the Marine tables?

How about just standing in front of the recruiting stations with literature. You probably can't put a table out there, or collect money, but you can pamphlet the piss out of anyone who walks into the recruiters.

Get the parents to opt out of giving student information to the recruiters.

Join the War Resistors League and other such organizations.

[chlamor]

7. It's all important

and necessary. Most of the protesters I know, including myself, do a wide range of things on a daily basis.

But absolutely raucous-theatrical-stubborn-etc. protests are essential for the psyche of the collective spirit. It provides a public visual that says "Dissent" against the machine that is eating us all. Knowledge without action is complicity and direct action is most effective. It entails more risk than other things but also breaks the spell of the Patriarch. You must go where they are and speak the truth directly to power.



"There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

-Mario Savio

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Yeah. I was thinking that, too...

and I have been to demonstrations simply for the feeling of solidarity and public statement.

But, it is getting ridiculous. Half a million people marched on Washington just before we went into Iraq and no one noticed.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets all over the country other times, and so what? The "protests" were really just parades, with permits, zones, and barriers.

Everyone went home and it was back to business as usual. Just like after a 4th of July parade.

I'm starting to think that if we can get enough people to vigils and progressive street fairs, that might be more of an answer. A constant picture of protest that might sink in. It will take a while, if it happens at all.

[MisterP]

8. hope they don't shoot them all and then send out people to weep

about how dangerous those bad ol' mobs are

[struggle4progress]

9. kick

Steve Bonkamp of Seattle carries a figure representing a U.S. soldier bleeding on top of a barrel of oil during a Monmday protest in front of a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office in Seattle's University District. — Ted S. Warren / AP Photo

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-869851.php