Growing Activism: Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO)

Make War No More

Written by John Malkin
Good Times Weekly
Wednesday, 16 January 2008

UC Santa Cruz grad Robert Zabala on the war, his conscience and why he just had to get out of the military

It may sound simplistic, but I have often thought that there would be fewer wars if people with guns stopped shooting them. Throughout U.S. history, hundreds of soldiers have connected with their conscience and objected to military service. But history lessons have tended to cast a heroic light on generals and their battles while leaving acts of conscientious objection to war on the cutting room floor.

Robert Zabala enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 2002 but his experiences in boot camp brought up ethical questions and led to a deeper reflection on the interconnectedness of life. He filed a conscientious objector application in 2004 and on March 29, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware ruled that Zabala was to be granted an honorable discharge and be released from the Marines within 15 days. Zabala, a graduate of the University of California in Santa Cruz, is now 23 years old and a resident of San Jose. Here, he reveals his journey beyond the military.

When you joined the Marines, what was your motivation?

I was 17 years old and I really wanted to show the world that I was made of something tough, raw and real. Also, I come from a huge long line of people who served in the military. My grandfather served in Vietnam. My grandmother taught officers how to speak Tagalog in Monterey. My mother and father both were in the Navy in the Gulf War.

Probably the biggest reason that I wanted to join the Marine Corps was that growing up a child so dependent on the welfare state, I felt that I should pay back this debt to society. I grew up on food stamps and free meals you get in public schools - even my college was paid for by financial aid.

What was that recruitment experience like?

I was the easiest sucker they’ve ever recruited! I walked right into that recruiting station and they told me all the things that I wanted to hear. They said, “You’re a smart guy, and a lot of the leadership skills that you’re going to learn in the Marine Corps, you’re going to be able to translate into the real world and you’ll be a better person.” Man, did I fall for it.

Could you choose what you would be doing in the Marines?

The recruiters say, “Hey, you can do this kind of job – you’ll work strictly with radars.” That’s what I was supposed to be, a wireman. When I got to boot camp it turns out that my recruiter didn’t do that at all. I was going to be a rifleman. And after I graduated from boot camp, when I joined up with my reserve unit in San Bruno, I met up with my first sergeant and he looked me over once and said, “Hey, guess what? You’re going to be a machine gunner now.” It’s that funny little clause in the contract that you sign that says at anytime they can change what you’re doing or where you’re stationed. Read article

Uncle Sam Wants You, But Ads Target Mom, Dad

Wall Street Journal
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN
November 29, 2007; Page B1

For the Army, it's out with "Be all you can be" and in with "Buy all you can buy."

The Army has been enlisting youths for decades by promising them money for college. Starting in January, it will try out a different sort of pitch in selected cities: offering up to $40,000 toward the purchase of a home or the creation of a business.

The Army's new plan is to win over "influencers" of potential recruits.

The new recruitment program, dubbed the "Army Advantage Fund," is meant to show parents and other adult "influencers" that Army service offers tangible benefits to young Americans. As the Iraq war continues, the Army is struggling to recruit enough new soldiers -- and such influencers are less and less likely to recommend military service to youths.

"If you want to get a soldier, you have to go through mom, and moms want to know what kind of future their children will have when they leave the Army," said Lt. Col. Jeff Sterling, the program's architect. "This is meant to answer that question in a tangible, concrete way." Read article

Female GIs complain of unequal treatment

By MATHEW D. LAPLANTE

Salt Lake Tribune
Friday, November 09, 2007

The soldiers outside her room were drunken and indignant.

"Why won't you date any of us, bitch?" Amanda Blume recalled one of the men demanded before he helped kick in her barracks door.

Inside, Blume remembered, she was surrounded, called names and pushed into a corner. Fearing for her safety, she said, she fought her way free, striking one of the men in the face on the way out.

The next week, Blume's Army commanders in Fort Sill, Okla., charged her with assault.

The exact details of what happened in the barracks on that night last March are known only to Blume and the men she has accused of attacking her. But in punishing the female soldier, Blume's male commanders followed a pattern that advocates of female service members call "epidemic" -- a pattern that nearly repeated itself again to Blume just a few months later.

Honorably discharged in early July, Blume remains proud of her military service, which began the month after she graduated from high school in 2004. As a whole, she said, the experience was positive. But it also was punctuated by moments that were alternately frightening, demeaning and unjust.

The day after Blume was attacked in her room, she was called in to see her commanding officer. "I thought he would help me, but that's not what happened," she said.

The man she'd struck had already been in to file a complaint. Read article

The Soldier and the Student

The Nation
By Aaron Glantz

[posted online on November 27, 2007]

"Join the military and go to college." That's what the recruiters say.

But the deal that today's servicemen and servicewomen get is a far cry from what their fathers and grandfathers got. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill into law in the waning days of World War II, he saw it as part of his New Deal program. The law, officially called the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, promised returning veterans that the government would pay the full cost of tuition and books at any public or private college or job-training program. It also provided unemployment insurance and loans to buy homes and start businesses.

By contrast, the current Montgomery GI Bill, passed in 1984, asks active duty members to accept a pay reduction of $100 per month through twelve months of military service. When they return to school, they receive $1,100 monthly for a maximum of three years of education benefits. It's an amount that doesn't come close to covering the cost of a modern college education, but it does help some veterans--if they can get through the red tape.

In July 2005, 23-year-old Paris Lee was honorably discharged after serving almost three years in the Army. A native of California's rural, picturesque North Coast where the old-growth redwoods grow, he returned home and enrolled in a free ten-week college prep program called Veterans Upward Bound at Humboldt State University. Lee was preparing to attend Humboldt State in the fall, but this past May he received a letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs denying his application for the GI Bill. "They said I'm not eligible because I served thirty-five months and two days in the Army," he told me. "Normally you have to serve thirty-six months to get education benefits, so they're trying to deny me based on twenty-eight days." After the VA rejected Lee's application for GI benefits, he sent an appeal letter to the VA regional office in Muskogee, Oklahoma. While he waits for the response, the Army veteran works dealing cards for blackjack, Pai Gow and Texas hold 'em games at Blue Lake Indian Casino east of Arcata.
Read article