What Does an Anti-War Movement Look Like Today?

By Celina R. De Leon, WireTap. Posted August 7, 2006.

Marciella Guzmán was a politically conservative 21-year-old when she joined the U.S. Navy as an information system technician in 1998. By the time she left in 2002, she said she had become liberal.

Guzmán, now a counter-recruitment activist in Los Angeles, said that she lost respect for the military: "I didn't trust that we had enough training or manpower to go into Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time."

Despite rare glimpses of growing popular opposition to the war, such as Cindy Sheehan or Medea Benjamin with "Bring Troops Home Now" signs on national television, the mainstream media still does not provide a consistent space for a critique of American foreign policy.

And while soldiers continue to desert the military, and 72 percent think that the United States should exit Iraq within the next year, the Bush administration and Congress cannot seem to come up with a concrete strategy for addressing the growing chaos and deaths in Iraq.

Impatient with the current status quo, students, war veterans, anti-war activists and soldiers and their parents across the country are thinking of new ways to get their message to the government and general public.

Realizing that mass national protests did not sway the Bush administration from staying the course in Iraq, many young organizers focused their strategy on local counter-recruitment campaigns. And their work seems to be making an impact.

The Air National Guard missed its recruiting target by 14 percent last year, and the Army missed its goal by 8 percent, its largest recruitment failure since 1979. Military recruitment costs have risen, totaling $3 billion of taxpayers' money each year, and will only get higher if the Iraq war continues and the ability to recruit young men and women to enlist decreases. Right now, the Army's new recruitment tactics increasingly include allowing young men and women with criminal records to enlist, recruiting members of hate groups, easing restrictions on recruiting high school dropouts and raising the maximum recruitment age from 35 to 42.

Spreading the real story of military life

In 1998, Guzmán needed money to go to college and thought the military would be a good way of getting that money. But when she stepped into boot camp, she realized she'd been sold on lies. Paperwork battles ensued until she finally received the higher wages and rank she was initially promised.

Her first command was stationed at Diego García, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. "The U.S. military personnel basically lease the island from the British, and the only people who are allowed there are military personnel and the workers there -- Filipinos who are brought to the island," said Guzmán. "It was very difficult to see how the American soldiers treated these people. The workers had poor benefits, they were underpaid, and the military didn't respect them. That reminded me of my family here. I'm Mexican-American, and it reminded me of the struggles my parents went through in this country. And so my ideology started to change."

Guzmán's perspective finally shifted for good after she left the military in 2002 and went to the VA to receive treatment for the back problems she acquired during her service. She had to fight to get even the most basic treatment.

Now Guzmán spends what little time she has between work and school to educate high school students about the realities of military service.

She just came out a month ago with the sexual assault she also suffered during her service. A fellow servicewoman had shared her experience with sexual assault, which helped Guzmán come to terms with her own experience. It has been four years since Guzmán was last in the military and she still has not told her family about the incident.

"I want [young people] to question why it was allowed, and that it's still happening in the military, especially for women," said Guzmán. "And what they're going to get into [if they join the military]. I give them the option: 'If you still want to go to the military, I will go with you to the recruitment office to make sure that they don't lie to you.' It takes so long to educate young people about the myths of the military."

And that's where recent counter-recruitment strategies like the Not Your Soldier initiative and STORY Collaborative come in.

Celina R. De Leon is a contributing writer for WireTap.

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