For
Immediate Release
Contact:
September 12, 2005
Dennis Apuan
(719) 632-6189
12:00 PM
Pikes Peak Justice and Peace
Mark Lewis 719-471-9400
CSAction.org
Colorado opts out of No Child Left Behind military recruitment
Colorado
Springs-September 12
A Leave
My Child Alone Orientation will be held in Gaylord Hall, on the Colorado
College campus (Worner Center, corner of Cascade and Cache la Poudre) on
Tuesday, September 13 at 6:30 pm. An 11 minute
film will be shown and a planning, training, brainstorm session will
follow. The task of the meeting is how to most effectively
get high school seniors to opt out of the No Child Left Behind provision
9528, that gives their personal information to military recruiters.
The orientation is organized by Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, Citizen's
for Peace in Space, and Springs Action
Alliance, along with national groups like Leave My Child Alone, and The Network Opposed to the Militarization
of Youth.
Refreshments, documents, posters, websites, and other information will be
provided. School Board and PTA attendance will be planned,
letters to superintendents will be written, and resolutions to school boards
will be finalized.
Dennis Apuan, director of the Pikes Peak Justice
and Peace Commission said, "In many school districts, students' names,
addresses and phone numbers are given to the military recruiters without
first obtaining the student's permission. Then the recruiters bother them
with many uninvited phone calls at home."
"This issue is about family privacy, as defined in the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act. Students and parents should demand that their
school not give out their contact information without permission! We must
stop the military's invasion of student privacy", Mr. Apuan said.
"Schools
should be teaching peacemaking and mediation skills, instead of promoting
militarism and glamorizing violent responses to conflict."
The film,
created by Main Street Moms, and featuring
Cindy Sheehan of Gold Stars Families for
Peace, who organized a month long protest outside President Bush's ranch
this summer, lasts 11 minutes and will be shown at 7pm.
Mark Lewis, Of the Springs Action Alliance
said, "Recruiters target the socio-economically challenged and tell them
they will get $70,000 for college under the GI Bill, but 43% never receive
a penny and 92% get less than the full benefit the recruiters promise. On
top of that they have to pay $1,200 annual fee for the enrollment, and it's
not refundable!"
"25,000 families of service personnel are eligible for food stamps. I think
that's not only in insult to those willing to risk their lives for our country,
but proves the fact that the military is targeting at risk people of color
and lower socio-economic background!"
Mr. Lewis publishes the full list of facts, documentation
and forms on his website, CSAction.org
and covers the ongoing counter recruitment movement in the group's daily news.
"I don't think the recruiter that was tape
recorded providing a student with a diploma mill to buy a fake GED for
$200 is an isolated incident. That recruiter is on tape promising a falsified
drug test to the student. I don't know about you, but I don't want that
person in a fox hole with my daughter, and high as a kite, because some
recruiter sold her safety out for some recruitment quota", Mr.Lewis said.
A petition
in support of House
Resolution 551 that would make the No Child Left Behind law an opt IN
law, will be available for signing. along with a petition
to stop the Pentagon from compiling a database of 30 million high school
students.
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