Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Likelihood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging pacifists that have become obsessed lately with the idea that compulsory military service might be returning to the United States. For example, I’ve watched the leader of one annual anti-draft workshop predict the draft’s imminent return year after year, in ever more excited terms and wondered what evidence this organizer has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watches this issue as much as anyone in his work for the San Diego-based “Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watching the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warnings about an impending draft have been circulating on the Internet for months now. Some are tying a possible draft to the election and predicting with bold certainty that conscription will be introduced in 2005… The energy that�s been generated on this topic has been both amazing and, I have to confess, somewhat seductive to anti-draft organizations like the one for which I work.
Most of the people I’ve seen get excited by a possible return of the draft were in their teens back in the Vietnam War era. Their organizing sometimes seems almost nostalgic for the issues of their youth. They’re trying to save the current generation from having to go through the same trauma. But the older activists’ anti-draft work is often patronistic and self-congratulatory, for it doesn’t take into account the fact that younger Americans don’t need saving.
The bottom line truth is that the Pentagon simply couldn’t reinstate the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 percent of people 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass mayhem if the draft returned. While some young men would surely obey, a huge percentage would actively defy it. Even if only 10% dramatically refused, the system would break down. This is a generation raised in a post-punk culture and many of its members aggressively question authority. They were raised by parents who lived through the sixties and saw widespread lies and abuse of power, including the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The media mythology around sixties-era radicalism has kept us from realizing that there’s a baseline of everyday radicalism today that far overshadows much of what was going on thirty years ago. The Pentagon knows this better than the peace movement does.
It’s not the only nostalgic protesting this generation is engaging in these days and I’ve compared revived organizing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recycling dead horses.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The latter point leads me to the second reason why I have some negative feelings about the current concern over the draft: Much of the anxiety is coming from people who are ignoring the more pressing problem of aggressive military recruiting, which, among other things, disproportionately affects non-affluent youths and people of color. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a poverty draft�and yet it has drawn relatively little attention from antiwar activists. There is a race and class bias reflected in this that needs to be seriously considered and addressed by the general peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his article again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last November we published a provocative article by pacifist Johann Christoph Arnold arguing that “A Military Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a personal response piece I wrote about how the “pressures of a military draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eighteen year old to really think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Nonviolence.org has guide to issues of “military conscription and conscientious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to highlight generational issues a lot.
* The Urban Legend debunkers at Snopes.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is coming back and any time soon, citing many sources.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ USA Today
History of Nonviolence.org, 1995 – 2008
October 13, 1995
Nonviolence.Org was founded by Martin Kelley out of a home office way back in 1995. Over the 13 or so years of its existence, it won accolades and attention from the mainstream media and millions of visitors. It’s articles have been reprinted in countless movement journals and even in a featured USAToday editorial.
From 2006:
The past eleven years have seen countless internet projects burst on the scene only to wither away. Yet Nonviolence.org continues without any funding, attracting a larger audience every year. As the years have gone by and I’ve found the strength to continue it, I’ve realized more and more that this is a ministry. As a member of the Religious Society of Friends I’m committed to spreading the good news that war is unnecessary. In my personal life this is a matter of faith in the “power that takes away occassion for all war.” In my work with Nonviolence.org I also draw on all the practical and pragmatic reasons why war is wrong. For more personal motivations you can see at QuakerRanter.org, my personal blog.
A Nonviolence.org Timeline
In 1995 I was editor at an activist publisher struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing book world. Many of the independent bookstores that had always supported us were closing just as printing costs were rising. The need to re-invent activist organizing and publishing for the 1990’s became obvious and I saw the internet as a place to do that. One of the earliest manifestos and introductions to the Nonviolence Web was an essay called The Revolution Will be Online.
I began by approached leading U.S. peace groups with a crazy proposal: if they gave me their material I would put it up on the web for them for free. My goal was to live off of savings until I could raise the operating funds from foundations. “Free typesetting for the movement by the movement” was the rallying cry and I quickly brought a who’s-who of American peace groups over to Nonviolence.org. I knew that there was lots of great peace writing that wasn’t getting the distribution it deserved and with the internet I could get it out faster and more widely than with traditional media. For three years I lived off of savings, very part-time jobs and occasional small grants.
Nonviolence.org developed into a web portal for nonviolence. We would feature the most provocative and timely pieces from the NVWeb member groups on the newly-redesigned homepage, dubbed “Nonviolence Web Upfront.” A online magazine format loosely modeled on Slate and the now-defunct Feed magazine, it also contained original material and links to interesting threads on the integrated discussion board. With these popular features, Nonviolence.org attracted a growing number of regular visitors. The combined visibility for member groups was much greater than anyone could obtain alone and we earned plenty of awards and links. Some media highlights of the era included a New York Times tech profile, a featured guest Op/Ed in USA Today, and an interview on Oliver North’s nationally syndicated radio show.
But this model couldn’t last. A big problem was money: there’s were too few philanthropists for this sort of work, and established foundations didn’t even know the right questions to ask in evaluating an internet project. Nonviolence.org was kept afloat by my own dwindling personal savings, and I never did find the sort of money that could pay even poverty wages. I took more and more part-time jobs till they became the full-time ones I have today. At the same time, internet publishing was also changing. With the addition of blogging features and open-source bulletin board software, Nonviolence.org continued to evolve and stay relevant.
Through the early 2000s, Nonviolence.org continued to be one of the most highly-visible and visited peace websites, being highly ranked through the first Gulf War II, the biggest U.S. military action since the web began. This model of independent activist web publishing was still critical. The Nonviolence.org mission of featuring the best writing and analysis continued until 2008 when Martin finally mothballed the Nonviolence.org project and sold the domain.