[Peace-discuss] *Meg Miner writes N-G*: IHSA flyers, National Guard & Champaign Police

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

Youth can serve U.S. aside from military

Friday November 30, 2007

On Nov. 25 you ran a wire service article about a Maryland-based  
recruiter. A National Guard recruiting event took place Saturday at the  
IHSA football tournament. It's too bad you couldn't have spent some  
journalistic energy on the local recruiting scene.

With written permission from the University of Illinois Police, members  
of AWARE (anti-war, anti-racism effort) were in the vicinity of the  
Guard's trailer. We were distributing information about military  
recruiting that passing high schoolers and their families would not  
hear from the Guard, whose mission on Saturday seemed to be challenging  
youth to chin-ups and pushups and handing out prizes.

If The News-Gazette had been present, you might have seen AWARE members  
being warned of a disturbing the peace charge by Champaign Police and  
of the group having names and personal information recorded by the  
officers.

I am a Gulf War vet and was with an Iraq and a World War II vet, along  
with a handful of peace-promoting civilians. No reasonable person would  
view our actions as disturbing the peace. I can only guess the Guard's  
recruiters were disturbed by the message on our flyers  
(http://tinyurl.com/2v7d6a) and felt that police intimidation would  
make us leave. It didn't.

I was in an Air Force recruiting unit before retiring. My message to  
local youth is you can serve your country without being in the  
military. Our doctrine of pre-emption is clearly a failure. Let's all  
promise our service members and our youth to work for better foreign  
policy solutions.

  MEG MINER

Mansfield
  Find this article at:
   
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2007/11/30/ 
youth_can_serve_us_aside_from_military
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