Success: students in Bay area opt out of Pentagon's data base

Check out this good news from students and allies out in Oakland, CA who are organized as BAYPEACE (Better Alternatives for Youth). In their latest achievement toward protecting students from unwanted contact from military recruiters, they worked with the school board in San Francisco to allow students to opt out of the Pentagon's "JAMRS" data base. Here is their report:

Another Victory for Student Privacy from the JAMRS Military Recruiting Database!
On October 12, 2010 the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Board unanimously passed Resolution No. 108-24A1— a Recommitment of the San Francisco Unified School District to Further Protect Student Privacy from Military Recruitment.

The resolution, presented by Commissioner Sandra Lee Fewer, was the third "JAMRS opt out" resolution inspired by the BAY-Peace Youth Manifesto Campaign. BAY-Peace: Better Alternatives for Youth, working in partnership with the American Friends Service Committee, is behind the three year, grassroots, youth-led campaign aimed at raising students' awareness of their right to opt out of having their personal information sold to the military by the private military recruiting database called "JAMRS."

According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, Joint Advertising Market Research Studies (JAMRS), is a private database funded by the Department of Defense with the goal of maximizing recruitment efforts. In 2005, the Pentagon announced the existence of the JAMRS Database—a massive registry of 30 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 25 for military recruitment purposes.

The JAMRS database includes information such as name, date of birth, gender, mailing address e-mail address, race and ethnicity, telephone number, high school name, graduation date, Grade Point Average, college intent, military interest, field of study and the student's ASVAB test score. The information is collected from a wide range of public and private sources, unbeknownst to the youth themselves or to their parents. A 2007 lawsuit by the New York Civil Liberties Union won the right of students to keep their personal information from being sold to the military by opting out of the JAMRS database.

These new Student Privacy resolutions in Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco each require that a "Joint Advertising Market Research Studies (JAMRS) opt-out form to be included in every high school student's registration packet" to inform students of their right to tell JAMRS not to sell their personal information to military recruiters. They also require that opt-out forms to be made visibly available at all Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco High School campuses.

The three districts already provide the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) opt-out form to protect students from unwanted pursuit by military recruiters. However, since most students and parents are not aware that their information is also being collected by JAMRS, a second opt-out form is considered to be necessary for further protection.
The Student Privacy Resolutions address the increased use of detailed personal information by military recruiters to target those young people whose options are limited by the economic crisis. In the words of Phuong Vuong, a teacher and organizer with BAY-Peace, "As a school District serving working class students of color, the population most targeted by military recruiters, the San Francisco Unified School District should do all it can to support youth to have fulfilling opportunities, opportunities that really embrace life and intellectual development."


Luis Montoya, a BAY-Peace Youth Action Team member, got loud applause from the crowd when he expressed his appreciation to the San Francisco Board for giving students the right to protect their privacy. "You are giving voices to the voiceless, and we all know that nobody can avoid the voices of the voiceless. So thank you!"

Board President, Jane Kim expressed her surprise that a second opt out form was necessary to protect student privacy. "I had no idea that there was a private company that was giving out student information to the military, and I'm really glad that Commissioner Fewer was able to follow up and to work with our legal office... to bring forward a policy for our district as well." Ms. Kim thanked the American Friends Service Committee for bringing the JAMRS issue to the attention of the Board.
Sandra Schwartz, of the American Friends Service Committee testified to the importance of protecting students from the "...extremely aggressive military recruiting practices that occur... At last count we are working in twenty five schools throughout the Bay Area and some of those schools have recruiters on campus every week."

According to Commissioner Jill Wynn, "Our district has always had a strong, strong tradition of opposing military recruiting in the schools... Our policy is quite clear. We follow the specific letter of the law and that is that we allow the same access, and only the same access, that we allow to other post secondary options for students... Military recruiters believe they can track people down, follow them around the school yard, go after them over and over again and come back to the school whenever they want to... We've had military recruiters say that 'the law requires you to let me in here whenever I want to' and that is absolutely untrue." Commissioner Hydra Mendoza also expressed her frustration with military recruiters who attempt to have free access to students. "I also want to publicly say to the recruiters that you're not welcome in our schools."

BAY-Peace has recently received funding to support their Youth Action Team to get the word out to community activists in school districts around the country about the JAMRS military recruiting database. Grants from the A. J. Muste Foundation, Resist and the Rose and Sherle Wagner Foundation will help BAY-Peace youth to distribute copies of our new video called "The List," which was produced with youth from The Factory this summer, to educate students about their right to opt out of JAMRS. Please join them in supporting this important project!

Our SOY table today at McCallum HS

Hart and I had a great school visit at McCallum HS today. Photos above. A few observations:
Quite a few students lingered and then brought friends over to the table. They participated in the penny poll (the environment jar had the most votes for federal budget priorities), peace wheel and "I'd rather buy" fliers, which we posted on the bulletin board behind us. The most popular patch design was probably the one of the pandas eating bamboo. Animals are important!
Several students staffed a Breast Cancer Awareness table across from us. It makes me sad that young people have to be worried about cancer. Our message about the environmental costs of war and militarism tie in with that.
McCallum is the arts magnet school, and it's always great to see the student art that is on display in the halls, a couple of photos of which are above.

SOY table at Lanier High School

We had our first Sustainable Options for Youth literature table of the fall semester at Lanier HS today. Hart and I were pleased to see so many students come by the table and participate with the peace wheel of fortune, the penny poll and the "I'd rather buy..." posters, which we put up on the bulletin board behind us.

Hart is studying Arabic at ACC this semester and offered to write students' names in Arabic script to take with them, and that was popular.

Photos above of our table, silkscreened cloth patches (peace wheel prizes), posters filled out by students, penny poll (early on) and some of the paintings that Lanier has displayed on their walls.

Women veterans organize

This message came yesterday from Iraq Veterans Against the War . It's good to hear about this new Women's Committee:

Iraq Veterans Against the War's first ever Women's Retreat took place over Labor Day weekend at beautiful Raccoon Creek State Park near Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh chapter of IVAW hosted the event, providing home-cooked meals as well as child care for participants who brought their children.
For many of the women veterans in attendance, it was the first time they had ever shared their military experiences, including surviving military sexual trauma. One participant noted, "This is the first time I've ever talked about these issues. When I leave here, I will leave behind the shame I have carried all these years."

In addition to the emotional support that the participants shared together, they also accomplished some tangible goals:

1) The group formalized the IVAW Women's Committee, which will continually reach out to women vets and service members offering support and ways to increase their involvement in the GI resistance movement.

2) We inaugurated a Women's veteran zine, "Ain't I a Veteran?" Many of the women in attendance described bad experiences with therapists and other health care providers in the Veterans Administration system. The first issue of the zine will provide guidelines for how to choose a healthcare provider. The second issue will be a survival guide for active duty women service members containing resources on health care, sexual violence support, and other issues related to their rights as military women.

3) We generated ideas for solidarity projects with Iraq and Afghan civilians as part of IVAW's mission to work for reparations, including a water sanitation project and a writing project with Iraqi refugee families in the United States.
A chief reason stated for going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan was to liberate women in these countries, and IVAW women must expose that myth. The idea that a military that oppresses and violates its own women can liberate women in other countries is a farce.

We know that women and children suffer most in war, and we share with them a common humanity. We believe that empowering women is what will end war.
Our work together in IVAW's Women's Committee has just begun. Stay tuned for future updates on our work.
Individual donations from supporters like you is what made this gathering possible.
We thank you!

In Solidarity,

The Women's Committee of IVAW

From clay

One of the cool things about our printing event last night was getting to see some of Alejandra's ceramic work -- such as these clay figures, above. Beautiful!

Printing for peace

Last night, Alejandra hosted a silk-screening party and SOY dinner at her ceramics studio, and it was great! We printed a bunch of images onto cloth that we'll give away to students as peace wheel prizes during our school tabling visits.

Alejandra demonstrated the process -- she already had transferred images we wanted to use onto two screens. Then, we ironed the cloth (used bed sheets work well), spread it out flat on a work table, used a squeegee to press acrylic ink through the screen, placing the screen at intervals down the length of the fabric, then let the ink dry for a few minutes before ironing it again to help set the ink. We also printed a few t-shirts.

Make art, not war!

Austin's Brave New Voices move LA crowds

Austin's under-21 poetry slam team, "They Speak," competed this month in the Brave New Voices International slam finals held in Los Angeles. They spoke - and then some. Big, big congratulations to Austin's team! Check out the report sent this morning by Ron and Sheila at the Texas Youth Word Collective:

To Our Beloved Poetry Family and Wonderful Supporters:

We are back from Los Angeles and the 2010 Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival. Now that we have had a night or two of sleep since BNV, I wanted to make sure that we informed our community of supporters what happened out in LA and how the team did. I should say from the outset that this year’s team is one of the best we have ever had, taking nothing away from teams of previous years. They showed great camaraderie, class, grace, passion, devotion, and dedication, all in ways that were surprising and inspiring. These young people demonstrated levels of maturity, sportsmanship, and respect for people and the art form that many adults in the poetry community could learn a lot from.

On Monday, the team arrived at Occidental College, located between Pasadena and Glendale, California. Occidental is a gorgeous campus in the LA mountains, flush with beautiful trees, huge flowers, and interesting southwestern architecture. The team met up with hundreds of other teenage writers and performers from across the country. Shay, as four time member of Austin’s youth slam teams, and veteran of BNV, served as the team’s ambassador and liaison with the other teams. They attended the Opening Ceremonies for BNV, and had a wonderful time interacting with the rest of the youth at the Festival.

Tuesday, the team members attended all-day writing workshops by such nationally recognized writers/performers as Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Kennedy Center), QueenGodIs, Robbie Q Taylor, among others. Notable, to me, on Tuesday was our team captain, Shay, passing on competing in The People’s Champion individual youth spoken word competition to make sure she was prepared to give her best performance for her team. As it turns out, this would be the first of her many selfless acts during the course of BNV.

Wednesday, in the BNV Quarter Finals, the They Speak Youth Slam Team came in second in both of their bouts. In their first bout, the team went up against teams from Los Angeles, Guam, Ann Arbor, and Nashville. This was an extremely competitive bout, with an amazing solo performance in the last spot in the last round by Nashville that helped them win the bout. In They Speak’s second bout, they went up against Detroit, Denver, Stockton CA, Delaware. In this bout, the team came in second to Denver, a team which made the Final Stage (and I’ll have something more to say about them a little later).

Later Wednesday night, the They Speak Team competed in the finals of the Robert Redford Center’s Speak Green competition, hosted by former Obama Administration environmental advisor Van Jones. The top three scorers at this competition would go on to perform at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Austin’s was the only team/ensemble performance in the competition against eleven other performers. They Speak, in a word, ROCKED it!!!! The audience cheered as the team gave a flawless performance of a poem comparing the abuse of the environment and the kidnapping and trafficking of young women into prostitution. Powerful, poignant, and eye-opening are the only ways to describe their performance. While the team did not score high enough to make Sundance, they have already been requested to perform at the Life is Living Festival in Houston later this year as a result of their making and performing in Speak Green. NO team in the history of our organization has ever qualified, much less performed in Speak Green. Performers at Speak Green have gone on to perform at the White House. More importantly, as a result of the team’s two high scoring second place showings (missing first place in each by less than 1½ points) it was announced at the end of Speak Green that the team qualified for the Semi Finals of BNV.

In their semi-final bout, They Speak Austin went up against Phoenix, Stockton, Albuquerque, and Houston. It was a phenomenal bout, a very close competition. Austin was the final team in the final round of the bout. The team was prepared to do Homebound, an incredible group piece where Shay, the team captain, is center stage and the rest of the team perform their parts from different locations in the audience. Everyone was in position to perform when, out of the blue, the Captain called an audible, and instead of performing her last poem EVER at BNV (she will not be eligible to make our youth team after this year), she said, “I know ya’ll think I am going to do a poem, but I am so proud of my teammate who has grown and progressed so much since she made the team, so I want to give the baby of our team the stage.” And with that Shay, our three-time team champion and four time team member, relinquished her last performance opportunity, giving a solo performance to the youngest member of the team, Lauren “Zuri” Hendricks (the next generation of youth poets in our community), while her mother, Elisa, looked on, crying the whole time. Zuri did her poem “Mamma’s Hands”, a personal poem about her grandmother.

So, as you might imagine, I'm VERY, VERY, VERY proud of our team. They were the embodiment of the principles we seek to promote: teamwork, hard work, and commitment to the craft and the youth spoken word movement. Big ups to the Teen Titans: Shay, as team captain and leader, Zack, Sheenika, Zuri, and their incredible coach, Christopher Michael. They were winners today, tomorrow, and forever!!!!!!!! You all made all of our work worthwhile.

Also, BIG thanks to The Mammas: Sheenika's mom, Monica, for chaperoning and keeping Sheila and I in stitches the whole time, Zuri's mom, Elisa, for single-handedly raising a boat load of dough to get the team out here (and dancing like it's 1999), and Zack's mom, Diane, for making the pizza run after the night of the Semis and shuttling the team to LAX! Thanks as well to Harold Hendricks aka Daddy Do Stuff, for running the kids to practices and performances. Also big thanks to Cesar and Sherri Taylor for their very generous last minute donation that provided us with the money in time to buy the team’s airline tickets. All of you are absolute blessings to us. And, of course, big thanks to our poetry slam family: Neo Soul, APS, KPS, 2nd Verse, Spoken and Heard, and all of you that came to the features, bought CD's, and made donations to the cause in person and online. There is a special place in Heaven for all of you.

Thanks.

Ron & Sheila
Texas Youth Word Collective

photo by makingpeace