Surely after the DREAM Act is put into practice and if it truly is horrendous, can’t we focus our activism on that?

The political debate over undocumented immigrants in the US has largely ignored the plight of undocumented children. This ranges from education to health care. In this time of crisis, it is critical to have accurate information about the characteristics of the unauthorized population. It is estimated that the number of undocumented immigrants living in the country range from 11.5 to 12 million according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The number of children of undocumented immigrants living in this country account for 1.8 million, or 16 percent. These are the numbers that have been widely cited by advocates and policymakers.

According to Jeff Passel of the Urban Institute, the affected population nationally is about 65,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States five years or longer who graduate from high school each year would be eligible for conditional status; however, he also stated that number is too high.

…our previous estimate of approximately 65,000 undocumented alien high school graduates under age 21 who have lived in the United States for 5 years or longer enrolled in college should be considered substantially too high.

Using this information to convert the CPS data into a national estimate, estimated college enrollment probably amounts to about 7,000–13,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 5 years or longer (and have graduated from U.S. high schools.)

The difficulty in estimating the size of the undocumented population, coupled with the misleading and inaccurate reporting of high school dropouts and graduation rates in state after state, year after year, has, until recently, kept the public largely unaware of a serious educational and civil rights crisis. The fact is undocumented students face various challenges as they move along the academic pipeline. Once again, as I mentioned before I FULLY SUPPORT the educational component of the DREAM Act. We should all support the idea that higher education should be for all students, both documented and undocumented. However, I feel compelled to inform people on how the military will take the full advantage of the military component of the DREAM Act.

I understand the argument that is being made on how this Act could provide an incentive to continue their schooling and finish college, eventually contributing their education to the society and economy of the state. Many of these students came to the United States with their parents and have lived in the country for more than five years. A large percentage has either graduated from a public high school or obtained their GEDs. A report by the Texas House Research Organization showed that not helping students join college results in much greater costs to the state and further contributes to a uneducated work force. Yet only 15% of African Americans and 11% of Latina/o’s age 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree. For low-income students, regardless of race, on average only 23 out of 100 will even enroll in college.

The fact that the Dream Act was offered as an amendment to the Defense Department’s appropriations bill should have raised red flags. The military is no fool. They are aware that struggling K-12 public schools, dramatic increases in college tuition rates, and decreases in higher education funding have caused a leak in the pipeline for many of today’s youth. They are also aware of how states who passed a state version if the DREAM Act are doing.

But lets look at the facts, since 2001, there have been ten states which, have passed laws allowing undocumented students who attend and graduate from in-state high schools to qualify for in-state college. In 2001, California and Texas were the first states to enact legislation allowing in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. Following suit were Utah, Washington, New York, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, and Nebraska. In an analysis of the 10 states, Roberto G. Gonzales, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Irvine, found that they

“have not experienced a large influx of new immigrant students that ‘displaces’ native-born students or added financial burdens on their educational systems. In fact, these measures tend to increase school revenues by bringing in tuition from students who otherwise would not be in college.”

In CA, after the state passed Assembly Bill 540, 1,620 undocumented students were enrolled in the University of California and California State University systems in 2005. And in TX, in 2004, only 3,792 students were attending public colleges. The total number of students paying in-state tuition only amounted to 0.36% of the 1,054,586 students attending public colleges and universities in Texas. Gonzales also found that in other states that offered in-state tuition benefits, the number of undocumented students taking advantage remains low.

I know that one would argue that these students would benefit once they receive state or federally sponsored financial aid after they are granted their legal status. Just recently, the College Board released a report stating that Federal Student Aid to undergraduates shows slow growth, while tuition prices continue to increase.

Nearly half a million students received awards in 2006 under two new federal student grant programs. Though higher than the previous year, total federal grant funding to undergraduates was still lower in 2006-07 than it was three years earlier, after adjusting for inflation.

While the numbers are dismal, the one group capitalizing on the difficulties facing Latino youth are the armed services. Military recruiters have been preying upon the most vulnerable and economically challenged of our African, Latino, Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander communities. To put it simply, as long as the armed forces target people of color excessively, we will continue to die disproportionately in this unjust war.

According to the New York Times, the number of Latino/a enlisting in the Army rose 26 percent, and in the military as a whole, the increase was 18 percent from 2001 to 2005. The military will use any means to accomplish their goal of herding Latinos into the military corral. Latino youth is seen as a commodity, a group to be won and profited from, as opposed to living breathing people with futures.

One would argue that it is impossible to enlist if a person where to drop out, but what is not widely reported is how the military would benefit from the DREAM Act. In the Iraq war, citizenship would continue to be used as a recruiting tool aimed specifically at young immigrants, who are told that by enlisting, they will be able to quickly get citizenship for themselves and their entire families. As political conditions worsen for Latino families, many young Latinos will be unable to resist this offer. If one were to look closely, the DREAM Act would have required the student to register with the Department of Homeland Security, but, what is not mentioned in the Act is whether the empire would deport their parents? Even worse, the DREAM Act was also unclear as to what would happen to the siblings who do not meet the Act’s requirements.

While the military states that it only enlist qualified people, in truth, the military are signing up a large majority of new military recruits from GED programs and their Delayed Entry Program (DEP), which operates in high schools. Recruiters operate in high schools trying to get children as young as 14 to sign up for the military’s DEP, which allows them to finish high school before going on active duty.

Under the program, these young “men and women,” as recruiters are trained to call them, are targeted, tested, gifted, video-gamed, recruitment-faired and career-counseled into enlisting before they turn 18. They are also paid $2,000 for every friend they talk into signing up with them, and, until recently, were paid $50 for every name they brought in to a recruiter. The DEP website provides tips on how students can assist recruiters in signing up their friends. The student can:

• Provide your recruiter with names and numbers of anyone you know who is considering joining the military.
• Obtain the names and numbers of people who work with you or attend places you frequent and the best time to talk to them.
• Obtain the names and numbers of friends or acquaintances who sit with you in classes.
• Help your recruiter by screening his/her lists.
• Accompany your recruiter to places your friends normally hang out and make introductions.

For those who already are serving in the military, the immigration law clearly states what would happen if an immigrant where to decide to be a conscientious objector – “No person who … was a conscientious objector who performed no military, air, or naval duty … or refused to wear the uniform, shall be regarded as having served honorably or having been separated under honorable conditions.” According to military law experts, this means that although applying for conscientious objector status is not grounds for a dishonorable discharge, but attempting to act on it is considered dishonorable behavior. In other words, a person must engage in combat despite their beliefs or receive a dishonorable discharge which would have been a violation of the DREAM Act.

Because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires states to implement a school accountability system based on the absolute test scores of their students, this law has weakened the incentives for states to develop school accountability systems based on value-added measures of student performance. Under NCLB, schools with disadvantaged students generally face harsher sanctions than other schools, which some say is the cause for the dismal graduation rate.

We are losing an unacceptably high number of young people to education failure and labor market detachment. Communities are losing the battle to successfully educate huge numbers of youth. This means that the majority of Latino youth, most of which have been tracked out of the college system, will see military enlist as the only viable option.

Our students and our communities as a whole deserve full and immediate legalization without having to serve in the military. If DREAM Act is once again introduced in Congress again, it is important that we demand that the military option of the DREAM Act be replaced by a community service option, similar to the previous versions.

As Kyle has mentioned, I have not wavered from my principles. The teachings of Gandhi have a major influence in my own beliefs. I admired that he did not balk from taking his principles to their most logical extremes because he deeply felt they were an expression of the deepest love for all humans. He believed that in order to convince opponents of their injustice, one might have to suffer or die in order to win one’s own freedom. To do this it means standing firmly behind one’s ideals.

Watch the lies they are telling our kids. As one of the put it, “there is peer pressure and there is army pressure.”


There is a movement to have the DREAM Act pass. However, after much soul searching, I simply cannot send any more people in harms way knowing that the conditions of our Latino schooling will make military enlistment the only “choice” for our undocumented youth because in predominantly Latino high schools, military recruiters outnumber college representatives five to one. How can we overlook the amount of evidence about the misleading tactics military recruiters use to trick Latino youth to enlist. This decision is a decision of the head and the heart, reason and compassion, and it is not a decision taken lightly.

I understand that the military provision has been included since 2001 and that the military has had their hand in all the education bills, but why can’t we finally be different and make a stand. And if we know there are all these faults, why do we always have to settle for less?

According to the Department of Defense, 750,000 youths who benefit from the DREAM Act. However, the current high school dropout rate among undocumented immigrants is 50 percent. Therefore, that would mean, half of them are already unqualified, which now brings that number to roughly 350,000 undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before age 16 and graduated from high school would qualify.

Since not all high school graduates will go on to college according to a study conducted by RAND because they found that roughly half of those students were “very likely to serve in the Armed Forces.” So we are now left with roughly about 25% of the original 100%, which means roughly 187,500 undocumented immigrants would choose college over the military option.

Of those 25%, not everybody will automatically get to adjust from conditional to permanent legal resident status, they still have graduate from a two-year college or complete two years of a four-year degree before they can qualify baring any hurdles placed by the Sec of Education and their respective state. The current dropout rate during the first two years in college for immigrant students is between 50 to 68 percent.

In the end, roughly 60,000 to 93,750 undocumented immigrants will able to adjust from conditional to permanent legal resident status. But what about the others? Where will those students end up? Dead on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan? Adding more to the over 600,000 dead Iraqis? Can we live with this?

What concerns me is the message that is being put out regarding pro-immigrant anti-war people. If we do not support the DREAM Act, we must be anti-immigration and this is a totally erroneous assumption. I am willing to do my part and join the struggle to get the DREAM Act if it is being pushed without the military provisions, but it is not.

The DREAM Act’s education component is a wonderful dream and one that I share those in favor of the DREAM Act, but as it stands, the only DREAM that is really being accomplished is the military’s DREAM.

Widely discussed throughout the media and the blogs is how the current immigration reform bill being debated in the Senate would create a permanent underclass of indentured slave labor by allowing multinational corporations and independent contractors to hire thousands of “guest” workers a year outside the US. However, what is not often discussed or reported is how one of the provisions tucked inside the bill would also benefit the military.

This provision is called the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act or DREAM Act, which would legitimize in-state tuition programs and “provide a pathway to obtain permanent residency” to immigrant children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents as children. In other words, the DREAM Act would allow undocumented immigrant to qualify for in-state tuition and automatically qualify them for state-funded student financial aid. As things stand, many undocumented students have not benefited from the financial aid aspect, because students are required to submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application to be considered. However, FAFSA is a federal form and undocumented students are not eligible to receive federal student aid.

A couple of days ago, Kyle from Immigration Orange informed of an of an article that was written in the Boston Globe. Bryan Bender reports how the military will benefit from this provision.

While the DREAM Act may facilitate access to college for a small percentage of these undocumented students, in many cases other factors will militate against the college option. This is where the military comes in, tucked away in the current immigration bill is a provision that will help boost military recruiting.

A little-noticed provision in the proposed immigration bill would grant instant legal status and ultimately full citizenship to illegal immigrants if they enlist in the US military, an idea the Pentagon and military analysts say would boost the Pentagon’s flagging efforts to find and recruit qualified soldiers.

The reality is that military recruitment is down significantly and there are reports that the Pentagon is wanting to impose a “limited military draft” in order to maintain “its present force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan” according to The First Post. If the bill were to become law, the provision is expected to improve military recruitment numbers by allowing undocumented immigrants to enlist as a means to obtain citizenship. It is evident that current recruitment programs are ineffective. Recently the Department of Defense announced that the recruitment goals fell short in May and this probably would explain why the military urgently wants to have Congress pass the current immigration reform bill or just the DREAM Act portion of the bill. The Army fell short in May by 7%, short of its goal of 5,500, while the Army National Guard fell 12% short of its goal and the Air National Guard was well below its target by 23%.

When the immigration bill failed to go through Congress earlier this month, Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, told a veterans’ group that he would like to see Congress fast track the DREAM Act so the military could start recruiting undocumented immigrants right away.

“In other words, if you had come across (the border) with your parents, yet you were a minor child and have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist,” he said. “And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen.”

Currently, between 40,000 and 47,000 non-citizens are serving in the military. According to Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, about 40,000 non-citizens are already serving in the military. Another source, Defense Manpower Data Center, reports there are 35,000 non-citizens are currently serving on active duty in the US Armed Forces, with another 12,000 serving in the Guard and reserves.

Only legal residents and green card holders were qualified to serve because the executive order President Bush signed 2002 only applied to them. If the current bill were to pass, the Defense Department is hoping to see a major boost because the expansion of the recruiting pool would now include at least 750,000 youths of military age that could immediately enter the path to citizenship in exchange for at least two years of service in the armed forces.

However, not everybody can qualify. According to the Globe, only high school graduates who are “honor roll students, star athletes, talented artists, aspiring teachers, and doctors” would qualify for military service. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, told the Globe only some of them – roughly 280,000 illegal immigrants between 18 and 24 – would qualify for the program. However, this is not true. The Globe most likely cited a summary of a previous bill because neither of the current bills that have been introduced in the Senate Bill 774 (as the “DREAM Act”), H.R.1275 (as the “American Dream Act”), the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348) or S. 1639 say anything about making such exclusions.

Why would the Globe and Deputy Undersecretary Carr state a provision that is not there or cannot be found in any of those three bills? One does have to wonder why they would make such a statement, could it be so that the nativists will not be claiming this to be another example of another amnesty program.

I previously wrote that Council on Foreign Relations neo-conservative senior fellow Max Boot had proposed that the military enlist and actively recruit foreigners from other countries.

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities – U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. (Emphases mine)

The truth is the US is running out of troops because the war in Iraq has tied down roughly 150,000 US troops continuously for almost four years. Now that the Bush is sending another 30,000 troops to Iraq this only makes the troop shortage worse. Recruitment is so bad, it was reported that the Army sent its recruiters to Panama City, FL during Spring Break hoping to entice some young drunk white co-ed into signing their life away to the Army.

Given the difficulty, undocumented youth have in affording college tuition, the pressure on them to make financial contributions to extended families, and the tendency to adopt uncritical forms of patriotism based on “gratitude,” military recruiters will be the ones who benefit the most. As I stated before, the US Military has a long history of targeting people who happen to come from working class families and areas with a large number of minorities, both urban and rural – otherwise known as a “poverty draft.” Many people assume that joining the military is a way out of poverty. Some veterans do say that their experience in the military or the college benefits that they were able to get, was helpful to them. However, the reality for most veterans is far different. According to the Army Times, reports that over 50,000 unemployed veterans are on the waiting list for the military’s “retraining” program. The Veterans’ Administration estimates that 1/3 of homeless people are vets.

The Pentagon has already spent millions to gather information on how to target recruit Latinos into the military. Each year, employees from JAMRS – the “official Department of Defense program for joint marketing communications and market research and studies” – gathered for their annual direct-marketing conference. JAMRS claims the role of the marketing communications programs is to “help broaden people’s understanding of Military Service as a career option.” However, it also engages in all sorts of not-for-public-consumption studies that are meant to “help bolster the effectiveness of all the Services’ recruiting and retention efforts.” In 2005, in their annual conference, paid New York marketing consultant Michael Saray made a presentation – “Marketing to Hispanics” – to JAMRS on how the Latino community is “wired” differently and how Hispanics tend to be “emotional” and “right-brained.”

According to Jorge Mariscal, Saray’s presentation indicated that Hispanics are supposedly “emotional, intuitive, creative, Big Picture, and visionary.”

Simply put, JAMRS trainees were taught “the Spanish language has not favored intellect over emotion. It’s [sic] bias or thought process has not favored the left brain over the right brain. This is a real cultural difference.” Therefore, the Saray group’s advice to Pentagon ad men devising Hispanic campaigns for military recruitment is to “avoid blatant overuse of numbers. You want to reach the heart, not the left brain.” To sum up, “the traditions of Hispanic culture are not necessarily in-synch with the concept of ‘mainstream society’ or the ‘American Dream.’ In general, Hispanics are right brain thinkers. The marketer must ‘acculturate’ or risk losing relevancy by continued reliance on left brain thinking.” (Emphases mine)

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. The role of a marketer is to convince us to want things we don’t really need because their goal personal goal is to promote or exchange goods or services for money. They will develop techniques to that will trigger a person’s emotions that also meet their wants and/or needs. Their employment, like any marketing company, exist with the sole purpose to convince people that consuming resources is a way toward greater happiness. But the question is at who’s expense?

With few prospects of gaining US citizenship through the usual channels, and with little hope of employment, decent housing and education, risking ones life for a glimmer of a chance for a better future clearly holds some attraction. But it does comes with a price. The sad reality, the promises made by the Government frequently fail to materialize. Just ask Yaderlin Jiminez, wife of missing servicemen Alex Jimenez, who is now facing deportation. One of the greatest challenges for many immigrants is the experience of immigration itself, but to the Bush War Machine, this is not a concern to them. For them, all they see is cannon fodder for their war effort, while at the same time they arrogantly tell military families they should “learn how to laugh” if they fell stressed out from hear news about the war. To the military people expendable while families are morning over the fresh graves that are being dug daily! Maybe the Bush cabal can see the humor in sending thousands of people in harms way, however, I doubt the children do as they see their moms or dads being shipping off to a war that is illegal, immoral and unjust. Or the the parents who are losing their sons and daughters. Or the spouses who are losing their husbands and wifes.

Ironically, nativist and xenophobic groups are demanding the deportation of the Brown, yet, you never hear them complain when it is not unusual to hear a Spanish surname on the roll call of dead or missing. Among the first US solider killed at the beginning of the Iraq War was Jose Antonio Gutierrez from Guatemala according to Casualties.org’s database.

For some immigrants, the DREAM Act will help them access to college in the US; for others, the barriers will continue to be insurmountable. One thing is certain – if the immigration bill passes, the quest to access higher education and achieve the American Dream will be nothing but a pipe dream as these new residents will be at the frontlines of next imperial misadventures.

And last night, Bush stated he is proposing a plan that would allow the military to “hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad … in the defining struggle of our time.”

The US Military has a long history of targeting people who happen to come from working class families and areas with a large amount of minorities, both urban and rural – otherwise known as a “poverty draft.” What makes today’s “poverty draft” more devious, given our current immigration issue, the proposed [tag]Civilian Reserve Corps[/tag] is one way “to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals” and it would “resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country — without animosity and without amnesty.”

The truth is without a draft that will impacted young white men and women, there will be no mass resistance among los gringos like it was in the 60s.

In other words, these pour souls will become the few, the proud – the military’s cannon fodder for the current war. In the document “Strategic Partnership Plan for 2002-2007″ written by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the architects of what we might call “[tag]niche recruiting[/tag]” stated:

“The Hispanic population is the fastest growing demographic in the United States and is projected to become 25% of the U.S. population by the year 2025.” The Plan goes on to explain: “Priority areas [for recruitment] are designated primarily as the cross section of weak labor opportunities and college-age population as determined by both [the] general and Hispanic population.” Not surprisingly, the top two recruiting batallion areas according to the Plan are Los Angeles and San Antonio.

With the promises of employment and visions of success and prosperity, it will not be surprising if we many Latinos and African Americans be willing to join the new Civilian Reserve Corps.

In hopes of escaping their economic prison, many will come to realize they will be bamboozled with empty words and false images – war really means death and suffering, not some X-box video game they thought it was.

The rest of this post is a re-post of the Green Card Daft because much of what I wrote has not changed.

As the military began preparing the invasion of Iraq, they already realized they were lacking the manpower needed for their invasion. There is no doubt the military’s Recruiting Command did not overlook the use of non-citizens to play a major role in their plan.

In July 2002, President Bush issued an executive order that would grant any non-naturalized soldiers serving honorably in the “war on terrorism” to speed up their process to citizenship once they have enlisted. Within 6 months, citizenship could be granted and they are once naturalized they can apply to have immediate families naturalized also.

According to Betsy Streisand, of the U.S. News & World Report, citizenship applications have gone up from 300 a month before Bush’s order to 1,300 a month in 2003. In short, the only reason Hispanics enlist in the military, really has nothing to do with defending our national security or “honor”, it is solely to increase their access to a decent education and a better life.

In a 2005 report by the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA Inc), a federally funded research organization for the US Navy, analysts found immigrants were half as likely as their US-born counterparts to wash out before completing their enlistment. Based on their finding and recognizing the need to “help fill current gaps and meet future needs,” they made several recommendations to tap into the “roughly 1.5 million potential non-citizen recruits”

To facilitate recruitment and retention of non-citizens in the military, the Department of Defense should:

• =>Provide military recruiters with more information for non-citizen recruits by developing materials for applicants and new recruits that explain eligibility for expedited citizenship, the advantages of filing for citizenship while in the military, and the benefits of attaining citizenship.
• =>Consider more structured, installation-based assistance that would help non-citizen service members and their dependents with the citizenship process.
• =>Investigate, through the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whether more uniform treatment of noncitizens across the military services is needed.

As Congress debates to tighten [tag]immigration[/tag] controls, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are serving in the armed forces. What is not generally known is that the Bush Junta, like the business community, has also been exploiting them. Some have even gone even further, Council on Foreign Relations neoconservative senior fellow Max Boot, and have proposed that the military, enlist and actively recruit foreigners from other countries.

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. (Emphases mine)

As extreme as that might sound, when it comes to military service, many immigrates are willing to put their life on the line as a way to prove their loyalty to the US in hopes of obtaining the American Dream, equal treatment and acceptance in their new country. Realities the military and neo-cons like Max Boot are well aware of and are willing to exploit.

During the 2004 Presidential race, many people were talking about the possibility of reinstating the draft. But want many people don’t realize, once America went to war and after Bush’s executive order, the military, Congress and Citizenship and Immigration Services were already in the process of fast-tracking applications and making it easier for immigrants to become citizens.

When reports were coming in about the military recruitment was at a 30-year low, the military already started targeting Latinos to meet their targeted numbers. One of the Pentagon goals is to double the amount of Hispanic enlistment through aggressive marketing.

Another tool aiding the [tag]military[/tag] in recruiting Latinos into the armed services is through the little known Hispanic Access Initiative Act (HAIA) of 1996, which allows ROTC recruiters to target Latino students at high school and Hispanic Serving Institutions, colleges with a large Hispanic student body. Recruiters are given access to high school students’ addresses and phone numbers and are free to contact them at home, unless parents object. In 2004, the Army has added $10 million to its recruitment budget to advertise directly aimed at Hispanic audiences.

So how effective are their advertisement efforts in the recruiting process? As of Sept 9, 2006, everything is going as planned:

The Pentagon announced Friday that the Army met its recruiting goal for August, which a senior Army official said makes it virtually certain that the service will achieve its aim of signing up 80,000 new soldiers for the full recruiting year, which ends Sept. 30. Last year the Army fell short for the first time since 1999.

And recently, Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced there are more than 40,000 immigrants currently serving in the military and more than 26,000 have already been naturalized since Sept. 11, 2001.

Their pipeline for a brighter future – a chance to become the next teachers, doctors, scientist, and other professionals – is soon to becoming nothing more but a pipe dream of empty hopes and promises. For them, there is no American Dream, only an American Nightmare.

The sadistic irony in all of this, as many immigrants risk life and limb entering this country for a better life, they are now being asked to risk life and limb to be played as pawns in a geopolitical chess game – all for the most “precious commodity” – [tag]US citizenship[/tag].

It seems like many people were talking about the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s plan to introduce a bill to reinstate the draft last week. On CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel had told Bob Schieffer, he is serious about calling for the draft.

“If we’re going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can’t do that without a draft,” Rangel said.

On the following Monday in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Rangel continued to make his case by saying that the U.S. is too strained in Iraq.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rangel’s call for a reinstatement of the draft is based on the notion that congressional representatives would be less likely to back a war that might involve the lives of their own children.

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

The fact is, the US is very unlikely to reinstate the draft because of the Vietnam experience, however, and the reality is, according to Gen. John Abizaid, the 4-star who runs Central Command, the US does not have the appropriate number of troops to maintain “stability” in the region.

In August, the Marine Corps resorted to involuntary call-ups, meaning the Marine called up as many as 2,500 Marine reservists who have already left active service for combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They would come from a pool of about 59,000 members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) — Marines with specific skills who left active duty and returned to civilian lives, but are obligated to serve if called. Marine Corps officials said yesterday that reservists in their first or last years of enrollment will not be subject to recall.

Rangel’s bill is tempting among progressives and liberals because the proposed bill would require all men and women – regardless of socio-economic background – between age 18 and 42 to serve in the military. Rangel has introduced a similar bill in the past that has failed. The proposed bill is a modified version of a bill he sponsored in 2003 which he proposed a draft for people between 18 and 26.

Soon after Rangel stated he was in favor of reinstating the draft, there was enough buzz in the progressive blogosphere to scare off top level Democrats to ensure that there’s no chance a draft will be instituted in a Democratic controlled Congress. Other political and military leaders suggest that there is no need to institute a draft but and the problems in Iraq can be solved by providing a several hundred thousand additional troops.

However, conscription does have some unlikely champions, including Noam Chomsky.

I might add, for what it’s worth, that although I was actively involved in organizing and supporting resistance (including support for draft resisters) in the 60s, and was saved from a likely prison sentence only by the Tet offensive, I was never opposed to the draft. If there is to be an army, it would be best, I think, for it to be mainly a citizen’s army. In part for the reasons that the top command oppose that option.

The proposed bill, would force every level of society to participate in military service, rather than placing a disproportionate burden on minorities and the working class. Those who are in favor of this idea are calling this type of draft the “equality draft” because Rangel clearly states, “everyone should share in the sacrifice.” In other words, everybody will have equal opportunity of living in misery.

The last time there was talk about the possibility of the draft being reinstated was after the 2004 Presidential election, several Internet sites and alternative media were advocating this view. In March 2005, Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris wrote a decidedly pro-draft stance, “The Case for the Draft,” in the pro-centrist magazine, the Washington Monthly. Carter and Glastris argues that the US simply doesn’t have enough soldiers to occupy every country in Bush’s agenda since we already have hundreds of thousands of troops – of the 1.4 million men and women on active duty – stationed in hundreds of foreign nations. Therefore, a draft is needed to meet our shortcomings.

However, unlike last year, where most major media called it a “draft scare” created by Internet rumor mills and conspiracy theorist, this year, they have come out denouncing the idea. The US Selective Service System (SSS) website has been very quite this time around, during the “draft scare” officials from the Selective Service were quick to state that there were no “active plans” to revive a draft. Yet, US Selective Service System has said that they are ready to “pull the trigger” if Congress the president to authorize a draft system.

With the number of casualties nearing 3,000 since the invasion in Iraq and the dismissal of reinstating the draft, what are Americans to assume? One thing is for certain, most Americans are skeptical that a draft is likely. The general idea is that politicians of either party look at all costs to stay away raising the specter of a revived draft. And for most young Americans the draft seems far off. If only they knew.

Although Congress and the Department of Defense remains steadfastly opposed to a draft, their actions tell a different story. Even though the requirement for all men between 18 and 26 to register with the draft was suspended in 1975, in 1980, Congress reinstated draft registration for men 18 to 25 years old in “preparations for intervention” after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Later, in 1987, Congress modified the Military Selective Service Act by enacting Public Law 100-180 which ordered the Selective Service System to put in place a structure capable of registering and classifying qualified health care personnel who are essential to the “maintenance of the Armed Forces.” Called the “Health Care Personnel Delivery System” (HCPDS), the system is able to specifically induct 73,000 civilian health care personnels from about 60 medical specialties if such a special-skills draft should be ordered by Congress.

The Selective Service system shall be maintained as an active standby organization, with (1) a complete registration and classification structure capable of immediate operation in the event of a national emergency (including a structure for registration and classification of persons qualified for practice or employment in a health care occupation essential to the maintenance of the Armed Forces), and (2) personnel adequate to reinstitute immediately the full operation of the System, including military reservists who are trained to operate such System and who can be ordered to active duty for such purpose in the event of a national emergency.

In 1989, Selective Service published its plans for the HCPDS for public comment on August 15, 1989 (54 Federal Register 33644-33654), and has had them ready ever since. According to one military doctor, in 2004, there was talk about that a physician draft is was most likely coming in the near future, however, nothing has been said if it will happen.

In 2003, a top-level meeting took place between the head of the SSS and Deputy Undersecretary in charge of Personnel and Readiness of the Department of Defense on reengineering a new type of draft, the Skills Draft. The unclassified memo proposes that the SSS be able to call up any number of several hundred skills the Pentagon and even the Dept. of Homeland Security might be lacking.

Washington Monthly piece by Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris, calls it the “21st century draft” and argues it would be more efficient than the conventional draft because it would be more universal (women as well as men) and more complex. In fact, it will not even be called a draft, it will wrapped up with an Orwellian label, sort like the “Clear Skies Initiative” or the “No Child Left Behind.” The draft will more likely be called “national service,” “homeland service,” or “universal service” and it draft for “homeland security” as well as duty overseas – duties would include being a border guard, immigration cop, IT specialists and medics.

If one were to look carefully to the wording used on “Face the Nation,” Rangel stated that the draft was not just for military services, but –

“young people (would) commit themselves to a couple of years in service to this great republic, whether it’s our seaports, our airports, in schools, in hospitals,” with a promise of educational benefits at the end of service.

I have previously written other posts (The CO Candidate’s Community Service Draft for Boys and The Green Card Draft) about chatter of reinstating the draft for “national service.”

This type of draft being proposed by some liberals and conservatives closely resembles what Israel has today. The Israeli national service requires three years of service for all Jewish and Druze men, two for all women–between age 17 and 50. Israel divides the type of service in three parts: military (compulsory for men, except orthodox women and Jewish or Druze theology students or teachers), security (police, fire, border, anti- terror units), and community service.

It is hard not to agree with Rep. Rangel and the pro-draft people who argue that the war in Iraq cannot be sustained by the existing volunteer force that makes up the current so-called All-Volunteer Army. But the idea of forcing people to become cannon fodder is unconscionable. And the to literally believe that creating a draft would limit political options by creating a level playing field between classes, are only fooling themselves from reality.

Rangel has provided the elite and the well connected a way out from serving military combat. The proposed plan will allow an individual the choice of serving in the military or doing civilian work. And if given that choice, the children of the ruling class and those who are well connected will be found working in air conditioned offices, while the vast majority of minorities and the working class will still be found fulfilling their “national service” duties in the Armed Forces. Anyone with an option to stay away from the military would and those who couldn’t would be sent off to some other country for the American Empire.

A draft by any other name is still a draft and it will still and always be wrong!

But what happens when the US decides to participate in too many international conflicts and commitments? The outcome, there are too few soldiers.

What happens next, you wind up having people like CO Republican candidate Rick O’Donnell, who I wrote about wanting to have a national service corp. draft for men. Or someone like Edward Bernard Glick (via Jeffersonian Democrat at Booman Tribune), who recently wrote an op-ed article in the Christian Science Monitor, advocating for the reinstatement of the military draft.

That’s why it’s time to reinstate the draft. A draft would do more than just harness the energy and idealism of the nation’s youth to meet the military’s unmet personnel needs. It would also tap more of the resources of the nation’s women, heeding their demands for more gender equality by making their obligations more consonant with their rights.

The difference between Dr. Glick’s, professor emeritus at Temple University in Philadelphia, proposal from O’Donnell’s, Dr. Glick draft would include women, some flexibility for conscientious objectors, and he considered it “fairer,” whatever that means.

It would give the federal government more flexibility in dealing with conscientious objectors. And it would be fairer to African-Americans and other minorities, who might stop viewing military service as just another job choice.

During a time of war, the US Military has a long history of targeting people who happen to come from working class families and areas with a large amount of minorities, both urban and rural – otherwise known as a “poverty draft.” What makes today’s “poverty draft” more devious, given our current economic state, it tends to feed off those who are concentrated in low-paying jobs without benefits or job security. These pour souls will become the few, the proud – the military’s cannon fodder.

In the document “Strategic Partnership Plan for 2002-2007″ written by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, the architects of what we might call “niche recruiting” state: “The Hispanic population is the fastest growing demographic in the United States and is projected to become 25% of the U.S. population by the year 2025.” The Plan goes on to explain: “Priority areas [for recruitment] are designated primarily as the cross section of weak labor opportunities and college-age population as determined by both [the] general and Hispanic population.” Not surprisingly, the top two recruiting batallion areas according to the Plan are Los Angeles and San Antonio.

Like lambs to the slaughter, many Hispanics and African Americans are eager to join the military with the promises of scholarships, good employment and visions of success and prosperity. Hoping they escape their economic prison, many come realize they have been bamboozled with empty words and false images – war really means death and suffering, not some X-box video game they thought it was.

As the military began preparing the invasion of Iraq, they already realized they were lacking the manpower needed for their invasion. There is no doubt the military’s Recruiting Command did not overlook the use of non-citizens to play a major role in their plan.

In July 2002, President Bush issued an executive order that would grant any non-naturalized soldiers serving honorably in the “war on terrorism” to speed up their process to citizenship once they have enlisted. Within 6 months, citizenship could be granted and they are once naturalized they can apply to have immediate families naturalized also.

According to Betsy Streisand, of the U.S. News & World Report, citizenship applications have gone up from 300 a month before Bush’s order to 1,300 a month in 2003. In short, the only reason Hispanics enlist in the military, really has nothing to do with defending our national security or “honor,” it is solely to increase their access to a decent education and a better life.

In a 2005 report by the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA Inc), a federally funded research organization for the US Navy, analysts found immigrants were half as likely as their US-born counterparts to wash out before completing their enlistment. Based on their finding and recognizing the need to “help fill current gaps and meet future needs,” they made several recommendations to tap into the “roughly 1.5 million potential non-citizen recruits”

To facilitate recruitment and retention of non-citizens in the military, the Department of Defense should:

• Provide military recruiters with more information for non-citizen recruits by developing materials for applicants and new recruits that explain eligibility for expedited citizenship, the advantages of filing for citizenship while in the military, and the benefits of attaining citizenship.
• Consider more structured, installation-based assistance that would help non-citizen service members and their dependents with the citizenship process.
• Investigate, through the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whether more uniform treatment of noncitizens across the military services is needed.

As Congress debates to tighten immigration controls, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are serving in the armed forces. What is not generally known is that the Bush Junta, like the business community, has also been exploiting them. Some have even gone even further, Council on Foreign Relations neoconservative senior fellow Max Boot, and have proposed that the military, enlist and actively recruit foreigners from other countries.

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune. (Emphases mine)

As extreme as that might sound, when it comes to military service, many immigrates are willing to put their life on the line as a way to prove their loyalty to the US in hopes of obtaining the American Dream, equal treatment and acceptance in their new country. Realities the military and neo-cons like Max Boot are well aware of and are willing to exploit.

During the 2004 Presidential race, many people were talking about the possibility of reinstating the draft. But want many people don’t realize, once America went to war and after Bush’s executive order, the military, Congress and Citizenship and Immigration Services were already in the process of fast-tracking applications and making it easier for immigrants to become citizens.

When reports were coming in about the military recruitment was at a 30-year low, the military already started targeting Hispanics to meet their targeted numbers. One of the Pentagon goals is to double the amount of Hispanic enlistment through aggressive marketing.

Another tool aiding the military in recruiting Hispanic into the armed services is through the little known Hispanic Access Initiative Act (HAIA) of 1996, which allows ROTC recruiters to target Hispanic students at high school and Hispanic Serving Institutions, colleges with a large Hispanic student body. Recruiters are given access to high school students’ addresses and phone numbers and are free to contact them at home, unless parents object. In 2004, the Army has added $10 million to its recruitment budget to advertise directly aimed at Hispanic audiences.

So how effective are their advertisement efforts in the recruiting process? As of Sept 9, 2006, everything is going as planned:

The Pentagon announced Friday that the Army met its recruiting goal for August, which a senior Army official said makes it virtually certain that the service will achieve its aim of signing up 80,000 new soldiers for the full recruiting year, which ends Sept. 30. Last year the Army fell short for the first time since 1999.

And recently, Emilio Gonzalez, director of the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced there are more than 40,000 immigrants currently serving in the military and more than 26,000 have already been naturalized since Sept. 11, 2001.

Their pipeline for a brighter future – a chance to become the next teachers, doctors, scientist, and other professionals – is soon to becoming nothing more but a pipe dream of empty hopes and promises. For them, there is no American Dream, only an American Nightmare.

The sadistic irony in all of this, as many immigrants risk life and limb entering this country for a better life, they are now being asked to risk life and limb to be played as pawns in a geopolitical chess game – all for the most “precious commodity” – US citizenship.

However, in Colorado, things are heating up between Republican candidate Rick O’Donnell and Democrat candidate Ed Perlmutter in Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, who are running to fill a seat being vacated by Rep Bob Beauprez, who is seeking the governor.

It seems two years ago, when Rick O’Donnell was serving as executive director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, he wrote an article in the Denver Post, titled “A new rite of passage,” proposing that every male in their 2nd semester of their senior year to perform compulsory service by guarding the border with Mexico or securing the ports for Homeland Security. According to O’Donnell, after the first semester of 12th grade, “all new men in America do six months of service” and the money held would go towards establishing a national service corp. for men. Not men and women, just men. This is what he proposes:

I propose that after the first semester of 12th grade, all young men in America do six months of service. For those who drop out of high school, they replace those lost years with additional service….

Young men could have a choice of where to serve, such as homeland security, armed forces or community service. After a basic-training type orientation, they would be given various duties in sore need of attention: securing our border with Mexico; thinning our national forests to reduce fire risk; providing homeland security at ports and other vulnerable locations.

Additionally, it would help assimilate the children of immigrants into being Americans.

This train of thought has so many problems at so many levels. The first has to do with the immigration. How are they going to help children of immigrants assimilate into being Americans, if the function of the Border Patrol is to “deter illegal entries” into the US. According to their national strategy, their 5 primary objectives are:

1. Establish substantial probability of apprehending terrorists and their weapons as they attempt to enter illegally between the ports of entry;
2. Deter illegal entries through improved enforcement;
3. Detect, apprehend, and deter smugglers of humans, drugs, and other contraband;
4. Leverage “Smart Border” technology to multiply the effect of enforcement personnel; and
5. Reduce crime in border communities and consequently improve quality of life and economic vitality of targeted areas.

Nowhere in their goals does it state that the migra are there to help the immigrants assimilate into the US. Where did O’Donnell get this idea?

Second, has to deal with the main reason for creating this program – “adequately preparing its boys for manhood.”

Men commit suicide four times more than women. The federal prison population is 93 percent male. Only 47 percent of Colorado’s sixth-grade boys pass the writing CSAP, compared to 62 percent of girls. On the 10-grade reading CSAP only 61 percent of boys pass, compared to 73 percent of girls….

There are many complex causes for this sad streak of problems among young men. The largest contributor is the epidemic of absent fathers. Almost 35 percent of boys live without their biological father. Forty percent of children in fatherless homes have not seen their father even once during the past year. Boys without fathers are twice as likely to be dropouts and four times as likely to need behavioral treatment as boys with fathers.

There is no doubt his goals are honorable, but don’t be fooled by his straw man defense. Although he may be trying to create a national program similar to the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, in reality, he is not.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is the oldest, largest and most effective youth mentoring organization in the United States. We have been the leader in one-to-one youth service for more than a century, developing positive relationships that have a direct and lasting impact on the lives of young people. Big Brothers Big Sisters serves children, ages 6 through 18, in communities across the country – including yours.

The Big Brothers Big Sisters Mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with measurable impact.

His real intentions are more questionable than honorable:

Each year, 4 million young men would do something productive for their country, rather than drop out of school or waste time in 12th grade. They would undergo a society-wide rite of passage into manhood, one that provides discipline, positive role models, fraternity, physical effort and a sense of adventure and risk.

O’Donnell seems to emphasize in the importance of male bonding when it comes to the rite of passage into manhood. The last time any relevant discussion that occurred emphasizing male bonding was during the German Youth Movement. The main purpose of the Hitler Youth was to provide a setting that is presumed to change German boys from a “limp dishrags” into a real man. Jungvolk members were supposed to prove that they were no more “little mama’s boys.”

n order to create the stage upon which this performance of masculinity could be presented, it was necessary to undergo a rite of passage, which the Hitler Youth called ‘baptism by fire.’ Baptism by fire was the youth’s first experience fighting. Here his masculine identity was tested. Young boys were trained for this ultimate test of their masculinity through conditioning towards violence and the physical training of their bodies. … Kinderlandverschikung program (KLV camps), the Nazi program for evacuating youth from the dangerous bombed cities to safer places, were transformed from “the young elite of the nation” into a “horde of half-grown barbarians.”

This is not an exaggeration; O’Donnell provides plenty of notions into his train of thought. O’Donnell begins the article by explaining “rite of passage” to manhood and how a father and son spent the weekend hiking, camping and talking not as father and son, but man to man. Because it was man to man, it adequately provided the ingredients – fraternity, acceptance, adventure and risk – necessary for an entrance to manhood.

Some may wonder, what does camping trip and tribal rituals have to do in rational connection with Nazism, but in reality, a lot. O’Donnell points to various problems in society regard male youth, he strongly asserts that the “largest contributor is the epidemic of absent fathers.” O’Donnell argues, “Boys must learn from their fathers how to become men.” He then carries on to firmly claim that only men can effectively show boy “guy things” generally because there are matters a woman “can never teach her son,” therefore failing to raise their “boys successfully [to] become men of character.” As determined by whom? When dealing with traditional gender roles, physical strength connotes manliness while the inability to defend one’s self is viewed as being too feminine.

There is an inherent danger in O’Donnell’s argument for establishing a national organization devoted to creating a “society-wide rite of passage into manhood.” In American culture, adolescence is viewed as a time of turmoil, frustration, and change; and in all honestly, there is no official rite of passage from childhood into adulthood. To understand the danger in establishing this type of organization, one must have a basic understanding in human development, especially when it comes to adolescent development.

Erik Erikson describes eight stages to human development, the stage prevalent to adolescent development to Erikson’s eight stages is Identity vs. Role Confusion. Erickson proposes that in each stage a child experiences a conflict that he or she must successfully resolve in order for the child to grow into an emotional healthy adult. Identity vs. Role Confusion occurs between the ages of 11 and 18. In this stage, the adolescent begins to develop a sense of importance and self worth through interacting with his or her peers. If an adolescent is unsuccesful in this stage, individuals would remain isolated and are unable to complete the process of identification of which Erikson speaks. In other words, it is in stage, an adolescent acquires a sense of belonging in peer group, which then provides them a standard they can evaluate themselves. It is also in this stage an adolescent adopts the values, norms, customs and language of the group, thus leading to a mass identity. A peer group can also help them to make the transition from reliance on the family to relative independence.

It is also important to mention Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Kohlberg proposes three levels of morality within which are two stages each of moral orientation. The conventional level of moral reasoning is typical of adolescents and adults. The conventional level consists of the third and fourth stages of moral development. In Stage three, an adolescent wants to remain in good standing with the important people in his/her life; therefore, he/she conforms to the rules and regulations set forth.

In Stage four the adolescent learns that conforming to rules, laws, dictums and social conventions is important in maintaining a functioning society. One must follow the rules to be morally acceptable. It is also where the person feels there is an obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules.

In the last level, morality is viewed in terms of personal rights. Democratic society should govern ideals and principles in order for each individual to be treated morally and fairly.

Another interesting aspect of O’Donnell’s community service corp. for men is his no exception rule for his little “fraternity.”

No one would be exempt, rich kids couldn’t buy their way out of service, and it wouldn’t involve the informality of AmeriCorps.

It is only through a classless society that it is possible to successfully establish a fraternal society because through this, people are more adept to having a feeling of equality with each other. Interestingly, during Nazi Germany, the Nazis nearly created a classless society, which illustrates why there was a collective mass with a common ideology and similar goals.

It is also through a fraternal society, a strong sense of civil obedience to a government is created because a society will have a common culture, morals, and beliefs. Nevertheless, fraternalism will end up providing its members a collective consciousness that is defined by society’s morals, traditions and beliefs that are dictated to them. One of O’Donnell worries is that in today’s society, men are lacking a traditional set of morals, traditions, and moral that defines his view of what a “real man” should be:

“It’s sad that for too many young men, sex, sports and violence are all that is left as anchors of their souls, rather than family, faith and hard-work.“

What better way to establish a stronger pro-Americana movement while creating an army of 17 and 18 year olds protecting our borders from the Brown invasion. What is scary is the reality that the Republican Party nominated him to run for US Congress knowing O’Donnell wrote this essay.

As the Bush Administration is trying to have us perceive that facism is spreading in the Middle East – “war against Islamic fascism” – we, however, are failing to pay attention to the fact that we are the ones inching closer to fascism. Former Vice President Henry Wallace provided us a warning on what is considered an American fascist, yet, it is us who failed him by not heeding to his warning.

represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after “the present unpleasantness” ceases…

Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.

Racism is becoming more wide spread because it finally has seeped into our mind and is making our decisions for us on who is acceptable or not.

It comes at us from the time we are young and not even able to discern truth from lie so well, let alone comprehend why on earth humans would purposely be so deceptive as our corporate structures who so heavily influence social norms and mores are.

… In this country, there is racism everywhere. And if you don’t see it, it’s because you’re being a good, hypnotized subject who has personal reasons for not seeing the racism. Of course, the obvious signs of racism are addressed in this society. They are obvious! And we like the pretense of being a kind and civilized and enlightened culture. So we praise Rosa Parks and we quote MLK, and we make a Black or Brown friend in the supermarket, and we call Racism dead.

It is hard to comprehend how patrolling the border or creating an all male national community service program designed to successfully institute a “society-wide rite of passage into manhood” will ease the social ills that plague this nation from poverty, homelessness, unemployment, insufficient healthcare, absence of assistance for unwed mothers and the elderly – all the main reasons President Lyndon B. Johnson created the national community service programs in the first place.

If we are to crush the current system we have in place, we must put in place the ability to keep people fully employed and end the ridiculous spend on this war. We must put human beings first and the almighty dollar second. We must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate this oppressive government that is now in charge and the modern day robber barons that have once again formed monopolies. I will say it again.

We must not tolerate this oppressive government that is now in charge and the modern day robber barons that have once again formed monopolies.