Long line at NH National Guard office

[dalebert]

I'm reading a magazine, Friends Journal, Quaker Thought and Life Today.

The first article that caught my attention seems particularly good. One thing I'm really liking about Quakers is that they seem to be about action in the real world. The article is about counter-recruitment in high schools and details what some volunteers did with notes about areas where they were successful or not and what all they learned from it. There is so much good effort already out there that Quakers have been doing. Much of it is work they started that took on a life of its own completely outside of the religion and gained followers outside of the Quaker faith. This article talks about one of those.

It just seems silly for us to reinvent the wheel when there is such good work out there that we can get involved with. There are so many resources available that we can learn from so we don't start everything from scratch. Here's an excerpt from the article.

We provided information about pay, the terms of enlistment, and the problems with the Montgomery G.I. Bill of Rights. We handed out a range of pamphlets over the school year, such as Ask a recruiter; You Don't Have to Join the Military to Go to Gollege, and Help Wanted, on jobs locally available. Our single most powerful piece of literature, one that we always try to have at our counter-recruiting table, is a blank copy of the enlistment document, so that we can point out to students exactly where it says in the Department of Defense enlistment form that any promises made to them (including promises made by recruiters) that are not explicitly written in this contract are invalid and will not be honored; that the length of the term of enlistment is eight years; and that the government is entitled to change all the conditions of the contract at any time, while the recruit is committed to every aspect of the contract, under penalty of law and prison.

This is a re-post from the Free Keene Forum. You can follow this thread over there if you like.