Youth Targeted,
Youth Fight Back!
Delayed Enlistment Program
Gerard Gratiot: Rescued from the Delayed Entry Program
How To Help Delayed Entry Program Members Out
Do You Feel a Draft?
Latino Recruiting
Recruiting Generation Ñ
Say "No Mas" to Militarism and Colonialism: Navy Out of Vieques Now!
Objector Interview
Asif Ullah YouthPeace Coordinator, War Resisters League
AWOL and Food Not Bombs!
The Home Front: A White Woman Against Apartheid and Conscription
THE OBJECTOR
a magazine of conscience and resistance
Who We Are
Donate to CCCO
Military Out of Our Schools Program
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter:
Objector Alerts
objector-alerts archive |
CCCO Covert Operations
CCCO intern Eric LeCompte discovers how to reach recruits on their way to boot camp
From Seattle to Puerto Rico our government has built centers called Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS). MEPS are regional processing centers where young men and women are sent after they have been recruited. Here young recruits take physicals and entrance tests. Later, they will be transported to a MEPS to await boot camp.
There are sixty-five MEPS in the United States and its protectorates. Every day, thousands of young people visit them. For CCCO, these sites -- where raising an army begins -- are important places to educate and to stand.
What do we do there?
This summer, both the Philadelphia and Oakland offices held vigil in front of recruiting stations and MEPS. During these events we passed out literature about the reality of military service. Bystanders received information concerning growing military expenditures. Delayed Enlistment Program recruits received specific instructions on getting out. Recruits boarding busses to boot camp received business cards with the GI Rights Hotline number. Even active duty recruiters received the GI Rights Hotline Cards.
Passing out literature at MEPS is important. Doing so as part of a group is great, but if you do it as an individual, you may appear less threatening and be better able to approach young recruits.
One activist's story
This summer, I strolled past the Philadelphia MEPS every couple days. After a few days, I had discovered two important things: I knew when large groups of young people arrived from the surrounding region and I knew when they gathered to be sent to boot camp.
Consequently, as an individual, I could take action. At times of high activity, I would stroll by and strike up conversations. For students there to take entrance tests, who were either already signed up or about to sign up in Delayed Enlistment Program, I had a pamphlet on military service and a fact sheet on how to get out. For young people gathering to await vans for boot camp, I had a GI Rights Hotline card which gave them the option to get help in boot camp.
Surveying a MEPS to find out its times of activity, and following up with literature, is a powerful way to establish a link with these young people. Giving men and women viable options within the military will undoubtedly empower more of them to free themselves in time.¦
Eric LeCompte, CCCO's Freeman/Bristol intern in Philadelphia, just graduated from St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict. After six months in Colombia, he wrote a senior thesis entitled Hacedores de paz/a case study in Colombian conscientious objection. |