in California in 2005 Counter-recruitment (which has long been a strategy of
pacifist and other
anti-war groups) received a boost in the United States with the unpopularity of the
war in Iraq and brief recruitment difficulties of branches of the U.S. military, particularly the
Army; although the Army has met, or exceeded, its recruitment goals year after year during that period. Beginning in early 2005, the U.S. counter-recruitment movement grew, particularly on
high school and
college campuses, where it is often led by students who see themselves as targeted for military service in a war they do not support.
Early history The counter-recruitment movement was the successor to the anti-draft movement with the end of
conscription in the United States in 1973, just after the end of the
Vietnam War. The military increased its recruiting efforts, with the total number of recruiters, recruiting stations, and dollars spent on recruiting each more than doubling between 1971 and 1974. Anti-war and anti-draft activists responded with a number of initiatives, using tactics similar to those used by counter-recruiters today. Activists distributed leaflets to students, publicly debated recruiters, and used equal-access provisions to obtain space next to recruiters to dispute their claims. The
American Friends Service Committee (A.F.S.C.) and the
Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (C.C.C.O.) began publishing counter-recruitment literature and attempting to coordinate the movement nationally. These organizations have been continuously involved in counter-recruitment to the present day.
High schools Most counter-recruitment work in the U.S. is focused at the policy level of public school systems. This work is generally done by parents and grandparents of school-aged children, and the most common activity is information and advocacy with school officials (principals, school boards, etc.) and with the general population in their local school area. CR at the K12 level is categorically different from other movements, since most of the students are underaged minors and parents are their legal custodians and guardians, not the schools. The most common policy goal is that the frequency of military recruiters' visits to public schools, their locations in schools, and their types of activities be controlled rather than unlimited. Many of the larger urban school districts have implemented such guidelines since 2001. Other goals have included "truth in recruiting", that counselors or curriculum elements be implemented to address the deficiency in high school students' understanding of war and the military life, rather than allowing military recruiters to perform that role. On high school campuses, counter-recruitment activists since 2001 have also focused around a provision of the
No Child Left Behind Act, which requires that high schools provide contact and other information to the military for all of their students who do not opt out. Counter-recruitment campaigns have attempted to change school policy to ban recruiters regardless of the loss of federal funds, to be active about informing students of their ability to opt out, and/or to allow counter-recruiters access to students equal to the access given to military recruiters. These political campaigns have had some success, particularly in the
Los Angeles area, where one has been led by the
Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools, and the
San Francisco Bay Area. A simpler and easier, though perhaps less effective, strategy by counter-recruiters has been to show up before or after the school day and provide students entering or exiting their school with opt-out forms, produced by the local school district or by a sympathetic national legal organization such as the
American Civil Liberties Union or the
National Lawyers Guild. Organizations which have attempted to organize such campaigns on a national scale include A.F.S.C. and C.C.C.O., the
Campus Antiwar Network (C.A.N.), and the
War Resisters League.
Code Pink, with the
Ruckus Society, has sponsored training camps on counter-recruitment as well as producing informational literature for use by counter-recruiters.
United for Peace and Justice has counter-recruitment as one of its seven issue-specific campaigns. Mennonite Central Committee is another resource on the subject. Some of these organizations focus on counter-recruitment in a specific sector, such as high schools or colleges, while the
National network Opposing the Militarization of Youth, founded in 2004, deals with the larger issue of militarism as it affects young people and society. ==In Canada==