On Thursday January 28th The American Friends Service Committee and The American Civil

Liberties Union of Georgia held a joint press conference at the State Capitol to mark the introduction of
a resolution that would protect children under 17 from direct contact from military recruiters. The
Resolution is the culmination of months of work that began when Azadeh Shahshahani of the ACLU
offered to work with AFSC during our campaign to halt the Dekalb Marine Corps Institute project,
which would have been a publicly funded Marine Corps themed School run by the Marines and funded
by recruitment dollars.
After the successful campaign we began looking at the state of military recruitment in Georgia and
came to some troubling conclusions.

Our concerns continue to grow over the racial and economic inequities in military recruitments. Low
income recruits continue to fill the majority of boots on the front line, many will also end up filling up
homeless shelters as a results of the wounds of war(1/3 of homeless people are veterans).More
troubling is the continued reports of deceptive military recruitment practices used on children,often
times under 17 years old, in our public school system.

Every year the army experience convoys rolls through middle schools all over Georgia, and the rest of
the country, to demonstrate how exciting and fun war can be. In their army recruitment pitches combat
is relegated to nothing more then a video game.

In our high schools military recruiters enjoy as much access to students as they want, often times
parading themselves as career counselors who are only there to help young people with their futures.
The recruitment pitch that kids are given often includes promises of college cash, jobs skills training,
top notch lifetime benefits, seeing the world, and some kids are even told they will likely not see
combat.

What young people are getting from military service is usually very different then the picture painted
by recruiters. Veterans make 15% less then their non-veteran counter parts, 1/3 of female vets report
being sexually assaulted while on duty, only 1/5 of vets ever get a four year degree, modern veterans
have the highest suicide rate in recorded history, and the enlistment contract binds you but not the
military- they can breach the contract as they please.

So this is at the core of our support of the resolution. Children under 17 should have no direct contact
with recruiters or military recruitment tools including the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery(ASVAB) and the army experience.

Recruiters should not have access to minors, especially without parental consent. Under the "no child
left behind" act high schools must release private contact information of all 11th and 12th grade
students or face losing their federal funding, this is a pretty scary concept. Often times parents and
students are unaware that they have the option to protect their information from falling into the hands
of recruiters. This resolution urges school districts to step up their efforts to provide every parent with a
form that would enable them to remove their child's info from the hands of military recruiters."

We believe that students, parents, and teachers have the right to have a realistic picture of what military
service and military benefits actually looks like before on the front end of the recruitment process.
Chris Raissi, an Iraq war veteran and former Marine Corps recruiter, spoke at the press conference
stating, "I think the resolution is very reasonable. Recruiters are trained to work everyone in a high
school, from freshmen to seniors. From my experience, the schools don't give any notification to the
parents about dissemination of student's personal information to recruiters. If Parents ignore their
phone calls, recruiters are trained to track down every kid on the list, either at school or at home."

Azadeh Shahshahani of the ACLU and the sponsors of the resolution in both the Georgia House (Rep.
Stephanie Stuckey Benfield) and the Georgia Senate ( Senator Nan Orrock) all spoke in support of the
resolution at the press conference. The resolution was assigned a number in the Georgia House (HR
1219) and the Georgia Senate (SR 955), and you can expect a lot of organizing around the state on this
important resolution.

SUPPORTING THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

What Does the Resolution Accomplish?

This resolution urges the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia

schools to safeguard the rights of children under the age 17 from military
recruitment and to implement basic safeguards for recruitment of 17-yearolds.

Specifically, the resolution encourages Georgia:

1. To comply with the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of

the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, ratified by the
U.S. Senate in 2002 and signed by President Bush;

2. To cease current programs and activities and refrain from future programs
designed to recruit children under the age of 17 into the military;

3. To implement basic safeguards for recruitment of 17-year-olds by requiring

that military recruitment activities be genuinely voluntary and carried out
with the consent of the child’s parents or guardians; and

4. To actively provide students and parents with exemption forms and

information regarding exemption forms that prohibit schools from disclosing
students' records to military recruiters as required by the No Child Left
Behind Act.

Why is this Resolution Necessary?

• Increased pressure to recruit during wartime has led to abusive recruitment

in violation of the Optional Protocol. Wartime enlistment quotas have placed
increased pressure on military recruiters to fill the ranks of the armed services.
The added strain of fulfilling enlistment quotas necessary to carry out sustained
U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan without reinstituting a draft
has contributed to a rise in aggressive recruitment efforts and documented
misconduct and abuse by recruiters, in contravention of the Optional Protocol.
• Documented misconduct by recruiters, including coercion, deception and
false promises nullify the voluntariness of youths’ recruitment. This resolution
will combat these practices and ensure that any recruitment of 17-year-olds is
completely voluntary.

American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia