In the 2012-13 school year, the We Are Not Your Soldiers (WANYS) project of World Can’t Wait made a number of visits around the country. We brought Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans to classes to tell the truth about the wars and why the military is really recruiting. The vets talked about their on-the-ground experiences in occupying countries, where civilians pay the price, and how it affected them as well.
In New York City:
- at an inner-city Brooklyn high school, We Are Not Your Soldiers showed a dvd of “Collateral Murder” and then Mathis and the WANYS representative engaged in discussion with the students.
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Mathis and WANYS spent half a day at a Bronx high school serving newly-arrived students in formal meetings with two classes and an informal gathering with students who wanted to follow the discussion further.
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John, from IVAW, visited a third high school in Manhattan with a very diverse student body, where we showed “Collateral Murder” to two classes and then engaged in an extended discussion.
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We Are Not Your Soldiers also presented once again at the NY Collective of Radical Educators conference held every spring.
We went to Connecticut:
- where WANYS and John, from IVAW, visted an after-school program that develops teen-agers’ critical thinking strategies. We showed “Collateral Murder” and John answered many questions about the wars and his own experiences.
In Chicago:
- We Are Not Your Soldiers tabled at the annual Social Justice Curriculum Fair organized by Teachers for Social Justice.
- A WANYS activist spoke together with Ray, a vet from IVAW, with students from a Chicago high school where students express themselves through the visual arts.
- A WANYS volunteer and Michael, from IVAW, visited a large urban high school where students are predominantly Hispanic with over 90% qualifying for free lunch. A teacher had reserved the school auditorium for their presentations to several class periods and four other teachers brought their classes. In the first session, they showed a few video clips from the IVAW “Winter Soldier 2” hearings and spent most of the time with students
asking questions and sharing their views. The discussion was lively and heartfelt, with debate about 9/11 and the causes of wars – and many questions about the purpose of the military and what it’s like to be in it. Clearly, many myths were being challenged! The school has a large Junior ROTC program and apparently this was too much for the JROTC teachers because they came to the second session and repeatedly interrupted the WANYS/IVAW presenters and the students. The presenters persevered through a third class period and were able to convey quite a bit of information, although the JROTC teachers’ outbursts put a damper on discussion. Finally, the principal, a former JROTC teacher herself, decided to ban their visit and two subsequent class periods were canceled.
We Are Not Your Soldiers was on the West Coast as well:
- In the Bay Area of Northern California, WANYS and Aaron, from IVAW, presented to a high school class using a specially prepared slide show and educational materials.
- In Olympia WA, a WANYS volunteer and Hart, from IVAW, were the invited guests at a special session called by a student organization at a community college where a number of students are veterans and there is active recruitment going on in the area to convince other students to sign up. The attendees were students mainly in their twenties and thirties who engaged in a deep discussion of the issues.
