By Joy Damiani

There isn’t much that’ll get me out of bed before dawn these days, but talking to teenagers about the realities of the military is always worth an early morning. The questions they ask are always reminders of how little information they have access to about a job that they are being heavily recruited for, but can’t legally quit for multiple years once they sign on the dotted line. In each of four classes of NYC high school students today, at least a few students had considered enlisting – military recruiters are a familiar sight to them. But if not for their teacher bringing veterans like me into their classroom, they might never get the chance to have their questions about that potentially life-threatening decision answered honestly. “What’s the food like? When do you sleep? Are the uniforms comfortable? Are you still friends with the other soldiers you knew?” These seem like simple questions, but at their core, they speak to primal needs – food, rest, clothing, community. Recruiters casually offer whatever response will lead to meeting their enlistment quota, knowing that once a child has signed the contract, the person who convinced them to do it will disappear into the background.

It never ceases to disturb me that this nation spends billions of dollars each year training teenagers to kill but refuses to pay for their education … that it restricts them from smoking and drinking till 21 but will put a semiautomatic weapon into their hands at 17 … that it will feed and house them in foreign wars but not guarantee them a home or a meal in their own country.

I wear this shirt when I speak to students because this nation would have them believe all Arabs are terrorists, when the truth is that it’s us who invade, occupy, and terrorize independent nations all over the world. Loosely, the text means “veterans against war.” Literally, it translates to “ancient warriors against war.” I tell the kids both translations, because despite what their government would have them think, Arabic is not the language of terrorists. The language of terrorists is war – and it’s one that no child should ever have to learn.