Elaine Brower speaking to HS Students

On Monday, November 14, Matthis Chiroux and I presented the WANYS tour in four high schools classes in New York City. We started at 11 AM and went until 3:30 PM. Pretty grueling, but very much worth it.

We were invited by a history teacher at the school. His classes were seniors, and he had about 30 students in each of his 4 classes. However, in the afternoon sessions, another teacher brought her classes in to join us, so we spoke to about 60 students per class. Thanks to the hard work of activists who have been distributing flyers at the school location, our tour is being noticed.

Matthis developed a statistical based survey since he is writing his college thesis on how high school students perceive the military. It is a great survey, and from what he said at the end of the day, it will give us some interesting statistics before the kids heard the presentation, and how they felt afterwards. We will publish the final document on this website when completed.

Both teachers were very impressed with our presentation. The teacher who invited us had shown the “collateral murder” video narrated by Ethan McCord, to his classes. Most of the students had already watched the original video, but liked Ethan’s version better because it gave them more of a perspective on what was actually happening on the ground.

The discussion they had around the video was interesting. The teacher told me that they discussed the fact that “what if they actually did have a grenade launcher” and that the soldiers in the helicopter didn’t really know so they were just protecting the troops on the ground; then some students said “having children in the van made a big difference” in that once the helicopter pilot knew that fact, it really became wrong to shoot at them. They also discussed that overall we shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place, and that the attitudes of the soldiers shooting at the ground and van was awful.
During our presentations, I opened up the discussion by explaining what the tour was, and what my role as a military mom was regarding my son’s 3 combat tour deployments and my anti-war activism; and that we were there to counter-act perceptions of the military and give them the truth that the military recruiters do not tell high school students, or anyone else for that matter. I mentioned that we had been flyering at the recruiting center. None of them had seen us there, which was odd, unless they just didn’t want to respond. The students were mostly Asian, with other ethnicities mixed in. They were quiet for the most part, and really were listening to and observing our presentation. We had some questions presented to us.

For instance, in our first class there was a male student who kept challenging Matthis about the fact that this was a poor man’s army, that it was a poverty draft and if you had money, you wouldn’t really need to join for education, benefits, etc. The student said that Saddam Hussein was bad and had lots of money, and he hurt his people. So we had to remind the students that Iraq is a sovereign nation and not for us to invade in the first place, nor did Iraq have anything to do with the events of 9/11. We talked about the Geneva Conventions, and PTSD, TBI, and the Veterans Administration. Most students didn’t know what any of that was.

We covered a lot of ground, and it was hard to educate as well as present our tour information. But through all classes we got some applause at the end and a lot of thanks from students and talk after class.

The 2 most interesting elements were that when I asked if anyone had family members in the military, or friends, or were thinking of joining, none, if only 1 or 2 raised their hands. No one had family in the military, and no one was thinking of joining. The other thing was the opt out forms. They all knew about them, and were urged to complete them and turn them into the school. The administration is careful about protecting the students’ rights when it comes to this issue. When we asked if they received calls from recruiters, few responded, but they mostly receive emails.

Based on these facts, I told each class that it was their responsibility to take the information we presented, and bring it into their communities, and to their friends who may be thinking about joining the military; and to also be aware of recruiters, and challenge them wherever possible, even if they don’t come onto their campus, which it seems that the recruiters do not regularly visit this school.

The teacher who hosted us said that the principal did want him to present the “other side” of the issue, even though we both agreed that the kids get the “other side” more often and much too frequently. However, he has a friend who was a marine and now works for homeland security. He said that he may pursue getting some sort of debate or dual presentation with his friend and someone from the tour, or even getting a recruiter to do it. It seems to be something that is of interest to most of the teachers and administrators we come into contact with.

Lastly, he said he has other friends who are teachers in public schools and will ask them if they want to have the presentation in their classes. He was very impressed, and couldn’t thank us enough.