Speaking of World Can’t Wait

One of the refugees from IVAW sent me a fund raising letter he got from World Can’t Wait (the organization founded by a lifelong communist) a few months ago. They were trying to solicit $12,000 to send Matthis Chiroux around the country to interdict recruiters’ influence in schools. Here’s the main part of the letter;

Notice the side bar. There’s a wonderful testimony from a NY teacher about a visit by Matthis Chroux and Elaine Brower;

At the time the “We Are Not Your Soldiers” tour visited, my students were preparing to take the New York State Regents exam. Many of my students have failed the exam at least two times. As their last shot before making the decision to drop out or get a GED, I was concerned that failing the regents exam would encourage some of my students to join the military instead.
Matthis Chiroux, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Elaine Brower, member of the World Can’t Wait, hosts of the “We Are Not Your Soldiers” tour, presented a compelling excerpt of the “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan Eyewitness Accounts” testimonials which summoned the visual and emotional interest of otherwise unresponsive youth. Matthis engaged the students with his own personal recollection of the military. He asked important questions, revealing truths of the racism of the war on Iraq, and connected to the personal lives of the students, while Elaine Brower offered the perspective of a mother, a point of view many of my students are sensitive to having been raised by only their mothers.
After the World Can’t Wait presentation, it was apparent that my students were affected. The next day one student showed me a poem he wrote about a young boy from the ghetto enlisting in the military and dying, another asked for a World Can’t Wait T-shirt, and yet another, who had wanted to join the military, handed me a recommendation form for a vocational school. Others are still lost forever to the military but the “We Are Not Your Soldiers” tour offered the education American youth really need and that more teachers need to be more conscious of.

“Lost forever to the military”. Any of you guys feel lost forever? I’m worried about a teacher that ends her sentences with prepositions, though.

The other testimony is from a student who desperately needs a team from WCW and IVAW;

My school has an immense problem with military recruitment – they are here every day, in the classrooms, in the lunchroom. At least 1/4 of our graduates join the military, as this is a fairly rural community and people don’t believe they have many options.

I want to request details of the tour, and how to arrange a visit, what it would cost, etc. The school has agreed to permit it (grudgingly), but it would not be an easy audience.

Any information you could send would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Jenny E.

So apparently recruiters are coming to her school and carrying her friends off in rough burlap sacks and sending them straight to Iraq. Doofus. Jenny E. has themakings of a good little busy-body and she’ll probably own several cats and live by herself, childless. Until Code Pink calls her one day to be a suicide bomber.

Your donation to WCW will go to good use;

Speakers on the tour give students reasons not to go into the military, and help organize collective resistance to recruiters’ lies by spreading visible mass resistance to joining this military as a part of stopping this war of terror for empire.

Classroom presentations include a short presentation by a World Can’t Wait youth organizer and an Iraq and/or Afghanistan war veteran, a 10-minute video clip of testimony by Iraq veterans from the March 2008 Winter Soldier hearings about what they witnessed and perpetrated and footage of high school students protesting military recruiters along with an open discussion.

Brilliant. Uneducated morons preaching to half-educated kids. My recruiter tried to talk me out of going into the infantry. SSG Carroll (I’ll always remember his name) made it sound worse than it was – so I really can’t relate to this whole “all recruiters lie” line. When I recruited at ROTC, I never lied about a minute of the Army, to potential recruits or cadets. That ten minutes of “Winter Soldier” must be a joy to suffer through – unless it’s another Winter Soldier than the one I sat through.

Why are they sending Matthis Chiroux to talk to these kids – what experiences of horror does he have? Oh, that’s right, I forgot – he has PTSD from LISTENING TO OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES!

And what is Elaine Brower going to tell kids? “Don’t join the military like my son did. Or reenlist like my son did. Or survive three tours of wars zones like my son did.”

Silly doofuses.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Code Pink, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Usual Suspects