The great uprising against white supremacy of people all over the country and the horrific response of the fascists in the White House, has opened discourse about the domestic role of the military.  This gives We Are Not Your Soldiers the opportunity to broaden and deepen that thinking and take it to an understanding of the imperialist role of the U.S. military as the police of the empire.  More profound thought is bolstered by young people here seeing the solidarity in protests against racism now taking place around the world.

We Are Not Your Soldiers brings exposure of imperial wars to a generation of youth largely unaware of the crimes being carried out throughout the world in their names.

On this Veterans Day, 2019, for the United States, making war is less about amassing human air, land and sea forces to attack “the enemy” as it is increasingly about amassing technological superiority in which machines replace humans enabling politicians and corporate bosses to pursue their goals without the pesky problem of waves of homeward-bound body bags and caskets.

Yet, the Pentagon was confronted with the obstacle of conscience being applied to technological research in mid-2018 when Google employees protested working on Project Maven, a program that would use artificial intelligence to assist in drone killing, causing Google to drop Maven. Tech workers at Amazon and Microsoft have also protested working on technology that supports repression and killing.

While work on Maven has been picked up by another firm and Amazon and Microsoft leadership have apparently felt free to ignore the pleas of their workers these protests illustrate the increasing power of individuals to throw monkey wrenches into the gears of the war machine.

Hence, the increasing importance of the task of educating all students on the consequences of war, whether or not they plan to join the military. 

This is what We Are Not Your Soldiers has been doing for 13 years by bringing veterans into classrooms. Being knowledgeable of the realities of fighting in or, by inertia, supporting the wrong side of imperialist wars can lead to people speaking and acting in opposition to them.

“I do the school visits because I feel it’s important for students and young adults to have information to make well-informed decisions.  The fact that these kids are usually exposed to only one side of the story with countless movies and media glorifying war in general is an extreme disservice to the people of the United States. Given that I use these speaking tours as my own therapy should say a lot about how much the military affects you. I want to say on record that I do not hate our military. I hate what our military is being used for. I love my country and that’s coming from a Haudenosaunee Native American whose own ancestors were slaughtered by the very institution I enlisted in.”

Read excerpts from student papers following John’s visit to their class.

Watch excerpts from a visit by John to a high school class.

Joe Urgo, a veteran who was in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam, speaks to classes that are studying the US war on Vietnam or doing a comparative study of current US wars with past wars in Southeast Asia.  He wrote this article on the 50th anniversary of Tet during the historic year of 1968 and the Winter Soldier Investigation, which he helped organize. The Winter Soldier Investigation made known to the people of the United States, through the heartfelt testimonies of the veterans themselves, the criminality of the actions of the US military in Vietnam.

Should another generation of youth living here be sucked into war for empire, the way two million+ have sacrificed their humanity and lives in the so-called “war on terror?”  We say no, and are actively working to present what the recruiters for the U.S. armed forces won’t ever say.  Should another generation of youth in this country be unaware of what is being carried out around the world in their names?  We say no, and are determined to build anti-war consciousness and activism.  It is neither in the interests of this generation of young people nor those of the people of the world for them to enlist in the military – while, on the other hand, becoming part of a movement opposing these wars is.

Beginning on Monday November 26, we had another very full and meaningful week of We Are Not Your Soldiers visits to NYC high schools and colleges – this time with Marine veteran Lyle Rubin who had been stationed in Afghanistan.  Lyle told the story of an important part of his life – how he came to enlist in the Marines, his time in boot camp and a particularly heartrending experience in Afghanistan – to over 300 students and engaged in deep discussion with them about his presentation.  The talk began by asking the students to think about whether we have an “enemy” and, if so, who that is and, if not, why are we told we do – and to think about how all this relates to morality, knowing the difference between right and wrong, both as an individual and as a society.

World Can't Wait | December 18, 2018

Nothing we could write could convey more effectively what it means for students vulnerable to joining the U.S. military to hear from veterans conscious of how they could lose their humanity by enlisting. And that’s only half of the story.

Most of the students whose classes we visit, whether in high school or college and despite having lived in a state of war for all or most of their lives, do not know about the seven wars being carried on in their names nor the realities of the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Lyle, John, Miles, Joe and Bruce, via the WeAreNotYourSoldiers project, each spoke to hundreds of students this year, sharing their hard-earned experiences.

This week, Lyle Rubin, a former Marine who was sent to Afghanistan, will visit high schools and college classes in New York City as part of World Can’t Wait’s  We Are Not Your Soldiers program.  In this small but important way, we are intervening with students who are in danger of signing up with the U.S. military.

We are grateful to those of you who have supported this project which brings veterans into high school and college classes to speak to students about their real experiences in the US military occupying other countries.  We look forward to your continued support and the support of others to bring this program to more students throughout New York City and to grow it  so that it can reach out to students around the country.

Please help us spread the word

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• Donate for advertising to reach educators in other states.  We are prepared to go anywhere, physically or virtually, to any school that invites us in to address its students.

World Can’t Wait’s We Are Not Your Soldiers project is starting its twelfth year of visits to high schools and college classes with recent veterans of U.S. wars of terror. We are now beginning to schedule our class visits for the fall semester.

With the Trump/Pence Regime envisioning and engaging in even more militaristic engagements and gearing up to expand those wars to additional countries via both traditional and drone warfare (as well as nuclear threats), it is more important than ever to go in to speak to students who are largely unaware of what’s happening internationally.

At the Left Forum in NYC on June 3, 2017 veterans with the We Are Not Your Soldiers project of World Can’t Wait present what they do in high school and college classrooms where students have grown up under continual wars, know very little about them and may be considering joining the U.S. military with no first-hand knowledge of what it really entails.