stephanie
01-16-2007, 04:09 PM
This is what your tax dollars are paying for....
By Justin Rocket Silverman
amNewYork Staff Writer
January 16, 2007
Alfred Peterson is a fictional 17-year-old weighing the benefits of military service. On the one hand is money for college--and on the other is potentially fatal combat duty in Iraq.
"People have a right to know what they are signing up for, that's all I'm saying," said Alex Neiman-Zych, who wrote the story about young Alfred and marched with more than a dozen other eighth-graders from the Manhattan Country School Monday to protest high-school military recruitment.
14-year-old Neiman-Zych read the story aloud during the march to highlight what he called recruiters' "false promises."
"They don't tell you about how hard it can be to actually get the money for college," he said. "And they don't mention certain interesting facts, such as that one-third of homeless people in America are veterans."
The eighth-graders, dressed in combat fatigues, marched from their school on East 96th Street to the military recruitment center in Times Square. The Martin Luther King Jr. Day march is an annual tradition at the small private school.
"We are taking MLK's stance against the Vietnam War and using it as a symbol for what is going on today," said 14-year-old Brandon George.
Military recruiters have come under fire for aggressive high-school enlistment tactics.
About 400 military recruiters work in the New York area. Last year, they signed up almost 5,000 recruits out of 180,540 people enlisted nationwide. While figures were not available yesterday about how many of those recruits were just out of high school, a 2004 Army handbook advises recruiters to focus on building relationships with incoming freshmen and sophomores.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently declined to ban recruiters from all city schools, saying students should have "all options open to them."
"While our kids are not of military age yet, they see what's going on all around them," said Rachel Sussman, a history teacher at Manhattan Country School. "Young people just a few years older than them are being sent to the Middle East."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/am-march0116,0,3510215.story?track=rss
By Justin Rocket Silverman
amNewYork Staff Writer
January 16, 2007
Alfred Peterson is a fictional 17-year-old weighing the benefits of military service. On the one hand is money for college--and on the other is potentially fatal combat duty in Iraq.
"People have a right to know what they are signing up for, that's all I'm saying," said Alex Neiman-Zych, who wrote the story about young Alfred and marched with more than a dozen other eighth-graders from the Manhattan Country School Monday to protest high-school military recruitment.
14-year-old Neiman-Zych read the story aloud during the march to highlight what he called recruiters' "false promises."
"They don't tell you about how hard it can be to actually get the money for college," he said. "And they don't mention certain interesting facts, such as that one-third of homeless people in America are veterans."
The eighth-graders, dressed in combat fatigues, marched from their school on East 96th Street to the military recruitment center in Times Square. The Martin Luther King Jr. Day march is an annual tradition at the small private school.
"We are taking MLK's stance against the Vietnam War and using it as a symbol for what is going on today," said 14-year-old Brandon George.
Military recruiters have come under fire for aggressive high-school enlistment tactics.
About 400 military recruiters work in the New York area. Last year, they signed up almost 5,000 recruits out of 180,540 people enlisted nationwide. While figures were not available yesterday about how many of those recruits were just out of high school, a 2004 Army handbook advises recruiters to focus on building relationships with incoming freshmen and sophomores.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently declined to ban recruiters from all city schools, saying students should have "all options open to them."
"While our kids are not of military age yet, they see what's going on all around them," said Rachel Sussman, a history teacher at Manhattan Country School. "Young people just a few years older than them are being sent to the Middle East."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/am-march0116,0,3510215.story?track=rss