[act-ma] 3/25 Anti-Military Recruitment Panel this Saturday

[Charlie Welch]

*TL;DR: **Necessary Dissent(previously United Against War and 
Militarism) is **hosting Recruiting Counter-Recruiters: a panel 
discussion on Zoom (https://bit.ly/3Fr26n8) on Saturday, March 25th at 
2pm, to discuss:*

  * *The US elite's push for war with the other so-called ‘great powers’*
  * *How that impacts US military recruitment tactics*
  * *Ideas for counter-recruitment organizing in high-schools *

*Featuring:*

  * *Sam Fogelberg: *Sam is a**Boston-area student and activist
    organizing against the Military Industrial Complex both on and off
    campus*.*
  * *Jeffery Parente: *Jeff grew up in Pennsylvania and attended PSU
    where he got a BA in History. He is a former Marine and Iraq war
    veteran who has since become an anti-war activist and has been a
    member of Veterans for Peace since 2016.
  * *Alonso Espinosa: *Alonso**is an activist living in Boston who
    started off fighting the corporate elite and their war machine when
    he co-founded MIT Students Against War while in school to protest
    Kissinger and Schwarzman. Since then he has continued organizing
    throughout the Boston area.

*Please reach out to necessary_dissent at riseup.net if you have any 
further questions*

Friends,
As we all know, there is a great need in the United States for a strong 
movement opposing the US government and corporate elite’s increasingly 
unhinged maneuvers to maintain world dominance. As the government 
continues to escalate tensions with Russia and China, bringing us to the 
brink of a third World War and nuclear war, the people in the US suffer 
from inflation, increased censorship, and outright neglect in wake of 
disasters (like the recent train derailment in East Palestine). Many 
people from very different backgrounds are slowly but surely waking up 
to this insanity and to the fact that we can only rely on ourselves, the 
people, to fix this mess, not the politicians of whichever corporate 
party.In Necessary Dissent, we are hoping to bring such people together 
in common struggle against the ruling elite’s maneuvers, while leaving 
room for us to discuss and debate the many different perspectives on 
what a better system ultimately looks like.
As one initial step, *we will be hosting a panel discussion on Zoom 
(https://bit.ly/3Fr26n8) on Saturday, March 25th at 2pm.*The panel will 
discuss current trends in US military recruitment in working class 
neighborhoods and high-schools and some ideas for counter-recruitment, 
placing this in the context of the US ruling class’ push for war with 
the other so-called ‘great powers’. In particular, we want to discuss 
how we can use anti-recruitment organizing as a way to reach larger 
masses of regular people who do not already see themselves as anti-war 
activists, bringing them into struggle against something immediately 
tangible (their kids or students being aggressively pursued by 
recruiters, forced into JROTC, etc.) while showing them the need to 
oppose the larger anti-people system driving us towards wars to begin 
with. We are hoping this can be one of many ways to unite people from 
all sections of society and build up a movement that shows the elites 
who run the country that the people will not stand idly by while our 
futures are gambled and our youth are made into their cannon-fodder.
We hope to see you all soon,
Necessary Dissent