Wired magazine reports that the U.S. army is implementing new regulations (Army Regulation 530-1 OPSEC) that require all email and blogs to be cleared by a superior officer. This regulation is also being used to muzzle contractors. Read more here:
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/army_bloggers?currentPage=2

What's going on here? Why is the Army clamping down after years of blogging? Is this a consequence of growing dissent within the ranks of the Army? How much of this is about genuine operational security concerns? If you have any insight on this, speak out, tell your story.

Members of IVAW brought their stories and poetry, collected in the new book Warrior Writers, to Burlington, VT last week. You can read a write up and interview from SevendaysVT here:

http://www.sevendaysvt.com/features/2007/peace-talks.html

There is a very moving and intense clip of one of the readings available on line. Take a moment to see the powerful way these soldiers are bearing witness and telling their stories.

http://www.agitfilm.com/Aaron_Iam.mov

The Counter Recruitment Tour is a tour of mid-west and mid-Atlantic states aimed at advancing regional counter-recruitment efforts and linking the issues of war and military recruitment to corporate globalization and environmental sustainability. The Tour consists of a dozen activists traveling via a bio-diesel bus to cities both large and small. At each stop, members of the Tour will organize and participate in workshops, trainings, public forums, direct education and outreach, all-out street protests, as well as concerts and other creative performances.

One of the primary aims of the Tour to build or strengthen communities and cultures of resistance along the way. We shall address specific needs of each community, whether to support local counter recruitment efforts that are already in place, providing resources and help build efforts where there are none, or by linking to the local costs of the war, such as the economic depression of the Rustbelt. By developing networks of trust we will plant the seeds for a sustainable and robust counter-recruitment recruitment that can also withstand the heavy-hand of repression that has accompanied the recent growth of the that movement. In our travels we plan to share our experiences and insights with the people we meet with along the way but also learn from their experiences. This ever-expanding knowledge-base can then be ferried from one community to the next as well as publicized on the Tour's website.

The Tour will start late-September in Washington D.C. and wind its way through 20+ cities before terminating in Chicago in late-October. It is being organized by UPRISE (Uniting People Resisting Industrial-Military Service and Empire), a emerging collective of counter-recruitment and global justice activists from Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore, Houston, Virginia, Santa Cruz and elsewhere.

For more information: http://www.uprisetour.org/..about

The participants of the STORY COLLABORATIVE TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ have published their finds from the retreat at the Highlander Center. Contributing members include the IVAW, WRL, Iraq Families, and NYSPC.

To download the complete findings go to.

http://www.smartmeme.com/downloads/STORYCollaborativeFindings.pdf

The STORY Collab is featured in this article from Alternet (along with The Coup!).

What Does an Anti-War Movement Look Like Today?
By Celina R. De Leon, WireTap
Posted on August 7, 2006, Printed on August 16, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/39913/

Marciella Guzmán was a politically conservative 21-year-old when she joined the U.S. Navy as an information system technician in 1998. By the time she left in 2002, she said she had become liberal.

Guzmán, now a counter-recruitment activist in Los Angeles, said that she lost respect for the military: "I didn't trust that we had enough training or manpower to go into Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time."

Despite rare glimpses of growing popular opposition to the war, such as Cindy Sheehan or Medea Benjamin with "Bring Troops Home Now" signs on national television, the mainstream media still does not provide a consistent space for a critique of American foreign policy.

And while soldiers continue to desert the military, and 72 percent think that the United States should exit Iraq within the next year, the Bush administration and Congress cannot seem to come up with a concrete strategy for addressing the growing chaos and deaths in Iraq.

Impatient with the current status quo, students, war veterans, anti-war activists and soldiers and their parents across the country are thinking of new ways to get their message to the government and general public.

Realizing that mass national protests did not sway the Bush administration from staying the course in Iraq, many young organizers focused their strategy on local counter-recruitment campaigns. And their work seems to be making an impact.

The Air National Guard missed its recruiting target by 14 percent last year, and the Army missed its goal by 8 percent, its largest recruitment failure since 1979. Military recruitment costs have risen, totaling $3 billion of taxpayers' money each year, and will only get higher if the Iraq war continues and the ability to recruit young men and women to enlist decreases. Right now, the Army's new recruitment tactics increasingly include allowing young men and women with criminal records to enlist, recruiting members of hate groups, easing restrictions on recruiting high school dropouts and raising the maximum recruitment age from 35 to 42.

Spreading the real story of military life

In 1998, Guzmán needed money to go to college and thought the military would be a good way of getting that money. But when she stepped into boot camp, she realized she'd been sold on lies. Paperwork battles ensued until she finally received the higher wages and rank she was initially promised.

Her first command was stationed at Diego García, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. "The U.S. military personnel basically lease the island from the British, and the only people who are allowed there are military personnel and the workers there -- Filipinos who are brought to the island," said Guzmán. "It was very difficult to see how the American soldiers treated these people. The workers had poor benefits, they were underpaid, and the military didn't respect them. That reminded me of my family here. I'm Mexican-American, and it reminded me of the struggles my parents went through in this country. And so my ideology started to change."

Guzmán's perspective finally shifted for good after she left the military in 2002 and went to the VA to receive treatment for the back problems she acquired during her service. She had to fight to get even the most basic treatment.

Now Guzmán spends what little time she has between work and school to educate high school students about the realities of military service.

She just came out a month ago with the sexual assault she also suffered during her service. A fellow servicewoman had shared her experience with sexual assault, which helped Guzmán come to terms with her own experience. It has been four years since Guzmán was last in the military and she still has not told her family about the incident.

"I want [young people] to question why it was allowed, and that it's still happening in the military, especially for women," said Guzmán. "And what they're going to get into [if they join the military]. I give them the option: 'If you still want to go to the military, I will go with you to the recruitment office to make sure that they don't lie to you.' It takes so long to educate young people about the myths of the military."

And that's where recent counter-recruitment strategies like the Not Your Soldier initiative and STORY Collaborative come in.

"I do anti-war workshops all the time, and so often I have very intense conversations with youth about the war in Iraq and everyone is like, 'It's all about oil, it's all about money, it's all about power,'" said Steve Theberge, youth and counter-recruitment program coordinator for the New York-based War Resisters League. "I think young people often feel that there's not much they can do about it. There's not a sense of empowerment or that energy or ability to make change. Not Your Soldier is about taking that political analysis that a lot of young folks have and translating that into possible action."

The War Resisters League, along with The National Youth & Student Peace Coalition, the National Network Opposed to Militarization of Youth, the American Friends Service Committee, and the League of Independent Voters have joined forces with the Ruckus Society to produce the Not Your Soldier initiative.

Not Your Soldier was first marketed through MySpace and through word of digital mouth like emails and text messages. "It's an educating tool that they themselves can use and pass along," said Adrienne Maree Brown, executive director of Ruckus Society, based in Oakland, Calif. (Full disclosure: Brown serves on the WireTap advisory board.) Through Not Your Soldier, youth can participate in the anti-war and counter-recruitment activities by visiting NotYourSoldier.org, watching the Flash movie "Punk Ass Crusade," the "Addicted to Oil" Flash movie, attending Not Your Soldier camps and going to concerts for revolutionary hip-hop band The Coup.

"We've recognized the need to go beyond training," said Theberge. "For a long time we've hoped that we would be able to provide training and somehow somewhere, somebody else was going to step up and organize on the local level. We have to shift our tactics. A lot has changed, and unfortunately the anti-war movement hasn't."

Not Your Soldier also connects young people on an emotional level by connecting them with men and women who have served in the war in Iraq. Theberge said, "I can throw as many stats out there as much as I want. I can talk as much as I want about the war. But I think that, for many people, hearing veterans speak is about as close as you can get." To that end, the group has put on three regional camps this summer and plan to host several more in the coming year.

"I think if you look at the anti-war movement, it's a lot of really good people, but it's not a lot of young people," Brown said. "A major belief of Ruckus is the impacted community has to be at the forefront of your work. We have to find ways for soldiers and students to be active components of their own liberation and guaranteeing their own rights."

Boots Riley, leader of the socially conscious hip-hop group The Coup, is currently on tour and talks about the Not Your Soldier initiative in the middle of every concert.

"I sometimes see people from the military coming to my shows and saying that they're fans. And not just someone who is in the Army, but someone deep in the military," Riley said. "There have also been military recruiters. And after the show they're like, 'I really agree with what you say, but being a military recruiter is just my job.' And I'm like, 'I guess.'"

Riley added that he's always found people against the war in his audience. "I'm talking about Old Smith, Montana. I'm talking about El Paso, Texas. I'm talking about Alabama. I'm talking about Ohio," said Riley. "Everywhere people were and are against the war. And these weren't just people who were coming to see a revolutionary hip-hop show."

Providing another option to enlisting

Riley can relate to the military option so many young people feel they have to take. Although he's been a progressive organizer since he was 14, when he thought he was going to be a father at age 17, he considered joining the military.

Riley's dilemma is one of the greatest challenges of the anti-war movement, according to Doyle Canning of smartMeme, a nonprofit collective of long-term organizers, strategists, trainers and communications professionals based in Burlington, Vt.

Canning said, "The U.S. military-industrial complex, for better and for worse, is selling young people on the idea of economic opportunity. And how does the progressive community offer that opportunity? And how can we actually do counter-recruitment -- like actually not just say, 'Hey, the recruiters are lying. Don't join the military'?"

In response, smartMeme has come up with a different strategy. They are working to build a network of organizations -- nonprofits, for-profits, institutions, businesses, farms and more -- that are willing to provide another option to young people who feel that they have no choice but to enlist. Canning said, "We have to ask [these young people], 'Why don't you come and become an intern at this progressive organization?'" And she said smartMeme is asking organizations, "Would you be interested in giving an opportunity to someone who is thinking about joining the military?"

Early in July, smartMeme gathered young Iraq veterans, students, counter-recruiters and peace activists, all under the age of 30, for an intimate retreat to discuss the anti-war movement at the historic Highlander Center in Tennessee. The project, the STORY Collaborative to End the War in Iraq, is online and soon will be publishing its findings. While no concrete answers came out of the Collaborative, Canning views the stories as the keys to gaining connection and momentum throughout the movement.

"The stories are at the center of our strategy," she said. "Recentering ourselves with our stories and realizing that we have such different stories, and that we have different relationships with the war in Iraq people of Arab-American backgrounds, people who live on the border and who see the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, and people from the South, people from Oakland, people from all over, saying, 'Yeah, we have different experiences, and we have different stories, and we have different relationships with this war. But we were able to come together and find some common ground.'"

Echoing the Ruckus Society's beliefs, Canning is clear that the anti-war movement needs new leadership: Those most impacted by the military's recruitment and the poverty draft need to be empowered to work against the struggle that most affects them.

"When we're talking about counter-recruitment, we're talking about the U.S. military targeting low-income people and youth of color, and that's for real. And so the role of traditionally white-led peace and justice organizations is to work in solidarity with those communities in resisting U.S. militarism. And that needs to be a collaborative relationship in order to really support the leadership of young people of color in those communities," said Canning.

Canning feels the anti-war movement should take notice of another important fact: Young people listen to young people. "That's the whole lesson of MySpace," she said. "That's the whole lesson of all this huge viral marketing stuff. It's about peer-to-peer networks. It's about who we listen to are people who we can relate with, people like us. And so how do we incorporate that learning into our counter-recruitment work?"

Ruckus Society founder John Sellers is hopeful that the new direction his organization is taking to contribute to the counter-recruitment movement is going to produce results.

"Basically, in a year or two, it's very likely that [the anti-war movement] will be as dynamic as college campus activism during the anti-apartheid movement. It's definitely spreading down to high schools, which is critical because that's where most recruitment comes from -- high school-age young folks from rural and urban backgrounds." He also likened the present day to the last time this country had a vibrant anti-war movement. "During Vietnam, we had the draft. Now we have the poverty draft. But we think that, by making all of the military recruiters miss their quotas, that's going to impact how Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney are going to view this war -- if they have less cannon fodder at their disposal."

Celina R. De Leon is a contributing writer for WireTap.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39913/

Voice of America sent a correspondent to the Highlander Center to cover the STORY Collaborative to End the War in Iraq. See the attached to hear the voices of the participants on a podcast or to read the text.
Peace, SC

http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-07-20-voa57.cfm

Young Peace Activists Hone Their Strategy
By Ann Lloyd
New Market, Tennessee
20 July 2006
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The Iraq War often seems to be one of numbers: $320-billion spent, more than 2500 US troops killed and over 18,000 wounded. Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated from 5000 to well over 10,000. And the mounting cost of the war has energized the peace movement in the United States. As with an earlier conflict - Vietnam - it's led by young people and veterans of the war.


View of Tennessee's Smokey Mountains from the Highlander Center
For decades, labor and civil rights leaders have come to the Highlander Center, in the foothills of Tennessee's Smokey Mountains, to hone their strategies for social change. This month, the historic complex hosted 27 young men and women, who came to learn how to spread their anti-war message more effectively.

Many of the activists at the weekend workshop have personal experience with the fighting in Iraq. They are members of Military Families Speak Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War. After serving eight months in Iraq as an Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison, Joshua Casteel joined the peace movement. I joined Iraq Veterans Against the War to be an advocate, he explains, both for soldier's rights for those who are still serving and to be a part of the momentum to stop the war. But that has to happen constructively and collaboratively, both with people who are in the military and are out of the military.


Stephen Funk
One of the first members of the military who spoke out against the Iraq War is 20-year-old Stephen Funk. He joined the Marine Reserves in 2003. But once he finished basic training, he became a Conscientious Objector and began a campaign against the Iraq War. He was court-marshaled for speaking out and jailed for five months. Funk told the workshop participants his jail time was a minor impediment to his anti-war work. I continued to receive a lot of support while I was there, which really helped me make it through. It really isn't that bad. As far as serving in Iraq or serving in regular military service; it was much better. Funk now travels around the country, speaking against US involvement in Iraq. He says the Internet is the greatest weapon the modern peace movement has at its disposal.


Doyle Canning leads a group workshop
Doyle Canning was at the Highlander Center retreat to help activists exploit the Internet's possibilities. She works with the smartMeme STORY Program, a Vermont-based youth training group that teaches grassroots organizations how to use all electronic media for social change. Canning says the Internet is a very effective way to reach teens and people in their 20s because they're already tuned in, creating on-line journals and virtual communities. The participants here and others can [create] blogs and commentary about their experience, about their perspective, about their ideas for bringing the troops home from Iraq and strategies to do so; and use different mediums to do that: video, pod-casting, etc. She says the movement even has a page on the MySpace website.

Other generations are also speaking their minds, even if it's not on-line. At the Knoxville Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, Gulf War veteran Boyd Dixon says US peace activists encourage the Iraq insurgency. The answer is stay the course, he says. George Bush has a plan. He knows what he's doing. When you show a lack of discipline and you show a lack of, you know, when you back off, they seem to come on.

Vietnam-era veteran Jeffrey Thompson says anti-war protesters lack the proper perspective. A lot of those people have never seen what that is like. To have bombs bursting in your front yard and bullets flying. They just don't have any clue.


Dave Adams shares his experiences with his workshop team
But Dave Adams saw plenty of action as a military policeman in Iraq. He stays in touch through e-mail with many of the soldiers he knows who are still in the field. He lets them know what's happening on the home front with the anti-war movement. But Adams says he's seen some unexpected opposition since returning home. The only time I've actually heard people say some really hurtful things to some Iraq veterans, was actually - and I never thought this would happen- actually being spat on, is the Pro-war crowd.

After three days of intense discussions and exercises, the young activists returned to their home states across the country, with new ideas and a more focused passion to build both virtual and physical alliances to halt the Iraq war.

The future of the peace movement
By Courtney Brooks | Special to the Vermont Guardian

Posted July 14, 2006
http://changingthestory.org/node/44

At a recent gathering, organized in part by a Burlington-based group, people from around the country came together to talk about the future of the peace movement in the United States, as well as finding ways to end the war in Iraq.

A key finding from the event is that peace activists and organizations need to find options to offer young people other than joining the military as a way out, and that currently those options dont often exist.

The gathering took place at the Highlander Center in New Market, TN, about 25 miles east of Knoxville, and included Iraq veterans, peace activists, war resisters, and youth from military families. Since 1932, the center has been a host to such gatherings by activists.

Doyle Canning, 26, of Burlington, dreamed up the idea for the peace collaborative with friends at a peace conference in New York city. They chose the Highlander Center, an important center for social and economic justice in Tennessee, because of its literal and symbolic significance.

It is important for young people looking at new strategies to examine what has come before us, Canning said. We all have different stories and sharing those stories and having the space to do that is crucial and something that we often dont get marching around, she said. We need to stop and talk to each other. We intentionally had a very small group because we wanted that intimacy.

Canning has worked at Smartmeme in Burlington since late 2003. Smartmeme is a multi-issue strategy organization with an emphasis on storytelling as a focus for social change strategy.

We look at how to build new alliances around shared stories and how do we progressives offer a vision that people can believe in and a story that people want to be a part of creating, said Canning. One of their programs specifically targetes youth Strategy, Training and Organizing Resources for Youth (STORY). Our youth program is really about how we bring the next generation of social change visionaries and organizers some of the tools and wisdom from the different places that we come from, she said.

The war in Iraq was the focus for the weekend because recruitment centers directly target youth, and the youth of the United States are inheriting the war, said Canning.

The U.S. is in there for the long haul. Theyre building nine bases. This is something that were looking at as a long-term movement that we have to build. One of the key findings is that its about relationships, its about going deeper, its about bringing it to the grassroots level of one on one organizing.

For young people, an anti-war position is the majority position, and it depends on how people want to express that. But there is a widespread understanding that it was lies that got us to Iraq, and that it is not going well and we are inheriting big problems that are bloody and brutal and unforgivable and we need to make it stop, Canning said.

While the Collaborative to End the War in Iraq began with Smartmeme, it quickly branched out to include groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the War Resisters League, and the Student Farmworker Alliance, and brought together youth from all over the country. We were trying to bring together young veterans, conscientious objectors, younger members of military families speaking out, and also people who are working for immigrant rights, etc., like the case of young immigrants who are targeted by recruitment centers and are offered citizenship as a bonus prize for serving in Iraq, Canning said.

There were 27 participants and four facilitators at Highlander this weekend, Canning said. Before getting down to business and analyzing and strategizing, they started the real work of building relationships, connecting, and finding shared stories. We spent a lot of time around the campfire, sharing who we are and where we come from and what is our relationship to the war in Iraq. We did a lot of work around understanding racism and how race plays out in our society; being at Highlander was a big piece of that, Canning said.

Collab-Art Stephen Funk, who attended the meeting, and was the first conscientious objector to the Iraq war, was reminded of an experience of his in Iraq when someone started singing Imagine by John Lennon at the campfire.

Someone sent him a postcard that said Imagine on the front and the lyrics to the song on the back, and he was reprimanded for humming the tune to himself later. While he was there, the song was a symbol for the peace of a world that he wanted to be a part of, while he was in a horribly oppressive place, Canning said.

Besides spending time around the campfire, they also made banners and other art, had a lot of facilitated conversations, and came out of the experience with many key realizations about the war and the peace movement. One of the key findings of the weekend was that peace activists often arent in a position to offer young people other options besides joining the military, Canning said.

Often thats about economic opportunities, educational opportunities ... . Also, the military is really offering people a story that they can believe in. Long-term work, we need to make a directory of peace and justice organizations, and communities where we can actually refer young people who are thinking about joining the military to check out as a different vision of how we could live together and what our future could be, she said.

During the weekend, the participants interviewed each other and wrote in journals with the plan to upload podcasts and blog to share what they had been doing there, as a way to create an ongoing forum, Canning said.

I think ultimately the vision that were looking for and striving for and living for is that culture of compassion and human connection that was co-created this weekend at Highlander. We think theres a better way to live. This is about de-militarizing our lives and de-militarizing our future and at heart its really about non-violence. That is long-term deep work, Canning said. And we think the conflict in Iraq and invasion and occupation of Iraq are the most current visible in the mainstream manifestation of a culture that is based on domination and violence and oppression, and thats not a culture that we want to pass onto our children. I think thats the big vision in terms of the anti-war movement.

Support Independent Media! Check out the Vermont Guardian !
http://www.vermontguardian.com

Youth Anti-War Organizers & Young Iraq Vets Talk Strategy On Ending The War

New Market, TN As the death toll of US troops in Iraq tops 2,500, and the nation turns 230, a diverse gathering of Americans under 30 will gather at the historic Highlander Center in rural Tennessee to strategize about building their generations movement to end the war in Iraq.

From July 7-9, young members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, student peace activists, and youth leaders from across the nation will meet together at the historic Highlander Center, site of key leadership gatherings of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. Representing more than 20 progressive youth organizations, participants in the STORY Collaborative to End the War are working to redefine what their peace movement looks like. Building diverse alliances led by youth and young Veterans, these savvy young activists are using new media, digital story telling, and cultural strategies to send their peace message.

Young people today are up against some major challenges, including putting an end to this illegal war that is morally and fiscally bankrupting our country, and impacting our entire generation, said Katie Joaquin, an organizer of the STORY Collaborative from Oakland, CA. We are converging at Highlander to share our stories from personal accounts of Fallujah to kicking Army recruiters off our campuses - and, as young people who are inheriting the war on terror, we are strategizing about how to build a real future of peace and justice.

The STORY Collaborative is a partnership of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the War Resisters League, and the Student Farmworker Alliance, convened by the STORY program (Strategy, Training and Organizing Resources for Youth) at smartMemea progressive multi-issue strategy organization. This unique alliance has tapped into diverse youth based constituencies from coast to coast and is using new communications strategies to organize the next generation of the peace movement. Participants are coming from California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, North Carolina, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Puerto Rico.

Through digital story telling strategies, and using personal media tools like ipods, myspace, and cell phone camcorders, STORY Collaborative participants are documenting their experiences on the y(our) story online blog pages at changingthestory.org/iraq. As the collaborative convenes, youth and young veterans will be using this web space to continue their dialogue and share their insights and stories with their peers.

We are the echo-boom, Millennial generation and we are online, networked, and have a lot to say about the atrocity that is the war in Iraq, said Stephen Funk, a young Conscientious Objector from San Francisco. We are students, war resisters, veterans, artists, visionaries, media makers, bloggers, bike riders, baristas, and storytellers. We are part of military families. We are part of Immigrant families. We are the new face of the peace movement and we are getting together to, talk strategy, share our stories, make music, create and collaborate to end the war in Iraq.

The STORY Collaborative to End the War strategy retreat runs July 7-9, 2006. More information at: www.changingthestory.org/iraq To give: www.smartmeme.com .

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FRIENDS: Thank you for your generous support for our work to deepen the antiwar alliance of youth and young veterans at the STORY Collaborative to end the war, and also thanks to the Funding Exchange (http://fex.org/) for an emergency grant of $1,000!

Even with this support, smartMeme is still struggling to cover costs for plane travel. It is expensive, but we feel that a national gathering is needed and are bringing folks from as far away as Seattle and Puerto Rico. Please help sponsor young Iraq Veterans and youth organizers to attend the upcoming STORY Collaborative anti-war strategy gathering at the Highlander Center - We need to raise another $4000. Every $10 to $100 to $1,000 donation helps! If you can't afford to help at this time please forward this request to friends and family that might be able to help us bring these young soldiers together with other anti-war organizers.

To Give: https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=9879

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smartMeme: strategy - training - communications
story-based strategies 4 social change
Give @ http://www.smartmeme.com

STORY: Strategy, Training, and Organizing Resources for Youth
...building a culture of strategy
www.smartmeme.com/story
http://www.changingthestory.org/ iraq
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