Campus Anti-War Network organizer in San Francisco,
Pacifists for War
How the fractured counterrecruitment movement includes those hoping to
bring the draft back
By Cristi Hegranes
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2005-11-02/news/feature.html
>...April Owen says activism is in her blood.
She went to her first anti-war protest with her mother when she was 9 years old. "I was in pigtails chanting, 'I won't die for Texaco,'" she says.
At a more recent protest, Owen and 250 of her fellow activists gathered on the corner of 16th and Mission streets to support the newest offshoot of the modern anti-war movement -- counterrecruitment.
Thousands of Americans who are growing more adamant in their opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have tied their hopes of ending the warfare to counterrecruitment. In San Francisco, it has emerged as a mixed bag of both direct action and symbolic legislation.
Amidst a sea of black-and-white signs that read "College Not Combat: Yes on Prop I," people amassed on a Saturday morning in September to support the nation's first citywide initiative to fall under the banner of counterrecruitment.
Owen stood on the outskirts of the crowd, next to a large green sign that read "Don't Die for Recruiter's Lies." She wore gigantic sunglasses that hid most of her small face, and her long blond hair was shoved into a messy ponytail. She was linking arms with a friend, who wore a dark green T-shirt that read "Yes to rain forests" on the front and "No to capitalism" on the back.
Owen says she hates both Democrats and Republicans. "This is a time for new ideas," she says. And she thinks America would be better off without a military. The American people, she says, need to spark a new revolution. Owen's ideas for attaining revolution, however, are unconventional. And her reasons for being involved in counterrecruitment can only be described as counterintuitive.
"We need something to happen," she says. "[Counterrecruitment] is about action, forcing action."
Like many who have recently come to call themselves counterrecruiters, Owen has very specific opinions about what the growing movement should aim to do.
"We've got to stop them from taking our poor and our minorities off to war," she begins. "Then we've got to chop our military off where it lives, in the lies and manipulations that get people to join in the first place. When the soldiers are really hurting because there are no new recruits, then we're getting somewhere."
Pausing to add the caveat, "I mean, I support the troops, but ...," she continues to outline the plan that some of the supporters of Proposition I and counterrecruitment have come to believe in. "We need outrage and power, like in Vietnam. Basically, we need the draft."
With another pause, she adds, "When rich white kids are being sent over there and their moms and dads are angry that they are dying, then this war will finally end."