CALL FOR UNIFIED ACTION AGAINST THE DRAFT AND MILITARY CONSCRIPTION STARTING IN SEPTEMBER 2004 IN FRONT OF HIGH SCHOOLS ACROSS THE US

As the US calls up an additional 47,000 troops for deployment to Iraq - as the occupation continues to go poorly with hundreds of US GIs dying monthly and thousands of Iraqis victimized by massacres and torture scandals - the calls for the reinstatement of forced conscription from all corners are getting louder and louder. The threat of draft reinstatement is paired up with an ever increasing presence of military recruiters in high schools across the country - turning guidance offices into virtual military recruitment stations.

With Democratic Party sponsored draft bills in both Houses of Congress and Republicans like Senator Hagel echoing the call, with calls for "universal service" and more troops for Iraq from presidential candidate Kerry and quiet preparations of the draft apparatus, talks of a special skills draft, and the "stop loss" policies forcing reservists who completed their term back into the desert by the current administration, it is getting ever more ominous that the draft could be imminent. Many are predicting an intensified public campaign for the draft after the November election and possible resumption during 2005!

The US occupation of and war upon Iraq is going badly. More and more Iraqi people are expressing their support for and are joining the resistance. Instead of hit and run - they are more frequently standing and fighting.

US objectives are modified and abandoned - perhaps temporarily - from Fallujah to Najaf. As both major presidential candidates call for a fight until the resistance is defeated, as the armed forces are stretched beyond their limits, it is quite possible that reinstatement of the draft could prove to be the only way for the US to escalate the war to the level it sees fit to defeat the resistance.

The time to stop the draft is before the US government successfully implements it. We must oppose the draft and demand an immediate end to the occupation. The draft will threaten the lives of millions of young Americans while providing a continued flow of blood to oil the US forces of aggression from Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Colombia, to the Philippines.

We the undersigned hereby call upon the peace movement, parents, students, youth, working people and all others who can see that this war is wrong to join this September in unified demonstrations in front of thousands of high schools and on college campuses throughout the US. We propose that the demonstrations clearly call for an immediate end to the US war upon and occupation of Iraq and the immediate withdrawal of US troops. We propose demanding that there be "no" draft and that we call upon the high school youth to reject military recruitment.

We need to be at the high schools because that is where the blood fuel for the war is being intensively recruited and that is where the administrative offices will be used to register youth for the draft and that is where the young people who can stop the war by refusing to enlist and by joining in a struggle against the draft are.

We propose concerted demonstrations at end of school day in front of as many high schools as are possible throughout September and beyond and that every effort be made to invite the students and their parents to participate.

We can stop the draft but we must act now. We have the summer to organize and reach out to as wide and diverse a constituency as is possible to consolidate these plans.

We must work together to stop the draft and bring an end to the occupation.

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