As our resource wars around the globe continue to grow a return to a military Draft seems to be a real possibility.

If a military Draft returns it may become difficult to file a Conscientious Objector (CO) claim all of a sudden. The first people to be drafted would be those turning 20 in the year the Draft starts. Women would be drafted as well as men.

To be safe it is important for you to start collecting information to file a CO claim. Your beliefs about fighting a war come from your moral, ethical, and religious background. To file a CO claim you don’t have to be a pacifist (someone who opposes all violence everywhere), nor do you have to oppose using violence to defend yourself. Also, you do not have to be a member of any religion to file a CO claim, but you do need to explain why you are opposed to war.

Start collecting and assembling your CO claim now.

What kind of information do you need to collect?

1-Write a statement on how you feel about war.

2- Ask a few adults to write letters about you and your personality concerning violence and military service, and your activities to create peace.

3-Keep fliers that describe peace events that you have attended.

4-Keep any papers that you wrote for school or publication that talk about your objection to war.  

5-Poems, songs, family histories, and journal entries about your feelings on war and violence, and even reviews of movies can be included too, as long as they support your idea that war is wrong.

If there is a military Draft make three copies of everything. Give one copy of your statement (#1 above) to your Draft Counselor. Mail the other two copies to people you trust, or to yourself. Keep these letters unopened in their original sealed envelopes.

Make sure you have five to seven pieces that support your belief that war is wrong.

If you want to document your CO claim in a national registry, with lots of other people, you can though PeaceRoots Alliance at info@objector.us

Contact us for more information or help.

CAMS (info@militaryfreeschools.org)
PO Box 3012
South Pasadena, CA 91031
phone: 626-483-6160

GI Rights Hotline: 877-447-4487

Conscientious Objectors are present today in the US military, and their numbers are increasing. Here is a recent one whom you can contact for more info:

Thank You Lt. Ehren Watada - Contact Us Add Your Name

For more information about conscientious objection, selective service, or a possible draft, check out the following national organizations:

Center on Conscience & War : this site has some important resources and forms to start a CO kit.

I Will Not Kill

Get Out! Want out of the Army Now? Here is a place to start.

Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide - Fighting For Peace

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO)

Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

If you are in the military now and want more information about gaining CO status, disobeying unlawful orders, and so on, check out:

GIRHot.pdf :: A flyer for the GI Rights Hotline (877-447-4487), and

IVAW Iraq Veterans Against the War

If you are concerned about the draft, you might want to look at

How To Stay Out of the Military (Primer on Draft Resistance)
by David Wiggins

Two pdf files from www.nodraftnoway.org

The Military Selective Service Act

Selective Service Board Member Information Packet

CAMS has put together a lesson plan on Building a Conscientious Objector Kit located on the Curriculum page

The marketing of militarism in middle and high schools is not new. The accelerated pace of JROTC programs is.
Low and moderate income students have become primary targets in a de facto Poverty Draft. Groups like United Teacher Los Angeles Human Rights Committee strive to provide alternative life choices beyond military enlistment.

• Conscientious Objectors
• Center on Conscience and War
• Conscription and CO by War Resisters International
• History: Timeline of Conscription in the US
• History: Chicano Moratorium Against War
• History: America's War and Black Americans
• Historical document: SNCC Position Paper on Vietnam
• Historical document: Speech Against Conscription and War by Emma Goldman

Confessions of a Conscientious Objector

By SUSAN VAN HAITSMA

Global Resistance Network

I am a conscientious objector, though I am a middle-aged woman whose talents
the military is not seeking. I wish the term was not so difficult to
pronounce, nor so ostentatious, yet it is a label I wear to stand with
persons I respect who have worn it despite disparagement and praise through
wars past and present.

The outreach I do in local high schools with Nonmilitary Options for Youth
includes giving away CO buttons as an education technique when we do our
literature tabling. First of all, students like free stuff, especially if
they can wear it or eat it. The buttons read "Conscientious Objector"
around the big CO in the middle. We ask, when a student takes one, "Do you
know what it means?" Well, um, let's see - "conscious objector?" O.K.,
that's a good place to start. You're conscious -you're aware. And you know
what "objector" means, for sure. Yeah. So, you're aware and you're saying
no to something. The student glances around at our other materials and
suddenly his eyes light up. "I don't like war, either! I don't want to
kill anybody!"

Sometimes students eagerly pin on their CO buttons and run right over to the
recruiting tables to pick up some free stuff there, too. Even JROTC
students have pinned CO buttons to their uniforms. It's a disconnect that
breaks my heart, but I cheer them on. The button states in black and white a
core value I know resides in the human being beneath the uniform.

"Conscience" comes from a Latin word meaning, "to know something with
oneself." Each of us knows something about the value of human life. And
because we are necessarily social beings, we also know that our lives are
not entirely distinct from one another. Is there a spiritual tradition that
does not, at its root, conclude that we are all one? When I watch groups of
students walking down the hall, leaning together, joined at the hip, I think
teenagers must know this better than anyone.

Many also recognize and reject the Bush administration's illogic of
defending life and freedom through the means of war. As one student wrote
in a survey we conducted, "Adults are always telling us not to use violence
to solve our problems, but it seems like the government is just a big
hypocrite." Concluded another, "I think we should handle things in a
nonviolent grown-up way. We should be big enough to reach an agreement with
our enemies and settle it like civilized human beings."

Interestingly, the term, "Conscientious Objector" originally was used by
English persons who in 1898 swore moral opposition to a Compulsory
Vaccination Act passed by Parliament. Later, men who objected for reasons
of conscience to participate as armed combatants during WWI adopted the
term, which has been defined in the context of war resistance ever since.
The symbolism of objecting to vaccination offers a useful analogy. As a
vaccination subjects the body to small doses of a disease in order to
inoculate the body against it, so, perhaps, does subjecting human beings to
the dehumanizing preconditions of war desensitize us over time to the
disease that war is.

Of course, when we discuss conscientious objection with students, we stress
the legal definition of the term as defined by current US law. We explain
that being a conscientious objector means objecting to participation in all
war, not particular wars, and if they believe they are conscientious
objectors, they should create files for themselves that contain evidence of
their beliefs and statements from adults who can testify to their sincerity
in case of a draft. We also want young people to know that they can cite
moral or ethical principles, not only religious beliefs.

It's important that students know the law, but in my heart of hearts, I
rebel against the notion that we must prove to an authority that we are
morally, ethically or religiously opposed to killing. We are born with an
essential reverence for life woven into our DNA, and I don't think there is
a lawyer, draft board member or politician alive who could untangle it.

Soldiers are persons of conscience, too. And there are many who have
developed a conscientious objection to war forged in the awful crucible of
war itself. Soldiers on trial now for desertion, whose claims of
conscientious objection have been denied by military authorities, are paying
very high prices for their convictions.

I see a connection between the uniformed teenager with the CO button and the
soldier serving a prison term for refusing to participate any longer in what
he or she knows, firsthand, is unconscionable. What the teenager knows
instinctively the soldier knows through hard experience, but it is the same
undeniable truth of being aware that we are inseparable. As Army veteran,
Camilo Mejia, wrote eloquently from jail following a court martial for
refusing to return to duty in Iraq, "By putting my weapon down, I chose to
reassert myself as a human being."

"What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience?" asked
Mejia. " What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own
actions? I am confined to a prison, but I feel, today more than ever,
connected to all humanity."

We suffer soldiers to experience fully the disease of war while most of us
become inoculated to it a little at a time. Soldiers who experience the
atrocity and then take a stand against it pay doubly.

On May 15, 2005 people around the world commemorate International Conscientious
Objectors' Day. I'd like to be able to give more than a pin and a pamphlet
to every teenager whose bright eyes assure me that we are bound together by
life itself.

Susan Van Haitsma is active with Nonmilitary Options for Youth and Austin, TX
Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation.

Phone Interview/Marcy Winograd of Palisadians for Peace
with Michelle Robidoux of the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada

Q.  How are Canadian groups organizing to support war resisters?

1)There is a national campaign called War Resisters Support Campaign which includes the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers) and many other groups. We have 'chapters' across the country, but are based in Toronto. We haven't established formal connections with any US organizations but have had contact with Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, local Quaker meetings, Quaker House in Fayetteville, N.C., and United for Peace and Justice (New York). We also have the endorsement of Ron Kovic, the Vietnam vet who I believe is in California.

Q.  If a soldier is thinking about leaving the military, what should s/he do?

2)If a soldier is considering his/her options to get out of the military, here is the info we give them: First, contact the GI Rights Hotline at 1.800.394.9544 -they will be able to go over the options that exist; second, if they are considering coming to Canada, contact Jeffry House,jeffryhouse@hotmail.com. He is the immigration lawyer handling the cases of the US war resisters who have applied here for refugee status, and he can explain the legal situation for resisters coming to Canada; third, contact the War Resisters Support campaign, 416.856.5008 or resisters@sympatico.ca to discuss what support exists here in Canada for war resisters. Our website is www.resisters.ca

During the Vietnam War era, what was the Canadian government's policy on war resisters?

3) The policy of the Canadian government during the Vietnam war was, ultimately, that it allowed war resisters (both draft evaders and deserters) to apply for landed immigrant status. (In the early days, they tried to discriminate against deserters, but they eventually changed that unwritten policy). It is estimated that over 50,000 US citizens came to Canada during the Vietnam war. There is an excellent history of this published by Harvard University Press called 'Northern Passage', by John Hagan. He teaches at Northwestern in Chicago.

Q.  What is Canada's policy today on providing sanctuary for US war
    resisters?

4) Good question! We've been asking ourselves the same thing - what is Canada's policy on war resisters? So far, here is what we know: the federal government intervened in the refugee hearing for Jeremy Hinzman, presumably to oppose his claim. However Prime Minister Paul Martin said in a pre-holiday interview with Global News Network that he would not 'discriminate' against US citizens who applied to immigrate because they refused to serve in Iraq. We are trying to obtain clarification of what he means specifically.

We feel the government could create a special immigrant class for war resisters who seek refugee in Canada. Such 'special' classes of immigrants have been created in previous situations, for example during the Vietnamese refugee crisis of the 1980s.

There haven't yet been signs of attempts to deport war resisters. Of course we are only in touch with resisters who have been willing to go public, which provides a certain measure of protection to them I think.

We have left it up to government policy makers to determine the details of HOW the Canadian government determines it can best allow war resisters to stay, and we've primarily focused on creating momentum around the demand for asylum. If they feel the pressure to allow them to stay, they will undoubtedly find the appropriate policy measures. If we find there are problems with their policy proposals, we will certainly campaign to have those proposals altered.

Q.  What can antiwar activists in the US do to support your efforts in Canada?

5) There are two things that spring to mind that could really help with the war resisters in Canada. First is to get the word out that people have gone to Canada, successfully, and that there is a nationwide movement of support to help US war resisters. www.resisters.ca gives some background on the campaign. The second thing is to put pressure on Canadian gov't reps in the US or to send letters to the Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin (The Right Honorable Paul Martin Prime Minister of Canada, Office of the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON, Canada  K1A0A2  - (613) 992-4211).
Although the decisions regarding the fate of those soldiers who have come north will not immediately rest with politicians, we are hoping that enough pressure can be generated to get our elected representatives to make a special policy.

I hope this is helpful, please keep us posted about your activities - and let folks know there are war resister support groups in Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia that can provide housing and other support.