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LA Vets Talk To Recruits: Don't Buy Recruiter's Lies

By VVAW

As both 1976 and the GI Bill came to a close, newspapers and TV broadcasts all over the country made a big splash about the rush of people enlisting in the military. Enlistments jumped by as much as 1000% in some places as people who saw no future for themselves in the job market hurried to take advantage of a GI Bill that was being hyped to the skies. And while it's true that the new GI Bill (which went into effect for people enlisting after January 1, 1977) is so bad that it makes the Vietnam-era Bill look good by comparison, nowhere did the media point out how inadequate the Vietnam-era Bill actually is.

In Los Angeles the newspapers had headlines reading "big Rush to Enlist in LA." Enlistment there jumped from 50-75 daily to 500 and more during the final days of the year. In response to the media blitz, members of VVAW and Youth in Action, a nationwide organization of young people taking up the fight for a decent life, went down to the Armed Forced Induction Center to take this attack on. Some went right into the Center to talk with the recruits there. The rest started leafleting the people coming in and out, mostly high school kids. And most of them talked about schools like holding pens, no jobs, no future, hanging out and getting busted. There was nothing to do except enlist a situation familiar to thousands of veterans.

VVAW members told these new recruits about the way they were used, the way their friends and buddies were blown away, disabled or killed so some rich bastard could squeeze profits out of Vietnam, Korea, or some other country. The vets talked about rotten conditions in the military, the repression and racism. And the caste system with peons and snuffies--the vets--on the bottom and the brass and rich on top getting fat. And then, from hard personal experience, the vets talked about how, after the rich had used them, they had thrown vets away like a no-deposit pop bottle. Vets are thrown off the GI Bill--and the Bill is only worth 1/3 of what is was worth back in 1944 when vets won it after fighting for 30 years to get it; and then there are the butcher sops they call VA Hospitals and disability checks cut back (like the vet who was cut back from 100% to 80% because he had "adjusted to being totally blind."

Many of the recruits knew that the demonstrators were there. Some went in after talking to the vets and asked some embarrassing questions of the recruiters; some exposed the recruiters around the raw deal they were getting. Finally, a Lieutenant Colonel and his flunkey, a Sergeant Major, the people who run the Center, came out to try to chase the demonstrators away. In fact, they were so scared of seeing vets and youth getting together that they Colonel was stuttering when he tried to speak. They set up a "brass barricade" of officers to try to keep the vets and youth out, and the recruits in. But this backfired when it attracted more attention and several recruits and even a sergeant came through the barricade to take leaflets and rap.

While everyone wasn't talked out of enlisting a couple of young people were persuaded; the rest are armed with some knowledge of the rotten conditions in the military and the threat of another rich man's war.

Through this experience both youth and vets found a real basis of unity infighting for common interests. As the American people get hit by higher unemployment and the threat of another war continues to grow, the rich will try to force millions into the military. These attacks will have to be turned around.

As the leaflet which the vets and youth were handing out said, "We aren't just fighting, we are going to win, knocking the rich and their flunkies off our backs once and for all. For those who have already signed up or who have no choice, when the rich star their next profit war and send us out to fight it, we'll know which way to aim."

DON'T VOLUNTEER
OUR FIGHT IS HERE