Our group on the Harbor High School campus hopes that by creating a place for people to congregate we can come together as activists to educate the rest of the student body about critical issues facing not only the youth of America but the general population as well.

Recently we’ve been focusing on issues of military recruitment. This past Thursday we conducted the first of many more counter-recruitment actions. We set up a table beside the Air force booth and our group played music and dressed in green shirts that stated different words that we see as representative in the military, such as SEXISM and RACISM. We leafleted the school and talked to students who had left the air force booth or were just hanging out. A few of our members walked around campus with a 20 ft sign that read, “Think Before you Enlist.�

We had just as many people come visit our booth if not more than the air force. Our objective is not to be anti-military or cause problems on campus, but to show our student body that the military isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be and that there are a lot of things they should be aware of before enlisting. We want students who are thinking about enlisting to know the truth about their contract, what the military recruiters won’t tell you. They are signing up for 8 years and any part of their contract can be changed at anytime. Students are told they can easily become pilots when in reality only about 2% of people in the air force will ever see flight time. We want students to be aware of these facts and many other myths the military spreads so they know that it’s not the glorified image they see on commercials.

For the future we hope to gain more members and build our group as well as our tactics. We hope to start doing some guerilla theater and some more radical/aggressive leafleting to get the word out and better reach our fellow students.

We are open to UCSC’s support. If you are interested in helping us during anti-recruitment actions please contact UCSC Students Against War (SAW) at ucscantiwar (at) yahoo.com or attend one of their meetings, Fridays at 5 in conference room D (above the Baytree Bookstore). We have begun coming to SAW meetings and have been building connections with their counter-recruitment team. Also, we hope to possibly start bi-monthly movie nights in conjunction with UCSC’s Revolution Youth

. If you want to attend our meetings they are every Friday from 10:15-10:45 in room H-1 at Harbor High School. Please feel free to contact Erin-Kate Escobar (eekers (at) pacbell.net) if you would like to get in contact with Students for Peace and Justice.