Thursday, June 05, 2008

Seventeen-year-old returning home

Amelia S., mentioned in the previous post, is returning home!

Check out Catholic Peace Fellowship for the whole story.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Seventeen and forced to bootcamp

As people like Cindy Sheehan can attest, military recruiters across the country may coerce and deceive young people and their families to meet recruitment goals for our increasingly stretched military. In the depressed Michiana region, the Indiana National Guard regularly threatens arrest to young disadvantaged people who have changed their minds after signing up to make a little extra cash and get themselves out of poverty. Sometimes the Indiana Guard will show up in the middle of the night to take these young people from their homes.

Amelia S. is one of these young people. Seventeen years old, she lives with her grandmother in East Chicago, IN. She participated in drills at the South Bend Armory, but decided she wanted to stay in school and go on to college. Recently, a doctor diagnosed her with clinical depression, which according to Army Regulation 40-501 2-27.d, is a disqualifying medical condition. She notified her superior officers of her diagnosis and intent to withdraw from her training. But that didn't stop Sgt. Ramiro of Hammond, IN, who picked Amelia up in the early hours of Tuesday, June 3 and brought her to Camp Atterbury, outside of Indianapolis.

The local news media (including the Chicago media) have not covered this story, perhaps seeing it as just a poor African-American girl with the unremarkable problems of a poor African-American girl in a poor town in Northwest Indiana. Amelia's town, East Chicago, just this week lost another manufacturing plant and nearly 450 jobs. Ironically, most of the jobs lost were union, and Union Tank Car Co. will now produce its products with non-union labor at facilities in Texas and Louisiana.

Maybe the local media thinks in a town like East Chicago, it would be silly for a girl in Amelia's situation to turn down the opportunity for a military career.

But Amelia has decided she wants out. She wants to finish high school, and thanks to the Indiana National Guard, she may flunk out of her junior year.

Amelia's story is just one of many that is not being told about our "all-volunteer armed forces."

You can read more about Amelia's story here:
http://www.catholicpeacefellowship.org/nextpage.asp?m=1000

Sources: Catholic Peace Fellowship, Chicago Tribune