“We Are Not Your Soldiers!”

Starting this week, World Can’t Wait begins the “We Are Not Your Soldiers!” tour reaching into high school classrooms with the participation of veterans of the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Barack Obama says he will expand the U.S. military by 92,000. Where will these troops come from? The military recruiters have a huge budget to recruit youth who are in high school now and almost unlimited access to reach high school students because the “No Child Left Behind” law ties funding for schools to whether recruiters can get to students.

This tour will bring students the desperately missing truth of what the “war on terror” is, no matter who is president. The tour will explain, through the words of veterans themselves, how the U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed a million people, displaced more than four million, and destroyed the infrastructure of both countries.

Speakers on the tour will give students reasons not to go into the military, and help organize collective resistance to recruiters’ lies.

Tell high school and community college students and teachers about the tour.

Events are scheduled for: Chicago November 24-26; Los Angeles December 1-5; San Francisco December 8-12; and New York City December 8-12.

For more information and details, go to worldcantwait.org,
or contact: youth_students@worldcantwait.org or call 347.385.2195.

SPEAKERS FOR THE TOUR:
Iraq Veteran Phil Aliff: Phil served in the US Army from 2004-2008 as a corporal with the 10th Mountain Division. After doing a tour in Iraq from 2005-2006, Aliff started the first active duty chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War at Fort Drum. He spoke at Winter Soldier, a national event where Vets testified to the war crimes they participated in and witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Phil was a part of leading protests against the war and the whole Bush program on college campuses, on the streets and outside the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Emma Kaplan: Youth & Student Coordinator, World Can’t Wait. She has been a part of organizing protests against the Bush doctrine of torture, military recruiting centers, and police brutality. She has spoken to youth at concerts, in classrooms and on campus, calling on this generation to take responsibility for the crimes their government is committing in their names. Most recently she participated in the protests with Port Military Resistance, along with Evergreen College (Washington State) students, where people formed human blockades to prevent the Stryker brigades from being sent to Iraq.

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