Pat Elder: It’s Not A Volunteer Force, Amy. It’s A Recruited Force. + Militarizing Schools, Criminalizing Students

Thoughts and Prayers Don't Save Lives, student lie-in at the White House to protest gun laws

Image by Lorie Shaull via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Pat Elder
World Beyond War, Feb. 21, 2018
February 26, 2018

Part 1: Inside the U.S. Military Recruitment Program That Trained Nikolas Cruz to be “A Very Good Shot”

Democracy Now! on Feb 21, 2018

https://democracynow.org – Dozens of students who survived last week’s school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida have arrived in Tallahassee to push for new gun control measures. On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives blocked a bid to bring up a bill to ban sales of assault-style rifles in the state. The Florida gunman, a 19-year-old white former student named Nikolas Cruz, was a member of the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program before he was expelled from the school. Cruz was also part of a four-person JROTC marksmanship team at the school which had received $10,000 in funding from the NRA. For more, we speak with Pat Elder, director of the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, an organization that confronts militarism in schools. He’s the author of Military Recruiting in the United States.

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