The Day We Fought the Military

Recruiters and Won

- by Richard Moreno

On an early campus morning at Mt. San Antonio College, I received a phone call from the local Campus Greens saying that there were some seven Marines armed with military props recruiting on our campus. At first, this was a shock since we made it a priority to exact the schedule military recruiters would be on our campus from the Student Life Services, which posts such things on our monthly campus calendar.

Case in point, a week before the incident, we were aware the Air Force were going to be recruiting; accordingly, we made sure to give them a warm welcome by organizing a counter-recruitment contingent armed with banners and posters fresh with pictures of the military's recent Abu Gharib antics. Needless to say, the young Air Force recruiter was not pleased at our efforts as she left earlier than scheduled.

But this time, the military sent in the Marines. The following week, not just one, but seven freshly crew cut soldiers equipped with mock military weapons designed to entice the sadistic fantasies of otherwise unaware youth arrived in full uniform. So immediately, we made the necessary phone calls on site and were able to assemble a formidable group of twelve counter-recruiters within minutes. As we began passing out anti-recruitment flyers within feet of their table, we noticed an accentuated bravado amongst them this time, which we clearly took as a sign of their frustration. In this vein, we noticed their tactics began to become more aggressive as they actively sought out students and equipped them with one of their mock bazookas, which the recruiters coarsely and arrogantly brandied in broad daylight.

For us this crossed the line. Consequently, we decided that this was not only in bad taste, especially in the context of the extreme nature the Iraqi war had taken, but also horrifically insensitive to the student body, which is located in the Los Angeles area where assault and violence on campuses is epidemic. Thus, the decision was made to alert Mt. SAC's crack security team to let them know that there was a group of men with shaved heads walking around with what appeared to be dangerous weaponry. When asked by campus security what kind of weapons they were displaying, one of us answered very expressively, "I don't know, but they're big!" Within seconds, a group of security cars swarmed the area. This when we knew we had them!

We watched with great pleasure as the Marines were being scolded by campus security for bringing fake weapons onto a place of higher education. I could barely hold in my laughter as one of the security guards assured us that the weapons were bogus props and that our safety was being taken care of--all this while his fellow security guards diligently escorted the once so arrogant Marines off our campus.

This is always going to be the day that we remember when we took on the military--and won!

Richard Moreno is a student at Mt. SAC and an activist with the Global Resistance Network (LA). He can be reached at polyapplications@aol.com