More G.I. Rights Hotline: What They're Hearing Now

(A sidebar cut for space, originally for the GI Rights Hotline story in the North Coast Journal.)

I asked Steve Morse of the Oakland Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and several Arcata volunteers what kinds of calls they noticed as being more frequent, especially most recently. Barbara Goldberg and Fred Adler talked about the recruiting of high school students (see other sidebar). Here are three other responses:

Steve Morse: AWOLS.

“ I’m seeing an increasing percentage of AWOLS. A lot of people would like to be conscientious objectors if the process were done the way it’s supposed to be, but since it’s not, a lot of people who feel that way just end up going AWOL.”

Helen Jones (Humboldt): Mothers.

“It’s amazing how many calls we get from mothers. They’re worried about their kids in the military. They say they sound bad, or they sound depressed, or they aren’t themselves anymore. They think it’s having an effect on them, and they worry a lot. We can talk to them, but we can’t really do anything---the kid in the military has to call us. ”

Rick Campos (Humboldt): Women.

“ The military is about 40% women now. They joined up to go to college, same as men. A lot of National Guard are women. We’re getting more calls than usual on sexual harassment and rape. The military lends itself to those types of situations---because of the chain of command, it’s really easy to prey on people. Women get picked on by upper echelons of command who can shut down any protest by the victim—the victim can wind up getting prosecuted. That’s a real crisis situation. When we can’t handle it we refer them to the military task force of the National Lawyer’s Guild... Sometimes we have to refer them to a suicide counselor first.”