Catholic Workers gatecrash military recruitment on Ash Wednesday in Brisbane, Australia

PEACE RECRUITMENT - Brisbane, Australia
Ash Wednesday Feb 9 2011

Last week on reading my boy’s school newsletter I saw an ad for an information night for students to join the Australian Defence Force Academy on finishing grade 12.

I sent a fairly strong email to the Principal voicing my usual objections to Catholic schools becoming military recruitment centres, but got no reply – so far.

At the bottom of the ad was a number to ring if you wanted to attend. On ringing the number I spoke to someone from a national call centre for military recruitment. I asked her about the evening, pointing out that the ad had the date and time, but no address. She said my son could ring and book a seat, and only then would he be told the address. (My son had something else on that evening and I am not sure if I could have talked him into coming or not.) But she did mention in passing it was at the Defence Recruitment Centre. Not too hard to find, of course.

I thought it rather strange though that they would not readily give the address, and I could only guess this was due to a) years of peace actions at the Brisbane Defence Recruitment centre, b) a previous successful attempt to speak the truth to recruits by our Melbourne fiends, or c) a combination of both.

Anyhow, inspired by the Melbourne 2009 action, we hijacked their leaflet with a few improvements (no offence folks), dressed up in suits (this is theatre of course, so friends and relatives annoyed by my usual dress code - don’t expect any permanent changes!), and headed for the city. There were only three of us, Sean O’Reilly, Warwick Miller and myself. But we thought this was enough given that we were unable to “book a seat inside”.

WE managed to give a leaflet to just about everyone who went in (only about 30 or 40 children with parents) Presumably all thought we were part of the recruitment of course, especially as we usually directed them to the 11th floor meeting. The front of the leaflet has a picture of a soldier with a young child, and the words “Want to make a Difference?. Inside is information about the “side effects” of a military career, the morality of war, and on the back, alternatives to the military.
Two young military folks came to talk. The first was a woman, who took our leaflet. As she started reading it I said “ We are just trying to help you out here”, After a little read she replied, “It doesn’t look like it”,

I said, “We are just including some information you probably miss. For instance, I bet you don’t talk tonight about Post Traumatic Stress, and the large number of soldiers who come back violent and/or suicidal. Did you know 4 serving soldiers from Brisbane alone committed suicide last year?”
“I know of a couple.”, she replied, “But I bet there are no more in the military than other occupations.” I was a bit taken back by this response, thinking that most folks knew about the problems of returned service suicides etc. “I can’t quote the statistics” I said, “but I have read a lot and am sure that is not he case”.

She departed at this point, but a young sailor came down and had quite along chat. We covered a lot of ground in a short time. He was more accepting of the obvious problems of post traumatic stress. But when I suggested they should mention this in recruitment, his reply was that you are not going to tell the negatives when you want someone to join. I replied that perhaps the military has a duty to tell them, much like when you buy a product in a Chemist and they are obliged to list all possible side effects. “His response was “Well it is all “out there”, if they want to find out. We don’t hide anything”

We moved on to a number of issues such as the morality of the Iraq and Afghan wars, freedom of conscience limited by joining the military, torture in Guantanamo and Abu Grahib, and more.

We did not make it to the talk to ask questions, but I am sure the leaflet itself was quite powerful. We also did not stay to meet people as they left, but hopefully we had a similar impact on some as the Melbourne experience.

It is a little unfortunate such nights a re not advertised more openly, but hopefully we can find about more and keep recruiting.

Peace
Jim Dowling
-Peter Maurin Catholic Worker Farm, Dayboro, Queensland