• George W. Bush
• Donald Trump
• ICE
• Eric Blanc
• SDS
• Venezuela
• No Kings
• Labor Politics
• Antiwar Movement
• Iran

Opinion: Trump’s war on Iran is unpopular, dangerous, and escalating. But without organizing, public anger will not stop it

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Mar 02, 2026 / Eric Blanc / Labor Politics - Donald Trump’s war on Iran is very unpopular. As pollster G. Elliot Morris notes, it is the most unpopular a US war has ever been when it started. And “with just 38% of Americans in favor, support for bombing Iran is lower than retrospective support for the war in Iraq was in 2014.”

Why then has there been so little collective protest against the US-Israel offensive? Answering this question is not easy. What follows are seven hypotheses rather than definitive conclusions. But exploring why we’re lacking an anti-war movement today can help us move to actually start building one. And for the sake of Iranians, the Middle East, and working people in the US, we’d better do so as soon as possible.

Americans Feel Powerless

A key reason why so many young people in the 1960s threw themselves into the fight against US military involvement in Vietnam was that the civil rights movement had recently demonstrated the power of mass action. As Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)’s founding manifesto in 1962 put it, “the Southern struggle against racial bigotry … compelled most of us from silence to activism.” Looking back, one participant recalled that such examples of success “gave the feeling that you could actually make a difference, that you needed to take a stand.”

• NNOMY
• War Refusal
• Youth Resisting War
• endless war
• Call to Action

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March 30, 2026 / NNOMY staff / The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) - A mind stops accepting endless war when young people begin to see themselves not as spectators to global violence, but as builders of something better. This shift rarely begins in policy debates or news cycles. It begins in neighborhoods, school hallways, community centers, and the informal networks where youth learn what is possible. For many, the first awakening comes from realizing that the stories they’ve been handed about war—its inevitability, its heroism, its supposed necessity—are not natural laws but narratives designed to shape their choices.

Young people encounter militarized messages earlier and more intensely than most adults realize. Recruiters appear in classrooms, cafeterias, and career fairs. Movies and games frame conflict as adventure. Political rhetoric paints the world as a series of threats. These messages work not because they are persuasive, but because they are constant. They create a sense that war is simply the backdrop of modern life. Youth organizing disrupts that backdrop. It gives young people a place to question the script and to see themselves as protagonists in a different story.

Community spaces play a crucial role in this transformation. A youth council meeting in a library basement, a creative content team filming a short video on a borrowed camera, a peer educator training held after school—these are the places where the idea of endless war begins to lose its grip. In these rooms, young people talk openly about the pressures they face, the futures they want, and the systems that try to shape their decisions. They learn that militarism is not just about armies; it is about the way society teaches them to see danger everywhere, to equate safety with force, and to believe that violence is the only path to respect or opportunity.

• JROTC
• military recruiting tools & methods
• Military Recruitment v. Right of Privacy
• Opt Out
• militarization of youth
• High school counter-recruitment
• S.1530 - SERVE Act

The Landscape of Counter-recruitment in U.S. High Schools is About to Change

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March 16, 2026 / NNOMY Staff / National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth - The Serve Act arrives at a moment when the U.S. military faces one of the most significant recruitment shortfalls in decades, and federal policymakers have responded not by rethinking the underlying causes of youth disinterest in military service, but by intensifying access to young people’s personal information and expanding the military’s presence in schools. The bill represents a strategic pivot: rather than relying on traditional recruitment pipelines, it seeks to normalize military contact with students as early as possible, to frame enlistment as a civic expectation, and to reduce the ability of families and communities to shield young people from aggressive recruitment tactics. For the counter‑recruitment movement, this legislation is not simply another policy challenge but a structural escalation that demands coordinated, long‑term resistance.

At its core, the SERVE Act reframes military recruitment as a national security imperative that supersedes local control, parental authority, and student privacy. It strengthens federal pressure on school districts by tying compliance to funding streams and by redefining “equal access” to mean not merely allowing recruiters into schools but actively facilitating their outreach. This shift is subtle in language but sweeping in effect. Administrators who previously exercised discretion over recruiter visits now face heightened scrutiny, and districts that once limited military presence to career fairs or scheduled appointments may feel compelled to permit more frequent, less regulated interactions. The result is an environment in which military recruiters gain unprecedented legitimacy and visibility, while educators and counselors who attempt to maintain balance or protect student autonomy risk being portrayed as obstructing federal policy.

One of the most consequential aspects of the SERVE Act is its expansion of access to student directory information. Although federal law has long required schools to share certain categories of student data with military recruiters unless families opt out, the SERVE Act broadens the scope of what can be collected and increases the mechanisms through which it can be obtained. This includes provisions that encourage or require schools to streamline data‑sharing processes, reduce barriers to recruiter access, and integrate military outreach into digital platforms used by students. In practice, this means that young people who have never expressed interest in the military may find themselves contacted repeatedly, both in person and through digital channels, without having knowingly consented to such engagement. For communities already concerned about surveillance, data exploitation, and the erosion of privacy rights, the SERVE Act deepens existing vulnerabilities.

March 12, 2026 / Edward Hasbrouck / Antiwar.com - The organizations listed below oppose the recent change in federal law, buried in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, that will result in the Selective Service System (SSS) trying to “automatically” identify, locate, and register men ages 18 through 25 for a future draft.

“Automatic” registration won’t produce an accurate or complete list of potential draftees. But it will increase the likelihood of war and violate the privacy of U.S. citizens and residents. Once implemented, an automatic registration system will deny young men, including conscientious objectors, the opportunity to indicate their opposition to being drafted by opting out of registration.

This change in law was proposed by the SSS because the previous method of relying on men to register themselves with the SSS has, over time, resulted in tens of millions of young men failing to register or report changes of address. The failing record of the self-registration system was underscored when the SSS reported that in 2023 only 39.9 percent of men complied when they reached the mandatory registration age of 18.

While there currently is no active military draft, the SSS is tasked with maintaining the mechanism for one if it is authorized by Congress. Given threats and actions by the Trump administration to intervene militarily in an increasing number of places around the world, it is concerning that, at this time, steps are now being taken to grow the number of people who could be facing the threat of a future draft.

Furthermore, even before a draft is activated, the mere presence of a system to carry it out and enroll men to be involuntarily inducted can encourage politicians and military planners to feel overconfident in planning and carrying out larger and longer wars without having to worry about whether enough people would be willing to fight them. Thus, having a system for a draft in place reduces a critical guard rail for such decisions.

The new “automatic” registration law will give the SSS unprecedented authority, starting in December 2026, to acquire and aggregate information from any other federal database that might help identify or locate potential draftees. However, whether an individual is required to register depends on factors like their sex as assigned at birth and their immigration and visa status, information that could very well be absent from other federal data sources used by the SSS. Relying on such a wide breadth of federal data sources could, thus, make the SSS database inaccurate and vulnerable to misuse and weaponization, especially against transgender, nonbinary, and immigrant youth.

This potential for weaponization has been starkly demonstrated by recent efforts to grant the Department of State and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services access to the SSS database of registered individuals. The stated purpose for requesting this is to evaluate the eligibility of individuals for U.S. citizenship, but it could also be used to identify immigrants for potential deportation. If implemented, the personal information and privacy of all U.S. citizens and residents would be at risk.

The change to “automatic” registration was enacted with no hearings, no debate, and no budget review. There’s no reason to think that a list constructed from other databases compiled for entirely unrelated purposes will be any more fit for the purpose of provably delivering induction notices than the current “selfregistration” list.

In light of these facts, including the failure of the self-registration system, we are calling for Congress to end SSS registration and totally repeal the Military Selective Service Act, for which bi-partisan legislation has been introduced multiple times in the last few years (e.g., S.4881 in 2024 and H.R.2509 in 2022).

Lawmakers should act quickly on this issue before federal records are misused and the rights of young men are infringed in an ill-considered attempt to bolster the capacity of the U.S. for endless, unlimited wars.

Source: As U.S. Military Threats and Actions Escalate, Coalition Calls for Ending Preparations for a Military Draft - Antiwar.com Blog

 Statement signers (as of 3/12/26):