Rick Jahnkow -
Students at Mission Bay High School in San Diego are now celebrating what amounts to a very rare organizing victory: the expulsion of a Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps unit from their school. The accomplishment is especially remarkable given that it happened in an area with one of the largest concentrations of military personnel and war industry in the world. San Diego County, with over 100,000 active duty sailors and Marines, has a Department of Defense payroll that frequently tops all other regions in the U.S. It’s not the sort of place where you would expect a rejection of anything military.
There are more than 3000 high schools in the U.S. with JROTC, the Pentagon’s high school military training and indoctrination program. Over the years, those who have objected to having such courses in their schools have learned that when a JROTC unit gets established, it is almost impossible to remove it with a campaign of protest directed at school administrators and governing boards. The reason is that once JROTC is present, the cadets — who are organized in military ranks — can be used as a lobbying force that will intimidate even the most anti-militarist school board. Activists in San Francisco, for example, have failed in multiple attempts to eliminate the program.