Latino's For Peace are campaigning hard to stop their children being given the (US) Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (test) at their locals schools. Good luck to them.
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Calling Hispanics "cannon fodder" in Iraq, Latinos for Peace wants to keep Latinos from being recruited for the war.
"Our schools have been drafted as the data base for turning our youth into cannon fodder again," said Rosalio Munoz, chairperson of the National Chicano Moratorium and coordinator of Latinos for Peace, launched Monday.
"We join in the campaign to inform parents of how to opt out of having local schools hand over their children's contact data to recruiters and opt out of their children being given the (US) Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (test) at the local schools," Munoz said.
Too many young Latinos have perished in Iraq, according to the group, which wants to avoid what it says would be a repeat of the Vietnam war, fought largely by young men belonging to minority groups.
The group launched its campaign in the United States on the 35th anniversary of the National Chicano Moratorium, when 20,000 persons protested the disproportionate number of Latinos who died in Vietnam, and which ended with the deaths of three persons, including Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar.
"In the Vietnam era, the Pentagon targeted Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and other minority and poor youth with a discriminatory draft," said Munoz, who planned press conferences in San Diego, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The group wants to ask high schools to limit military recruiters' access to students and their personal information and to teach high schoolers how to keep their data from the Pentagon.
Under the law that created President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program, recruiters have access to the students' information, unless they opt out.
The group wants to have as many children as possible sign opt-out lists.
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