A new investigation by the New York Times has found that thousands of low
income students, typically, students who are minorities,
have been forced into Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps programs.
So, the ROTC programs essentially.
Even as there are guidelines by the pentagon in place to prevent compulsory or
forced enrollment into these classes.
Now, JROTC or Junior ROTC programs taught by military veterans at
some 3500 high schools across the country again are supposed to be elective.
They are not supposed to be forced into these classes.
But the New York Times investigation actually ended up finding that in school
districts that are underfunded in poor neighborhoods, minority neighborhoods
students are being automatically enrolled, meaning there's compulsory enrollment.
And in some cases, they're even being forced to take the elective class even
when they're not supposed to.
Okay, so I wanna give you some of the numbers that the New York Times
found here.
A review of Junior ROTC enrollment data collected from more than 200
public records requests showed dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or
steered more than 75% of students in a single grade into the classes, okay?
Now, since the 1970s, there was a pretty strong effort by anti-war activists
to prevent these elective classes from being mandatory or compulsory.
They luckily won on that.
But as you can imagine, with the difficulty the Pentagon has had in
recruiting new members to the military, they're starting to kind of loosen things
up and entice these school districts to not only just offer the classes but
to pressure or force the students into taking them.
So, while Pentagon officials have long insisted that these classes are not
a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding
the $400-million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s,
as a way of drawing more young people into military service.
The army, in fact, says that 44% of all soldiers who entered
its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered Junior ROTC.
And so, there is a cost-saving element to this,
which is encouraging these underfunded school districts to do this.
And I think that's the most interesting part of it, right?
Because apparently,
the military subsidizes instructors' salaries while requiring schools to
maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program.
In states that offer this to be used as an alternative graduation credit,
some schools appear to have saved money by using the course as an alternative
to hiring more teachers in subjects such as physical education or
wellness or any other elective.
It's disgusting, I mean, I'm not surprised by this at all.
I mean, when you see the way the military was trying to recruit young people
on twitch and how that got exposed, and they kind of backed off of it.
I was curious what they were gonna turn to next.
And apparently, this has been going on, and credit to the New York Times for
actually doing an investigation into this.
>> Yeah.
So, you know how you see right wing was always talking about all the left
wing wants to indoctrinate the kids.
It goes back forever and ever but I remember they said it about Obama
because Obama went to go and talk at an elementary school.
If you remember George W Bush was an elementary school when 911
happened, right?
And he had the upside-down book and the whole thing.
And I remember doing a segment on that going, well,
how's this indoctrinating the kids anymore than Bush?
But the right wing constantly goes that talking point.
Groomers are getting the kids ready for this and
they're indoctrinating them into believing in science and doctors.
It's terrible and all this stuff, right?
Why do they say that?
Because they love indoctrinating kids and so
they assume that the left is doing it as well.
So, they're, now, remember what you really got to indoctrinate them into is that that
there's a mythical creature and it gets controls all their lives.
Now, they can't see the mythical creature,
they have to just remember you indoctrinate them to believe me.
I'm the guy who's telling you what the mythical creature believes, okay?
So you have to follow all my orders, okay?
That's indoctrination happens every Sunday or every Friday or
whichever religion you're in, Saturday some, etc, right?
And then you've got school where they then say, okay, you know what?
You got a lot of different choices or
maybe you don't have a lot of choices even better.
Here's a choice you should consider the military where we can use your body and
have you die so that we can get defense contractors even richer.
You have to actually defend America.
No, I mean we haven't had to defend America in decades, now, right?
But, hey, Lockheed Martin is gonna make more money if we use you as part
of our grinder for offensive wars that we start for no goddamn reason.
But that's harder to sell.
So they have to say, you're going to be a hero.
Look at how cool this is and look at all the opportunities that you have.
And why do they target poor and minority areas?
>> We know why.
>> Well, there's several reasons, one, those folks have less opportunity.
So, they think, good,
you don't have enough opportunities so we can grind you up, okay?
Two, rich people have a lot of opportunities.
They ain't gonna sign up for the military.
The rich people start the wars, they don't actually fight in the wars.
So, that's obvious, right?
>> Right, rich people tend to send their children to private schools or
they live in areas of the country that are where property values are much higher.
So, the public schools receive a lot more funding.
And so, those school districts aren't looking for
ways to cut costs the same way that underfunded school districts where
minority students are really overrepresented end up doing.
>> So, unfortunately, a lot of those folks think like Trump did.
Joining the military is for suckers and losers, right?
But he thinks he's such a winner Trump does because he didn't have to join
the military.
No idiot, you had $413 million dollars given to you by your dad, okay?
That's why you didn't have to join the military.
A lot of these kids feel like they don't have any other choice,
especially when they're indoctrinated, just like this from the beginning.
And of course, the last reason they target the poor and
the minorities is because they don't care about them at all.
>> Yeah, that's a really good point.
And that's why again, we see minorities overrepresented in the military.
You see them getting sent off to multiple deployments in the Middle East
when our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were at their peak.
It's what we see happening over and over again.
And the poor in this country are constantly put at a disadvantage and
their kids are constantly put at a disadvantage and
they're being exploited and indoctrinated.
And I think this is a perfect example of that.
So,-.
>> I'm gonna say one last thing, this is also partly not the main reason, but part
of the reason why they don't want free college because then you'd have an option.
>> You would have an opportunity.
Exactly.
>> Yeah. And they don't want you to have
that opportunity.
They don't want you to have that option so they could use you for their grinder.