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Conscientious Objector Counseling Project

The Visalia Friends Meeting is planning to establish a counseling service for people who want to explore their beliefs and options regarding their participation in the military. This project is in a startup phase. We welcome your participation whether or not you are a member of the Visalia Friends Meeting.

To jump-start our project we had a 3-hour training session for prospective counselors led by a representative of the CCCO (Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors) on Saturday Feb. 16. We videotaped the workshop.

 

Why "Draft Counseling" When There Is No Draft?

The current draft registration process has no provision for allowing you to indicate you are a conscientious objectors. As it stands now the first opportunity you would have to establish such a claim is after receiving an induction notice. At that point you might have as little as 10 days to build a case. This provides little time to sort out and be able to articulate your beliefs, discover your legal rights, gather letters of reference, etc. It is important to think through your position, document your beliefs, demonstrate that your life style is consistent with those beliefs, and develop a network of information and support.

Other areas needing to be addressed now are educational efforts to counter the aggressive on-campus military recruitment, and counseling for those in the military who have had second thoughts.

[It has come to our attention that a bill is being considered in the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee (HR 3598) that would require universal basic military training. It appears that this bill, if passed in its current form, would require even conscientious objectors to participate in basic military training. This bill has been referred to committee. You may want to contact your representatives and register your feelings about this bill and/or its conscientious objector provisions.]

[During Easter week 2002 the Navy set up a Disneyland-style flight simulator in the Porterville Wal-Mart parking lot for a recruitment fair ("War Faire" as Bill Warner so aptly put it). We responded by setting up a booth with counter-recruitment literature. To clarify my own thinking I wrote out my thoughts on the rationale for opposing recruitment for a volunteer military.--David Chandler]

 

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