Kill all that you can see

by Laurence Ashton/PoorNewsNetwork

I am back jack

From an illegal occupation

Invasion..colonization..

That is totally whack

Done kilt, and spilt

With no thought to who

To’ up with guilt

And now I am back jack

With a mixed-up mind

Wanting to know

who I should blame

and what should I do

(kilt and spilt by Corporal P)

As I walked home from the powerful anti-war, anti-colonization march and rally in March the words of my friend and poet, Corporal P, who just returned from Iraq began to flood my mind., "Watch out brutha, they’ll get you next"

My friend spoke in his deep, foreboding voice which makes him seem a lot older than his 19 years. He was trying to scare me about an upcoming draft which he is convinced the current Amerikkan goverment has in the pipeline. At first I didn’t listen but recently, my editor suggested I look at the Bigga Pikcher i.e., the impact of what my editor refers to as the No Child Left Alive Act (No Child Left Behind) on the youth of amerikka.Upon examination of the messed-up "act" which was co-opted by Bush Cheny Inc for their latest coup it requires that parents who enroll their children in public schools automatically register them with selective service.

Selective Service spends every hour of every day planning for the heinous crime of conscription. That is who they are. It is what they do. They are like the Terminator- they would draft your grandmother if the order came down.

In my research for information on the draft I discovered www.draftresistance .org who refers to selective service system as the Selective Slavery System and lists 7 reasons why you should Never register for Selective Service including the fact that the more people register the more it appears like Selective Service could actually launch a successful draft.

Personally as a very low-income young African Descendent man who is trying to come up and out of poverty by getting an education, I ended up registering cause I thought I had to but through this website I learned that that too! is another fallacy. They gave an alternative resource for college funding; The Fund for Education and Training (FEAT) will give you money for college if you refuse to register. So don't register! FEAT address: 1830 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington DC 20009-5732 202 483 2220 fax: 202 483-1246

And of course all of this draft mess will, like all military recruitment have the worst impact on poor folks. College not Combat held an anti-military recruiting coalition protest in front of an army recruiting office in downtown San Francisco in March. The main point of their campaign is kicking out all army recruiters from Bay Area schools because the military systematically targets for recruitment those most harmed by the misplaced priorities of the political establishment: working class children and people of color and more often than not like in the case of my now homeless Iraqi veteran friend, the military promises of financial support amount to nothing.

As I got on the Bart to return to Oakland, filled with truth from the day and the strength to resist the pervasive pro-military lies, I couldn’t help noticing a pile of military recruitment brochures emblazoned with the oldest lie of them all, Be all you can be, or as my friend re-named it kill all that you can see