By Peyton Cleaver, Managing Editor
The term “poverty draft” was coined in the 1980s to describe the ranks of young people in the military who were believed to have joined because of their limited economic opportunities. Decades later, this term is still used as the military targets young individuals, often from poorer communities, to serve. For decades, the United States military has taken advantage of a system that offers extremely limited opportunities to the poor in order to boost the ranks of their volunteer-based army.
The number of soldiers has dramatically dropped since the 1970s and, to combat the lack of troops, the army has poured millions into advertising. According to Department of Defense estimates, the Army spends $400 million dollars on advertising annually. This $400 million goes towards targeting the young and disadvantaged to fill their ranks.
By targeting disadvantaged youth in recruiting, the military is able to lure in young people with promises of better futures full of financial and educational benefits. It’s easy to see why the military would be appealing to poorer individuals; signing a military contract means room and board on top of a salary. In addition to that, benefits are also promised once soldiers leave the military including reduced medical fees, pensions, and education.
While it is good to reward those who willingly risk their lives to serve our country, the fact of the matter remains that many who are laying down their lives do so because they believe it is the only way they can succeed.
“One of the national crises right now is student loans, so $31,000 is [about] the average,” Maj. Gen. Frank Muth, head of Army Recruiting Command told reports at the Pentagon in Sept. 2019. “You can get out [of the Army] after four years, 100 percent paid for state college anywhere in the United States."
In a 2017 survey conducted by the Department of Defense, 49% of the respondents indicated that if they were to join the military it would be to pay for future education. Crises with student debt feed more recruits into the military-industrial complex, the alliance between military corporations who profit off of the war and help drive this system that routinely exploits the desperation of members of poor communities.
“They first usually approach you by calling and introducing themselves and asking for a minute of your time then after a few phone calls… they ask if you're willing to go to a recruitment center for a quick computer test to assess your skills and a chat,” Kennedy alumni Ruben Ponce said. “They even will offer to pick you up and drop you back off because they know these kids are typically too young to even drive.”
The military also offers expedited paths to citizenship for immigrants who are looking to move to the U.S. These pathways to citizenship, mainly targeted towards dreamers who came to the U.S. as children, once again reflect the way that the military targets the disadvantaged in recruitment.
While having a military is necessary, it is impossible to ignore how the military takes advantage of systemic injustice in the U.S. to boost its ranks of soldiers at the expense of the communities it claims to protect.
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