Army of None

Uniformed U.S. Army Officers lunch with students in elementary school cafeterias. Army training programs including rifle and pistol instruction replace physical education in middle schools. As never before, military recruiters are entering the halls of U.S. schools with unchecked access in an attempt to bolster a military in crisis.

However, even as these destructive efforts to militarize youth accelerate, so do the creative and powerful efforts of students, community members, and veterans to challenge them. Today, the counter-recruitment movement—from counseling to poetry slams to citywide lobbying efforts—has become one of the most practical ways to tangibly resist U.S. policy that cuts funding for education and social programs while promoting war and occupation. Without enough soldiers, the U.S. cannot sustain its empire.

Aimee Allison and David Solnit's Army of None exposes the real story behind the military-recruitment complex, and offers guides, tools, and resources for education and action, and people power strategies to win.

David Solnit is a twenty-year veteran of mass direct-action organizing, street confrontations and jails. He helped initiate and was an organizer of the direct-action shutdown of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. He cofounded Art and Revolution, and has helped to popularize street theater, culture, and puppets as an innovative form of resistance in social change movements and street actions throughout North America. He works with Code Orange Affinity Group, a part of Direct Action to Stop the War, which coordinated the shutdown of San Francisco's Financial District on March 20, 2003, the day after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.