Check back at wilderside for more updates and action. Someone posted photos of the event on Flickr and NY’s own Mac Bica and Walter G were there and pictured!
( Just found the press release posted as well at Common Dreams. Also, for more information, the group focusing on this work is here: www.shutdowntheaec.net )
(excerpt from) El Mundo Tech website:
—- Seven Arrested at Philadelphia Mall over Military Recruiting Practices
300 Veterans, military families, religious leaders and voters rallied, marched and closed the “Army Experience Center” to decry the Army pilot program that entices teens with violent video games
Philadelphia, PA — Saturday, May 2, 2009 – Several hundred demonstrators from a coalition of 30 national and regional veteran, youth and peace groups, including the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action, Student Peace Action Network, protested what they claimed were unethical military recruitment of teenagers at Franklin Mills Mall in northeast Philadelphia.
The protesters rallied at a church, then marched one mile to the Franklin Mills mall where dozens of police blocked them from entering the “Army Experience Center” (AEC). After nearly an hour of chants of “War is no game, shut down the Army Experience Center” and speeches, Bob Smith of the Brandywine Peace Community (a member of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of 1,300 national and local organizations) delivered a criminal complaint (4) to a Captain at the AEC and to a representative of the mall’s parent company, The Simon Property Group, Inc. After two police warnings, hundreds of protesters continued to chant and listen to speeches by Col. Wright and others, until the police arrested seven conducting civil disobedience by refusing to leave. Forced out of the mall, people continued to vigil and listen to songs by the Granny Peace Brigade outside the “red” entrance to the mall.
“The Army Experience Center is an abomination. It epitomizes the turn for the worse that the military was forced to take over the last eight years. It is misleading. It targets impressionable minors, and it propagates the glorification of war. I am utterly disgusted that the Army which I loved and in which I served so long has resorted to such a deceiving recruiting strategy,” said Sergeant Jesse Hamilton, who served nine years in the Army including tours in Iraq. After receiving and honorable discharge, he joined Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).
Elaine Brower, 53, who sits on the board of Peace Action of Staten Island, was one of those taken to jail. She has been organizing against the AEC because she is the mother of a Marine who just returned from his third tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan…
Filed under: activism, counter-recruiting, local, long island, Long Island Politics, News, politics, progressive politics, US Politics, war Tagged: | Army arcade, Army Experience Center, counter military recruitment, Elaine Brower, Franklin Mills Mall, military, military recruitment, Philadelphia, war
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