The Seventies are.... Friends and local witness about military issues for the CURRENT millenium

The Cut to the Chase Queries:

What are the spiritual needs of people with different kinds of recent military experience?

Do Friends even realize that there are young people among us who have recent military experience, not to mention cousins, parents,...?

Friends in our Meetings have various experiences both as conscientious objectors and with military service. How might Friends with these experiences share their Light with people who come to our community with war / military experiences?

How do Quaker parents cope when their children decide to enlist?

How many among us are familiar with:

--The nearest GI coffeehouse, Coffee Strong outside Joint Base Lewis McCord?

--The realities of different conscientious objector cases connected with current wars.

--The dynamics of the poverty draft and trading military services for immigration relief?

--the devastating challenges faced by returning veterans and returning vets' being overrepresented among the homeless, those with substance abuse and mental health issues?

--Screening programs, such as they are to assist troops returning from deployment, to assess their risks of PTSD, self-harm and other mental health issues, as well as access to services through military health systems and the Beterans' Administration?
--The Demise of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the expansion of combat roles for women....?

--Friends' and others' efforts to ensure that parents and youth have to OPT IN to having information shared with the Selective Service and military recruiters rather than having to OPT OUT?

RantWoman is cataloging all these concerns for seasoning; RantWoman thinks there is much work, the hats of advocacy roles looking for new heads. All RantWoman can do is call out...
Readers who want to interact further for current connections about the points raised above would be forgiven for stopping here and using your search engines. Or leave a comment and RantWoman will consider leadings to comment further or offer referrals.

Readers who want to pair the quest for current faces with peering into the past, please read on.
(Tactless RantWoman tirade: World War II is OVER. Korea is Over. Vietnam is OVER. It's a new millenium. RantWoman is TRYING not to Dis anyone's experiences but summons us all:  how are Friends called to be present in current situations?)

RantWoman's Meeting is in the midst of an interesting exercise about indexing minutes.

RantWoman's Meeting is blessed with software professionals who own scanners and have time to migrate some or all of minutes to the electronic world.

Based on a recent Adult Education session, RantWoman feels well heard about one suggestion: that some of the deciding what to index include reviews of Big Decisions, how they are reflected in minutes of Business Meeting and / or supporting committees.

Unfortunately, hearing RantWoman about one suggestion just generates MORE suggestions queries, quibbles, and general querulousness.

Gifted Historian Friend (who has other noms de blog) did an Adult Education presentation covering several topics, some of which get their own posts. RantWoman early on in the session insisted on collecting one piece of data about those assembled. RantWoman was born in the 1960's. RantWoman asked and no one present was born in a later decade; those born in earlier decades were unwilling to share their birth decades, though RantWoman has a pretty good idea in most cases.

(RantWoman tartly notes that Adult Ed currently occurs in a time slot where there is no child care. RantWoman is meditating about whether this point resonates with anyone else's concerns.)

But back to conscientious objection. Gifted Historian Friend extracted from minutes:

--Comments about one young CO who openly sought Sanctuary at the Meetinghouse after either going AWOL or not appearing in the first place, RantWoman is unsure which.

--Minutes of personal support for one Friend led to sit in at the Selective Service

--Collection by Meeting of letters from young people, okay young men, documenting their faith in case the Selective Service came calling.

--Accounts both of support for young men going to Canada and for medics returning home and enrolling in special training options customized based on their experience as military medics.

--Longstanding support for draft counseling through the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) or when AFSC laid it down by Friends with strong leadings regardless of what AFSC did.

Appreciating these opportunities to peer into the past do not lessen RantWoman's clarity about the queries that open this post.