MN anti-war protesters successfully remove Army recruiters from career fair
Brooklyn Center, MN – On April 29, a career fair organized by Hennepin County at the quiet Brookdale Library became the scene of a successful action against the presence of U.S. military recruiters in communities. Roughly a dozen activists from the MN Anti-War Committee and the anti-war veterans’ organization About Face disrupted the fair with the demand that recruiters for both the U.S Army and the Minnesota Army National Guard leave immediately.
Protesters began by inconspicuously entering the fair before unfurling a banner reading “Recruiters out – stop the war” and taking the floor to speak and chant against the military personnel present, refusing to leave until the recruiters did.
“We’re protesting the presence of U.S military recruiters at this career fair,” said AWC member Wyatt Miller. “These people are preying on our communities. They are preying on people’s basic needs like employment and healthcare and education.”
Miller continued, “U.S. massacres in Iran are launched from the same bases where the U.S. military staged its many wars and occupations in neighboring Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands. Most people want the U.S. military presence in the Middle East to end once and for all.”
The recruiters simply packed up and left within minutes of the protest beginning. With further chants of “Recruiters out! Stop the war!” “No justice, no peace!” and “U.S. out of the Middle East,” protesters followed them to the parking lot to ensure they had actually left before dispersing. No arrests were made.
In a time of economic hardship, tens of thousands of Americans are looking for work, and the military-industrial complex is happy to prey on those people. Recruiters for the armed forces are a common sight at job fairs across the country. Making sales pitches about travel, education, healthcare and career opportunities, recruiters seek to entice people into a career with the military.
Contrary to the popular view that the National Guard doesn’t deploy outside U.S. borders, at least 250 Minnesota National Guard soldiers, from 58 communities across the state, are currently deployed in the Middle East. Such deployments are not new. The U.S. military’s newspaper Stars and Stripes reported in February 2024 that 550 Minnesota National Guard soldiers were being deployed to the Middle East. That same division, nicknamed the “Red Bulls”, was also deployed in Kuwait in 2018-19, and Iraq in 2009-10.
As the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran have continued, and a combination of American threats and Israeli aggression in Lebanon have damaged the prospects of a negotiated end to the war, concern has grown about the possibility of U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran.
A statement from the MN Anti-War Committee says, “American soldiers have murdered thousands of Iranian civilians, including the hundreds of children killed at the Minab girls’ school on February 28, potentially the largest massacre committed by U.S. forces since the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war. U.S. troops have bombed other Iranian civilian infrastructure like hospitals, power plants, bridges and water treatment facilities. These are all war crimes under international law.”
The statement continued, “U.S. military recruiters prey on our communities to make these crimes possible.”
This successful action highlighted the opportunities that are available for activists to target the areas in which the U.S military-industrial complex intrudes upon communities.