VivirLatino

El Barrio, NYC Says no to Military Recruitment

08:49 H | Topics: Activism - Events - New York City

I've written about how the U.S. Military is targeting young Latinos to join their shrinking rank and file. Well today young people in el Barrio, NYC aka Spanish Harlem are taking a step to resist and tell the military recruiters that music and Hummers are not worth their lives. Today at noon there will be a rally at 103d St. between Lexington & Park Avenues. According to a press release by the organizers of the rally:

The Pentagon's personnel records reveal that in East Harlem in 2004, over 90% of the enlistees into the u.s. military (not including the marines who did not provide sufficient data) were Latino and the percentage of recruits from East Harlem was 15 times higher than that of the wealthy (and largely white) Upper East Side which is located right below East Harlem in Manhattan. In the South Bronx, which has the largest population of Puerto Ricans in New York City, the number of recruits into the u.s. military last year was 38 times higher than that of the Upper East Side.

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