http://www.uprisetour.org/

The Counter Recruitment Tour is a tour of mid-west and mid-Atlantic states aimed at advancing regional counter-recruitment efforts and linking the issues of war and military recruitment to corporate globalization and environmental sustainability. The Tour consists of a dozen activists traveling via a bio-diesel bus to cities both large and small. At each stop, members of the Tour will organize and participate in workshops, trainings, public forums, direct education and outreach, all-out street protests, as well as concerts and other creative performances.

Our Vision of social change and how we fit into a larger movement for social justice:
The prevailing anti-war analysis of the current war in Iraq is often examined in a vacuum with scant attention paid to the larger issues of corporate globalization and institutionalized systems of inequality in the domestic sphere. UPRISE organizers assert that there is a lack of connection between wars waged overseas and the wars waged at home in the form of racism, corporate domination, classism and sexism. The interconnectedness of such issues often goes ignored or undetected. It is impossible to weaken support for the military and effectively counter recruit young people without a more thorough examination of the circumstances that make the military appear as a "viable" option. These circumstances vary on surface but one can generally identify racism, classism or sexism as the root causes that compel military services. Whether it's appealing to dominant culture's sense of machismo through aggressive, testosterone fueled military ad campaigns or our class structured society which severely limits economic opportunities for the working class and people of color, there are forces at work both culturally and institutionally that encourage military service. Further, a more thorough examination is required of the driving forces behind war and empire, namely corporate expansion into resource rich countries and geo-political dominance. The struggle for resources and global domination is perpetuated by corporate institutions that rely either on neo-liberal or neo-conservative expansion into new markets with the goal of keeping an elite few comfortably in power.