http://safeamericanhome.blogspot.com/2007/12/teen-badass-leads-recruiter-protest.html

WILLISTON — At 5 feet tall, 15-year-old Jaz Whitney doesn’t look like a threat to the omnipotent U.S. war machine. But when it comes to military matters, appearances can be deceiving.

Last Friday, November 30, Whitney and a pack of other young rabblerousers took to the streets — or rather, the parking lot of Williston’s Maple Tree Place shopping center — in protest of U.S. military recruitment policy. Vocal opponents of the Iraq war, they’re concerned about a section of the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act that forces schools to release student contact info at the request of military recruiters. Though a 2006 Vermont law requires school administrators to inform kids about their right to “opt out” of recruitment, Whitney and others have a beef with the “opt-out” process.

At 2:30 p.m., Whitney convened with fellow Mount Mansfield Union High School classmates and event organizers Phoebe Pritchett and Emily Coon in the shadow of Best Buy. Their plan? To storm an adjacent military “career center.” “A lot of students are opposed to the war,” reflected Coon, 17, a Jericho native who sported a rainbow-colored scarf. “But they don’t have access to the government, so they can’t vote.”