Three Congressmen have teamed with four Pittsburgh punk rockers to fight an obscure provision of the No Child Left Behind Act. Section 9528 of NCLB authorizes military recruiters to obtain student contact information from high schools. The campaign launched Thursday seeks to change the parental notification practice and petition for a halt to the practice.
“This is a young people’s issue,” said Jim McDermott (D-WA), who, along with Pete Stark (D-CA) and Lynn Woolsey, (D-CA) is spearheading the campaign. McDermott has also enlisted the support of Anti-Flag, an activist punk rock quartet, whom McDermott first met in the fall.
“When they’re not doing concerts, they’re writing op-eds,” McDermott said of Anti-Flag. Recently, lead singer Justin Sane authored a column in which he compared the U.S. military death benefit to the rewards Saddam Hussein offered to Palestinian terrorists. The column appeared in newspapers nationwide.
“I’m proud to stand here with Anti-Flag,” Woolsey said, describing the band members as “young people with real convictions.”
Woolsey, McDermott, and Stark, and Anti-Flag expressed concern about privacy and about the influence of the military in schools. Schools are drug-free, alcohol-free, and weapons-free, said McDermott, and they should also be military-free.
Stark does not want the military to entice students away from college. “We should be encouraging our children to continue their education,” he said.
Woolsey and Sane were more concerned about privacy.
“Our young people’s privacy must be protected,” Woolsey said.
Sane took a stronger stand. “We are here today to restore people’s privacy,” he said. He described the government as seeking to “strip young people of their privacy.”
He predicts a large movement to defeat this provision. “Young people are definitely going to stand up,” he said. Their support of Anti-Flag’s petition will “show the people who wrote this law that young people do not support this.”
The provision in question, however, is not entirely original; a similar practice has been in place since 1974, under the Family Educational Right to Privacy Act. Prior to NCLB schools had the option of supplying military recruiters with student contact information; NCLB made it mandatory.
The contact information includes names, addresses, and phone numbers. The military can only collect data from juniors and seniors.
The rights of students and parents to object to this measure have not changed. Under FERPA and NCLB parents could “opt-out,” or inform the school that they did not wish for their children’s records to be released.
“The law provides that parents are notified [that they can] opt out of directory information,” said Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman at the Department of Education. A school is responsible for notifying parents of this policy.
“The law does give parents the rights to object,” Bradshaw said.
McDermott, Woolsey, Stark, and Sane support a change that would allow parents to “opt-in.” Under an “opt-in” policy, parents would have to consent formally to have a child’s records released. Standard practice at the Department of Education calls for an “opt-out” policy, according to Bradshaw.
McDermott hopes Anti-Flag will mobilize the country’s youth against the provision, and he didn’t hesitate to reach out. The Washington representative, noting the flat-ironed coif of one rail-thin rocker, quipped, “I own styling gel.”
“I once had a Mohawk in the Fifties,” he later added.
The 73-year-old Stark conceded his lack of style to the band. “Anti-Flag can deliver the message with a little more sex appeal than I can,” he said.
“The future belongs to them,” McDermott said, “and not a moment too soon.”
McDermott’s choice of Anti-Flag may not have been the shrewdest. While punk rock has always had strong political overtones, Anti-Flag is more message—an odd conflation of democracy and anarchy—than music. During the Presidential election the band took part in youth get-out-the-vote movements like Punk Voter and Democracy Now!
The message of Anti-Flag is not unique—it echoes the protests of the anarchist contingent who descended on Washington during the inauguration. Vicious during the Clinton administration, Anti-Flag has grown angrier during George W. Bush’s tenure.
Anti-Flag has attended and engaged in protests directed at the current administration. Anti-Flag believes the U.S. is fascist, having been most recently subverted by the “neo-con Project for a New American Century,” a group for which Sane expresses deep suspicion. In a video clip of a protest in Washington on the band’s website, Sane turns to a camera and remarks, “This is what democracy looks like . . . in the Soviet Union.” Other footage of the protest depicts a flag burning and chants of “George Bush has got to go! Hey hey! Ho ho!”
An overwhelming theme of Anti-Flag’s music is obsession with the American flag. On their 1996 album, Die For The Government, “Red White and Brainwashed” explored the symbolism of the flag: “the red stands for the blood of all the people we’ve slain / the white for this racist, bigoted foundation / the blue for your aryan eyes — all empty empty because you’re taught to bow down to the man.”
Their 2003 album, The Terror State concludes with “F-ck the Flag,” a composition on flag desecration. The song contains the refrain: “F-ck the flag and f-ck you! / F-ck the flag and f-ck you! / F-ck the flag and f-ck you! / F-ck the flag, the f-cking flag, f-ck the flag! / F-ck the flag and f-ck you!” Anti-Flag explores political issues other than flag desecration, as in a similarly titled song about the Pope and in an homage to Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Mumia’s Song.”
The quartet does, however, digress—though rarely—from the overtly partisan. A sensitive 2002 track “Ever Fallen in Love” explored relationships in a fit of teen angst. “You spurn my natural emotions / You make me feel like dirt / And I’m hurt / And if I start a commotion / I run the risk of losing you / And that’s worse.”
Larry Scholer is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
