This is the site for the

ALTERNATIVES TO MILITARY SERVICE PROJECT

We believe that YOU CAN DO BETTER than signing an 8-year-to-life contract with the military. The military offers a lot of things - steady paycheck, health care, housing - that aren't easy to come by in 2006. And if you aren't going to college right after high school (whether because you can't afford to or you're just sick of school), you might not see much that competes with the military.

We're here to tell you YOU CAN DO BETTER! We're developing a list of jobs that you can do without a big fancy education, that will pay you a realistic wage, and that offer some of the things that you might like about the military (like travel, excitement, and getting to play with power tools). This isn't just a static list though. We've actually researched what companies will hire you, and we've interviewed folks who've worked for them, so that you don't have to trust us -- you can go straight to the source. We'll update this anytime we have more stuff to add, so check back every few weeks. If you have an idea -- maybe a job your cousin's friend did, or something you've been interested in doing yourself -- let us know! You comments, ideas and additions will help somebody else.

We're focusing on the Denver, Colorado area, simply because that's where we live. But we'd love this site to be useful to everyone, so we will include more cities if we find out about websites & PDFs that have good stuff. If you don't live in the Denver area, email us & tell us where you live and what you're interested in. We'll get to work on your area next. You can make a comment right here: http://youcandobetter.pbwiki.com/discussion.php?page=FrontPage

Why would we do all this? Well, several reasons. First, we don't think that kids should be forced to go into the military just because they need a job. It should be a choice. And with all the service people getting killed or injured in Iraq right now, we're not convinced that the military is such a good bet anyway. Used to be you'd get job training in computers or whatever -- now it's kinda like learning how to clean a gun. What company will hire you to do THAT when you get out?

Second, we were getting tired of the older "hippie" folks telling the younger folks that they SHOULDN'T join up, but never offering anything about what kids COULD do instead. We think a lot of you would chose not to go into the military if only you knew of another way to earn a decent wage. At YCDB, we're all about solutions.

Third, we wish this had been around when we were in high school. Would have saved us a lot of work.

We've only found a few similar things:

• http://www.militaryfreeschools.org (for the L.A. area)
• http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/mideast/iraq/counter-recruit.html (for the San Francisco area),
• and one from Florida: http://www.afn.org/%7Evetpeace/workshop2.htm#jobs
• non-military options in Austin, Texas: http://www.progressiveaustin.org/nmofy/drupal/

But, chances are you don't live near these cities, and anyway our vision is to have more MONEY IN YOUR POCKET JOBS and less college stuff (if you're going, you can find info in tons of places, you don't need another list). So call this a gift to our younger brothers & sisters.

And finally, we're getting college credit for putting up this website (it's really just a way to get the teacher to let us surf the web all day, but ssshhh, don't tell him!)

So, we hope this helps, we want to know what you think (about the jobs we've listed and how we can make this site better), and we believe that YOU CAN DO BETTER.

love,

the YCDB crew

Blue-collar jobs can be very well-paying jobs. Although you can look through the classified advertisements in The Westword or the The Denver Post, you can also contact a labor union directly. Most of them have apprenticeship or entry-level positions, and ALL of them can tell you the best way to go about learning the trade (which may not actually be by going into the military, no matter what recruiters tell you). Visit the Unions page for a list of labor unions in the Denver area.

If you want a little more travel & excitement, and you aren't afraid of getting dirty and sweating a bunch, you can look into things like being part of a FireCrew. They are essentially firefighters who travel a lot.

Interviewing for a job can be a pain in the ass. It can also be kinda scary, especially if you don't know what some words mean. Here's a little cheat-sheet to help you understand some key words, and also a couple of questions to ask: whattoask

I Don't Care What You Say...

And if you really do want to join the military, you should make sure that you know what you are getting into. If you don't, it's kinda like buying a used car without test-driving it. Here are a few places to visit, just to make sure that you are getting the whole story:

Iraq Vets Against the War on myspace: http://groups.myspace.com/ivaw

Vets who been there, done that: http://www.veteransforpeace.org

if you have questions about what will happen once you sign up, these folks can tell you: http://girights.objector.org/

and everybody knows the "news" that we get on t.v. is more lame than a 3-legged dog! so check out Free Speech TV, located in Boulder, for the real deal on what's up in the world http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/genx.php?name=home

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