Peace groups shut down 'Army Experience' center permanently

Army announcement made just days before planned protest.   

A coalition of thirty peace groups has proven triumphant in their goal of forever shutting down the “Army Experience Center” in a suburban shopping mall in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Army plans to permanently close the facility.

In Wisconsin, peace groups were successful in greatly scaling back a "Virtual Army Experience" exhibit, a smaller traveling version of the video game-based recruitment effort, at Milwaukee's  Summerfest in 2008 and 2009.

 The Inquirer report:

After almost two years of glorifying the “Army experience” and U.S. wars through video and war games, the Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Malls announced it will shut down on July 31, 2010.  The $13 million, 14,500 square foot Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Mall boasts dozens of video game computers and X-Box video game consoles with various interactive, military-style shooting games.  The facility has sophisticated Apache helicopter and Humvee simulators that allow teens to simulate the killing of Arabs and Afghans.  Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Rob Watson compared the Army Experience Center to "a heavy dose of candy cigarettes."

Dozens of local and national peace groups joined the “Shut Down the Army Experience Center” effort in January 2009, soon after the heavily marketed Center got national press coverage.  The mall was the site of several protests of hundreds of people, with more than a dozen arrests.