This event has passed, but you can see the video of it here:
Saturday, October 21st, 2017
9:00am-5:00pm
Sunday, October 22, 2017
10:00am-1:00pm
UDC Law School, Washington DC
4340 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
As Trump is creating dangerous confrontations with North Korea and Iran, while increasing the militarization of our streets, join us to target his defense contractor cronies profiting from the chaos.
On October 21-22, 2017 we will kick off of the Divest from the War Machine campaign! Hear from arms trade and foreign policy experts, voices from the military, activists working on nuclear disarmament, and divestment experts to learn how to best confront the war machine. Let’s use divestment to shine a light on the weapons producers that profit from deadly hyper-militarism at home and abroad.
Join us in this campaign to stop the companies making a killing on killing!
Purchase your Summit tickets now!
Our powerful list of speakers will include Andrew Feinstein, former Member of Parliament of South Africa, global arms trade expert and author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade; Susi Snyder, producer of the Don’t Bank on the Bomb report targeting nuclear weapons producers; William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy; Vijay Prashad, historian, journalist, and professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut; and many more amazing individuals.
A schedule of the day’s events is available here. Share the event with every list and every person you can!
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Let’s get our schools, our cities, our churches, and more to divest from the companies that profit from unrestrained U.S. militarism. All of us are complicit unless we work to reel in the war machine. Divestment is a tool we can use to revoke our consent for a war machine forced upon us.
VIRTUAL March on Washington
Picture the Washington Mall filled with people protesting the move toward war by the Trump Administration. Polls show that over two-thirds of Americans do not want war. But it would be hard to mount an actual march on Washington. That would take time and organization. We might not have time. War could start anytime.
So, what we need now is a VIRTUAL march on Washington. We need computer programmers to visualize a simulated Washington Mall in a way that will allow protesters at home to send an avatar to stand in the virtual Washington Mall in protest against the real threat of war. As the program goes viral, the empty mall will begin to fill with protesters. It will be different from an ordinary online petition effort. It will be visual. It will make it easy to see that the masses oppose going to war.
We need this because large numbers of people are anxious about Trump and Kim playing chicken with nuclear weapons but need an easy way to express their fear. A protest after a war has begun would be meaningless, especially if the war goes nuclear. There needs to be some mode of expression that can go viral quickly now.
I am writing to you to urge you to use your leadership and your resources to find programmers who could make this happen. It should not be too expensive nor take too long to build, test and put out to the world.
The program could be kept simple, providing only a visualization of a march with others in Washington. Or it could have supplementary activities, like teach-in materials about the backgrounds to the situation in Korea and Iran, visualisations of the impact of nuclear war, materials on the history of the Constitutional power to declare war, legislation to restrict a president from launching a preemptive nuclear first strike, etc. It could be part of a complex of activities, quizzes, message boards and other activities to engage people in an effort to stop the world from sleepwalking towards war.
I am writing to you and to other groups who might be interested in taking this idea and running with it. I do not have the resources to bring this into reality. But some of you might. I have set up VirtualMarch@Googlegroups.com to serve as a clearinghouse for ideas and activities so that people do not unnecessarily duplicate efforts. If you have any interest in this idea, please do let me know either by email or through Google Groups.
Peace.
Jock McClellan