The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the need for governments and the international community to focus more on human security issues and to shift resources from military spending, especially the nuclear weapons budgets, to accomplish this. However, the nuclear weapons and fossil fuel industries have vested financial interests in maintaining the nuclear arms race and a fossil fuel economy. They are a potent political force preventing change.

Governments, cities, religious communities, universities, banks and private investors can shift these financial incentives by divesting from the nuclear weapons and fossil fuel industries and re-allocating these investments according to ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) principals. Such actions provide political support for legislative efforts to cut nuclear weapons budgets, especially in the USA and UK.

During the webinar, held April 21, international experts and activists highlighted examples of nuclear weapons and fossil fuel divestment and examined how these can assist initiatives to cut nuclear weapons budgets and support public health, climate protection and sustainable development.

The event included  the preview of a Handbook on Nuclear Weapons Divestment which will be produced by the Move the Nuclear Weapons Money campaign.

The webinar was sponsored by Abolition 2000, Move the Nuclear Weapons Money, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and the World Future Council.

The post Move the Nuclear Weapons (and Fossil Fuel) Money appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

This Earth Day and as part of the Global Days of Action Against Military Spending, UFPJ Member group Code Pink is asking supporters to help spread the message that #WarIsNotGreen.  Code Pink also has created a Global Days of Action on Military Spending Toolkit with a variety of resources.

The post April 22: on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, Divest from the War Machine appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

March 25 Call

March 19 Call

Join Shailly Gupta Barnes of the Kairos Center  and environmental attorney Mark Dunlea for the second of two national calls on Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS).

Wednesday, March 25, 2020  
8:15 – 9:15 pm EDT;  7:15 – 8:15 pm CDT;  6:15 – 7:15 pm MDT;  5:15 – 6:15 pm PDT
Click here to register.

You also can listen to a recording of the first GDAMS briefing call, held on March 19, featuring Lindsay Koshgarian of the Institute for Policy Studies and Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy. Click here to read Bill Hartung’s new Pentagon Spending: A Primer.

Lack of preparedness for the COVID-19 epidemic reveals the potentially grave consequences of slashing social safety net spending while deluging the military-industrial complex with our tax dollars. Trump and the Pentagon are pressing yet another massive increase in military spending. Critics from Washington think tanks working with the Poor People’s Campaign, reinforced by grassroots activists across the country are demanding that money be moved from wars and preparations for wars to addressing our urgent human needs: health, climate, housing, education and more.

GDAMS 2020 will take place from April 10 – May 9.  We hope that you will consider organizing a local event. To help you prepare for this year’s GDAMS and for longer term efforts to change our national spending priorities, we have scheduled an inspiring briefing call featuring  these two leading authorities on military spending and alternatives.

Shailly Gupta Barnes is the Policy Director at the Kairos Center. She coordinated and edited the Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America report for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, working closely with the Institute for Policy Studies. This report looked at the evolution of the key themes of the Campaign over the past 50 years and its findings informed the current Campaign’s Moral Agenda and Demands. Read more about the Souls of Poor Folk  and Moral Agenda at poorpeoplescampaign.org.

Mark Dunlea is an attorney associated with the National Lawyers Guild, was a co-founder the Green Party in New York. He is a leading climate change activist with 350.org, and news correspondent for WOOC Radio who speaks widely about the Green New Deal. He formerly served as executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State and has run for Congress.

Lindsay Koshgarian: Lindsay’s work and commentary on the federal budget and military spending has appeared on NPR, the BBC, CNN, The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, and others. Now at the Institute for Policy Studies, her work is at the intersection of military and domestic federal spending. She got her start as a clinic worker and organizer at Planned Parenthood in central and suburban Philadelphia, and led economic development and affordable housing studies at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute prior to joining the National Priorities Project in 2014

Bill Hartung: Bill is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He has also served as a Senior Research Fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and is former director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He specializes in issues of weapons proliferation, the economics of military spending, and alternative approaches to national security strategy. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he served as the director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams.

Ruth Benn, of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee and the New York War Resisters League has prepared a fine short peace announcing this year’s Global Days of Action on Military Spending along with background about this U.S. and international campaign. Click here to read the article.

Click here to register for the March 25 briefing call

The post Global Day of Action Against Military Spending Briefing Calls appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

• On March 7, Neta Crawford of the Costs of War Project and Mark Dunlea expert on the Green New Deal and co-founder of the New York Green Party spoke about moving the money from wars and preparations for wars to addressing real human needs. Click here to listen to the call.

• On March 14, Join Lindsay Koshgarian of the National Priorities Project and Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy who discussed Trump’s newly-introduced budget and the challenges it presents for peace and justice activists. Click here to listen to the call.

With Trump and the Pentagon pressing for yet another massive increase in military spending, grassroots activists, national organizations and policy analysists must challenge the Trump budget as part of the Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS).

The post Listen to UFPJ’s Two National Calls on Military Spending appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Pentagon spending will be $716 billion in 2019 – that’s $716,000,000,000! Add another $66 billion for Washington’s wars from Afghanistan and Yemen to the Philippines. Before these increases, Pentagon spending equaled that of the world’s next eight biggest military spenders – combined! That’s more than half of U.S. government discretionary spending.

We are on track to spend between $1.2 and $1.7 trillion for new genocidal and omnicidal nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. The already obsolete F-35 fighter/bomber will cost more than a trillion over its lifetime. We’ve already spent $5.6 trillion for the post 9-11 wars.

Meanwhile, Trump wants to cut funding for housing, food subsidies, education, legal assistance, and the environment!

In this era of mounting assaults on the foundations of democracy, human rights and peace, it is clear that our actions are interconnected. Each community-based action is a reassertion of commitments to democracy and human dignity.

Click here for additional background materials about the Pentagon’s budget, other militarist spending, Move the Money alternatives, and graphics that you can use for your events. You can also hear a detailed budget briefing by William Hartung and Lindsay Koshgarian, by dialing: (712) 775-7039. access code: 495518#.

Please send notices of GDAMS events you schedule with photos from your actions to JGerson (at) afsc.org  

In Solidarity!
The UFPJ Coordinating Committee

GDAMS is a project of the International Peace Bureau. Participating U.S. organizations include: American Friends Service Committee, Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, Code Pink, Environmentalists Against War, Granny Peace Brigade, National Priorities Project, National War Tax Resistance, Peace Action, Pentagon Budget Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War, United for Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace, Walpole Peace and Justice Group , Win Without War, and World Beyond War.

The post Join GDAMS Actions April 14 through May 3, Protest the $716,000,000,000 Pentagon Spending appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

This week peace activists around the planet are participating in events to protest the military budgets that wreak destruction and rob human needs programs. Join the Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS), April 18-28, in your community. We must act boldly to help our neighbors recognize how badly the world is overarmed and peace is underfunded.

Host or participate in an event in your community. Unite around new priorities, protest the war-economy, and promote policies based on peace, diplomacy, and funding human needs. This year’s Global Days of Action on Military Spending span U.S. tax day (April 18) to the release of the annual world military expenditure figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (April 28).

Here’s how you can get involved with GDAMS in the coming days:

• Find and participate in a GDAMS event near you
• Add your events to UFPJ’s event calendar
• For hosts: find event planning tools, reports, posters, banners, logos, flyers – even special masks!
• Join the GDAMS Thunderclap campaign on social media
• Take and publish a GDAMS selfie on social media
• Download and share new Infographics on military spending
• Check out the GDAMS US page
• National Priorities Project has up-to-date resources on how the Pentagon and our military economy robs from life sustaining social programs

We hope you will take action, along with our parters around the globe this GDAMS!

The post Defund War! Join Global Days of Action on Military Spending in Your Community, April 18-28 appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Other upcoming events:
Ongoing – Reiner Braun, International Peace Bureau, U.S. Speaking Tour
June 11 – National Pride March
June 18 – Women’s March to Ban the Bomb

Please check out our updated Peace Pledge, and add your name if you haven’t already done so. Thank you for keeping the pressure on. When we work together and build our movement, we can win.

If you appreciate our work, please send $17 right now to show your support for United for Peace and Justice!

Thanks for all you do.

The post Our Movement’s In Action – A Schedule You’ll Want to Be A Part Of! appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The post Mobilizing for an Action-Packed April to Defend Our Rights & End War! appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The Middle East and Central Asia
U.S. military intervention continues unabated – in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya, leaving chaos in its wake and millions of refugees fleeing war zones.  Administration advisors push to return boots on the ground in areas that Daesh (ISIS) moves into. In Syria, the U.S., Russia and now France – three nuclear-armed nations – are bombing side-by-side and on different sides. Turkey, a NATO member with U.S. nuclear weapons based on its soil, faces off against Russia,and it appears that the U.S. is arming Kurdish Turkish opponents fighting Daesh across the border in Syria.

The humanitarian crises resulting from these wars are horrific and include: the bombing of hospitals – allegedly by both the U.S. and Russia, lack of food and water in war-torn areas, destruction of entire cities and communities, millions of children losing years of education, (can add some more horrors).

The U.S. (the largest weapons seller in the world) and European allies also are selling Saudi Arabia – the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world — billions of dollars of weapons, which then are being used to slaughter innocent civilians in Yemen and repress democracy in Saudi Arabia..

Europe and NATO
In Ukraine and Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its NATO allies and Russia are backing opposite sides in a confrontation involving four nuclear-armed countries. Both NATO and Russia are building up their forces along Russia’s border, and increasing the tempo of exercises of both nuclear and conventional forces. The Obama administration’s new military budget calls for a massive increase in funding to support this dangerous buildup.

These military interventions continue with little Congressional debate and no real discussion about the merits (if any) and risks (many) involved – leaving the American people on the sidelines and further endangering U.S. troops in futile, endless wars.

The Far East
To add to these dangerous conflicts, the U.S. and China, another nuclear-armed nation, are facing off against each other in the seas bordering China and other Asian nations. In January, North Korea conducted its 4th nuclear test (claiming it was an H-bomb). In a show of force, the U.S. responded by deploying a B-52 bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons on a low-level flight over its ally South Korea. North Korea’s subsequent satellite launch has further inflamed tensions in the region.

As the U.S., Russia, China and the other nuclear-armed nations spend billions of dollars to modernize their nuclear arsenals, the danger of wars among nuclear-armed states is growing.

The War at Home
The increasing militarization of police in  communities across the U.S., coupled with an ever-growing disparity in wealth, adds to the violence, racism, and oppression experienced by those marginalized by our society. People of color, immigrants, low-income workers and homeless people face unending harassment, intimidation, aggression, incarceration, and even murder by police and vigilantes. The legal system is failing to provide justice as erroneous or draconian use of the criminal justice process ruins the lives and futures of many.

An increasing technological “surveillance state” monitors civilian activities and conceals governmental and corporate criminality. Calls for closing borders, monitoring of Muslim communities, and ever-present racism fuel xenophobia, islamophobia, and hate crimes. In the face of these threats new campaigns are emerging.  Black Lives Matter, Immigrant Rights, and Indigenous Rights movements are demanding self-determination and real security. As peace activists we must also confront this never-ending war at home and stand with our fellow activists who are calling for economic and racial justice.

Cutting Military Spending
Total military spending in the Administration’s recently released FY 2017 budget request continues to increase, amounting to nearly $623 billion, including the Pentagon budget, nuclear weapons and aid to foreign militaries. The budget provides $583 billion for the Pentagon alone in 2017, a $2 billion increase over 2016.The Pentagon budget is more than ten times the budget allocated for diplomacy under the Department of State. Compared to $7.5 billion for military efforts to fight Daesh, the budget provides just $4 billion for dedicated diplomacy and humanitarian relief around the region.

These endless wars have cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars, while the needs of growing numbers of Americans here at home go unmet. Europe is overwhelmed by the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with huge daily migrations (6,000 people per day) and drownings of people so desperate to escape war zones that they undertake perilous journeys to a place that might be safer. Meanwhile, the United Nations is begging for a mere $550 million in aid for the refugees who are the victims of war.

The post US Militarism’s Expanse and the Need for a Movement to Cut Military Spending and Invest in Human Needs appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

This year, April 5 – 18, have been designated as Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS), days to campaign against military spending and to promote spending on to life-affirming, sustainable social programs. The International Peace Bureau is coordinating plans at the international level. United for Peace and Justice is part of the U.S, planning group.

Click here to find ideas, resources and reports from previous years’ GDAMS.

April 4 is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and also of his remarkable speech, “Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break Silence,” delivered in 1967, exactly one year before his death. Identifying the U.S. government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” Dr. King powerfully described the inextricable links between militarism, racism and poverty in the struggle for peace and justice. His words were both precautionary and prophetic, providing both a diagnosis and a cure – “a true revolution of values”—for our society’s gravest illnesses, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.” And they apply more than ever today.

Consider organizing a public participatory reading of “Beyond Vietnam” in your community as part of GDAMS. UFPJ has prepared a “how to” kit, with everything you need, including the text of the speech. (Whatever else you do, be sure to read or listen to this speech!)

Start planning a GDAMS action in your community now! And let the rest of the world know about it by adding it to the UFPJ events calendar.

 Please support UFPJ by making a donation today.

Read more of our analysis  here: “US Militarism’s Expanse and the Need for an International Movement to Cut Military Spending”

The post Join the Global Days of Action on Military Spending (April 5-18) appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.