How are you feeling after this nail-biting election? Relieved? exhausted? apprehensive? That’s where we—the peacemakers— come in. Just as grassroots groups around the country are pushing Biden to embrace visionary policies such as a Green New Deal and Medicare for All, we have to push him for a new foreign policy, a feminist foreign policy that replaces militarism with international cooperation and diplomacy. We’re pushing Biden to stop U.S. support for the war in Yemen on day one. And we’re putting forward an exciting 10-point call for the Biden administration to re-envision U.S. policy from a feminist perspective. Add your name to endorse our 10 Challenges for Biden and we will deliver it while he considers his cabinet and policies. 

U.S. relations with the rest of the world must be based on respect, cooperation, and diplomacy—not war. We are challenging President-elect Biden to agree to:

Reduce Military Spending, Invest at Home. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have been allocating over $700 billion dollars to the Pentagon. Instead, we want Biden to significantly cut the Pentagon budget and use that money to invest in what really keeps us safe: universal healthcare, infrastructure, a Green New Deal, education, housing, tax cuts for the lowest incomes, and humanitarian aid. To do this, he must create a transition program for workers to move from military to peace-based jobs.

End Wars, Use Diplomacy, and Respect International Law. Biden must stop U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He must finally get U.S. troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. He must rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal and remove crippling U.S. sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and others.

China is Not Our Enemy. During the 2020 election, Biden and Trump competed with each other on who could do more China-bashing. Now, more than ever, we need cooperation, not another Cold War and that’s why we are calling on Biden to fight COVID, not China!

Stop Supporting Israel’s War on Palestinians. $3.8 billion dollars a year for Israel to maintain a system of apartheid is shameful! A Biden administration must hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.

Stop Arming the Middle East, No Weapons to Human Rights Violators. Rather than isolating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump continued weapons sales to the Saudis and has now set up a weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates, in exchange for them normalizing relations with Israel. Biden must block Trump’s deal with the UAE, stop arming the Middle East, and end the U.S. practice of selling or giving weapons to countries — such as Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines — that violate human rights.

Work for a Nuclear-Free World. A peaceful country is a country that abides by its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We are calling on Biden to remove missile defense systems from Europe and end NATO expansion. And we want to see the U.S. join the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Close Overseas Military Bases. Did you know that the U.S. has nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad? The U.S. needs to begin the process of closing those bases and using the U.S. military to protect the nation, not seek new enemies overseas.

Grow a Green Local Peace Economy.  The U.S.needs a feminist peace economy that respects people and the planet, and is based on giving and sharing that’s local and relational. Biden must begin his term in office by supporting the Green New Deal and developing a feminist foreign policy.

End the Corporate Influence of Weapons Manufacturers. Weapons manufacturers donated millions of dollars to both candidates’ campaigns — a down payment to ensure they will continue to see their profits rise. A president for peace can begin to address this endless cycle by denying cabinet positions for any former CEOs or lobbyists from weapons companies and rejecting policy recommendations from think tanks funded by weapons manufacturers.

Stop Militarizing the Border and the Police. After Obama’s reign as Deporter-in-Chief and Trump’s policy of family separation, it is more important than ever that we stop these attacks on migrants and refugees. Likewise, we must end racist U.S. policing, as well as the transfers of military-grade weaponry and surveillance equipment to local police departments.

Joe Biden promised us during his campaign that he would return our country to “normal.” But does “normal” mean kowtowing to weapons manufacturers, retaining bloated Pentagon budgets, continuing support for Israeli apartheid, imposing neoliberal policies on Latin America, creating a new conflict with China?

No. We have to redefine “normal” as a country that stops arming human rights abusers, develops a just and principled foreign policy towards Palestine/Israel, acts like a good neighbor to Latin America, stops the new cold war with China, slashes Pentagon spending, and more.

So let’s start the transition to a just foreign policy before Biden gets to the White House. Join us today in supporting the 10 challenges that would make Biden a President for Peace, and would bring a feminist vision of the world into the White House.

Add your name now!

The post What do you think of these 10 Challenges for Biden? appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Add your name to a letter, signed by over 100 organizations, which urges the presidential candidates to end the Monroe Doctrine and establish a foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere based on the principles of non-intervention and non-interference, mutual respect, acceptance of our differences, and working together for the common good.

The post Letter to the Biden and Trump campaigns calling for a real Good Neighbor policy for Latin America and the Caribbean appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Our militaristic foreign policy — a policy that has led us to become a global bully — affects everything from migration to the environment, from poverty here at home to poverty abroad. If the US were a Good Neighbor, not only would people in Latin America be better off, but people in the US would be better off as well.

The post Pledge to Support the Good Neighbor Policy appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

At the same time, the government continues to offer piecemeal responses to this pandemic and the growing economic crisis that have put profits over people. We must come together to demand that all of our elected leaders act on the responsibility they have to protect and provide for every person in this country, not just during a national crisis, but at all times.

 Click here to take action with us by calling Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to demand that they provide real solutions for this public health and economic crisis to meet the needs of poor and impacted communities in the next stimulus package by implementing the Poor People’s Campaign’s Moral Agenda!

 Click here to read our news alert about the Stay in Place! Stay Alive! Organize! campaign.

Sign our petition to demand a moral stimulus package that addresses the roots of the double pandemic of poverty and COVID-19.

 Click here to read the Poor People’s Campaign’s COVID-19 Health Justice Advisory Committee’s statement.

Click here for additional readings & resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic from the Poor People’s Campaign and their national co-chairs.

United for Peace and Justice is proud to be a national mobilizing partner in the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. RSVP for June 20, 2020 – Digital Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington.

The post We Can’t Go Back to Normal: A Moral Response to Coronavirus appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

With the onslaught of the global pandemic, the targeted countries — especially Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe — are finding it prohibitively difficult to protect and save the lives of their citizens in the face of the ongoing global emergency. These sanctions constitute crimes against humanity.

United for Peace & Justice has joined with other groups to call for the lifting of these crippling sanctions. Please add your name to the Open Letter to the Government of the United States and the United Nations demanding that all U.S. and UN sanctions against the targeted nations be lifted, and all U.S. military threats and actions against them be stopped immediately. The Open Letter is available in several languages.

Stay home (if you can), stay safe and stay healthy!

The UFPJ Coordinating Committee

The post Open Letter to the United Nations and the Government of the United States to Lift Sanctions appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

 “Our world faces a common enemy: COVID-19. The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly. Meanwhile, armed conflict rages on around the world….

 That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”

 In an April 3 update, Guterres reported that, “the global ceasefire appeal is resonating across the world,” noting that the call has been endorsed by some 70 United Nations Member States, numerous civil society organizations, all UN Messengers of Peace, religious leaders including Pope Francis, and more than a million people around the world through grassroots mobilization on line.

The Secretary-General reported that, “A substantial number of parties to conflict have expressed their acceptance for the call.” These include Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Libya, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.

However, he warned: “there is a huge distance between declarations and deeds — between translating words into peace on the ground and in the lives of people.”

“And so,” he concluded, “we need to do everything possible to find the peace and unity our world so desperately needs to battle COVID-19. We must mobilize every ounce of energy to defeat it.”

These articles, in Consortium News (April 5) and The Guardian (April 19), provide additional important information about which countries are blocking implementation of the Global Ceasefire.

Please do your part! Add your name to the more than 2 million people who have signed the petition in support of the Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire.

The post COVID-19 is Our Common Enemy: Sign the Call for a Global Ceasefire appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Right now, Congress is considering an influx of urgently needed money from the federal government—one TRILLION dollars. We need to bear witness and make sure that money gets to where it is most needed – extending fundamental needs like paid sick leave, health care and housing security to everyone.

We call on President Trump, Vice-President Pence and all Members of 116th Congress to fulfill their moral and constitutional responsibilities to the American people: join your voice to expand the emergency provisions and enact our Moral Agenda.

We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting universal health care, expanding social welfare programs like SNAP and LIHEAP, ensuring access to water and sanitation, providing cash assistance to poor and low-wealth families, guaranteeing good jobs, living wages and an annual income. It means ensuring that our abundant national resources are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy.

Sign on to the Poor People’s Campaign’s demands in response to COVID-19.

Forward together,

Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

United for Peace & Justice is proud to be a mobilizing partner in the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

The post Poverty Amidst Pandemic: A Moral Response to COVID-19 appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

Dear Movement Family,

Today we joined faith leaders, including denominational and national leadership, with moral advocates across the country in requesting that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights hold our government accountable for violating the UN Charter and escalating us toward war with Iran. This afternoon we formally requested a meeting with High Commissioner Bachelet. As the request began:

“We write gravely disturbed, indeed outraged, by the death that is occurring because of our President’s rogue actions in the Middle East. His willingness to bypass congressional approval, violate international law, pardon convicted war criminals, implement harsher sanctions and abandon existing peace deals, sets a dangerous precedent that can have continued lethal and destabilizing results.

The US President’s order to carry out a lethal drone strike violated the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force. The assassination of General Qassim Suleimani represented an act of war against a country with whom the United States was not at war. Trump’s claim of imminent danger from Suleimani is unfounded and must be investigated.

The threat to add new sanctions to Iran, and to involve the NATO military alliance, all indicate that the threat of war remains very real. Furthermore, we know that the majority of impact from these sanctions will be on the poor.”

We know that in the words of Rev. Dr. King “war is the enemy of the poor.”  We must say no to war and militarism.

Join us in our request. Sign here. Share it widely as we humbly and whole-heartedly work to keep our country from war and our world from the dangerous precedence of immoral and unaccountable leadership. Our people across the world are hurting, and it’s gone on far too long.

We know that together we can and must revive the heart and soul of this nation.

Join our signatures here.

Forward together,

Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, President of Repairers of the Breach

Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, Director of the Kairos Center

Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

The post Poor People’s Campaign Calls on UN to Hold U.S. Accountable for War Crimes appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

When CalPERS meets with General Dynamics about its contracts with the for-profit prison companies, it also needs to raise the moral argument about its contribution to ongoing conflicts around the world- in particular, the war on Yemen. As one of the largest public pension funds in the U.S, CalPERS has a responsibility to start engaging with General Dynamics on its billion-dollar arms sales and its complicity in war crimes.

CalPERS has invested millions in a company which has been implicated in war crimes and the loss of countless innocent lives. In one of the most egregious cases, 54 were killed- 44 of whom were children- and countless more wounded in an airstrike on a Yemeni school bus with remnants of a General Dynamics guided metal fin found at the scene.

General Dynamics has a long-lasting contract with Saudi Arabia estimated at 1.3 billion dollars. This means that General Dynamics is providing weapons to a country which is waging a war on Yemen that has already killed an estimated six thousand innocent civilians. The company’s arms sales to despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia only contribute to the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in the region, which creates strong resentment towards our country and contributes to the rise of violent extremism. Join CalPERS members in urging the pension fund address General Dynamics’ war profiteering.  

Investing in peace,

Linda Helland, Roxanne, CODEPINK

 and United for Peace & Justice

The post Talk to General Dynamics About Its Weapons of War appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.

The Campaign hosted a presidential candidates’ forum in which Campaign members posed questions to nine 2020 candidates.  All candidates were asked if they would commit to a presidential debate on the five interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, racism, ecological devastation, the war economy and religious white nationalism.  They all said YES!

The Poor People’s Campaign is asking everyone to sign a petition demanding that at least one LIVE televised 2020 presidential debate focuses on these five interlocking injustices.

Please Sign the Petition.

United for Peace & Justice is proud to be an endorsing partner of The Poor People’s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival.

Important Message from the Poor People’s Campaign:

Last week, more than a thousand poor and impacted people gathered from over 40 states for the Poor People’s Moral Action Congress. On the first day we held a presidential candidates’ forum in which nine candidates committed to a televised debate on poverty and the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation, & the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. As we challenged them, we cannot go through another election cycle where the issues and demands of 140 million poor and low-income people are not at the center of our national life.

Sign your name to demand that the Democratic and Republican National Committees use their series of LIVE televised 2020 presidential debates to focus on the five interlocking injustices of poverty, systemic racism, militarism, ecological devastation, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.

This is not about one debate or one election—this is about the very heart and soul of our democracy. Last week, we testified before the House Budget Committee, where we made it clear that there is a moral crisis in this country that is devastating millions of lives and the very livelihood of the planet.

We weren’t there to just tell the stories of our struggles, but to share our solutions. At the Congress, we launched our Moral Budget, which reveals that the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign are not only possible, but will benefit all of society. In response to the tired and weak rationalizations many in power make for our suffering, we answer: it will take moral policies and larger social transformation to lift the load of poverty.

That’s why we must demand debates in which every presidential candidate addresses how they will confront poverty and the interlocking injustices of our time.

And we cannot stop there. It will take a movement of the poor and impacted to lead the way forward. On the last day of our Congress, we called for a Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington for June 20, 2020. Between now and then, we will continue to organize in every region of the country, register people for a movement that votes, and build lasting power for the poor.

Forward together, not one step back!

Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis,
President of Repairers of the Breach & Director of the Kairos Center
Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

The post Poor People’s Campaign Petition asking for Presidential debate Forum on Injustice appeared first on United For Peace and Justice.