Start organizing your Global Day of Action on Military Spending
On April 17, all the streams of our work will come together. It’s Tax Day. It’s the day when the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute releases the latest year’s figures on military spending around the world. It’s when Congress will be wrangling over next year’s budget. It’s when your city will be anguishing over the budget cuts it’ll have to swallow.
Bring all these streams together and organize an action on Tuesday April 17 or the April 14-15 weekend just before. Click here for templates you can develop.
The Pentagon Is Taking Your Job
New leaflet: The Pentagon Is Taking Your Job (also check out: The Pentagon Is Taking Your Education and The Pentagon Is Taking Your Health Care)
Video: War Industry Vs. Jobs exposes the war profiteer CEOs and their propaganda campaign that claims Pentagon cuts will cost a million jobs.
Updated study: The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: 2011 Update shows that a billion dollars spent on clean energy, health care, or education will create thousands more jobs than the same money spent on the military.
The 2012 Federal Budget
Our Taxes Are Off to War presents the essential facts about the military budget and strong arguments for real security.
Click here to see how President Obama’s military budget compares to the budgets of the past 60 years.
Alternative budgets
The 99%’s Deficit Reduction Proposal from Occupy Washington DC/Freedom Plaza calls for $600 billion a year in new taxes on very wealthy individuals and corporations, serious cuts in Pentagon spending, and much more. You can sign a petition to support the proposal.
America Is Not Broke from the Institute for Policy Studies says we can tax the rich, cut the Pentagon, end fossil fuel subsidies, raise $824 billion a year, and move toward the society we want.
The RESTORE the American Dream for the 99% Act from the Congressional Progressive Caucus creates 5+ million jobs over the next two years and reduces the budget deficit by over $2 trillion over the next ten years by ending the wars, cutting $280 billion from the Pentagon, raising $1.15 trillion by taxing Wall Street speculation and very rich people…
“Move the Money” Toolkit
http://www.peace-action.org/move-the-money-tool-kit
Tips for Bird-Dogging
From the capital of bird-dogging — New Hampshire
Resolution Campaign Resources
List of Resolutions Already Passed
US Conference of Mayors Resolution
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Resolution
Maryland and DC AFL-CIO Resolution
Arizona Democratic Party Resolution
Lessons from the Northampton Resolution Campaign
The National Priorities Project has a flyer describing the cost of war to your state, and a tradeoffs calculator you can use to make your own leaflet (“Taxpayers in Mytown could build x schools if we took the money we are sending the Pentagon this year”).
DefundWar.org has quite an array of resources you can use for this campaign.
This Economic Crisis: The Military Budget and Us – A Primer
Five Ways to Start Funding our Communities by Cutting Military Spending
What We Can Cut From the Military Budget – Peace Action
Cut the Pentagon!
The National Priorities Project’s website has new numbers on the cost of war.
Warcosts.com has videos and commentaries on war lobbyists, the Pentagon cuts-social cuts tradeoff, the “defense jobs” argument, Social Security vs war contracts in Supercommittee states…
Unified Security Budget for the United States – there is an alternative budget!
War Budget Cuts Possible If We Counter Contractors’ Multimillion-Dollar Campaign Spending
Ending Wars on Time Would Save $200 Billion, One-Sixth of Debt Reduction Goal
To live within our means, let’s leave Iraq – Robert Naiman
Taking “Green Scissors” to budget would yield $380 billion in savings
This memo from the Project on Defense Alternatives, Pentagon Cuts in Context: No Reason for “Doomsday” Hysteria, compares possible budget caps and reductions to current and past budgets. “National Security in a Time of Budget Austerity” is the farewell address by Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn. Watch especially from the 8 minute mark on.
“Sequestration” — the automatic Deficit Deal cuts and some better alternatives
This paper from CBPP describes which domestic and military programs will be cut in 2013 and after.
This interview with Jo Comerford of the National Priorities Project explains what automatic cuts mean for the Pentagon and why we need deep changes in US defense policy.
This blog from the National Priorities Project shows that domestic discretionary spending will fall 31% below 2010 levels if the automatic cuts take effect.
SAVE for All, a human services coalition, has a toolkit with a “Deficit Deal Explained” webinar, state-by-state fact sheets, and much more.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has posted a series of blogs that show how the safety net helped millions of Americans hold the line against poverty and hardship.
The “Half in Ten” anti-poverty campaign has a map of poverty data by congressional district with a table that shows where poverty rose from 2007 to 2010, and a state map with break-outs by gender, race, and child poverty.
“Measuring the Recession’s Toll” shows that poverty rates increased in all states and the median household income dropped in all but five states and the District of Columbia from 2007 to 2010.
Who’s Dying to Keep This War Going?
“American Military Deaths in Afghanistan, and the Communities from Which These Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines Came,” by Michael Zweig, Michael Porter, and Yuxiang Huang addresses the racial and gender composition of the dead, their education levels and reasons for joining the military, and their position in the class structure of the economy. The report also details the geographic origins of the dead and presents key economic data for their communities.
Amazing new animations and graphics
4 minute video – Tax Dollars at War
Bridges Not Bombs – what we could have bought for 10 years of war in Afghanistan
Cartoon: “Debit or Credit?”
The Story of Broke – the Pentagon plays a brief part in this video from the makers of “The Story of Stuff”
Presentations
Security Not War, 9-min video from the PA Campaign for Smart Security
New Priorities for a New Economy, introductory power point presentation or video from the Bay Area New Priorities Campaign