“Cut military spending, invest in our future” — That was the message on a fly-specked green-on-white bumper sticker from the mid-1970s that surfaced in my old papers recently. A reminder that what we are living (and dying) with now is not a new phenomenon, only more of a “same” that has gone on far too long.
Remembering the oft-mentioned quote in President Eisenhower’s January 1961 farewell address to the nation, warning that: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” I read his short speech with interest. He also said:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
Six years later Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., decrying America’s “triple evils” of poverty, racism and militarism, said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Are we there now? Certainly the funds going for “defense” cannot be justified to the world: fighting and financing seven wars, funding 800-plus military bases around the world, persisting in building more nuclear weapons, providing arms to dictators, occupiers and governments who use them against the poor and defenseless (think Yemen). Meanwhile, we face myriad cutbacks to social and environmental programs, increased poverty at home and abroad, and insufficient action to meet the realities of a dramatically warming climate.
We need a big change, and Tax Day is a good time to consider how our tax dollars are used — and abused. Thus the importance of citizen opposition to the recent tax give-away and more swollen than ever military budget. So it will be interesting and important to hear what local groups and activists have to say about the effects in our immediate area — and what we want and need — at the Tax Day Rally and Speak-out on Saturday, April 14, from noon to 1:30 p.m. on the Greenfield Common.
The day after the King assassination anniversary, two articles in the Greenfield Recorder spoke to the problem. Without mentioning federal cutbacks in state education, My Turn writer Deborah Potee (“Funding school budgets shouldn’t be a bottom-of-the-barrel priority”) gave good reasons for public support of resource-starved public schools. And in “Local pols hope to continue Healthy Incentive Program,” we learn of the fight to keep “the wildly successful” program “providing local produce to SNAP recipients beyond mid-April.” Needed is an additional $2.1 million. The FY 2019 federal budget includes more than $700 billion allotted to the military. Do the math on that one. Perhaps a bit of wiring on a boondoggle F-35 fighter jet?
The extreme and unnecessary allocation of resources to the military has so many ripple effects. More pollution and greenhouse gases. Less money for mental health care. A culture that glorifies violence. Insufficient funds for education. Each of us can add to the list.
Why not replace missile “defense” with more security at home: through guaranteed and preventive health care; jobs to rebuild and replace run-down infrastructure, building affordable housing, improved public transportation, well-planned walkways and bike paths? We want healthy food available for all, adequately funded schools benefiting their communities, free public education. Let’s meet basic needs and deal with the causes of poverty, racism, addiction, depression and violence. It’s an old cry and demand: turn those tanks into trolley cars! They are needed now, more than ever.
As we work to change priorities from fear, exclusion and death to hope and community, we join others in the broad social movement that has no name, but is resisting the worst and working for life-giving and saving alternatives. The Greenfield Rally and Speak-out on April 14 is one of dozen such actions around the country and world.
Wendell resident Anna Gyorgy supports the April 14th Tax Day Rally with the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice and Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution.