When Ronald Reagan was elected President he and his circle launched a major effort to cut human needs programs that had emerged from the Civil Rights Movement and War on Poverty of the earlier decade, and direct the funds toward ramping up the Pentagon budget. The Cold War vilification of the Soviet Union was intensified -the"evil empire" and a serious propaganda campaign was mounted to instill fear in the American people of a Soviet nuclear attack. This was used to justify enormous expensive and provocative nuclear weapons programs such as MX Missile, which would be kept in constant motion on rail tracks across the desert, and in 1983 the Star Wars anti-ballistic Missile campaign, and numerous other very profitable weapons projects for the military/industrial complex. As described in the article below one of the responses was the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, which eventually resulted in reagan and Gorbachev signing the SALT treaty. Within urban and industrial area, where the cuts in social programs hit hardest, the Reagan fight back took the form of Jobs with Peace Campaigns.
Once again our nation is facing a remilitarization - at least in terms of the fedreal budget - With the military budget continuing to grow to outrageous levels, many critical programs serving human needs are being starved. However, the great majority of the advocates of the civilian programs are silent on the need to cut the Pentagon budget. To this end it iss time to reactivate the spirit and goals of the Jobs with Peace campaigns, to make clear the coupling of bloated Pentagong budgets and starved human needs program.
The Advisory Committee for this effort: Jonathan King [Chair] (Prof. Emeritus, MIT; Co-chair of Mass Peace Action); Jill Nelson [Vice-Chair] (Denver Colorado; former Executive Director, National Jobs with Peace Campaign); Cole Harrison [Secretary] (Executive Director of Mass Peace Action); Amy Rugel [Treasurer] (Martha’s Vineyard, MA; Early Childhood Educator); Rep. Carol Doherty (Mass. State Legislature; former Pres. Mass Teachers Assn); Frances Sandy Eaton (MassCARE; Mass Nurses Assn); Heather Gautney (Prof of Sociology, Fordham University; Author of “The New Power Elite”); Heather Gray (Atlanta, Georgia; Vice-Chair Pacifica Radio Foundation National Board); Suzanne Gordon (Author of “The Battle for Veteran’s Healthcare”, “Nursing Against the Odds” and many other books and articles); Andrew King (Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University); Roger Quindell (Vietnam Veterans Against the War; former Executive Director of Milwaukee Jobs with Peace Campaign; former Milwaukee County Supervisor); Paul Shannon (Former AFSC staff; Raytheon Campaign Chair).
The MAPA Education fund has agreed to serve as a 501(c3) sponsor, should we pursue additional funding. The programs/forums listed below will initially be posted on the Mass Peace Action site under “Peace Economy” and at the Institute for Peoples Engagement under “Jobs with Peace"
Four programs are in the works. Other arenas needing similar attention include Housing, Public education, Public Transit, and Incarceration).
-“Warheads to Windmills” – Forum Program being organized by Nuclear Ban.US. (May 7, 2023).
- “Fund Healthcare Not Warfare “– Forum program organized by the Fund Healthcare Not Warfare Coalition led by Mass Peace Action. (Late spring, 2023).
- “Double the NIH and NSF budgets” – Forum program organized by members of this Advisory Committee for Saturday Sept 9, 2023. The Draft Program for this Forum is below.
-“Invest in Minds Not Missiles “– Forum Program to be organized by the Nuclear Disarmament Coordinating Committee. (Early fall, 2023).
"Protecting the Nation’s Health: Doubling the NIH, NSF and CDC Budgets by Cutting
Nuclear Weapons Spending"
Virtual Conference, Saturday September 9, 2023,, 3:00 - 6:00 pm.
First Panel ; The Congressional Discretionary Budget Chair: Rep. Carol Doherty (Massachusetts Legislature)
The Civilian Components of the Discretionary Budget- Deborah Weinstein (Coalition for Human Needs);
The Military Components of the Discretionary Budget – William Hartung (Quincy Institute);
Acute Social Costs of the War Economy – Shailly Gupta Barnes (Kairos Center and Poor People’s Campaign);
Congressional Allies for a Shift in Priorities: – Larry Cohen (Our Revolution).
Second Panel: Towards the Federal Budget the Nation Needs -Chair: Prof. Jonathan King (Dept of Biology, MIT and Mass Peace Action)
Doubling the NIH Budget – Prof. Eric Sundberg (Chair of Biochemistry, Emory University School of Medicine);
Doubling the NSF Instrumentation Budget- Prof. Catherine Hoyer (Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute);
Example: Cryo-Electron microscopy – Prof. Ed Egelman (University of Virginia);
Example: The Protein Data Bank (Prof. Helen Berman, Director Emeritus);
Example: CDC and Vaccine Access Prof. Brook Baker (Northeastern Univ. Law School)
Third Panel: Dangers of Nuclear Weapons Modernization Chair Prof. Robert Redwine,(Dept of Physics, MIT).
- Dangers of First Use – Prof. Elaine Scarry (Harvard University);
- Destabilization Driven by Nuclear Upgrades- Richard Krushnic (Massachusetts Peace Action);
-- The Provocation of New ICBMs - David Borris (Chicago Area Peace Action);
U.S. House Back from the Brink Resolution - U.S. Representative Jim McGovern.
Responding to Coronavirus -
Fund Public Health not Foreign Wars
By Heather Gray and Jonathan King
How is it that in the richest nation on Earth we don’t have enough masks, gowns, virus tests, and ventilators to serve our front-line healthcare providers in this coronavirus pandemic? Part of the answer is that the nation’s wealth has been mis-allocated between military and civilian needs over the past four decades.
All of the budgets that President Trump has submitted to Congress have called not only for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, and resisting expanding Medicare access, but for cutting funding to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Center for Disease Control - agencies critical for the nation’s response to new infectious agents. Even though the administration has espoused an isolationist foreign policy, its rationale was the need to transfer our tax dollars to the Pentagon budget. But these are precisely the programs the nation needs in order to develop the tests, vaccines and therapies needed to control the coronavirus pandemic. These budget choices have hobbled biomedical scientists in key colleges, universities and medical centers across the nation, from preparing and mobilizing for such outbreaks. And, of course, the failure to invest in healthcare and hospitals have left millions of Americans without adequate care.
Re-Militarization and Its Response
This mis-appropriation began in the 80’s, when in the name of combating the USSR – the “evil empire” – the Reagan administration sharply ramped up military spending. This was partially financed by cutting the budgets of the War on Poverty and Great Society programs established in the 60’s under President Johnson. We responded by organizing the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign which led to President Ronald Reagan meeting with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and both leaders signing the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Weapons. Though this was a significant step forward in lowering international tensions, it didn’t help the millions of Americans who needed support for housing, healthcare, or education.
In urban areas where the budget cuts hit hardest, the response to Reagan’s policies focused more directly on budget priorities. Non-binding resolutions calling for transferring funds from the Pentagon to civilian needs were passed in cities and towns across the nation, including Baltimore, Boston, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and San Jose. These Jobs with Peace and related campaigns had some effect on muting the Reagan-era war mongering, but only limited effect on Congressional appropriations for the Pentagon. However, when the Cold War effectively ended in 1991, we thought that the shift from military spending to domestic spending would proceed.
The Failure to Change Congressional Budget Priorities
In fact, we underestimated the influence of the military/industrial/Congressional complex, which was able to use billions of taxpayer dollars from contract awards to continue to influence Congress, media, academia and the nation in general. Following the events of September 11, 2001, hawks had a new enemy - international terrorism - to rationalize further increases in military spending. This threat was used to ramp up conventional wars as the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and expanded military bases around the world to the current 800+.
Under President Trump, the imbalance has gotten worse with Trump proposing in each of his Presidential budgets, not only additional tax cuts for the wealthy, but sharp cuts in budgets for domestic spending, with the funds transferred so as to provide large increases in Pentagon accounts. Congress has supported these priorities, with the current budget allocating some $738 billion to the Military, much of which goes to large corporations for new weapons. It also includes tens of billions for upgrading thousands of our nuclear weapons, threatening a new nuclear arms race.
What is Required for National Security in this Age of Coronavirus?
We need ‘Medicare for All’ and greatly increased investments in the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation, and Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) appropriation of $900 million for the NIH, $3.5 billion for the CDC, and $2.5 billion for the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority (BARDA) was a step in the right direction, but pales before the Pentagon budgets. In fact, as noted by the US Department of Defense, in the Trump administration ‘the Pentagon’s budget has swelled with the addition of tens of billions of dollars.
The hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent on a new generation of nuclear weapons won’t feed us, house us, get us to work, and won’t prevent or alleviate the coronavirus pandemic.
While the on-going CARES Acts that Congress is grappling with begin to correct the past budget austerity for human needs, the Poor Peoples Campaign wisely makes its demands to Congress. The Poor Peoples Campaign’s ‘Moral Budget for America’ calls for cutting $300 billion from Pentagon accounts and investing the money into healthcare, jobs and human needs programs the country desperately needs. The time has finally come for Congress to shift its focus to the real threats and that being the neglect of our collective well-being and instead to fund programs that will benefit the masses. We need more nurses and vaccine candidates, fewer foreign bases and nuclear submarines. We need jobs with peace.
As noted in the US based Poor Peoples Campaign’s ‘Moral Agenda’:
“When confronted with the undeniable truth of unconscionable cruelty to our fellow human beings, we must join the ranks of those who are determined not to rest until justice and equality are a reality for all”.
___
Heather Gray is a writer and radio producer in Atlanta, Georgia and is a board member of WRFG-FM in Atlanta and of the Pacifica National Board of Directors and Jonathan King is Prof. of Molecular Biology at MIT and Co-Chair of the Mass Peace Action Board of Directors.
The time has finally come for Congress to shift its focus to the real threats to our population, and fund public health, not foreign wars.