DETROIT—People are fighting here to divert funds intended to support war to instead meet social needs. Following the passage of two ‘move the money’ resolutions in Detroit and Hamtramck, the Michigan Move the Money Coalition held its first of many public forums on Saturday.
“This first public event from Move the Money Michigan was a stirring success considering we are building a broad coalition of organizations and individuals that are willing to work together on one common issue: spending more money on public needs and less on the war machine,” Bill Meyer, chair of the Michigan Peace Council told People’s World.
Located on the northwest side of Detroit, the public forum was held at the Wayne County Community College campus in partnership with the school. Detroit councilmember Mary Waters, who played the key role in getting the resolution passed through council, helped the coalition partner with the college. Included in the resolution language was a section that said the Detroit City Council would facilitate public forums on the use of public dollars on the military budget.
“We not only were one of the first cities to pass a ceasefire resolution” in Israel’s war on Gaza, “but we also were one of the first cities to pass a ‘move the money’ resolution,” Waters said. “Our constituents do not want more war. They want clean water to drink, better infrastructure, better public transit, better schools, and access to clean energy.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., gave a virtual address to the forum. She has been a longtime supporter of the peace movement and was the only member of Congress to oppose the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11. She introduced H.R. 1134 – People Over Pentagon Act in Congress, which calls for slashing the Pentagon budget by $100 billion, as well as calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Our people are dealing with a cost of living crisis,” she said. “We are spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on war spending…over 40% of total world spending on the military. The Pentagon just failed its sixth audit…We should be spending public dollars for free college tuition, healthcare, good jobs, and our public schools.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., agreed. A stalwart of the peace and labor movement here in Detroit, she told the audience that “year after year, we’re told that we have no money for our public schools and our teachers to be paid a fair wage.”
“But there’s always money to pass a military budget that costs more and more each time. And many of my colleagues in Congress own stock in, and profit from, defense contractors and endless wars.”
Tlaib encouraged peace activists to pressure their elected representatives to support her bill, H.R.7264 – Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act of 2024, which would prohibit “members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from owning or trading stocks, bonds, commodities, futures, or any other form of security from a defense contractor or which are significantly based upon defense contractors.”
Jodie Evans, co-founder of the anti-war organization CODEPINK, connected the necessity of growing the national peace movement by rooting it in local campaigns, such as the Move the Money Michigan Coalition. “By having a local campaign in the grassroots, we can educate all of those closest to us,” such as how $0.52 of every federal dollar spent goes to the Pentagon, “and move those of us currently used and confused by the war machine.”
On activists’ minds was the $75 million weapons manufacturing facility being built by Saab, Inc., a Swedish aerospace and weapons company, in Grayling, Michigan. The weapons plant will produce missile weapons systems for the U.S. military, including components for Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) as well as close combat weapons.
In August, anti-war activists with CODEPINK Michigan encouraged state residents to oppose the proposed facility in Grayling, a city just over 200 miles north of Detroit that houses the Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center.
“The state of Michigan is planning on giving Saab a $75 million grant to start this project,” Jackie Barlow, an activist with CODEPINK told People’s World. “And that’s just to start.”
“They are looking at selling off our state land to facilitate this, at least 350 acres, to Saab, Inc. to do basically whatever they want, including testing their weapons and polluting more of our environment,” she said.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is attempting to sell the public on the facility as a reflection of Michigan’s “reputation as a national leader in defense and advanced manufacturing” and claims the weapons factory will bring “good-paying jobs.”
Jessie Kelly, a skilled trades mold maker and member of UAW Local 160, spoke at the forum on the need for workers to realize their self-interests are not in more war and weapons manufacturing, but on a just transition to a peace economy.
“We as workers need to organize ourselves and demand a just transition. Just like we did in the UAW with the just transition to electric vehicle (EV) production” in the 2023 Stand-Up Strike, “we need to make the case to our fellow workers that a peace economy will bring a safer world and better jobs for our families.”
“Military solutions will always block diplomatic solutions,” Kelly told People’s World. “If we take $100 billion from the Pentagon and move it to social services, we could hire one million union elementary school teachers amid a worsening shortage of teachers. We could give free tuition to two out of three public college students and give every household in the U.S. a $700 stimulus check to help offset the effects of inflation.”
Jim Rine, a military veteran and member of Veterans for Peace, told the forum that, “As a veteran and a geologist, I am more concerned about climate change than I am about Russia or China, or any of the so-called ‘enemies of the American people’ that our media likes to fear monger about.”
“The U.S. military is one of the biggest contributors to climate change…about one hour of a B-52 bomber flying around emits roughly the same emissions as a year’s worth of traveling by seven automobiles…and we know that they fly more than just one of these airplanes and for longer than one hour,” he said. “The money we spend on the U.S. military is not really for security, it’s to enrich the defense contracting monopolies and U.S. imperialism.”
Longtime Detroit community activist Maureen Taylor, who chairs the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, asked, “How is it that we have a homeless veteran or a homeless mother and child carrying a sign that says ‘Will Work For Food’? They are having to walk past like 50 abandoned homes and buildings just to get to the street corner where they are having to beg for food.”
Taylor feels the pressure of the cost of living crisis herself. She brought as “show and tell” a foreclosure notice from the banks that she received the morning of the public forum to demonstrate just how cruel the war economy is to working families. She then referenced the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and how U.S. imperialism neglects the needs of its own people in the service of securing maximum profits for its monopolies.
“We are in a world of trouble and basic human needs are just not being met,” she said. “You would think that our country’s priorities would be that our children have clean water to drink, healthy food to eat, good schools to go to, notebooks and pencils for class, but it’s not.”
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