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Divest “Your Body” from the War Machine

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Military Industrial Complex | CodePink | Code Pink Divest

CODEPINK, in partnership with an array of peace and disarmament groups, has launched a divestment campaign to encourage universities, religious organizations, retirement funds, mutual funds, private investors, and other financial institutions in the United States to take action to reduce violent global conflicts and slow the hyper-militarization of our world by divesting from the U.S. War Machine. Divestment from the War Machine means divesting (removing invested assets) from companies that derive their profits by supplying and profiting from U.S. military interventions, expansions, and the militarization of our streets. In other words, we are calling for divestment from companies that make a killing on killing.

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth is extending this divestment beyond how we support the vast and socially debilitating war industry with our dollars to include the idea of divesting of our bodies. Of course, from a humanistic point of view, your body is not a financial asset, but like so many things in our contemporary world, we have been reduced from citizens to consumers. And the military factors us in financial terms: the cost to maintain our training, deployment and, all too often, our health from being used as soldiers in endless wars and conflicts.

Codepink Divest Campaign Website at divestfromwarmachine.org

NNOMY has the hope that our participation will resonate with other peace organizations, inspiring them to take up the cause to tell our American youth to divest of their bodies to U.S. militarism, regardless of their prior interest in the military, patriotic appeals by military recruiters, peer pressure, wanting to continue family tradition of service, or wishing to believe that benefits offered by military service will help them determine a direction for their lives.

We realize that this is a great sacrifice for many who are facing limited opportunities provided by our economy, or are not able to pay for a college education at this time to move their lives forward. For NNOMY, this is a moral appeal to not risk harm to innocent others or themselves in a time of unending military conflicts based on a critical assessment of U.S. wars as not serving the security of our country or its citizens.

Many of those youth who seek out community service alternatives to the military will be serving inside their own communities and regions where there exists a great need for humanitarian assistance to aid in environmental and social crises that require our direct intervention. Those youth who can connect the dots of what real community service means for establishing a sustainable economy will be the real heroes challenging the future quality of all of our lives. We need to begin to send the message that the waste of military spending needs to be redirected from war profiteering to enlivening the communities where we live and to invest in renewable energy and away from extractive resources which are the source of much of our war-making.

The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth would also welcome Code Pink´s collaboration with us again in an active campaign of counter-recruitment in our public schools, especially those schools who serve our underprivileged students where we find the greatest military recruitment effort against our youth.

http://www.codepink.org/divest

Thank You

For peace and social justice,

Pat Alviso - Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) - National Coordinator, Long Beach, California

Libby Frank - Northwest Suburban Peace & Education Project - Arlington Heights, Illinois

Rick Jahnkow - Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) - San Diego, California

Bill Scheurer - On Earth Peace - New Windsor, Maryland

Seth Kershner - Winsted Area Peace Action - New Hartford, Connecticut

Barbara Harris - Granny Peace Brigade - New York City, New York

Miranda Groux - The Resistance Center - Northampton, Massachusetts

The Latest from "Divest from the War Machine:"

03.08.19
Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?
Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products.
03.06.19
If America can find $716bn for the military, it can fund the Green New Deal
Funny how some politicians have no qualms about ballooning the deficit with tax cuts for the rich but balk at investing in the long-term health of our people and communities. Just as peculiar: the fact that military spending cuts are virtually never mentioned as an option for freeing up funds for social good instead of war.
09.17.18
Merchants of Death: How the Military-Industrial Complex Profits from Endless War
The Real News Network / Interview with Medea Benjamin
A look into how the military-industrial complex fuels endless war for corporate profits. CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin discusses her new report on the five largest US weapons manufacturers and their arms deals with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt
04.19.18
Shooting programs taught by the military don’t belong in our schools!
Divest From the War Machine / Militarism in our schools is a major contributing cause of gun violence in America. Almost 2,000 high schools have school shooting ranges affiliated with the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program. Our young people are introduced to our national war culture in their high school cafeterias, where military recruiters forge relationships with kids during lunch.

Other News Reports from the Divest From the War Machine campaign

Resources

Divesting Our Youth from the War Machine: A Guide to Countering and Resisting the Militarization of Youth 2017-2018

In Cooperation with Codepink's Divest from the War Machine campaign, The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth contributes this guide for demilitarizing our schools from the over-reach of a provision of the Every Child Succeeds Act that permits unrestricted access to military recruiters in our schools. This guide instructs activists how to lobby school districts to follow equal access guidelines and to organize communities, parents, teachers, and students to limit recruiter access to their schools.

Much of the contents of this Divestment Campaign Guide are borrowed with permission from the National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY), National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, Stop Recruiting Kids, and Save Civilian Civilian Education. We are extremely grateful to them for contributing their insight and experience to this movement. To learn more about NNOMY’s work, visit http://nnomy.org/index.php/en/. To Protect Student Privacy’s work, visit http://www.studentprivacy.org/. To learn more about Stop Recruiting Kids, visit: http://srkcampaign.org/. To learn more about Save Civilian Education’s work, visit http://savecivilianeducation.org/.

Download the DivestCRguide2018.pdf

Peaceful Career Alternatives website

The Peaceful Career Alternatives website has been developed with the support of multiple national, regional, and local peace and religious organizations to provide young people deciding how to begin their productive working lives with alternative ideas and options without entering military service.

We encourage school counselors, parents, teachers, and most of all our youth, to utilize this resource before recommending or deciding on a military career and to network this resource to those considering enlistment

http://peacefulcareers.org/about.html

You can visit Codepink's Divest from the War Machine website at https://www.divestfromwarmachine.org/

Revised 5/10/2019

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