ANDREW BACEVICH – The nation’s current preoccupation with race, as honorable and necessary as it may be, falls well short of adequately responding to the situation confronting Americans as they enter the third decade of the twenty-first century. Racism is a massive problem, but hardly our only one. Indeed, as Martin Luther King sought to remind us many years ago, there are at least two others of comparable magnitude.
ERIC STONER – Momentum organizer Nicole Carty discusses how the Black Lives Matter movement built consensus on racial justice and the strategy needed to make the goal of defunding police a reality.
CAROLINE HURLEY – Security, claim peace scientists, is the experience and expectation of well-being. Analyzing management of the major 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is instructive given Covid 19’s global rampage. Despite internal UN dysfunction, especially the veto system pitting members at cross-purposes, that organization proved its worth.
ROBERT kOEHLER – In the linear world of geopolitics, militarism and mysteriously determined “national interest” rule and security means — though it is never put this way — playing games with Armageddon. This is called realism. And those who claim to be realists never — ever, ever — allow a word like “disarmament” into the conversation, much less into the realm of political choice.
BERNIE SANDERS – On this May Day 2020, I wanted to give you an overview of what working people are going through in this country and throughout the world and where we need to go from here.
MIKE FERNER – If we can expand our consciousness and compassion, we can begin to comprehend our government’s behavior in the world and come out of this pandemic demanding to be better members of the human family.
CENTER FOR CITIZEN INITIATIVES – The Covid-19 pandemic shows that governments that think of security in mostly military terms are simply wasting money, Mikhail Gorbachev has said. Defense spending must be cut globally to fund things that humanity actually needs.
PAUL ENGLER – There are times in history when sudden events — natural disasters, economic collapses, pandemics, wars, famines — change everything. They change politics, they change economics and they change public opinion in drastic ways. Many social movement analysts call these “trigger events.” During a trigger event, things that were previously unimaginable quickly become reality, as the social and political map is remade
BRIAN TERRELL – “I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values,” said Dr. King. 52 years later, our very existence as a species is at risk and the radical revolution of values that he preached is our best hope.
MOVE THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS MONEY – Three former UK Royal Navy Commanders sent a letter to all UK parliamentarians on April 1 questioning the policy of maintaining a continuous at sea nuclear deterrent. The commanders note that the £2 billion a year cost of maintaining this nuclear posture and readiness for war appear to be unjustifiable, especially as the economic costs of the coronavirus pandemic are mounting
BERNIE SANDERS – This is a moment that we have got to be working together and going forward together. What I wanted to do is talk about a series of proposals that we are working on and that we will introduce to the Democratic leadership about how we can best go forward.
KATHY KELLY – U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.
