By Ben Cohen
Dear friends,
Why didn’t we stockpile ventilators and PPE? Because our government spent our money stockpiling bombs instead.
How many bombs? Enough to destroy every city on earth and still have 1,500 bombs left over. Literally. Researchers at Popular Mechanics did the math. No exaggeration.
And just this year, they decided to spend another $50 Billion on building a whole new generation of nuclear weapons.
That’s despite the fact that the US could cut its defense budget in half and still spend more money on war-making than Russia and China combined.
And that’s despite the fact that the “global war on terror†is creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.
As Michael Franti wrote, “you can bomb the world to pieces but you can’t bomb it into peace.â€
The fact is that for 3% of this year’s Pentagon budget we could have had all the 880,000 ventilators and PPE we needed at the ready. And their not cheap machines.
And for 4% of the annual Pentagon budget, we could replace every lead pipe in America — which currently afflicts 22 million people. Many of them children who will be impacted for the rest of their lives.
Enough is enough. Do your bit to put an end to it.
Join me in Drop the MIC, a new social media campaign to expose the corruption of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the financial, human, and environmental costs of spending over half of the entire US discretionary budget on preparing for war.
Please like our new page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram and invite your friends
It’s time to make it clear that we’re not willing to put up with endless wars and war machines. Not in our name, not with our money.
In solidarity,
Ben Cohen (Co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s)
Ben Cohen (co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s) started this petition on MoveOn. If there’s an issue close to your heart that you’d like to campaign on, you can start your campaign here.