Recordings of these calls are now available at the links below:
Join Shailly Gupta Barnes of the Kairos Center and environmental attorney Mark Dunlea for the second of two national calls on Global Days of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS).
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
8:15 – 9:15 pm EDT; 7:15 – 8:15 pm CDT; 6:15 – 7:15 pm MDT; 5:15 – 6:15 pm PDT
Click here to register.
You also can listen to a recording of the first GDAMS briefing call, held on March 19, featuring Lindsay Koshgarian of the Institute for Policy Studies and Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy. Click here to read Bill Hartung’s new Pentagon Spending: A Primer.
Lack of preparedness for the COVID-19 epidemic reveals the potentially grave consequences of slashing social safety net spending while deluging the military-industrial complex with our tax dollars. Trump and the Pentagon are pressing yet another massive increase in military spending. Critics from Washington think tanks working with the Poor People’s Campaign, reinforced by grassroots activists across the country are demanding that money be moved from wars and preparations for wars to addressing our urgent human needs: health, climate, housing, education and more.
GDAMS 2020 will take place from April 10 – May 9. We hope that you will consider organizing a local event. To help you prepare for this year’s GDAMS and for longer term efforts to change our national spending priorities, we have scheduled an inspiring briefing call featuring these two leading authorities on military spending and alternatives.
Shailly Gupta Barnes is the Policy Director at the Kairos Center. She coordinated and edited the Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America report for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, working closely with the Institute for Policy Studies. This report looked at the evolution of the key themes of the Campaign over the past 50 years and its findings informed the current Campaign’s Moral Agenda and Demands. Read more about the Souls of Poor Folk and Moral Agenda at poorpeoplescampaign.org.
Mark Dunlea is an attorney associated with the National Lawyers Guild, was a co-founder the Green Party in New York. He is a leading climate change activist with 350.org, and news correspondent for WOOC Radio who speaks widely about the Green New Deal. He formerly served as executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State and has run for Congress.
Lindsay Koshgarian: Lindsay’s work and commentary on the federal budget and military spending has appeared on NPR, the BBC, CNN, The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, and others. Now at the Institute for Policy Studies, her work is at the intersection of military and 
domestic federal spending. She got her start as a clinic worker and organizer at Planned Parenthood in central and suburban Philadelphia, and led economic development and affordable housing studies at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute prior to joining the National Priorities Project in 2014
Bill Hartung: Bill is director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He has also served as a Senior Research Fellow in the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and is former director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He specializes in issues of weapons proliferation, the economics of military spending, and alternative approaches to national security strategy. Hartung was the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. Prior to that, he served as the director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams.
Ruth Benn, of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee and the New York War Resisters League has prepared a fine short peace announcing this year’s Global Days of Action on Military Spending along with background about this U.S. and international campaign. Click here to read the article.
