Fight the War Economy By Growing Local #Peace Economies via @CodePink

The big marches happening over the next few weekends will likely have an additional anti-war component now that Trump has bombed Syria, provoked North Korea, and dropped the MOAB - the largest and most expensive non-nuclear bomb we had in our military arsenal - on Afghanistan.

We encourage you to get in the streets for those marches, but also organize local actions in your communities in the days in-between to voice your rejection of American imperialism and the war economy, and support of multilateral, diplomatic strategies and solutions. Calling Congress to express these opinions is also crucial to making our voices heard.

But in addition to rapid response actions, we can work locally and personally in the longer term to create the world we want to live in. Code Pink, the women-led grassroots anti-war organization founded during the Bush years, has launched a campaign to help raise awareness and encourage reflection about the fact that each and every one of us is invested in the war economy. We invest by the way we live and the decisions we make each day. But they believe, as I do, that we can divest from the war economy and cultivate a just, “Local Peace Economy” that creates conditions conducive to life by redirecting our investments to our local communities and people.

The fact is that the war economy is killing us. America has been at war for the last fourteen years and now Trump has put us on the brink of multiple, new escalations. This perpetual war, the widening wealth inequality, and refusal to deal with existential issues like climate change, are inextricably linked. The wealthy few hold an immense amount of power and control political, social, and economic systems to safeguard and expand their power. As Code Pink explains, this situation has resulted in “a social, ecological, economic, and political crisis that threatens life on earth.”

On the Local Peace Economy campaign page on their website, Code Pink writes, “Even though there is evidence that shows that humans are predisposed to be cooperative and sharing, the war economy survives by creating the experience of scarcity that forces the reliance on greed, selfishness, competition, and a sense that we are separate.”

Head over to CodePink.org/peaceeconomy to read more about the campaign, take the Peace Economy Pledge and read the Next Steps to begin growing your Peace Economy now.

The next steps include questions to ask yourself to see where in your life you are not living your values, a list of suggested organizations and causes to engage with that align with Peace Economy goals, how and where to invest financially in your local community, and much more.

So, if supporting an economy that promotes peace over war is important to you, be sure to hit the share buttons to spread the word about Fighting the War Economy by Growing Local Peace Economies via social media so that others in your network can spread the word too.

Mr. Roger’s once said, “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

Divest from War, Invest in People. Let's grow #peaceeconomies locally via @codepink @voiceinwild https://t.co/baxcxJhzBq pic.twitter.com/ED5zwy0JB2
— Peace Economy (@PeaceEcon) January 31, 2017