Fifty-five years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed.

Fifty-six years ago today, he said that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." In that same speech, he declared: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

Every year, the President and Congress increase military spending. Every year, a small number of Congress Members remain silent until the vote is sure to pass, and then vote No. This is no longer good enough.

Click here to tell your Representative and Senators to publicly commit to voting No on military spending unless it is reduced, to do so on every related procedural vote, and to publicly urge their colleagues to do the same.

Is making a real effort too much to ask?

Republicans withheld their votes on choosing a House Speaker until they won numerous demands.

Progressive House Democrats withheld their votes on the last military spending bill until Manchin's dirty oil deal was removed. And they succeeded. They didn't need the Senate or the President.

Exercising actual power is perfectly possible, but here's how military spending has gone the past few times through.

1. President Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to.
2. Corporate media outlets report on the full discretionary budget proposal as if the single item that takes up more than half of it — military spending — doesn’t even exist. Zero Democrats object or encourage No votes or vote-withholding threats or even state that they will personally vote No.
3. Congress, with most Republicans and top Democrats in the lead, proposes a massive increase over and above Biden’s massive increase. Progressive Democrats grumble about the increase, suggesting (through omission) that Congressional Republicans caused the only increase. The bill passes both houses and is signed into law.
4. Progressive Democrats tell people they voted No, and moreover they’ve cosponsored the People Over the Pentagon Act. But that’s a bill to reduce the military spending that has gone through the roof during the years they’ve been proposing that bill — a bill which, if it passed the House, would have to pass the Senate and the President. Such a bill has almost no chance of becoming law, and would accomplish little or nothing if it did. That's why we're asking Congress Members to publicly organize No votes on military spending.

There comes a time when we must loudly demand better.

Click here to insist that your Representative and Senators publicly take a stand and actually try to reduce military spending.

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Thank you!

-- The RootsAction.org team

Background:
>> David Swanson, Progressive Hub: "How to Reduce Military Spending"

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