Today, we highlight grassroots movements to disarm and divest from the U.S. military industrial complex amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, over 90,000 people are counted in the official death count in the United States. Experts say the real number is much higher due to the numbers of people who have died at home from the virus. The U.S. has close to 1.5 million cases. Black, Latino, Indigenous and impoverished communities have been hardest hit by COVID-19. Meanwhile, as death rates continue to rise in the United States from COVID-19, not only is Donald Trump busy trying to re-open the country and play down the death count, but he is continuing to implement his conservative agenda in the United States, which years ago would have been considered fringe. This includes rolling back environmental protections and civil and human rights.
The administration is ramping up aggressive action against other countries. He continues to promote action against China, spreading the unproven theory that the virus began in a lab in Wuhan, China. The Trump administration is also continuing to support a change in government in Venezuela, attempting to overthrow that countrys democratically-elected government. Also, he continues to ramp up hostilities against Iran after scuttling the nuclear power deal. What price are people in the U.S. and around the world paying for the massive military budget, the largest in the world? The Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons has pointed out that the U.S. spent $35.1 billion on nuclear weapons in 2019. This could have provided: 300,000 intensive-care beds, 35,000 ventilators, and the salaries for 150,000 nurses and 75,000 doctors. If only a small portion of conventional weapons spending were redirected, many more supplies could be available for first responders, essential workers and impoverished people across the U.S.
Today, you will hear audio from a recent webinar entitled, Disarm & Divest During COVID-19. The webinar was hosted by CODEPINK, a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism. It focused on the continued build-up of militarism and the destitute condition of our world before and during the pandemic. It also shed light on civil resistance disarmament actions, such as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who are facing sentencing for their nonviolent symbolic disarmament action at the largest nuclear sub-base in the world.
Kings Bay Naval Station houses one-quarter of the U.S. deployed nuclear weapons. The panelists demand that instead of spending money on war, the U.S. should direct funds towards health care for all, particularly during COVID-19 and all future pandemics. Speakers include Dr. Cornel West, Jeremy Scahill, Medea Benjamin, The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Martha Hennessy, Steve Kelly, Carmen Trotta, Clare Grady, Elizabeth McAlister, Mark Colville and Patrick ONeill.
