 Hello everyone. I'm Jim Garrison. I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we begin day five of a five-day program on the conflict in Ukraine. We've covered a lot of territory from seeking to understand the history and how we got from the end of the Cold War and those heady days when we thought there would be a peace dividend to this titanic struggle between the superpowers in Ukraine 30 years later. We've talked about the costs of war. We've talked about the dangers of nuclear war. And we've sought to develop an understanding in the spirit of what Jody Evans said at the very beginning that education is the foundation of peace. It's so important that we simply understand what's going on in order for us to take right action because if we don't really know what the truth is we don't know which direction to point our intention. So the purpose of this summit and the subsequent summits that Code Pink and Humanity Rising are convening in April and then again in June is simply seeking to enable people to understand more deeply both the nature and the gravity of a crisis that has put the world in its most dangerous moment in our lifetime. Today we want to conclude with a discussion on the pathway to peace. And I'd like to just take a few moments to frame the complexity of any given pathway because we have to satisfy a number of interests that are now in deep contradiction. The first interest is that of the United States. But when the Cold War came about and the Soviet Union withdrew from Eastern Europe and then the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia emerged along with 14 other republics. The United States decided that rather than building peace it would aggressively move its imperial control from Western Europe to Eastern Europe. And that's the single most important geostrategic reality that has to be taken into consideration is that the United States has now pushed its imperial military and economic control over all of Eastern Europe. The United States now controls Europe. Europe is now a vassal of the United States in fairly classic imperial terms. The other interest is Russia. Russia saw this happening. It wasn't strong enough to resist until the United States in 2008 announced that Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia were next. And it was at that moment that President Vladimir Putin said this is an existential threat. This is a red line. And if the United States continues to expand east into Ukraine, which at that time was neutral, the Russians would take action. They have to take action because Crimea is essential for their access to the Black Sea, to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. And so the Titanic struggle that we're witnessing today is between the irresistible force of U.S. expansion and the movable object of Russian nationalism as it consolidates what we can all see on the map as a land bridge to Crimea. And they've now annexed all that territory into Russia, and they're not going to give it up. And they'll use nuclear weapons to defend it if necessary. So that's the immovable object. And the third interest is Ukraine. Ukraine has recently become sovereign. This extraordinary fact about Ukraine is that for its entire history, it's been essentially controlled by somebody else. The very word Ukraine means border crossing. So empires and nations and tribes and religions and trade has traversed the great steps of that part of the world in southern Europe for thousands of years. In and through that Ukraine has emerged only in 1991 as one of the newest countries in the world as sovereign. And as you can see, Ukraine desperately wants to be sovereign. So any peace agreement needs to somehow factor in the imperial interest and contradiction between the United States and Russia and the yearning for sovereignty of the people of Ukraine. And the fact that this conflict in Europe has now taken on global dimensions as China and other countries around the world are increasingly allying themselves with the Russian position is what makes Ukraine as dangerous as it has become. And the reason why we, at Humanity Rising, working with Code Pink and the growing coalition of peace groups around the world are seeking in the face of a massive propaganda machine organized by the military industrial complex who want this war or are seeking to inform and inspire and mobilize. And we'll be talking about that more deeply as we begin our session. We welcome your questions. We know many of you are watching passively. I've been in touch with people in Ukraine over the last couple of days who have been tuning in to this program. So I want to acknowledge that and welcome the people in Ukraine who are watching this program. So we want to integrate your questions and concerns or comments in any way we can as we finish out this summit today. Before we jump in, let us just take a pause as we always do on Humanity Rising and just simply breathe together. It's a turbulent world and the internal coherence that we can create within ourselves and with each other is absolutely critical to the capacity that we have not only to navigate but to work together in solidarity. So in a moment, you'll hear the sound of a bell. Just breathe in for about five and a half seconds. You'll hear the sound of another bell and breathe out. We'll take 10 breaths together and then we'll begin our program. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to this summit. Thank you, everyone. It's now my pleasure and privilege to introduce Jody Evans, who's been ceaselessly active and helping to shape this summit. We've been partnering with Code Pink, which I would say is one of the most dynamic peace organizations in the entire world, working on many, many fronts, including educating people and mobilizing action for peace in Ukraine. So Jody, thank you so much for everything that you've done to make this summit so successful. We're honored to be working with you and your colleagues in Code Pink and this growing coalition that you are catalyzing globally. So thank you so much and I turn the program over to you. Thank you, Jim, and thank you for creating this and understanding the need and the value. It's been a privilege to work with you and a pleasure. So here we are back to our last day together and this is where we talk about the pathways to peace. The only recognizable feature of hope is action. It's engagement. It's being engaged for what you hope for. And here, you know, this is I'm just so excited today to have these two great peace activists with us because these women are tireless and each have been leading engagement for their entire lives and they do it beautifully. When Jim talked about Code Pink leading on, you know, the work with peace on Ukraine, these are the two women that have been doing it at Code Pink. So I just want to go back to what I said the first day and as Jim said earlier, what makes our capacity to be a good force for peace is that we stand on strong ground, on strong ground with our hearts and with our minds. So, you know, sometimes there's something in the way and I hope today that we're able to get to questions. Medea has agreed to be here for answering. So put them in the chat and after Marcy teaches us how to be engaged, we'll come back and listen to Medea and then we'll go to questions. So first for you to meet Marcy Winograd, she is the coordinator of Code Pink Congress. So before the war on Ukraine started, Marcy was gathering Code Pinkers every week and educating them on the issues of peace and we had many members of Congress join and she's hosted that with Medea and it's been a great tool to educate, inspire and activate. She's also a long time anti-war activist who served as the 2020 DNC delegate to Bernie Sanders and co-founded the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party. She's also a leader at the Progressive Democrats of America and Marcy's activism started in high school like Medea and myself when she marched against the Vietnam War and later she joined the defense team of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg who we heard from earlier this week. She's a retired English and government teacher and she blogs about militarism and foreign policy at LA Progressive. She also ran for Congress in my district in Venice and it was such a pleasure to be on the team of someone so radically left and progressive and vocal and smart. So here you are Marcy Winograd. Thanks for joining us and just want to add that we have another team member also with us to support her, Mahaz, on to share her slides. Thank you so much, Jodi, can you hear me? Jodi, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, you know, I try to start my video but I don't know why I can't. Anyway, it's so wonderful to be with you Jodi and Jim, Humanity Rising, Code Pink, all of you today. I am so grateful for this series that you're doing. I am getting emails every day about how much people appreciate it, how much they're learning and how critically important it is. So what you're doing is a great service and I just want to thank everybody, excuse me, for being with us today and for your genuine interest in activating around this issue because this is the issue of our time. As Jim mentioned earlier, we're on the precipice here. We're standing on the precipice and here we go. I think maybe now you'll be able to see me. Okay, here I am. We are standing on the precipice of survival and annihilation. I don't know how else to put it. And so I think we just have to say to ourselves, you know, there's nobody else. It's us. It's really, it really is up to us right now. We can't look over here, look over there. We have to to reflect on what our skill set is and what we can do and what we can bring to the table and how we can bring people over. We have started Code Pink launched a piece in Ukraine Coalition. This was almost immediately after the Russian invasion on February 24th. Our coalition includes over 100 organizations. We have a steering committee, Code Pink, World Beyond War, Roots Action, Veterans for Peace, Progressive Democrats of America, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and on and on. And we are meeting twice a month to plan actions, to educate ourselves, to practice and breakout groups, how to talk to people because we know this is really tough. Yeah. It's like, how do you condense this? I mean, what Jim said was so spot on. How do you say that in one sentence before people go off on, you know, repeating all of the themes that they're hearing daily to manufacture consent for what I say is World War 3? You know, the most recent news I read is that Victorian Newland, the Under Secretary of State, who was instrumental in goading Ukraine to become a sacrificial lamb in this war, having gone over to Ukraine in 2014, having boasted about giving $5 billion to overthrow the government there. Now she's saying that the United States is fully on board for Ukraine attacking Crimea. Just to briefly put that into perspective, Crimea was part of Russia for nearly 200 years until it was handed over by Khrushchev in 1954 without a vote of the ethnic Russians who live in Crimea and who have voted in referendums to align with the Russian Federation. Crimea is the site of Russia's naval fleet on the Black Sea. It is not going to give it up. I mean, this is really the beginning of what we cannot allow to be the end. You know, we have to mobilize. So at CodePeng, at Peace in Ukraine, our Peace in Ukraine Coalition, our mantra is educate, organize, and mobilize. So let's take a look at what we've been doing. I'm going to ask you to come along with me and Maha, thank you Maha, as we visit our Peace in Ukraine website, which is replete with resources that we want you to use to continually go back to as a bank of information and tools. So Maha, if we can bring up the Peace in Ukraine website, here's the home page. It's PeaceInUkraine.org. So it's pretty easy to remember. On the front of the home page, we have join us as we mobilize for this March 18th and 19th. I believe the march is on the 18th. That's a Saturday in front of the White House. Some of us don't live in Washington, DC. Some of us will be attending sister rallies, perhaps in San Francisco or Seattle. But those on the East Coast or those who have the means to get to DC, we urge you to go there. We need to be visible. We need to be in the street. And if the media is not capturing our protests, by all means, we need to capture those protests. Take pictures, take video, get it out there. Okay, let's scroll down. We can see that you can also find resources for how to get there. These are the, hold on one sec, here we go, up a little bit. Stop. Okay, so these are the the slogans, the demands of the March 18th rally that has been co-sponsored by Code Pink, the Answer Coalition and the People's Forum and the 100 billion in arms shipments to Ukraine. We are now to, well, yeah, we have 100 billion to continue this war, 113 billion to continue the war in Ukraine. And NATO, why in NATO? Because NATO is not a defensive alliance, despite what people will tell you, NATO is an aggressive alliance. We have seen NATO be aggressive in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and elsewhere. Stop the permanent war economy that funnels trillions of dollars away from jobs, education, healthcare. Negotiations now. Have we once heard President Biden say he wants to talk to Vladimir Putin? I haven't. Not since this, not since February 24th. And reports are that before February 24th, Vladimir Putin wanted the United States to agree not to encourage Ukraine to join NATO. We refuse. We refuse to negotiate over that. In fact, we did the opposite. In September of 2021, Secretary of State Blinken signed a strategic charter with Ukraine, encouraging Ukraine to join NATO to take back Crimea, so that we jointly could privatize Ukraine. And then Biden sealed the deal when he signed basically the same document in November. No war with China, because many on the hill say first Russia, then China. First Ukraine, then Taiwan. No. How do you join us? How do you join this rally? You can register there. Find more information at the link there. And then when we scroll down, we have all sorts of transportation centers. Anyway, you can learn more about this rally, peaceinukraine.org. Now, let's take a look at the about page, which lists, and pardon me, my voice is, well, I've been challenged this week, taking care of my toddler grandson who's sick. We scroll down, we'll see who's in the coalition. Keep going, let's go. Okay. All right. Coalition. There we go. So there's the steering committee, and then we have international organizations. I'm sure many of you have been following the protests. I read anywhere from I don't 20 to 50,000 out in Berlin. Last week, we see protests in Italy, in Paris, in London, stop the war coalition. And in fact, on Code Pink Congress, she already mentioned that earlier, which I co-host with Medea Benjamin. What an honor. We will be looking next Tuesday at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern at the European anti-war movement, featuring members of that movement, leaders of that movement, talking about how we can work together. All right. Let's go to the next tab. Let's go to our under news and press. We have our February 24th week of action. So, you know, we say we have to be visible, as Judy mentioned. And what does that mean? What does it mean to be visible? What it means, it can mean anything, really, from wearing this button I have on, you'll see later, which says ceasefire in Ukraine, to be in front of our Congress members' offices. If we scroll down, we can see more pictures. Okay. So this one, this was in Europe. And then we have New York, Madison, Orcas Island, Washington. People writing letters to the editor, please do. San Francisco, Massachusetts, Oakland, Milwaukee. Okay. And more pictures are coming in. So to be visible, be in front of your Congress members' office. Be inside their office, too. Be on the street where traffic is moving rapidly. Be out there with your signs. I use buttons.com. I think it's unionbuttons.com. There you go. You can get anything printed, any kind of button. Code pink has buttons as well. Okay. Now, let's take a look at resources. This is a page I hope that you will make great use of. Okay. We can find out about Mimidia's book tour. She'll be talking about that. Talking points, statements, petitions, and more. Let's click there. Thank you, all right. Printable table materials. Petition. Let's click on that first one. No more war in Ukraine. All right. So what we're finding in our Peace and Ukraine Coalition, these are hardcore activists who really want to mobilize, but some of them are in places in the country where they feel like they're in a silo. They're isolated. Who can they turn to? Well, first of all, you can turn to us at Code Pink. You can ask me, Marcy, at Code Pink to connect you with people in your area that might be up for organizing with you. You can look for veterans for peace chapters in your area. You can look for DSA chapters, DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, or also partners with us in the Peace and Ukraine Coalition. Here we have a petition that members in the Bay Area created, and I've taken this petition out several times to my local farmers market. I'm on Chumash land in Santa Barbara, California, and I've gotten a few others to join me. And I just talked to people who are entering or leaving the market. I asked them to sign this petition. It is a vehicle for engaging people. I always tell them this petition doesn't just call for a ceasefire. It calls for no more weapons because these weapons only fan the flames of endless war. And we see how President Biden keeps reversing himself. No, we're not going to send this. Yes, we are. No, yes, no, yes. And now the Ukraine wants fighter jets, long-range fighter jets that can reach Russia inside Russia. Look, this, we are talking about a direct war with a country that represents 193 million people, 150 ethnic minorities, and possesses 6,000 nuclear weapons. This is pure madness. We need to wake people up. We are sleepwalking, eyes wide open into World War III. So talk to people, download this petition. Once you do, gather their names, create your group. This is your base. Take this petition, these petitions, to your Congress members' offices. It is supposed to be the people's house. They are not hearing enough from us. Call them. Call them every day. Take the petitions. Be a presence, a constant presence. Also under resources, if we go back, we can see a sample resolution. We don't have to open it, but it's a sample resolution you could take to your union hall, to your church or temple, any group you're involved in, civic group, to talk and get their endorsement, to have a conversation. They're not going to hear this unless they hear it from us. How to guide responses to misconceptions. Let's take a look. So many of us are confronted with the same assertions over and over. And the chief among them is Russia's invasion of Ukraine was unjustified and unprovoked. Well, at Code Pink, at the Peace and Ukraine Coalition, we agree it was unjustified. Nothing can justify this level of death and destruction of the Ecoside. You know, hundreds of thousands of young men dying for what? And 50 to 100,000 dolphins washing up dead on the Black Sea, dying from the detonations, from the weapons, from the shelling, from the noise that is emanating from this war on both sides, all sides. So we need to talk about how it was provoked. And I know you've been hearing those talking points all week long about the coup in 2014, backed by the U.S. $5 billion about us undermining the Minsk Peace Corps, the 2015 Minsk Peace Accord by arming the civil war triggered by that coup in 2014, arming the nationalists against the ethnic Russians and the Donbass, who were prohibited by law, passed by the Ukrainian government from speaking Russian in the public sector workforce. Okay. And this contains other responses that you can look over. And I hope that you do. Okay, let's take a look at what else. Sample letters to the editor. Buttons and stickers. How about this? Banners. Let's look at banners. Maha, who is helping us today, she created these. I had one printed out. We're taking it out to the street. Women's International Day is coming up. Thank you, Jodi, for all your organizing on that. March 8, take a banner. If you're going to be at a march, take a banner. Print it out. Wherever you are. See if you can hoist a banner. If you don't have a lot of people, I remember something Jodi once said to me, if you don't have a lot of people, take a big banner. Okay, let's go back to flyers for a minute. And then we can wrap this up. Flyers. Okay. We have created some flyers. You can easily download along with that petition. Okay. Diplomacy not war. This is a half page flyer. Sometimes people like half pages, but I'm full pages. Talks about the risk of nuclear war. Democratic Socialist America has provided us with more background on this issue. Keep going down. We have more recent ones that talk about the inflationary aspects of this war, the economic aspects. That's really important, right? You know, 30%, I think it's 30% of the country is food insecure. It doesn't know where their next meal is going to come from. And yet we are hurling money at Ukraine. But more specifically, half of that money is going to line the pockets of for-profit, for-profit weapons contractors. That's where this money is going. It is a giant money laundering scheme. And we need to be really explicit when we talk to people. They don't know they're not hearing this anywhere else. Okay. Finally, I don't know. I'm just going to check in. Do we have time to show one last tool? And that is the video on the environmental impacts of the war in Ukraine. The DNI, along with Michelle Elner, worked on this video that talks very explicitly about the threats to our environment as this continues. Some people say, you know, we just have to keep fighting them. Another three, four years, even though General Mark Milley chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is hollering, basically hollering and saying, no, no, we need diplomacy. This is an unwinnable war. Okay. This could go on and on. And with each year, with each day, with each hour, we risk a miscalculation or an intentional first strike. And Biden was very clear about what he said that would lead to, Armageddon global annihilation, either immediately in the aftermath or in a nuclear winter. So let's take a look at this. We gave this to everybody on Wednesday with the cost of war. Yeah. Okay, great. So we won't need to see it again, but you know it's there and you can download it, excuse me, on the Peace and Ukraine website and also at Code Pink. And with that, I will wrap it up and just invite you to join us on Code Pink Congress, Code Pink.org backslash, Code Pink Congress, and also at peaceinukraine.org. And thank you so much, Jodi, Jim, Humanity Rising, Code Pink, all of you who showed up today for giving me this time. I appreciate it. And I thank you. Thanks, Marcy. And I'm hoping Moja will add to the chat all the links and the link again to the video in case people missed it on Wednesday about the cost of war to the planet and ways you can engage today. So Moja, if you could add ways that they can engage and write to Biden and their members of Congress today, that would be awesome. So thank you, Marcy, so much for all you do, even sick. Thank you for sharing your voice. I'm reminding us that there's nothing they can get in the way of us advocating. Yes. And I just want to remind people, I had more time, I would have shared, we have an Act Now page, and I'll post some of the links. And they have some one clicks to Congress, very easy you can do before you get off this soon. So thank you. Great. And we heard from Janet in the chat that she called her senator and they told her that they were getting lots of calls. So let's keep those calls and letters coming. You know, as Marcy says, she wakes up and picks up the phone and calls her senators and her member of Congress. So making that like brushing your teeth would be a good habit to get into. All right. So next, I'm so excited to introduce you to my amazing, amazing partner, Medea Benjamin. She's the other co-founder of Code Pink. And she's also co-founded so many other organizations that are for peace and justice global exchange, the Human Rights Group. I don't know if many of us traveled the world to war zones and places where the US had their boot heavy to come back and be able to tell stories of what we saw. She's co-founder with Marcy of the Peace and Ukraine Coalition. Unfreeze Afghanistan, which advocates for returning the $7 billion of Afghan funds frozen in US banks. And Asaree, the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect. And the Noble Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors Campaign. Medea has been an advocate for social justice for 50 years. And she was also nominated for a peace prize along with a thousand other women globally who work for peace. She's written 10 books. And her last book is on Ukraine. And she's just been on a 50 city book tour. As we say, it's all about educating, inspiring and activating. And Medea is the rock star of that. She's probably been arrested 100 times disrupting Congress and those warmongers. And it is tireless. Last week, I saw her leading a lobby day in Congress, and it's where her joy is, is bringing truth to power. So please, Medea, take it away. Thank you so much. And what a great series this has been. And of course, it's a great pleasure to be with Jim and with Jodi and Marcy, who has been doing such incredible work on this. And I want to update us on where things stand just in these last few days as you've been having these series. And one new development is that for the first time since this war began, there was actually an in-person meeting between our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, and his counterpart Lavrov in Russia. It's quite remarkable that this is the first time they've met in a year. It's also quite remarkable that that meeting came on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in India, but it was only a 10-minute meeting. I mean, imagine that. What could you possibly do in 10 minutes? And what you could do is basically tell each other what your positions are, and that's it. And it seems like that was the crux of it. When Blinken came before the press, he basically said that he lectured Lavrov to tell him that he must end the war, that we're going to stick with Ukraine for as long as it takes, that Russia should go back into the New START Treaty, which it should. Of course, it didn't remove itself. It just suspended the mutual inspections. But when the US lecturers, the Russians, about treaties, I'm sure Lavrov brought up the US pulling out of the ABM Treaty, the INF Treaty, and other treaties that had been negotiated so carefully over so many years. The other thing that Blinken said he told Lavrov is to release a prisoner, an American, that the Russians are holding Paul Whelan, who was a former Marine who's been accused of spying. And I don't know what the Russians told Blinken, but it doesn't seem like 10 minutes is really the beginning of negotiations. The only other talk they had was by phone, and that was back in July. And the reason for that talk was to push the Russians to release Paul Whelan and Brittany Greiner. We know that Brittany Greiner was released. My point here is to say that the US is now making motions to try to show the world that it wants negotiations, but in reality is doing just the opposite, by the endless flow of weapons, by not pushing Ukraine towards the negotiating table. I do think it's important to recognize that there have been talks along this last year, not only the ones that the US and the UK hijacked, which I know you've talked about in other sessions, but successful talks between the Ukrainians and the Russians that have guaranteed the export of tens of millions of tons of grain out of the country, talks about getting the International Atomic Energy Association into the Zaporizhia nuclear plant when it looked like that was about to explode after accusations of shelling from both sides, and many successful negotiations for prisoner swaps. While the US public only knows about Brittany Greiner, and that was between the US and Russia, between Ukraine and Russia, there have been constant prisoner swaps, monthly prisoner swaps, and that takes a lot of negotiations, a lot of trust building. There has also been an exchange of wounded soldiers and exchange of bodies of fallen soldiers. That is to say that talks are possible. What there has to be is the momentum globally for talks about how to end this war. And another country has weighed in recently on that front, and that is China, that put forth its peace plan, which I would really characterize not as a peace plan because it didn't go into issues about what to do about the Donbass and Crimea, but it was a set of principles that talked about protecting civilians, exchange of prisoners, keeping the grain deal going. It talked about building up towards a ceasefire and negotiations and a lifting of sanctions. That was a serious proposal that the Chinese made. It was received by both Russia and Ukraine in a positive way because they both want to have good relations with the Chinese. It was received very positively from Russian allies in Kazakhstan and Belarus. And it was immediately dismissed by the US and NATO in a very cavalier fashion of saying that China could not possibly add anything that would be positive towards trying to reach negotiations. And instead, the US and NATO have been threatening China with sanctions if China sends weapons to Russia. I don't want to see more weapons poured into Ukraine on any side, but we must admit that it is quite ironic for the US and NATO to be telling China that it can't send weapons into the region while the US is supplying tens of billions of dollars of weapons. In any case, I think it would have been a positive move for the US to actually really respond to China's set of principles, going through each one of them one by one, what they agreed with, what they didn't agree with, or alternatively putting forward the US set of principles or the US framework for a peace plan. The US is constantly hiding behind this mantra, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, that we can't possibly tell the Ukrainians when to negotiate and what to negotiate. And yet, of course, we understand that the US is paying not only for the weapons, but the US is paying for the government to be able to function. In fact, President Biden said the other day that the US is paying for the pensions of the Ukrainians, which sparked a lot of response in the United States among people who are not getting pensions. And this issue about what the war is costing, not only here in the United States, but what it's costing in Europe, has sparked tremendous protests like Marcy was referring to. We have to recognize that while the US public has not felt as much the blowback from these sanctions that the West has imposed on Russia, the Europeans certainly have. And we see the response in terms of demonstrations that link the issue of inflation, of the increased costs of living in Europe, the increased costs of energy prices, especially with the war in Ukraine. We saw early on, back in the fall, large demonstrations that were taking place in the Czech Republic. We saw demonstrations taking place in Greece, including recently when Biden made a visit there. We've seen demonstrations, very large ones in Germany that happened in this last weekend. And I think it's important to focus a minute on what is happening in Germany, because when Sy Hirsch put out his article about the US blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, this has caused a lot of resentment among the public in Germany that sees US energy companies war profiteering from the need of Europeans to scramble to get alternative sources of energy, where US companies have stepped in selling their energy at four to five times the price that the Europeans were paying before for energy. You also have to understand that Europeans know war on their own soil more than people in the United States do and are very afraid of this war becoming a war that is expanded into their own countries. And so there are two, there's a politician from the Left Party, Sarah Wagenneck, and together with a woman who is sort of the glorious stynum of Germany, her name is Alice Schwarzer, put forward a manifesto calling for negotiations. They have received over 700,000 signatures by Germans supporting this, tremendous support. And we also see the polls in Germany being much more and more towards this call for negotiations. As there were protests happening last weekend in Berlin, huge ones, estimates somewhere between on the low end, 13,000 on the high end, 50,000. There were also protests at the same time in the city of Ramstein, where the US has a military base, including calls there for the US to leave, increasing anger among the population in Germany. The largest protests, well there were big protests in the UK, but the largest protests have been in Italy, which has a long tradition of a peace movement and also has strong support from the labor unions for their peace work. And they had protests in cities all over Italy, tens of thousands of people coming out, and it was really sparked by a recent decision of the new prime minister in Italy to send weapons to Ukraine. So I put that in the context of how much activity there is going on in Europe and to understand the context for their protests. We have a very different situation here in the United States. We have a population that did come out for large anti-war protests during the days of the Vietnam War when there was a draft, came out in the days of the Iraq invasion to oppose that, but hasn't come out in large numbers for anything since then. And so it is so difficult to get people out in the streets, especially on this one when they really don't understand what's going on because of the narrative that is coming out from the mainstream media as well as from both political parties, that this is a black and white situation, that there is no context in there for understanding Russia's moves, except that Putin is a madman, and this fiction that if we only send in more weapons, that we can achieve victory without even being able to tell us what victory means. We have no idea if victory means in the United States political context what it means by Zelinsky, who is saying every inch of Ukraine, every inch of Donbass and Crimea, or if it means something that we have heard once or twice coming from administration officials, that victory would mean going back to where things were before the February invasion of last year, which is a very different definition of victory. So I want to just end my part here before we go into questions by looking at the disconnect between what is possible on the ground, which is there is a stalemate, what we are being told, and the fact that there is a breakthrough despite this media and political narrative, that the American people more and more are getting tired of the over $110 billion that we have put into a war and are starting to feel like we are in a similar situation of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars where we are told victory is around the corner as long as we keep pouring in more money. And so we see that in the opinion polls that keep showing an increase in the number of Americans who are questioning this war. And the latest AP poll shows that only 48 percent of Americans are in favor of sending more weapons to Ukraine. It doesn't mean that 52 percent are opposed, it means that 52 percent either are opposed or don't know. But the fact that it is less than 50 percent who say, yes, we must send more weapons is quite extraordinary given not only the narrative, but extraordinary given how few people we have in Congress that are willing to take that position. In fact, it's a handful of extreme right members of the Republican Party that are willing to take that position. There is not one Democrat, even the only Democrat, Rokana, who has continued to say that negotiations are important, does come out and say that we should keep supplying all the weapons that Ukraine asks for. So this tremendous disconnect is something that we have to recognize and work on. And so all of the work that we are doing in the peace in Ukraine, the work that I have been doing on this 50 plus city book tour, has been to try to get Americans to understand just how dangerous the situation and how it is up to us really to create this groundswell of opposition that reaches up into our Congress that could then move to the White House to say, put forward your peace plan, push for a peace plan, be real, not with a 10 minute discussion, but real discussions about peace. And that is the only way that we can influence this situation. We don't have the ability to influence Putin. I think the Chinese do. I think that there are other countries like India and other countries of the global south that can, but our job is to influence our own government. And I want to end just by quoting from President Lula from Brazil, who met with Biden just recently. And Biden pushing Lula just as he is pushing other countries in the global south to actually get involved in this by sending weapons to Ukraine and showing their support for keeping this war going. And Lula said, what we need is not more weapons, we need interlocutors. And he said, interlocutors to tell the Russians what a terrible mistake they made by this invasion and tell the Ukrainians how important it is to go to the negotiating table. He said, we do not want to join this war, we want to end this war. And I think that should be our mantra as we go out in our communities and try to stir up this groundswell of support for peace talks, negotiations. We know more war is not the answer. Thank you so much. Thank you, Medea. Yay. Thank you. So I'm going to, Jim and I are going to come back and see if there's questions. Jim, maybe you could start with, do you have a question for Medea? Sure. But before I do, I want to recommend her book. Yay. This is a very good book, everyone. It's essentially a primer that brings in a very concise and empathetic way the complexities that led to the war and how we need to understand the pathway forward. So, Medea, first of all, I just want to thank you as a fellow author that you got this out so quickly and so definitively. That's quite an achievement. So I just wanted to begin there. And I wanted to just bring in a question or two that Richard Page was asking, which I think has been a source of a lot of confusion. And that is the Maidan revolution, Maidan coup back in 2014. Again, the narrative on this side was that this was a popular uprising of the people of Ukraine to throw out an incredibly corrupt regime. And the other narrative was that this was in fact a coup by the United States to overthrow a pro-neutral government to bring in the kind of government that was required for the Ukrainians to go to war against the Donbas. What's your understanding of what happened in 2014? Because that was so critical in setting the stage of everything that followed. Yes. I think you've gone through some of this in your other talk. So I'll try to be brief. But it's to say that both are true, that there was a popular uprising. And it was hijacked. It was hijacked with people who didn't want to see it end in a negotiated solution. And it turned violent and it turned into a coup. There were discussions going on while there were large numbers of people out in Maidan. And an agreement was made with Germany, France, Poland, and the parliament at that time to come up with a quick transition to a new government elections during that same year. And instead of accepting that, there was a group of violent people who then went on instead to pick up arms and to storm the parliament and to put on fire police cars and things that are a lot more violent than we saw on January 6 in our own country. And so we also have to recognize the role of the United States that had been involved in building up a sentiment against the government in power. Even Victoria Newland herself recognized that the U.S. had spent $5 billion on doing that amazing amount of money poured in through things like the National Endowment for Democracy and the direct involvement of the U.S. in deciding who would be the new leaders of that. And we see that, as you know, Jim, through that leaked discussion, audio that Newland had with the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine where they decided who was going to be in power and who would be on the sidelines. But I really look forward to seeing in the years to come through Freedom of Information Act requests the extent of the U.S. involvement in what turned out to be a coup. So let's recognize there was a broad-based peaceful uprising that turned into an ugly one that the U.S. supported that then makes it a coup. Yes. And one additional question, which I think is important, is to explain from your perspective how the coup then influenced the tensions in the Donbas because it was immediately after that, of course, that the Russians seized Crimea. So the relationship between the coup and the new regime and the conflict that began to intensify in eastern Ukraine and the Russian counter-move were all part of the ignition, I would say, of the war. And I think it's important to fill this in because many people think the war kind of started last February 24th. But actually, many of the commentators recognize that the war really started back in 2014 with this complexity of actions, counteractions, and then, of course, the seizure of Crimea. How do you understand that? Well, certainly when the new government came into power with a very anti-Russia bench and started instituting new laws that were discriminating against the ethnic Russians, that was the key for the people in the Donbas who were majority ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, to declare a breakaway republic. And then the conservative neo-Nazi groups got involved to say, well, we have to talk about the Minsk Accords coming in there, the Minsk agreements to try to end what turned into be a civil war between the Ukrainian and the breakaway republics. But we know that the Minsk Accords was never implemented, which meant that this civil war has gone on for what would be nine years now. We go into it in great detail in the book. And I think it is important to recognize that the coup was the spark that led to both the breakaway republics as well as the Russians feeling that they were going to lose their very critical port in Crimea that was their warm water support. And they're also the Crimea being a place where it was majority Russians and Russia and the people in Crimea have had several opportunities to have referenda and have said constantly that they wanted to remain with Russia. So that's a very brief explanation. Yeah. And let's turn to the larger alliance that's forming between China and Russia and the move of the United States to take them both on simultaneously. As a historian, I would just be interested in how you're understanding that development because I think that single development of the Russians and the Chinese on one side and the United States and NATO on the other side with much of the global south, either neutral as we saw with Brazil or allying themselves increasingly with the Russians and China is what makes this conflict so dangerous to us all. So I think it would be interesting for people to hear your perspective on the evolution of that and what's at stake. Well, I think we should recognize that those in power and this is both the hawks and the Democrat and Republican Party, as well as in the military have had their sights set on China. And this war in Ukraine has become an opportunity for them to weaken Russia so that Russia would not be a strong ally with China. Now they are desperate because the possibility of China actually helping Russia would be a totally unbeatable connection. And as you said, Jim, the global south is weighing in either on the neutral side or siding against the US because they have had enough of US imposition of US hegemony, US sanctions and see this as a time of great realignment. I think there is, you know, when you listen to the hearings like we just had the other day and hear people in Congress, the way they are talking about China, they're just insane. I mean, they really think that they can be China economically. We have generals in the US talking about a war with China in 2025. It is stretching the imagination to think that this is even a possibility, given that the tremendous connections between the US economy and the Chinese economy. And what this would do to the US economically to say nothing militarily. So that's why it's so important that we rise up now to say no to this war because they are planning the next war as we speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I think that's a juncture where we should turn now to the United States. I think you've made a very seminal point that there's not much we can do sitting here to influence Russia or China. But there is something that we can do to influence what's going on in the corridors in Congress and in the popular understanding of the war. And I think the first question that I would love to hear your comment about is how do you explain the extraordinary power of the neo conservatives? I mean, here we have a small group of people starting, you know, around the Bush junior administration, which coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, 911 and so forth and so on 10 years later, that group of people have consolidated almost complete power over US foreign policy and the official narrative in the media. It's an extraordinary phenomenon that such a small group of people could have so much influence in such a highly aggressive destructive way over such a long period of time. And I know it's framed, you know, the President Eisenhower warned us back in 1960 about the military industrial complex, but it seems as if the military industrial complex has essentially consolidated power, has essentially staged a coup in the United States. And the neocons have been the voice and the strategist for that to happen. And it's been to the detriment of the United States in ways that we've seen in the course of the week in the discussion of the cost of war. But how do you understand that phenomenon and that trajectory of consolidation? It's this extraordinary thing that we're dealing with here in the United States. Well, I think you're totally right. And it's quite amazing. I think it's not only the military industrial congressional complex, but you have Ray McGovern, who is called it Mickey Mat, who brings in the think tanks, academia, all the different pieces that go into this. Let's recognize one, there is a tremendous amount of money. I mean, where else do you see these kinds of dollar figures that we talk about with the military? Where else do you see the ability of contractors to get contracts for billions of dollars? And I'm not just talking about the big weapons companies. I'm also talking about all of the privatization that has gone on in the military now, where if you go around the suburbs of Washington DC, especially in Virginia, you see mansion after mansion after mansion. And these are people who have gotten filthy rich off of the war machine. So I think we have to talk about the amount of money. And then when you look at that amount of money, think that how much that has been used to fund the quote think tanks. There's money going directly from the Pentagon into those think tanks. There's money going directly from the Pentagon into the media that give us this view of the military as the most trusted institutions, despite the fact that it can't win a war. We have billions of dollars going into propaganda that is that everything from sports events to religious activities to our media to convince us I know just from a little anecdote how annoying it is to me when I try to go on a plane and they tell the military to come up first and thank them for their service. That's just one little example of how ingrained this is into our psyches that the military is keeping us safe, that that money that we are spending is somehow in our natural national interest, that the fact that the Pentagon can never pass an audit is something we shouldn't worry about. And so here we are where 53% of our discretionary funds is going into that military and it's using that money to convince us how key the military is to our survival when we have so many other real needs that are being neglected. So I would say money is at the basis of it. If you look at the cycle of money that goes into the pockets of the politicians, especially those on the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committees that go directly from the weapons industry into their election campaigns, I mean we tout ourselves Jim as being this great democracy that should export our model to the rest of the world when it is so incredibly corrupt and fortunately many people around the world see that. But the fact that we have so much money from this military-industrial complex in our electoral system is a big part of the problem and that is why you don't find people in Congress voting to give significant cuts to the Pentagon. You don't find them voting against pouring more weapons into Ukraine. You basically have two more parties. Yeah, well we have one more party divided between right and left. It's the essential point I think that we've come to and it's an extraordinary tragedy that a country founded on so high ideals has succumbed to such destructive domestic and international policies. But as we bring this session to a close, I'd like to bring you back in Jody with Medea and I don't know whether Marcy is still with us or not. But just to talk about now, given all that, you know, what are the next steps and Marcy, you were outlining some things but I think it's really important for everything we do at humanity rising is not only look the crisis right in the eye as we've tried to do, but to look for the opportunities and the solutions that emerge out of the crisis because in the end I think all of us understand that if we the people do not act in a very effective way and in total solidarity with others in other countries around the world, we may not stop this thing because of the vested interests that are seeking to foment war. I mean just to pick up on one point that you made, Medea, which I think is essential to take in, Victoria Nuland and the U.S. government is now encouraging Ukraine to take action against Crimea. Vladimir Putin has made it clear that they will defend what they've taken, which is now part of Russia. And as Marcy said and others, this has been part of Russia for the last 250 years since 1783. They'll use nuclear weapons to defend it. So the war machine is escalating as we speak in Ukraine and in China. So the acuity with which we in the peace movement need to act could not be more urgent. And so Code Pink is really the leader of us all, I would say, in these matters. So I'd like to have each of you just speak as to the priorities that you see that all of us in this global audience of humanity rising can take to join together with the solidarity that we need to make the kind of difference that's so urgently necessary. Maybe Marcy, beginning with you and then Medea and then Jodi. Thank you, Jim. I mean every word you say is profound and I appreciate your urgency because this is such an urgent time. So, you know, I would ask people to join our Peace in Ukraine Coalition, peaceandukraine.org. Make those calls, as Jodi mentioned, it should be like brushing your teeth. After I get off the Zoom, I'm going to communicate with my congressperson about this issue with Crimea. And I'll put in the chat when I'm done a link where it talks about Victoria Newell and encouraging strikes on Crimea. This really is an existential moment. You know, in terms of what we can do, I think we have to ask ourselves what our capacity is. Do we have the capacity to take this petition on the peaceandukraine.org website and go out to the next farmer's market and talk to people and get them to sign this petition and create some kind of base if you don't already have one. Can you go to your congressperson's office with some signs? Can you get them on the phone? How are we going to communicate the urgency unless we do so, unless we reach out? And I would say that, excuse me, got to be visible. We have to be in the face of congress. Okay. Victoria Newell and I saw somebody in the chat wrote arrest or absolute, I say, yeah, maybe we should have a citizen's arrest. She's a very dangerous woman. You know, she's been goading and this is her moment. I mean, this is what she has wanted. Right. So I was thinking maybe Code Pink will have an action around that. Jody or Medea, you're in Washington a lot. Do you know her? Does anybody know her? Because she's married to Robert Kagan, right? Right. He is the arched Neal conservative. So he's clearly, they're clearly working as a team. And that's important because the Neal conservative position now, it's not just Victoria Newland as an isolated individual, but but she's the tip of the spear of a very coherent, well resourced, ideologically clear coalition in Washington. So that's what makes her so doubly dangerous. I'd also add that she has survived both Democratic and Republican administrations. It's quite remarkable that they take somebody who has created such chaos in that region and put her back in such important positions of power. So my closing thoughts are to say that this is also dangerous for the political alignment of forces in the United States. I don't know who is listening to this and your political leanings, but I will assume you're not right wing Republicans. And this is actually as it drags on going to be to the benefit of those right wing Republicans, not only those in Congress, but people aspiring for the presidency. We see Ron DeSantis in Florida, who is saying that he is questioning this blank check to Ukraine. And he says that Russia is not a threat to US allies in NATO. He is taking a position that is very different from the majority of Republicans. We also see that Donald Trump has been using this to his advantage in rally after rally, saying if he were president, he would pick up the phone and talk to Putin and this war would end. And he gets tremendous applause from the audience. So I think that the Democrats, as this goes on and on, are putting themselves in a worse and worse position of ownership of this war. And so that is another reason why it's so important to push Congress and especially push the progressive Democrats who at one point came out 30 of them with this letter saying time for negotiations and withdrew it within 24 hours and have been silent ever since then. So we really need to get them to come out and say get on the peace train. The peace train is on the right side of history and we need you to get on board. Thank you so much. That's a very important point that you're making, Medea, that if we're not careful here, this war and the tumult toward greater escalation could actually play into the hands of the extreme right in the next election in ways that would be unimaginable in the consequences if someone like a DeSantis becomes president of the United States, particularly if they consolidate increased control of the House and possibly the Senate. So that's a very important note to make. Thank you for that. Jodi. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Medea and Marcy, for joining us today. Thank you so much for all you deliver in your passion every day. So a few things that I wanted to just circle back to. And we've had a lot of information, but where, Marcy, can you mute? Oh, no problem. Thanks. So the place really that this comes from is our hearts and you've heard all of this and why we did Wednesday was to show the cost of war. We don't see the cost of war. This is being spoken about in terms that are, you know, as Medea just said, it's political. Like the reason these members of Congress know this is wrong, they know that we should be going for diplomacy and that it's political that these decisions are made from fear, their fear, let you know, some of the most fearful people on the planet are members of Congress that don't want to lose their jobs. So they make these, you know, cautious decisions. We have to make them uncomfortable. We have to really be there with our hearts with the like, what are you doing? You know, the thing they're not getting is like, where, how lost are you? So, you know, as we've been spending the week pulling apart the propaganda that is so thick that it's a fog that people can't see through, well, imagine if you're in the halls of Congress, the most money the Pentagon is spending on people's brains is on the people in Congress. So, you know, think about how we feel and, you know, what we're waiting through and what other people are grounding in. Imagine Congress, they are, it is thick and it is deep. So if this moves you, if in your heart you understand how close we are to a nuclear winter and that we're playing with literal fire, if you understand that people are dying, that in both Ukraine and Russia and around the world, there are people in this war from around the world, their mothers are losing a child, their fathers are losing a child, that this is real. And it's become in the United States, I mean, these people outside of the United States, look at us, there's something that's happened to us in our disconnect from what war really is. And, you know, we live in a hypocrisy. Jim, you said earlier a country that was born on such great ideals, but it was born on great ideals, but has been horrific since the beginning, a genocide of the indigenous people and a slavery that's unthinkable, that in ways continues today in the South, the violence and the racism that Black people still live in, in this country. So we live in a hypocrisy. And too many people in that hypocrisy are caught up in the ideal and not the reality. And the reality is, is that that Wolfowitz memo that everyone laughed at back in the 90s is the Bible of the White House and those who have their hands on power in the United States right now. And that is Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan. Because the other thing I can tell you, there's like nobody in Congress that understands foreign policy, and there aren't presidents that come in that understand foreign policies. So please know that these people who write this memo and these people in this, you know, it's a very small group of people that are living off of war. And may I remind everyone that is taxpayer money. Madea was describing that is hard earned taxpayer money that is going to that that should be going to the needs of the people. So as is where it's happening, it is also continuing to disintegrate the very fabric of society of the United States of America, because that value of war and weapons and militarism is in our streets. It is playing out in our relationships. And we are becoming more divided. And, you know, what I learned the very first day of the Iraq war, when I got to go in on July 7th and be in, you know, where power was taking where US power was taking over Iraq, divide and conquer. Divide, divide, divide. That was like all they could do is like, how are we going and and actually before the war, we were, Madea and I were with a woman and we said, what is your greatest fear? And she said that it will divide us, that my family is Sunni and Shiite and Christian and Muslim and, you know, that when this happens, we will be divided and we watch that. So we're watching this war. Wars are divisive. No one wins them. But the problem is that the people that benefit from war that are that the greed is their cause, you know, their force. They don't care whether we win or lose. They don't care anything who dies. It's just the money. And there are so many pigs at this trough. That's, it's a billion dollars. Sorry, a trillion dollars. That's a lot of money. That's an incomparable, that's an unbelievable amount of money. So imagine how many pigs are at that trough that actually have their levers on power. So I look to you to understand that everyone else is in a fog of war, that it took you spending a week to really feel strength and feel in your heart the courage, because we need to stand up, we need courage. And so I hope that this information has helped you have the information you need and the knowledge that you need to stand strong for peace. But I hope also in your heart you have the courage to do what is necessary, because this is for the future and this is for the people, and this is for a planet. And it's all in, it's all in this game. We're all in this and it is a tragedy. But it takes us to stand up and say that in our communities, in, you know, calling members of Congress, where are you on this? You know better. What did you forget about the war on Korea, about the war in Vietnam, about the war on Iraq, about the war on Afghanistan? The devastation is real. People's lives were, you know, traumatized still. You know, the ground in Vietnam is still traumatized. I would love to do a show, you know, summit with you on Korea, because we don't understand in the United States what we did to Korea and what we continue to do to Korea. So, and I bring up, I just want to bring up Cuba, you know, that we've talked about Cuba a little in the relationship of that moment, but the United States still has its boot on the neck of the Cuban people, the most loving, caring, generous people, the boot on the neck of the people of Iran that we, that the Pentagon tells these stories, weaves these narratives that you get wrapped in that are lies and people around the world are paying the price so that you can leave this and feel I am a champion for peace. And like Marcy says, find your capacity. You find the thing that you can do locally because it's all about the local. We build locally with the people we know. So, whether that's your community around the country or around the world, it starts with your community. Come together. You know, next week on March 8, we have International Women's Day. We're asking people to take that day, which was a day of women standing up and speaking out and being revolutionary. Take that day and whatever social media you're on, tell your story about why war is wrong and why peace is necessary and use the hashtag IWD and war because it's going to be global. People are participating in this globally. On March 18, join us in the streets. This is the first call for a really big rally of those, you know, progressive voices to say no to war. We already have a coalition of over 120 groups It's going to be right outside the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. One o'clock on March 18 and it will be a rally and a march and then another teach-in after at a local church, a beautiful sharing of musing and poetry and coming together with our hearts to be in the culture of peace. Medea is going to be leading lobby days with, you know, as Ray talked about the it was, no it was Phyllis talked about our call for Christmas truce and a thousand religious leaders coming together. So Medea and Ariel will be leading a lobby day with them. Around Earth Day will be leading a lobby day with the environmental movement. So there's always ways to come together. Join Marcy and her peace and Ukraine coalition. She'll send you something to do every day. Come to Codepin Congress and continue to be inspired and deepened in what you can know and how you can be engaged and know that there's a community. Sometimes we live in a, you know, our community and we're the only one with this information. Start being the teacher. Start being out there and like Marcy said, if you go out with a sign, make it a big sign if you're all alone, find a friend because the only recognizable feature of hope is action. And sometimes when Medea and I get just black as looking into the war machine and get black, we just go out with our signs and be in action and we're back in the passion of our hearts and the knowledge that we know the only thing we can do in the face of this is be engaged from our hearts, from our knowledge and from the love of everyone on the planet and the planet itself. So thank you for joining us. Please engage. It will nourish you. Like after all that you've taken in, it will also nourish your own heart. Thank you. Oh, Jodi, Medea, you are jewels. You are jewels beyond price. And what you just said, Jodi, it was a perfect ending to our summit this week. It's up to us, the people, to take the action necessary to stop this war. And if we do not, we may end up doing damage to human life and planetary life from which we will not recover. Because the end of this trajectory of superpower conflict is nuclear war. And that is what we all need to take in. So each day we need to commit to take some action. And I would just end by saying Code Pink. I think Code Pink is doing more good work than any organization I know of anywhere, given the critical nature of this conflict in Ukraine. So Jodi, I want to salute you, Medea. I want to salute you. I know that Medea was one of the co-founders of Code Pink, among others. And I think that is a good visionary way to end our summit here. And also to note that we'll be reconvening April 24 to 28. And then again, the 21st to the 27th of June, we're going to keep these summits going. But in the middle between the summits, we all need to take the kind of action. And I think that Code Pink is leading the way. And we should just follow that banner and do what we can to end this war. So Medea, Jodi, thank you so much. I salute everything that you're doing and applaud the courage that you have manifested. And Marcy, you too. The women are leading this. And I think it's powerful. And we want to honor you. So thank you, everyone. That'll bring us to a close for this summit. And today's program, you're all welcome to the after session chat. And we'll see you all again on Monday. But just as I close, just remember this, everything is at stake with Ukraine. Everything. And all of us need to understand that and understand that every act that we make with the awareness that we have provided this week is critical to the overall solution we also desperately seek. Every choice matters now. And we need to make it toward peace. Thank you all. Bye for now.