 The Trump increase, just the increase, is larger than the entire military budgets of European powers like France, Germany, United Kingdom. It's only $12 billion less than the entire Russian military budget. So I think it's been very much understated in the press, just what a huge increase this is. As it mentions on the slide, it's more than the next eight countries in the world combined and it's gonna come almost dollar for dollar from cuts in education, environment, health and human services, basically federal programs that serve low income and working people. So not only is it going to promote war, but it's also going to risk lives at home because of the kinds of programs that are being cut. I think if we look at the slide number four, it'll show you the breakdown in the discretionary budget, which 54% of the discretionary budget, which is basically everything, but things like Medicare and Medicaid, which are entitlements. You have to change the law to change those. These are things that Congress votes on every year. But as you'll see, it's most of the things people think of as government, transportation, energy, environment, housing, community development, veterans benefits and so forth. So the entire federal government, other than transfer payments, is already dominated by the Pentagon and the Trump budget or the ones being considered in the Senate would make that even worse. It would be more than 54 cents, could be 60 cents on a dollar. So it's putting a huge squeeze on everything else the government tries to do. And it's important to remember that Trump isn't the only problem here. Congress is a huge problem. Democrats and Republicans both, because there's very few members standing up and saying, this is too much. We can't be throwing this kind of money at the Pentagon. So part of what's needed is people to go after them in town hall meetings, meetings in the district, letters to the editor, anyway possible to start generating some pressure on them. So they know there's a political cost to them to signing off on this horrific, I believe obscene budget. So the fact that you're on this webinar and that you're planning to do this work is essential. It's not gonna happen in Washington alone. Washington is where there's kind of incremental change and everybody's looking at this little tweak at the subcommittee level and so forth. But if we really wanna change the priorities of the country, it's gotta be people organizing at the grassroots all over the country. And that's why it's so important that Jack is on to talk about some of the local initiatives with the mayors. So to talk about the cost of war, we could move to slide. Yes, here's the one I was thinking of. If you look at Iraq, which was one of the most disastrous wars in recent history, certainly, over a million civilian casualties, 40 for a hundred US service personnel, millions of people displaced. And depending how you measure it, if you measure just the straight taxpayer costs or the long-term costs of taking care of veterans and so forth, anywhere from $800 billion to $3 trillion. And it's important to remember that the Bush administration said, oh, this will cost $50 billion, about one 20th of what it ended up costing just in terms of tax money. So they always understate the cost of war on the way in and then we pay it once the war gets started and of course the wars of this century have not ended. So if we let this continue to happen, there's gonna be two sets of consequences. One is, of course, funding more war. And Trump has already increased troop presence in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, in the Philippines, special forces, other kinds of boots on the ground, increased drone strikes and so forth. So he inherited these wars from Obama. Obama was no peace stick, but he's actually got yet another level. And he's put the generals in charge. So there's not even a discussion of how many troops in Afghanistan. He's just handing it off to General Mattis, saying, you know, you decide. So it's even in some ways a more militarized government than we had under Obama, which was already one of the more hawkish administrations in recent times. Yeah, the one difference with Obama is that he fought more wars with fewer troops in more places. He didn't have 160,000 troops in Iraq like Bush did or he gradually wound down in Afghanistan after jacking up the number. So he's tried what I call politically sustainable warfare, what they think they can get away with. If there's fewer US troops, if it's more drone strikes, more military aid, more training, they think there'll be less domestic attention to it. And I think that's gonna change, right? I think they've had some success with that in terms of the average person not thinking about the cost of war. And I think it's our job to help change that. So if you look at slide 11 and the ones in between are sort of the consequences, it goes into more detail on Iraq and Afghanistan, just the huge consequences of this war and the continuing costs of the war against ISIS, the war in Afghanistan, and so forth. So these are just kind of the costs of war itself, the actual fighting of the wars. But the Pentagon gets hundreds of billions more to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, to do peacetime training. They've got programs to give aid to local police forces. So they actually spend more money on bureaucracy and preparing for war than they even spend on these wars themselves, which are graphically expensive. So, of course, the war is being brought home in a number of different ways. Trump wants to cut environmental protection by 31%, which is unprecedented. He wants to cut the labor department by 20%. So people's wages are getting stolen, probably going to protect them. Occupational safety and health is going to be abandoned. Things that matter to the workforce are going to be unattended to by the federal government. Housing is being cut 13% low-income housing, which was already hugely gutted going back to the Reagan years. So it's already on life support and they're cutting it further. And the kinds of impacts we're seeing, they want to cut the supplemental nutritional assistance program, which is more common, known as food stamps, $190 billion over 10 years. And that'll tip at least 5 million people into poverty and many millions more will go hungry. So if you compare that to the plan to spend a trillion dollars on new generation of nuclear weapons over three decades, which is making the world a more dangerous place and could end life as we know it, I think it's pretty clear how skewed the priorities are. They're going to get rid of six block grants that serve low-income communities. They're worth about 13 billion, the six of them together. And they give job training, mental health services, home heating, substance abuse treatment, child care. And all those block grants together cost about the same as the new aircraft carrier that the Navy's buying and they have 12 of those. So again, unless you think we need to be patrolling every corner of the globe looking for new wars to fight, when we already have seven underway, that kind of spending priority makes no sense. And they also want to cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars in the next 10 years, knocking at least 14 million people off of health insurance. And they're going to try to do this whatever way possible. If they can do it through a healthcare bill, they'll do that. If they come at it a different way, they'll do that. But they're going to be relentless about going after healthcare for low income people and middle income people. A lot of people depend on Medicaid now, given how messed up the healthcare system is. And I think it's important to keep in mind, these programs weren't meeting the needs out there to begin with. There are many unmet needs under existing funding. And so this is going to take a very difficult situation for many, many people and make it that much worse. I think the thing we want to think about is, we're not talking about going back to the good old days before November 9th, we want to build a better world. And that means better than Obama, better than Clinton, certainly better than Trump, better than most leaders in Congress are willing to contemplate. So we're fighting defensive battle, but hope for also raising hopes for a better future, which I think is one way to inspire people to activism. So my last point is just what we can expect in Congress. There's going to be votes this week on the floor on the House appropriations bill for defense. And these things happen very quickly. So there's groups like Peace Action and others who will send out alerts when without war, women's extra new directions. And they'll mention three or four things you might want to weigh in on. For example, there's some amendments to try to restrain US support for the Saudi war in Yemen. Barbara Lee's got an amendment to try to change the authorization for the use of military force, which was what they used after 9-1-1 to basically create a blank check for war. So she's trying to rein that in. So those things are short term, but I think the big fight is going to be now through the fall and probably into December about how much the Pentagon is going to get. And all these numbers, Trump's numbers, the Armed Services Committee numbers, Appropriations Committee numbers are just suggestions. There's no, none of them are set in stone. So the more pressure we put on, the better we're going to see the possible results, at least cost some of that money back from the Pentagon. And there's probably three possibilities. One is, there's budget caps on the Pentagon going back about five years, but they're only on its main regular budget, not on the war budget. So what they've been doing is, they have to stay under caps for the Pentagon. They throw tens of billions of dollars into the war budget for all kinds of pet projects that aren't even being used in the wars, but are things that couldn't fit in the regular Pentagon budget. So they're either going to make a deal to eliminate those caps, and then all bets are off on how much they can spend on the regular budget or the war budget, or they're not going to be able to lift the caps, then they'll jack up the war budget as high as they can get away with. Or they'll be a complete train wreck, which actually for us will be the best possibility, because then if they don't pass the budget, they have to stick to last year's levels. So at least these increases they're pushing for now would be held off. So none of those are the outcomes that we want, but I think what we want to do is put as much pressure as possible on the process to get the lowest level depending on spending and to educate as many people as possible to keep the heat on their members of Congress. Cause it's rare to even hear one of them get on the floor and say, this is insane. Now, why are we spending this kind of money? When we're basically taking food, medical care, housing away from people who need it in order to spend the weapons we don't need and to fight wars we shouldn't be involved in. So that's, those are the basic points I have that you're in good hands with code pain in terms of activism, because code pink works all aspects of the problem and is one of the most forceful and I think most present groups in fighting on these issues. So thanks for having me and I'll stop there for now. Thank you, Bill. It's great to learn from you. Thank you so much for being here for all your knowledge and the work you do as well. And as Bill is saying, there's so much impact from all the money that is funneling to war and wars and more violence. And we can be different and we can, we should be creating spaces in our communities to be more educated about what's happening and imagining what we can do with all that money and what should we be investing in. So now I'm gonna pass it to Jackie Cabasso to talk more about some of the victories in trying to divest from war and also the importance of local organizing. Let me see, Jackie. I'm not sure if you can unmute yourself. We've not all tried to do it from here. How about now, can you hear me? Yes. All right, so thank you, Mariana and Ariel and code pink for inviting me to be part of this webinar. So I'm gonna jump right into it. I wanna start with a little bit of historical context because the idea of city-based local organizing is not new. In the 1980s, there were lots of organizing initiatives including anti-apartheid divestment campaigns at the city level. There were local nuclear weapon free zones altogether over 130 US cities being coordinated by Nuclear Free America. But a cautionary note, because this is what we're gonna keep running into. Mostly those were symbolic and declaratory, but with financial implications sometimes causing cities to violate their own ordinance. There's an order to purchase from or invest in companies and financial institutions. There are part of the web of nuclear weapons makers, the military industrial complex comes back to bite us again and again. There was even a magazine called municipal diplomacy. And of course, in the early 2000s as part of the anti-Iraq war campaign, there were cities for peace. So now we're operating in a new context which I think is best summed up in an article I just came across called States and Cities Saying No to the Feds by Kirkpatrick Sale in which he describes a growing trend towards what he calls nullification of federal laws and policies by cities and states. So it seems that in a time when the federal government and Congress are increasingly dysfunctional and unresponsive to the needs of people, there's a tremendous opportunity as well as a need to organize and build grassroots power at the local level. So the most striking example of this is the mayor's response to the Paris Climate Court in response to President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. On June 1st, they issued a statement, quote, as 362 US mayors representing 66 million Americans, we will adopt honor and uphold the commitments to the goals enshrined in the Paris Agreement. We will intensify efforts to meet each of our cities' current climate goals, push for new action to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target and work together to create a 21st century clean energy economy. Now other examples are sanctuary cities, minimum wage laws, marijuana laws, gun laws, healthcare, and there are other examples. So why not tackle federal spending priorities of nuclear disarmament advocacy at the local level? Just the way the mayors responded to the current administration pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, we need to respond to the other existential threat, that's the threat of nuclear weapons, as well as bloated military spending. Of course, it's easier for cities to engage in direct action to mitigate climate change, so we need to be creative. We have to remember that there are thousands of military bases in the United States, which have economic ties to local communities, as well as military contractors everywhere. So this idea of just transition that was mentioned earlier also means to be in our thinking. But this year resolutions have been adopted by cities including New Haven, Connecticut, Charlottesville, Virginia, Evanston, Illinois, New London, New Hampshire, and West Hollywood, California, urging Congress to cut military spending and redirect funding to meet human and environmental needs. So let me talk a little bit about Mayors for Peace now and the US Conference of Mayors. I serve as the North American Coordinator of Mayors for Peace, among my other hats. Mayors for Peace was founded in 1982 at the conclusion of the United Nations second special session on disarmament by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to its covenant, it says through close cooperation among cities, Mayors for Peace strives to raise international public awareness regarding the need to abolish nuclear weapons and contributes to the realization of genuine and lasting world peace by working to eliminate starvation and poverty, assist refugees fleeing local conflict, support human rights, protect the environment, and solve the other problems that threaten peaceful coexistence within the human family. Mayors for Peace has grown to include 7,392 cities in 162 countries, representing more than 1 billion people and there are 210 US members. The current president of Mayors for Peace is the Mayor of Hiroshima, the Mayor of Nagasaki is the lead vice president with a total of 28 executive cities around the world, and Mayor Frank County of Des Moines, Iowa is the newest vice president and the lead US mayor. So I'm gonna get into these slides in just a minute, but let me tell you about the US Conference of Mayors. The US Conference of Mayors is the national non-partisan association of America's cities with populations over 30,000. There are 1,408 such cities and resolutions adopted at annual June meetings become official US Conference of Mayors policy. Increasingly strong resolutions submitted by Mayors for Peace members have been adopted by the US Conference of Mayors for 12 consecutive years now. So if you wanna move to the next slide. So this June, June 26th, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a Mayors for Peace resolution entitled calling on President Trump to lower nuclear tensions, prioritize diplomacy and redirect nuclear weapons spending to meet human needs and address environmental challenges. The conference also adopted two additional resolutions calling for reversal of military spending to meet the needs of cities. And the link up here will take you to a press release which provides a lot of context and details as well as links to the texts of all of the resolutions and the sponsors of the resolutions. In the case of the US Conference of Mayors resolution there were 20 co-sponsors. So I'd just like to take you through a few of the highlights of the resolution. Could I have the next slide please? So these are just some of the provisions of this resolution which are talking about the, no, could I back please? Which are talking about the really urgent, no, next one, the really dire dangers we are facing, growing dangers from nuclear weapons and the growing dangers of wars among nuclear armed powers. So it cites the bulletin of the atomic scientists which has moved the hands of its students at clock to two and a half minutes to midnight, citing the twin existential threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change. This is a very important quote here. This is an unprecedented moment in human history. The world has never faced so many nuclear flashpoints simultaneously from NATO Russia relations to the Korean Peninsula to South Asia and the South China Sea and Taiwan. All of the nuclear armed states are tangled up in conflicts and crises that could catastrophically escalate at any moment. And this is part and parcel of our anti-war work. Okay, next slide. So this gives us a little bit more factual basis, nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons, most in order of magnitude more powerful than the U.S. atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 90% held by the United States and Russia continue to pose an intolerable threat to humanity in the biosphere. And then a recognition that no national or international response capacity exists that would adequately respond to the human suffering and humanitarian harm that would result from a nuclear weapon explosion in a populated area. And will probably never exist. And that the United States and all of the other nuclear armed states are engaged in programs to modernize the bombs, warheads and delivery systems, including in some cases giving them vastly improved targeting capability. So the next slide. Very important. On this 50th anniversary of Kings Beyond Vietnam speech, the resolution recalls King's quote, that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense and on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. The next slide. We haven't talked about nuclear weapons spending yet. So let me just tell you, we're talking about a lot of money. President Trump entered office with the United States to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads to submarines, missiles and bombers to deliver them and the infrastructure to sustain the nuclear enterprise indefinitely. And the second point, I'll just summarize to say that the request for just the warheads not clean delivery systems is 10.8% higher than the fiscal year 2017 level. Can you move to the next slide, please? Okay, so this one, I won't read it at all. You can read it yourself, but calling on the US government as an urgent priority to do everything that's powered to lower nuclear tensions, intense diplomatic efforts. This is in spite of the Reshigate controversy. And then welcoming historic negotiations which actually were just completed at the United Nations on a treaty to prohibit the threat for use of nuclear weapons, the possession development maintenance of nuclear weapons, which was adopted by 122 countries and deeply regretting that the US and the other nuclear arms states boycotted the negotiations and then calling on the US to support the ban treaty negotiations as a major step towards negotiation of comprehensive agreement on the achievement of permanent maintenance of a world tree of nuclear weapons. Next slide, this is the one that we've all been waiting for. So, here's the money paragraph and this wraps up, wraps back to the other resolutions, calls on the president and Congress to reverse federal spending priorities and to redirect funds currently allocated to nuclear weapons and unwarranted military spending to restore full funding for community block development grants and the environmental protection agency to create jobs by rebuilding our nation's crumbling infrastructure and to ensure basic human services for all, including education, environmental protection, food assistance, housing and healthcare and then calling on US mayors to join Mayors for Peace and to take action. The next one, next slide. So, the Mayors for Peace resolution also welcomes the resolutions adopted by the cities that I mentioned earlier and it also unanimously adopted two complementary resolutions opposition to military spending sponsored by the mayor of Ithaca, New York and calling for hearings on real city budgets needed and the taxes our cities send to the federal military budget sponsored by the mayor of New Haven. So, I have a few more things to say. I realize I'm running a little bit late here but let me just try to talk about how we can use these resolutions at the local level. Go to the next slide. If people wanna write down the link you can read the resolution. I only barely scratched the surface of it. So, first the Mayors for Peace resolution is designed to be used as an educational tool. So, please use it. Give it to your mayor, your congressional representatives and your local media. Publish it on your website. Use it as a basis for op-eds. Ask your mayor to use it as a basis for town hall meetings. Find out if your mayor is a member of Mayors for Peace and if not sign him or her up. That's very easy, www.mayorsforpeace.org. Work with your city council to adopt resolutions modeled on the recent local city resolutions or draft one commending and affirming the US Conference of Mayors resolution and I can help with that. Another important thing mayors can do is to raise public awareness about how military spending is diverting resources badly needed to address the needs of cities and about the growing dangers and costs of nuclear weapons. One way to do this is to host relevant art exhibits in city halls and other public spaces and I can help with some connections there. And then I wanna talk briefly about divestment. In its 2016 resolution, the US Conference of Mayors commanded the mayor of Cambridge and the Cambridge City Council for voting to divest their $1 billion city pension fund from all companies involved in production of nuclear weapons entities involved in such companies. Subsequently, the Future of Life Institute at MIT, which had worked with Cambridge on its divestment plan prepared a nuclear weapons divestment toolkit for cities which we distributed at the June US Conference of Mayors meeting. It's not available online yet but I can provide you with print copies. Regarding divestment, it bears more thought because we certainly don't wanna be divesting from nuclear weapons and reinvesting fossil fuels. So that presents challenges and opportunities but it offers us an opportunity to make common cause with other issue constituents who such as fossil fuel and pipeline opponents. And in order to build the strong grassroots movement we need from the bottom up, we have to find ways to get out of our issue silos and organize across issues. Now, how to organize at the city level? In many ways, it's similar to lobbying Congress which is what we're gonna hear about next but it does depend in large part on the size of your city. In small to medium cities, you can probably request and get a meeting with your mayor or council members. In large cities, you'll need to cultivate relationships with their key staff people and you might even want to initiate a local petition campaign to ensure your access. One useful tip is that it's helpful to know what the issues of concern are to cities in general and to your city in particular and you can learn a lot by looking at the US Conference of Mayors website. For example, to learn about community block development grants which Bill mentioned which are really important to cities. Finally, it's always helpful to work with people engaged in other issues who may be able to make introductions for you. For example, when recently trying to reach my own mayor to ask her to co-sponsor the recent US Conference of Mayors resolution, I was having no luck getting her to respond. I reached out to colleagues who were working on climate change and sure enough, one of them was able to contact the staff right away, a staff person right away based on their previous interactions and we got the mayor's endorsement right away. So again, I would be happy to consult and work with you on developing a real cities campaign in September. And my contact information is at that link there. So thank you. Thank you so much Jackie. Thank you also for your wisdom and knowledge and all the work that you've done. And yeah, just to let know people that will be sending the webinar recording and the slides, if you have RSVP at bothpink.org slash no 54 billion webinar tool. So if you RSVP too on our website, then you'll receive all the materials and also we'll send some contact information so that you can ask questions, more questions for Jackie and Bill. And yeah, as Bill and Jackie have mentioned, there's that you can use to start organizing locally. And now we have the opportunity to lobby Congress and hopefully make some change for September, but organizing locally will stay. Building coalitions will be very important to show the intersections of all the problems that we're facing right now. So now I'm gonna pass it to Ariel from Code Pink who's gonna talk a little bit more about the opportunity we have now to lobby Congress and how to do that. Hi, so I wanna reiterate that this budget has not passed yet and that our Congress is accountable to us, to constituents. And so we have an opportunity here to oppose this budget. Starting next week, next Monday, Congress will be on recess. And so in home districts, that means that you have a couple of ways to address your representatives in Congress. You can go to test them out or you can go to town halls and you can also request meetings with your Congress members or with their staff. The way to request a meeting would be to go to their website and find the contact information. You would then send an email letting them know that you're a constituent and you would like to request a meeting with them and that you'd like to discuss the proposed budget and specifically the amount of money that's proposed to go towards military spending. We know quite well that Congress is most responsive to in-person visits. Fantastic as well to email your representatives and to make phone calls. And as we get closer to September, we will be asking people to do that to Congress. But we also know that in-person face-to-face really has one of the largest impacts on how Congress votes. And so this is a great opportunity to meet with them in person and to really make your voice heard. And in this case, we're very clearly asking them to vote no on the budget. And through that, we're hoping both to stall the budget and to reduce the amount of money that is allocated towards military spending. So I think that's it for me on that. I'll pass it back to Mariana and we're probably going to open it up for questions. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you, Ariel. Yeah, so now we're gonna open some time and space for questions. So there's a couple of ways you can ask your questions. I'm gonna unmute everyone and this way you can just maybe get on stack or something or you can also write your, if you're joining us through the Zoom conference call then you can just write your question in the chat box and I can read your question. So I'll go ahead and unmute everyone. If you have questions for Bill, if you have questions for Yaki, Ariel, this is a really good time. This is Tony Ludwinko. Go ahead, Tony. Karen Bass is my Congressperson. She's pretty receptive to the arguments against the budget. She's consistently voted against the Trump program but it seems like we're really preaching to the choir unless we put the hard pressure on Congresspeople in marginal districts which could go either way. And I'm wondering if that is part of the targeted targeted approach which is being taken. I mean, I'm in liberal California. It's not probably gonna make any difference to me particularly in Karen Bass's district. There might be some people who are worried about reelection in California who might make a difference. There's some Republicans who are under pressure but it seems to me that the real problem appears to be in those marginal districts in which you've got a real chance to bring some pressure on a Congressperson who is going to vote against the budget. That's all. Thank you for your question, Tony. Anyone want to answer Tony's question? I can take that. So we're looking for a momentum here. We would love to have a champion in Congress and some of those marginal members to oppose the budget but at the same time, we build that momentum by getting members of Congress to speak out more against the budget. It was quite shocking to have Trump already proposing 54 billion and then having the Senate and the House say that itself was not enough. And so we need all opposition to the budget and I think some of the ways that we sometimes see momentum in Congress is it can gather from all directions at the same time. So I would say it's always important even if you're in a very progressive area and you're a member of Congress that's likely to vote against the budget still to meet with them, to advocate, to oppose the budget, come a city for peace, pass a city resolution, all of that is part of the momentum that we need. Okay. But let me add something. I mean, I think one of the challenges we face is to cross the bridge to meet halfway with the people who are going to be most directly who are being most directly impacted. And it's been hard to do. There's still a lot of resistance to taking on militarism. And one of the modest, more successful efforts I think has been led by the Coalition on Human Needs which I draw your attention to which is a national organization that is coming from the other side but which has put together several very strong letters to Congress and gotten signatures from something like 1,500 organizations. And they don't really go into military spending in depth but they do identify it right up front as a source of funding to meet human needs. So I think we need to be a lot more, we need a lot more thought and creativity in how to make common cause with those folks who should be on our side. But again, I wanna mention, I glossed over this, we are up against a system that is embedded all over the country. And so we talk a lot about foreign bases in the peace movement. We don't talk much about the domestic bases. I think there are 6,000 of them in the United States and also all of the military contractors. And as you probably know, just about every weapon system that is authorized and you paid for is divided up into like 38 different pieces that are produced in 38 different states. So it's really, I mean, Bill can elaborate on this very well but we have to be strategic and really try to think about new ways to address these two points. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Ready for the next question? I'll just read one comment from Michael in Oakland. It says, even some of the most progressive members of Congress like Barbara Lee have brought into the Cold War, Russia bashing that works at cross purposes to their stated objective of moving away from military confrontationalism. Yeah, dramatic resolution of international disputes. So meetings with even the best MOC are even worthwhile if you don't have much otheratory behavior. Thank you, Michael. Who had another question? I did, this is David. Hi, David. When the presentation came up regarding contacting our Congress members, the comment was made that Congress members are accountable to the constituents. It seems as though that's primarily only true at election time. And otherwise, we don't quite get the attention that I think we would deserve but election time, they definitely pay attention. And then you would propose contacting them in person as always best, but also emails and phone calls. And my question was, I was wondering, can Code Pink as an organization do pledges at election time? Because at election time, they're really busy, even those that are in more progressive districts, they're still active, they're meeting with constituents, they're attending events. And that's a great opportunity to get them to commit to less spending on nukes or finding ways to move towards a peace economy. And really, it puts them on the spot. It's election time, they're meeting with lots of constituents, they get in the news cycle. And it seems like a huge opportunity to me to get their commitment and get their signature when they're meeting with constituents and when they know that if they don't, then it's a great opportunity to go ask their challengers if they'd like to sign the petition, especially in the primary season in spring next year. What do you think? I'll respond to that. Sure, I think that election time is definitely when Congress pays the most attention and is the most accountable. However, members of Congress are always thinking of their reelection bids at all times. So this is part of what happens when they're in home districts is they are thinking ahead towards election time. And this is always a question to them of how do you represent me? I think election bids are a great idea and that's something that we can look into. And what about the pledges? Can we actually bring to them, the same as any other petition that we're signing ourselves and forwarding to them, ask them to pledge to take action specifically on the action that we'd like done. I think that's definitely a possibility that we can look into is pledges for them. I know a few years back Amnesty International did it big time. They hit every single congressional office and the impact was fantastic. They either signed and they didn't and then they published the results and those that didn't sign were really embarrassed to not join the pledge. It was should we put a naval blockade around Iran or not and those that didn't sign were hugely embarrassed. Yeah, we'll look into that. That sounds like a great idea. Thank you. Thank you, David. And yeah, we're always looking for new ideas and creative ideas to target our representatives. So please also, if you have other ideas, keep emailing us or contacting us. Are there any other questions or comments? What's your name that's on Jodi Evans screen? Well, this is Mariana Mendoza. Hi, Mariana. I think as well. So there's another question in the chat box. It's from, I think, Robin. It says, I attended the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability session in Washington DC in May. A staffer in Bernie's office said that highly radioactive nuclear waste will be transported from Chalk Reef Canada to Savannah River. Possibility through our Highway 89. How can we find more information about this transportation of nuclear waste? Anybody has the answer for that? Yeah. I'm looking up a website right now. Yeah, but if you talk to the New Mexico-based ANA groups, they'll have the information. Yeah, NukeWatch New Mexico. Yeah. If you just Google it, you'll get them. But they're on top of that kind of stuff. Wow, thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? It was Tony Kenya. Michael in Oakland is saying that Robin can make a request to your member of Congress and a FOIA request to the Department of Energy. I don't know if I can speak if I'm in a queue. Sure. You hear me? Yeah, this is Paula. Hi, Bob. Hi. One way I'm thinking and getting the narrative if we start sending postcards to our Congress, people saying I want the $30 billion to be spent on such and such, or I want 54% of my taxes to be spent on such and such. So we're talking less in the know and more in this is what I want since we seem to have all this extra money to spend. This is what I would like it to be spent on. Thank you, Paula. That's a really good question. So I want to encourage people to go to the National Priorities website and they have a tool that you can use to look at trade-offs in your own specific community and how that money's being spent and how you want it to be spent. And this is a great tool in preparation for meeting with your representatives in Congress. And that's a National Priorities website. I can put the link in the chat box. Thank you, Ariel. Anybody else would like to respond to that question? Ask your question. A couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, there was an attempt to have a, what do we call it, new priorities network. Where we were discussing these exact things before the crisis was so obviously critical. And it was very difficult. It didn't catch on the way we had hoped it would. But there were some town hall meetings with members of Congress where a really serious attempt was made to bring, get people in the community to testify about their personal situations and how they were being impacted by federal budget cuts, federal budget priorities. And it seems to me that that's an important part of really getting buy-in from the local community because sometimes the military questions are seem abstract. Whereas if a person's food stamps are being cut, that's very concrete. So I, but I would like that again, the way this happened, it all got completely pulled out of the context of military spending. And so if we were to do that, go that route again, I would wanna work really hard to make a real connection so that people there could understand what was happening. Thank you, Jackie. Yeah, I also encourage you to go to National Priorities Projects website because there you can see how much money could be invested in projects like healthcare or other services that are needed. And you can as well use that data to advocate for those services in your community. Are there any other questions or comments? There was a note on the chat about whether I had a PowerPoint of my talk. I'm gonna write it up on medium and as a short piece and I'll send a link that can go out to the folks. Excellent. Wonderful, thank you, Bill. And again, we'll be sending the recording of the webinar and also the PowerPoint slides. Other questions or comments? Let's get to work. Let's get to work. That's right, Tony. So thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. As all the speakers said, it's crucial that we make our voice heard in our communities and take advantage of all the tools and all that is out there to advocate for rights and also create the spaces to imagine what could be possible. Because sometimes we're all just reacting to the horrible things that are happening, but it's also important that we think about what do we want and what do we need in our communities and how do we imagine a world without war and violence. So thank you again and hopefully we'll keep creating spaces like these to share more knowledge and bring questions and ideas to collectively create a better world. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Bye. That was a live chat from people all over the country that I just participated in.