 is going to guide us through this hour and we're so so appreciative of her efforts as well. It's a very exciting lineup tonight from COP26 to the Arctic. Our special guests include Bernadette DeMantef of the Gwichian Nation in Alaska, Professor Nita Crawford of Boston University and the Cost War Project and our own co-pink co-founder Jodi Evans who like me to just return from Glasgow, Scotland. Before we go to our special guests, however, we're going to review a couple of norms. Yeah. Ania, will you do us the honors? Absolutely. Well, here we go. I think Ania was pulled away. Okay, so just some simple norms. We noticed that in the past most people are very respectful. We appreciate that but there are times when people get off track in the chat and we just want to keep us all focused. So please show respect at all times to everyone involved. We do encourage healthy debate, but disagree agreeably. Any disrespect will not be tolerated. So let's try to stay on topic and organize for peace and justice. Yes. So before we go to our special guests, we're going to hear a few updates. I first want to just share that word came in tonight that the Senate will be voting on this record high $778 billion military budget this week. So please appeal to your U.S. senators to vote no on the NDA and that will be part of our action later tonight for our Capitol Calling Party to stay with us for that. For another update, let's go to Leo Flores, one of our Code Pink Latin American coordinators. What's happening in Cuba, Leo? Thanks so much, Marcia. I'm a big fan of Code Pink Congress, let's go now. So in Cuba, there was a lot of buildup to November 15th just yesterday for a couple of reasons. On the positive side, children went back to school as Cuba finalized its vaccine campaign, including vaccinating children as young as age two. And the country opened back up to tourism, which should significantly help the economic crisis. On the negative side, the U.S. had been promoting protests for November 15th for months to try to kind of reign on this parade. The White House, the State Department, several members of Congress, especially what's his name, Marco Rubio, had threatened the Cuban government over these protests. And then yesterday, a bunch of members of Congress had a press conference and a photo op in front of the Capitol to kind of tap the protests. But as it turns out, nobody in Cuba showed up to protest. And that's, you know, a very slight exaggeration. There were basically no protests in Cuba yesterday. Medea Benjamin published a really lovely article that I encourage folks to read. I'll put it in the chat in a bit. And she's in Cuba right now because Code Pink, along with Fuentes de Amor and the People's Forum, sent a plane full of 18,000 pounds of food as a gesture of solidarity from the people of the U.S. And, you know, she spoke to Cubans on the streets, even some who participated in the July 11th protests, and they said that they aren't interested in overthrowing their government, but they do want conditions to improve. And that's something that Biden could deliver on immediately. He could end the 243 sanctions imposed by the Trump administration with one signature, and that includes limits on remittances and travel. And right now, we're working on Congress, getting Congress or members of Congress to sign a letter to Biden to engage with rather than confront Cuba. And I'll also put that link in the chat. Thanks, Marcy. Thank you so much. Very informatively. Yeah, nothing like touting a protest that no one attends. All right, let's go to Olivia DiNucci. She's another Code Pink organizer. And Olivia's going to tell us about the citizen's filibuster. What is that, Olivia? Hey, everyone. Olivia here based in D.C. on Scottaway land. Yeah, we just got off of a record breaking or, yeah, filibuster to protest the filibuster, the People's filibuster outside of Mitch McConnell's house yesterday. There are over 50 folks who spoke during it, musicians, artists, performers, and speakers. Code Pink was part of that to really uplift the intersections of the types of policies that Congress votes on or blocks that affect our neighbors, and especially frontline Black, Brown, poor, low income indigenous communities here, but also in other parts of the world. So we were maybe making those connections between the high cost of our military budget and our just hypocrisy in our priorities. It was a really great way to connect with D.C. organizers here and then also kind of leverage the stuff that's happening just two streets away from Mitch McConnell's house at the Capitol. There are going to be sit-ins throughout the week for some young activists wanting to get billback better passed. And then also because the NDA is voted on tomorrow, we will have our presence there as well, making those connections between, you know, endless money for war, more money that was, you know, this is the most, as we all know, the most expensive NDA and yet the billback better budget continues to be cut down. So continuing to connect those dots and just like build community with people despite what we're up against. And we are up against a lot, but we so appreciate all of your activism and organizing to push back on the filibuster that prevents us from making a lot of very important changes. All right, let's go to Nadia Ahmed. Nadia is a good friend, author, attorney, law professor, and environmental justice advocate. She is an associate professor at Barry University School of Law, a visiting associate professor at Yale Law School. And Nadia, it's our honor to have you with us tonight to tell us about UN Human Rights Council and its resolution for a right to a healthy environment. Thank you so much, Marcy. So I wanted to tell you about the UN Human Rights Council when it had passed last month, the right to a healthy environment. This is part of work that they've been doing for over two decades to get this resolution passed in the Human Rights Council. And the support for it included 15 different UN agencies, including the UN Development Program and the World Health Organization, 50 UN Rights Council special repertoires and more than 1,300 NGOs, more than 50 businesses and more than 100,000 children, as well as the UN Commissioner for Human Rights and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. When the resolution was adopted with the Human Rights Council, it recognized the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right. And so as this resolution was adopted, it now goes before the UN General Assembly. The United States was not actually a member country of the Human Rights Council at the time the vote was made, but spoke in opposition to it. Right now, we're doing work to get support for the US to back this human right to a healthy environment. We've gotten a letter from the American Bar Association, which is the largest voluntary bar of lawyers and legal professionals, which consists of over 400,000 attorneys to write a letter in support of it. So we're also looking for additional support. If anybody can help us, we would be very grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And Nadia, if you want to write in the chat the type of support you're looking for, I'm sure people would want to help you support what you're doing. All right, terrific. All right, let's go to our special guests. We are so honored and thrilled to have with us tonight, Bernadette Dimentith. Bernadette is from Fort Yukon, Alaska. She is the Executive Director of the Gwich and Steering Committee representing an indigenous nation formed in 1988 to protect their sacred lands in the Arctic refuge. As Executive Director, Bernadette coordinates the activities of the Gwich and Steering Committee to protect the porcupine, caribou herd, calving grounds, their sacred land, and the Gwich and Way of Life. Bernadette is a seasoned speaker, organizer, and leader who educates and informs all audiences about the critical need to protect not her homeland, not just from the oil drilling, which we hear a lot about the threat, but also from the impacts of the climate crisis. In addition to all that, Bernadette is the mother of five children and grandmother of six beautiful grandchildren. She takes her position as Executive Director seriously and says it has transformed her life to better serve her people. Bernadette views her role as sacred to pass down her knowledge of the land as she continues to learn from elders and carry this knowledge closely. Welcome, Bernadette Dimentith to Code King Congress. Thank you for having me. I'd just like to recognize that I'm on the lower Tanana Diney people's ancestral homelands. I'm honored to be here. I kind of was just busy. It's been a chaotic day for me, but I work for the Gwich and Staring Committee off and on, but as Gwich and People, this does not work for us. Protecting this area is very personal. Well, let me back up. The first gathering that was held in over 150 years was in 1988, and it was called upon by two Gwich-in elders from the Vantet Gwich-in people of the lakes. And they called upon it because of the threat to the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Everyone else knows it as the Arctic Refuge and or, but to us, it's called Ijikwetsan Bondi Gautlit, the sacred place where life begins. And we didn't only start protecting this area 30 years ago, we've always protected it. It is so sacred to us that we do not step quick there. When this is the area, our creation story tells us that there was a time we were able to communicate with the caribou and we made a vow to protect each other. And for thousands of years, for over 40,000 years, we migrated alongside the caribou, always falling short from entering into the calving grounds. This is their safety net. This is where they've been going for millions of years. And right now, since Alaska is completely open in the northern part of oil and gas development, there's nowhere else for them to go. There's birds from seven different continents that migrate there, even the whales. They go all the way around and come back to give birth. The food that grows there at that exact precise time of year is very critical for the mother and calf to regain their health. And right now, climate change is impacting Alaska two times, almost three times faster than the rest of the world. And we don't only feel attacked by our government, our former, the former administration, but we also feel attacked by climate change. We literally have 33 coastal communities eroding into the ocean. We have thousands of dead fish in our rivers and our lakes. It was unbelievable. Then there is dead birds literally falling from the sky from starvation. And we have an elected leadership that refuses to acknowledge any of that. This is Betty in the background. Yeah, but the perky pine caribou herd is very healthy in numbers, and they always bring that up. They're healthy in numbers, but that's because I feel it's because we've been protecting such a sensitive place for them. Alaska is not an oil state. Alaska is an oil-dependent state, but there's more to my home than just oil. And I'm really tired of people always using that. We had record break in fires. I couldn't come out of my home for three days. We were surrounded by fire and only by the grace of Creator that we're still, everybody stayed safe, but I couldn't even see 50 feet in front of me. It was, these last few years has been really scary. So we have ticks, something that I never even knew existed until like two years ago. I mean, you guys know what they're others is little nasty little critters that get on your animals. We have those. We've never had those before. And so when this happens, a lot of our lakes are drying up and our rivers, I went out hunting and I noticed that a lot of our, the Yukon River is just the trees are just falling in. And I didn't even recognize. I didn't even recognize the way home. So, you know, we're not asking for anything. We're just simply asking to be left alone to continue to live and thrive off the land that Creator blessed us with. We're not asking for jobs, our offices, our schools. We want to continue to live. It may be a harder way. I know a lot of people might find that hard to believe that we want to go out, our grocery store is our land. But it's the way we want to live. It's, it's the way we've always survived. And that's our survival. We are interconnected to our land, to our water and to our animals. And we will stand up to anyone who seeks to destroy or disturb that, especially the sacred Arctic refuge, the coastal plain. It's going to, it's going to affect all of us. You know, Alaska may be way up here, but what happens up here will happen where you are. And I know everyone is ground zero all over. And it's heartbreaking to see, you know, all across the country, all across the world, just all the negative impacts that are happening to all of our people. But, you know, our people are always the forefront of almost every devastation. And it's hard to try to explain to people that will never understand our way of life that we matter. And that, for instance, I went to New York, and that's like concrete, just nothing but concrete. And I have to have dirt. I have to have land. I have to have trees. I, that's like therapy for me. And, you know, and I respect that they want to live there. And I think that we deserve that same respect. So in 2017, Trump's administration opened our sacred lands to oil and gas development. And, you know, it was, it was hard to come back and, you know, tell all my people that, you know, we thought we were going to get protected by Obama. But instead, I had to come back and tell them, get ready, we have to battle ahead of us. And so it's been really rough. It's been a really rough four years. I'm really grateful that we have someone in there that has been stating from the very beginning that he wants the Artic Refuge protected. This is not just about environmental. This is about our human rights. I'm not an activist and I'm not an environmentalist. I'm a mother. I'm a grandmother. And I didn't come looking for a fight. I didn't, I'm just standing up for what is rightfully our way of life. And, you know, I'm grateful that we have an administration that is actually respecting, you know, some of our ways that we, but there's still, this is not just which in issue. This is an everybody issue. Climate change, don't care what color you are, don't care if you're black, white, brown, don't care if you're rich or poor. We are all going to be negatively impacted. And it's time that we start sticking our differences aside and come together and start working together, especially if we love our children. We need to, we need to do better. And if we don't have a government that supports that, then we need to do it together as we're stronger together. I just want to, you know, share that every two years the Gwich'in Nation, it's, it's consists of Alaska and Canada. Are they stuck the border right in the middle of our homelands? We come together to reaffirm our commitment to protect the Gwich'in when I got it. And we haven't had that because of the COVID that's been passing around. And it's impacting a lot of our communities right now up here. We have a really high rate of COVID patients. And I just, it's hard. It's hard to see the world as it is now. And wondering if it's going to stay like this for, you know, the rest of the time, because time of change ain't slowing down. You can't stop it. I mean, we can do stuff to prevent it, to, you know, slow it down, prepare our children, but it's here. And it's time we accept that. I'm a strong believer in the power of prayer. I just hope that we can find a way to unite and, you know, save Mother Earth, save what we have left where, yeah. Anyways, I hope I covered everything. I, thank you so much, Bernadette. It's so moving to listen to you. And, you know, we, like you said, we're all in this together. I just had a couple of questions. And I don't, I don't know what your schedule is tonight. Maybe you can, I hope you can stay with us. Others have more questions after we hear from the other speakers. But, you know, I know that Biden imposed through executive order a temporary moratorium on oil and gas, drilling in the Arctic. Do you find that your senators, your U.S. senators from Alaska are advocates for you as Republicans? How does that work? Absolutely not. They do not interact with the indigenous people up there. When the voting comes around, they do. I'm just being honest. I'm trying to choose my words carefully, so I don't not be disrespectful in any way. You know, our elders told us to three directions. It's go out and tell the world we are here to work in a good way and not to compromise our position. So that do it in a good way is very simple sentence, but putting you up against so much dishonesty and misleading statements from our own elected leadership. It's not always easy, but I try. They have been Murkowski's father, who was in her seat prior to her being senator. He always tried to have it opened. This is the like the last remaining 5% up here. You know, this is the rest of on this side of Alaska is open and all the caribou and herds that are in that area have declined. One of them have declined 57% since 2010. They can't tell us that our food security and the way of life will not be impacted, not clearly see different. So we have been up against our own administration Alaska administration going down having to ask other senators for help because ours refused to listen. Many challenges ahead. Thank you so much, Bernadette. Great honor to have you with us tonight. Thank you for having me. Okay, our next guest is Professor Nita Crawford. Hania, if you're here with us, please. Yeah, absolutely. And again, thank you so much for inspiring us, Bernadette, with your words of wisdom. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce Professor Nita Crawford, who is a professor and chair of political science at Boston University and co-director of the Costa War Project, which has documented the impact of militarism on climate. Professor Crawford is the author of accountability for killing, moral responsibility for collateral damage in America's post 9-11 wars, and she is also the author of two books, Soviet military aircraft and argument and change in world politics named best book in international history of politics by the American political science association. Professor Crawford has served on the governing board of academic council of the United Nations system and on the governing council of the American political science association. It's a pleasure to have you here today, Professor. Please take it away. Hey, thank you. I'm happy to be with you. I'll just say that I have another book called accountability for killing, looking at collateral damage in America's post 9-11 wars. Uh, which started me on another path looking at the treatment of civilians in all US wars from the colonial era to the present. Um, you know, I just want to say maybe three things today about my current project on military emissions and what I found at COP. First of all, I went to the conference of the parties to meet with some people who are working on what was called the military emissions gap by this group. And they started a website to try to understand and explain to people the gap between the voluntary reporting of military greenhouse gas emissions and what we really need to know, which is the total emissions, the entire military boot print of greenhouse gas emissions. So they've got this website. You can find it by googling the military emissions gap or military emissions.org. And it's a good start. I've also myself calculated US military emissions and tried to highlight the Department of Energy statement about those emissions. And so what I want to do is just sort of give an overview of US military emissions and say what maybe what this means. Okay, so in 2020, the United States military emitted 51 million metric tons in scope one and scope two that is direct emissions themselves, or by purchasing power from another entity like a local power company. So that's 51 million metric tons, which is greater than the emissions of many countries in the world. Right. And it is the United States military, the largest energy consumer in the United States, the single largest energy consumer. It is the single largest fuel user fossil fuel user in the United States. And in fact, I think in the world. Now, what does that mean? It means that it's a place that's ripe for reduction. And I think that the military will tell you that they've made great progress in reducing their emissions. And in fact, they have reduced their emissions by about 50% since 1991. So going from about 109 million metric tons annually in 1991 to about 51 million metric tons today. So that's that's amazing. And it's wonderful. And they should be lauded for all that progress. Now that occurred in the context of the end of the Cold War, where many military bases were closed. There were fewer exercises. And at the same time, the military was getting off coal, moving away from coal. Of course, there's still the only federal agency that burns coal, but that's another matter. And now they're basically trying to convince us that they're a lean green fighting machine that what they're going to do is continue to be a lean green fighting machine. And you don't have to really rethink the missions of the military. In other words, the fact that we spent about a quarter of our fuel and all about 30% of emissions, I'm estimating, in central command need not, they would argue, be rethought because the United States is using less fuel. Overall, in transitioning, no, we still need to be there. And in fact, we need to increase our presence in Asia, pivoting, swerving, swiveling, moving to defend US interests in Asia and the Pacific. So all of what it does is vital. Okay, so that's the first thing that they're doing. They're saying that they're virtuous in the sense that they're reducing. And others are arguing that, in fact, the United States military should be a leader in innovation. And it is a leader in innovation, and that we should depend on them. I think Michael Clare makes this argument. And so does Bill McKibbin, to think through problems that people are unwilling to think through. Okay. The second part of this is the argument that climate change caused conflict and war is coming to a neighborhood near you. And this is the argument that I'm just phrasing it very bluntly because I only have a few minutes left here, that because people will be in great distress, there'll be massive migration, that there'll be conflict over resources that may escalate into war, we should be prepared for climate change caused conflict escalating. And so therefore we have to prepare the walls, rely on the moats, the Atlantic and the Pacific as our moats, pull up the drawbridge and prepare to defend the United States. And in fact, there's no reason to decrease the military budget. In fact, the need is to increase efforts in Homeland Security. So this is the so-called lifeboat approach. You pair that with the militaries doing great, being a lean green fighting machine. We're going to raise the drawbridge. What you get is then a military focused on adaptation rather than mitigation. In other words, the idea is that the United States needs to have a military that is prepared to deal with the threats to its own infrastructure and missions caused by climate change, but not so much focused on reducing its emissions. And then I want to make, I think, a final point here. What I'm seeing is attention in the peace movement. And even among colleagues that I've known for decades, people are arguing that climate change is a national security issue. And it's a security threat. And in arguing that, I think we're very close to validating arguments that will lead to increased budgets and fear, which is the great motivator for much of what we do. So we were using the military to validate, some of us were using it to validate our concerns about climate change. But now they're using climate change to validate, promote, legitimize the argument that they're the best things since sliced bread and they're going to help us through all of our troubles. So I just wanted to raise the issue that I'm having conversations with the colleagues I've known for a long time and suggesting we really ought to move away from that argument and think about instead problematizing the narrative that the instability, the immiseration, that is occurring because of climate change will necessarily or likely lead to conflict and the argument that was made in the national intelligence estimate last month and in the Department of DOD briefings that all of this is likely to be the instability that will be associated with climate change is likely to be taken advantage of by our, quote, adversaries. Russia and China needs to be countered, nipped in the bud. It's all part of a sort of narrative that I think is distinctly unhelpful. I think I should stop there. Thank you, Professor Anita Crawford. Yes, you know, earlier on Code Pink Congress we had a representative from 350.org who was warning us also about the terminology calling this a national security issue of climate and just even the word climate emergency. I mean, it is an emergency, but with that word emergency comes all sorts of thinking about further militarization. So I'm glad that you brought that up. I'm sure we'll explore that more during the Q&A. So thank you. And now we're going to turn to Code Pink co-founder Jody Evans, who served in California Governor Jerry Brown's cabinet when he was in charge in California. And she led and worked on efforts to promote wind and solar energy. Jody has led citizen diplomacy for decades, delegations to Iran. Because of Strip, Afghanistan, she's published two books, one called titled Stop the Next War Now, Effective Responses to Terrorism and Twilight of Empire. Jody Evans is a busy woman. She serves on several boards, including Bioneers Institute for Policy Studies, Rainforest Action Network, and Drug Policy Alliance. She and Code Pink's Nancy Mancias, together with Susie Gilbert in Europe, traveled to Glasgow, Scotland, where they joined with thousands of other activists demanding climate justice for the global south. And a focus on the link between militarism and climate chaos. Welcome, Jody. We want to hear all about your trip. Thanks, Marcy. Hi, everybody. Great to see you all this week. So I'm coming from the occupied lands of the Tongva people. And first I want to say what a rock star Anita is. We rely on her deep research and our work to cut the Pentagon in war. But she's also fantastic in the streets. She joined us all day Friday at the youth march after a night of no sleep coming to Glasgow and the next day at the people's march. And a great photos of her carrying our war is not green banners. So thank you for that. And then just a deep thank you to Bernadette for how you offer your life to protect land and life and for your call to action and sharing your heart and wisdom that was deep and beautiful. And just reminds me of like one of the most important things that caught 26 was that, you know, we in the global north, we're talking about a future and we're doing this for a future. But this is now and we felt that in Bernadette's story. And so for most people, it's not something that's coming. It's something that they're experiencing now. And, you know, as we see it could pink, it's the war economy, the extractive, oppressive economy. And, and those were the people inside the blue zone in cop. I've been attending cops before there was a cop way back to the earth summit in Rio in 1992, which led to the forming of cop. And so in the arc of history change is happening. And it's important we feel these victories in the face of just absolute failure cop 26 is a failure. It failed to value life on the planet and decided for greed and profits and corporations, it failed to hold the north responsible for all its consumption and fossil fuel usage that the people of the global south are already paying for with their lives. But a victory was the potent power of the indigenous voices telling their stories and getting inside and making those in the blue zone really uncomfortable. The voices from the global south were loud, beautiful, clear and brilliant, both inside and outside. And that's even with so many of them being kept out of Glasgow because of the vaccine apartheid. You know, another part of all this greed. Another victory was the people's tribunal, which was really powerful and beautiful. And you can all put the link when I'm done talking. But it delivered its verdict of guilty and on all the charges and it called for cop to disband its current form and be ring constituted from the ground up as a means of redress that it had formed as an intimate partnership with the very corporations that have created the climate crisis and it had refused to democratize the process to listen to those on the front lines who bear the brunt of the crisis. You know, one of the things that was really distressing is I did get inside the green zone. And all you heard were corporations pronouncing that only corporations could solve this problem. So you just the stupidity of the corporations continues and it was on steroids there. One of the testifiers that the people's tribunal was Mitzi Jonel Tana, young Filipino climate activist with Fridays for Future. And she said the youth felt a strong sense of betrayal from the world leaders as they go on with their empty promises and lies. Enough is enough. She said the summit so far has done nothing but greenwashing. And the tribunal did call for the trillions of dollars in tax havens to be expropriated to fund the climate transition. Another victory is that for years it could pink. We have been working to get emissions from military addressed. In Paris, we were fused all platforms even on the outside. But in Glasgow, we had an entire day dedicated to the emissions and we always had a designated place in the marches. And by the way, Marcy, it wasn't thousands I was in the streets with, it was hundreds of, it was at least 100,000 if not more. We had at least one panel every day and the media picking up our story and sharing it. Mida was on democracy now. So I would say that's a huge movement in the last five years and it's all of us raising our voices. And we got to see the fruits of our teachings because then other people and other conversations were bringing it into their panels. And so it just started to move wildfire through the communities. As we passed out our wars, not green stickers in the marches and rallies asking people if they knew that militarism was the greatest industrial polluter. Almost everyone said no, but they were happy to learn and they took the sticker to remind them to learn more and stop the military blueprint was trending for days. And why a boot print and not a footprint? Because inside the blue zone, they were talking about footprints. But kind of as Mida was saying, it's a boot print because it's not just the use of fossil fuels by the military. It's all the ways that the military destroys and causes climate change. It's layered and it's many. And so we call it the boot print. Also Abby Martin, our friend at Code Pink is making a film about the cost of war to the planet. And she was able to get inside the blue zone and do interviews. But best of all, she was able to ask questions at the press conferences of both Democratic governors and Nancy Pelosi and her panel of members of Congress, who which basically exposed them as ignorant on the issue. And AOC was then able to take the other side, say she knew about it, and that the military did need to be measured and took responsibility to teach her fellow members of Congress. So our team member Nancy Pelosi Nancy, not not policy. She would kill me up that I connected the two man see us. She's been running our black rock campaign. And for four years, she's been working on really educating the climate justice movement about the cost of war, and has laid the ground work for this inclusion in Glasgow. And Nancy was on all the organizing calls. So she organized a press conference for Thursday. That was the day dedicated to militarism. She'll build a coalition for huge March to be a the UK's largest weapons manufacturer, which included some of those amazing Samba drummers, I think I like 50 Samba drummers who are drumming all the way, really inspiring. We went for miles down streets of Glasgow until we shut down the front of the AI and had a rally. And then it was followed by a teaching that Nancy facilitated that began in steps, where Sheila Biotta from Micronesia climate change action in the Mariana Islands opened with a blow on her conch shell, followed by activists from all the UK and US anti-war organizations, and ended with an Afghan refugee calling on the needs of the people in Afghanistan. It was interspersed with great music from David Rovex. So it was a beautiful peace rally. And you can read more about our actions at at the Pentagon. And I'll put that in the chat in a minute. So core messages for you to take and make a part of your lives and conversations are one that went across all the organizing outside is that we need structure change, not climate change. And of course, the structure is held up by militarism. So yet another reason that it should be ended. And the understanding that we know the cost of war to the planet, as does the military as Nita was saying, and they they're really gearing up right now for climate change to be the next reason for war, like Nita was saying, this is something we need to be aware of, and, you know, get in the front of. And, you know, one of the other things was is the seriousness of how much money of this militarism is being diverted to arming borders. And that's another place where it's being invested in. So I want to bring up another victory, which is for the last 18 months, our China is not our enemy campaign has been working to raise the alarm about US aggression on China. And instead, we need to call for cooperation on climate change. So just before Glasgow, after much many months of outreach and research and work, we got 31 members of Congress to send a letter to Biden to cooperate with China on climate. And that really helped push so that one of the victories out of COP could be Kerry's announcement about cooperation with China that led to the meeting with Xi and Biden, which was along, you know, something we thought impossible given all this warmongering that Biden's been doing and the arming of Taiwan, etc. If you want to read more about that, follow us at China's Not Our Enemy. And then many of you have been helping pressure against the EGLE Act, and I want you to know it's stalled. So your calls and outreach are part of that victory. The bad part of that is they may still put the Innovation and Competition Act in the end of the DAA, but we're not going to vote for it anyway. The Innovation and Competition Act includes aggression on China in it, which might be hard to do given what, you know, Biden trying to be in cooperation would just expose more of his duplicity because it actually just funds more military training in Taiwan and Hong Kong and more, you know, education in Taiwan and Hong Kong that, you know, inserts US story into both those places. So it's still meddling. And then another victory is that we may cut the Pentagon global. Many of the organizations across the global south that we were talking to want to join in because they say cutting the Pentagon affects them. And so they want to be part of our big tent movement to cut the Pentagon. $22 billion was spent on militarism during the war on terror and 1 billion tons of fossil fuel was used. So that has already caused some 270,000 climate deaths across the globe. Militarism is turbocharging the climate crisis, and we at Code Pink will continue to expose and call for the reduction of the military blueprint as we call for the cutting of the Pentagon. So there's two bills to pay attention to. One is Barber Lee's bill that we've had for a while or cut the Pentagon project is pushing that, and that's to cut the Pentagon by $350 billion. And it's very clear and it's what it should be. And, you know, one of the things that has been mentioned a lot where we can cut emissions is cutting all these bases we have around the globe. And that's definitely part of it. But then with Nita's help, Congresswoman Lee was able to introduce a new piece of legislation on the tail of COP, and that's to demand accountability of the greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S. military. And if this was passed, it would require the U.S. military to monitor, track, and report greenhouse gas emissions from its operations, including combat operations, deployment, drone attacks, weapons productions, and testing and basic construction and functions. And that's a big blueprint, you all. So that would be amazing. So we have to get behind that. And, you know, what we do know is the U.S. military is destroying indigenous lands all around Asia in this aggression towards China. And we have to be able to stop that also. So, you know, no more blah, blah, blah. We need action. And we'll give you lots of ways to engage on that as we continue post-COP26. Thank you so much eloquently. Stated, Jodi Evans, co-founder of Code Pink. You talked about Barbara Lee's latest House Resolution and Jim Rine, a Veterans for Peace, is with us now just to give us a quick update on that, the number of co-sponsors, and so forth. We do ask that you stay. We will have a Q&A, and we want to ask all of our guests, our honored guests, questions and dialogue with them. And then we will go to our action portion, our capital calling party, and we're going to be talking about legislation and asking our senators and our house reps to co-sponsor legislation to protect the land of the Wichan and to co-sponsor Barbara Lee's resolution and to vote no on the NDA with that, Jim Rine, Veterans for Peace. Thank you, Marcy. First, let me say that the resolution that I'm going to be reporting on is designed to or hopefully will impress upon the American people the impact of the U.S. military on our environment and climate change. Now, I want to first do a little correction on what Jody said. This is a sense of the Congress resolution, which is now known as HREZ 767 or expressing the sense of the House of the Representatives that is the duty of the Department of Defense to reduce and overall the overall environmental impact of all military activities and emissions and for other purposes is a resolution. It doesn't really have any legal impact, but as Nita Crawford pointed out to me and some other folks, that there is already the law of the land in the, even though the National Defense Authorization Act has many nasty things in it, in the one for fiscal year 2021, it actually makes it a demand that the Department of Defense has to report its emissions. So this resolution is sort of in a supporting role for that. Now, how did this resolution come about? Well, in the spring of 2021, it began as a combined project of Veterans for Peace and the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project in Code Pink, with action items largely derived from the conflict and environment observatory, otherwise known as COPS. In July of this year, we met with Robert, Representative Barbara Lee's staff, and we asked if she would be the lead sponsor, and she soon agreed thereafter. Now, after soliciting numerous national peace and environmental organizations to endorse this resolution, largely due to the efforts of Cindy Peister and Marcy, and after improvements suggested by Nita Crawford, Representative Lee's office agreed to introduce this resolution, which she did in late October after a dear colleague letter was distributed to get original co-sponsors. The resolution was introduced on the third with 26 original co-sponsors. As of today, there are five more. I'm thinking maybe, so that's a total of 31 with the inclusion of the addition of Representative Lee. Hopefully, this is the result of folks calling in. We had over three people call their members of Congress to ask them to be co-sponsors, and now there's also a campaign just starting to get a lead sponsor in the Senate, so we can go through this whole thing again. So that's essentially where we're at right now, and I'll put a link in the chat to get to where you can read the resolution, but also to sign up to ask your member of Congress if they have not already become a co-sponsor to become one. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. I think one of the strengths of this resolution is that it asks for accountability on all military operations and breaks them down on bases, as Jody mentioned, and proxy wars, drone attacks, troop deployment, so it forces people to look at what we're doing. I wanted to properly introduce Jim now that he's already spoken. He's an adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental Science. He's a retired research geologist. He teaches geology at Wayne State University. He's a member, as he mentioned, of the climate crisis and militarism project. He's a Vietnam-era vet who joined Veterans for Peace in 2005 while living in Houston, Texas, and prior to returning to his hometown of Detroit in 2016. He spearheaded BFP's work with Congresswoman Barber Lee's office, as you just heard him explain. So thank you so much, Jim, for that. Now I want to give our participants some time. Hania and I will be looking at the chat, and Shay is helping us grab some of the questions from the chat. For our honored guests, Bernadette Nantef in Fort Yukon, Alaska, on the Indigenous Gwich'in Nation and the challenges they face with the climate crisis, Professor Nita Crawford of Boston University, Jodi Evans, co-founder of Code Pink. So I'd like to start off. I'll ask the first question, then we'll take some questions from the chat. Bernadette, can you share with us any of the tactics or approaches, strategies that the Gwich'in Nation has adopted to advance your concerns about protecting your ancestral lands? Yeah. We actually went to banks in New York. We went there and many of them vowed not to fund any Arctic refuge activity. We also went to oil and gas company shareholder meetings, which was a little uncomfortable, but you have to have the hard conversations. We also held our very first Arctic Indigenous Climate Summit in Fort Yukon two years ago, and one of our elders from Canada came down on a boat. It's like a 12-hour boat ride. He told us, enough with the gathering, enough with the meetings, it's time to start getting active. His name is Stephen Frost, and he said that it's time that we start doing something, as meetings are not going to stop the climate change. Just sharing our story and sharing what we're going through, I believe that your voice is one of the most powerful tools that you have that you have to use it. We're not giving up. It's not an option for us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Question and honey, I jump in if you want. Shae, jump in. Question here. Can you comment? I think this is to Nita on PFA's chemicals which leak into soil and water, especially near the military bases. They are called forever chemicals. No, because I don't know anything about it. Okay, all right. I'm sorry. No worries. I really am. I'm all greenhouse gases all the time. Okay. In terms of the military, which elements of the military are the worst emitters? Sure. So the division is 30% of emissions come from bases, installations, and there's the 750 overseas and the bases in the U.S. And the DOD already says about 20% of those, that's excess. They don't need all of that. They're acknowledging that. And then the 70% remaining, the vast majority of that is operational and that's aircraft emissions from helicopters to bombers to transports. And much of that, you're talking gallons per mile efficiency levels, not miles per gallon. So really jet fuel is the big user, the big emitter. Thank you. I also want to recognize Madison Tang is on the call, or she was earlier, I think, Madison, you're there, who's working with Jodi on the China is Not Our Enemy campaign. And, you know, my hats off to both of them for this amazing job that they're doing. Jodi, you know, I'm glad you mentioned the declaration, the U.S. China declaration, because I read it over before this Zoom, and although it's, the language is relatively vague, you know, I mean, they commit to strengthening the implementation of the Paris Accord and meeting again in a year to review what they're doing. But I think the victory is a symbolic one, don't you? I mean, perhaps you can elaborate. Yeah, well, clearly, when you're reading in the paper, and there's a year and a half of just aggression, aggression, aggression, trying to score both. And it was a goal of our campaign just to get the language of cooperation to be out there, and that it's necessary. So, yeah, it's, you know, I'm sure lots of those, as we can see with what's happening, we're still selling weapons to Taiwan, and there's still aggression, and there's bills going through Congress that are aggression. But for Curie to stand up there and finally be heard, because he's been fighting inside the White House since he got there, and saying, you know, we need to have this cooperation, and working with the guy from China, who's been at the table since Paris, that's important, because that's, it looks a lot different than, you know, the China virus. And that's going to matter to saving lives of people of Asian descent in the United States. Exactly. And I think I saw a picture of John Kerry, our climate envoy, almost head to head, forehead to forehead in a friendly way with his counterpart in China. And that image just stayed with me, you know, I think that's very powerful, and that's a victory, as you said, that we have to celebrate. Well, the funny thing is, is that my first night there, I saw Senator Kerry, and I went up to him and I said, China's not our enemy, we need to cooperate with China, you know, no aggression. And he looks at me and he goes, I'm with you. And so I told everybody, I was like, he said that, and they said, oh, I just wanted to get rid of you. And then when, when the announcement came out, I was like, see credit, why not? All right, well, it's six o'clock, honey, did you want to say something? Yeah, Marcy, I just wanted for Bernadette to touch upon something important that she just brought up about the divestment from banks, right? Could you tell us if there has ever been a successful story with that? Because again, you know, we have had some losses in the climate, obviously, you know, movement and we've had some great gains. So to end it on a positive note, what has been the most successful divestment campaign that you can recall that has been led by our communities of color or our activists around the world? The banks, we had six of the largest banks in the U.S. commit to not fund in the Artic refuge activity. We're going after the insurance companies now to let them know it's not a, not a good idea. Scientists from all over the world is saying this is not a good idea. So they actually did a lease sales and no major oil companies bid on it. So we, you know, we were loud, very loud. And we're not going to, we're not going to let somebody come into our homelands and make decisions about our future and not involve us. So we've had it. Those are important victories. Thank you for sharing them. And as we go forward, you know, we want to invite you and the Gwich'in Nation to partner with Code Pink in our appeals to banks and insurance companies not to fund plunder of the Arctic, you know, your ancestral homeland. With that, I want to ask everybody to unmute and thank our guests, those who gave us updates, as well as our special guests who shared with us for several minutes their thoughts about climate crisis COP 26 to the Arctic. So let's unmute and say thank you.