 How are you? Thank you for having me here. Carlos, I'm Marci. Welcome. Tell us what you've been up to. I know you're a busy guy. After walking for 1,300 miles, we arrived to Washington D.C. on the 25th. We participated in a rally asking President Biden to leave the sanctions await over the Cuban people. We have been in CNN, in Spanish, and democracy now this morning. Also, I had the opportunity to go to State Department today and talk to a person from State Department and turn in the petition for 20,000 signatures for asking President Biden to leave the sanctions await on the Cuban people. And that's it. And also, I talked to a board, Senado Tech Cruz, and asked him to basically, the way is not intervention in Cuba. He's creating breaches of love. And he said, yes, yes, I agree. Something like that. So Carlos, we know you're going to have a question for Congresswoman Jaya Paul, but we just wanted you to do an intro to the group, and we will add some links in the chat. If people want to see your Facebook, can you add the link in the chat where they should go? I'll put in some links to other articles they can read about you. And Carlos is a high school teacher in Seattle. Also, a Iraq war veteran has taken dozens and dozens of students to Cuba when it was allowed, and now just wants to be able to send money to his family. Back in Cuba, travel there when he wants and alleviate the shortages that the Cuban people are suffering. And many of you on the call have helped us with the syringes campaign to buy 6 million syringes. Carlos and his group, Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, was very active in that campaign as well. So we're delighted to have you, Carlos. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos, for making that trek. How are your feet doing? I'm doing good. And I really lost some weight. I think that that was great and have the opportunity to meet many Americans from different backgrounds and different religions, different races, African Americans, Anglo, Latinos, and everybody agreed that the embargo should be lifted, that we should create bridges of love between our countries. That's a common agreement. Thank you. Medea, perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about the syringes campaign. 6 million were delivered. No, not yet. We have 1.6 million were delivered. The first two containers and the rest are on their way. For anybody who hasn't followed this campaign, we raised over $500,000, a broad coalition of groups. And the hard thing was getting companies that were willing to sell syringes to Cuba and ship them. And so when anybody says, oh, there's no restrictions on sending humanitarian aid, tell them, yeah, find companies that really want to deal with Cuba. That's the hard part. So we're in the process now of moving that campaign to not be just for syringes, but also to be for medical supplies in general. And anybody wanting to support that can go to the Code Pink site. We can put the link in the chat. But it's wonderful to be countering our government's policy of strangling the Cuban people and trying to starve them into getting out on the streets to demand regime change instead of normalizing relations and building what Carlos is calling for, puentes de amor, bridges of love. Yes, it's a 510 and we are expecting Congresswoman Jaya Paula any minute. I believe she's on the floor of the house and she's going to break away to talk to us while we're waiting for her to join us. We can start with a few updates. Honey, are you there? Absolutely, I am here. Okay, tell us, honey, as a progressive Democrats of America, we will hear from Ellen in a minute, but tell us what's going on in Ohio. What are you doing there? Oh, my goodness. So I traveled out to the great state of Ohio for to serve as a surrogate for Senator Nina Turner, which is an absolute honor of a lifetime for me. She's been a progressive champion for for decades educator. She's been in the trenches as a council woman and as obviously a state senator. And so she's been fighting for this community for a long time. This is probably one of the poorest and the number one rated ranked poorest area in the nation. And so this, everything is riding on this particular congressional election. And unfortunately, the opposition is heavily funded by dark money. The MFI has thus far put over $1.2 million into the opposition's race just to smear Senator Nina Turner by different television ads, as well as there are a number of billboards that we see around the area funded by Americans for the United. And that is actually a pack in a lobby group that normally funds a ton of Republican Congress members and senators. So this really isn't about democracy here. This isn't this race isn't really they don't care the opposition doesn't care about the people of Cleveland, they just want to continue to remain a military state and not only control the narrative here in Cleveland but impose it again, you know, in countries where we come from, you know, Iran and so on and so forth. So I think one of the things that is a concern is that Senator Turner started very strong but some of these ads have been impactful against her. So I, we're seeing that lead narrow and the race is tightening so everything is really up to the, the August 3rd when people show up to vote so we're hoping to be able to get out of the vote. We're going to we had Alexandria representative like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who was here this past weekend as also a surrogate and we are going to have Senator Bernie Sanders who's going to be present here on Saturday for a rally. We are going to have Attorney General Keith Ellison joining me for my event with Dr. Cornell West. And so we are I'm here mobilizing the API and Middle Eastern vote. We have now been able to narrow is what sorry. Asian Asian Pacific Islanders. And so we're really reaching out to that broader group that is never that's usually on the menu but never at the table. So we're hoping to be able to really uplift and elevate and get the people that are forgotten to the polls to vote August 3rd so some of you who belong to the Democratic Party I know we're not endorsing anybody and you know Alan can go into it, you know, PDA is endorsing me but CodePink I'm sure is is not but if you are willing to make calls PDA is running phone banks. I know we're doing that and so we are asking for everyone to get engaged and involved. Thank you so much honey sister honey coming to us from Ohio on the ground. So, waiting for Congresswoman Giapal to join us so Alan Minsky executive director of PDA tell us progressive Democrats of America what's the organization focused on. I know that Nina Turner race and what else. Well, I'm going to just say quickly about the Nina Turner race first of all, I do really wish I could be there in Cleveland but I did make the decision to send, instead of myself, PDA member from San Diego, Dr. Richmond will be going into Cleveland. She has a large family in Cleveland. And so there's a real opportunity there for her to network and promote Nina's candidacy and so she'll be there doing that. And, and of course we're calling on everybody within the region to go in this weekend to help out that campaign I do want to accent. One of the things that Henea said about the race which is this money that is poured in against Nina comes from a pack that is for a Zionist pack that is a reactionary Zionist pack. It is been established because a peck was viewed as too toxic within the Democratic Party it is a that's what it is. And it is. Again, US foreign policy, you know, I think we've seen over the last month, six weeks the ways in which a progressive agenda domestically can start to develop momentum, and then the noxiousness and the undertow of reactionary US foreign policy, you know raises head as it does over and over and over again, but I think we've seen that in a number of different theaters around the world recently. So it's incredible to have a partnership with code pink, and it is an absolute honor to work with you and to have you guys sort of lead, and we partner with you on foreign policy I want to say this other thing there's breaking news from the Nina Turner race, and that is that there's an ethics probe going on against her opponent. And it is a pretty pretty damn condemning stuff for the final week of an election basically email surfacing saying that she would go out and win contracts for people as an elected official. And as a representative the Kaya Hoga County Democratic Party for I think it's people connected directly to her family. So there is that. But of course, all of that doesn't matter because we are there for Nina and all that Nina represents and hope everybody can help out as best they can. Time going on of course, thank you for the opportunity. Alan what about the climate initiative you're launching. Well we have, we're, we're pushing right now of course we're going to have a climate liaison partnership we have with Food and Water Watch so we're going to go again for a more democratic representative would have a liaison from PDA and Food and Water Watch and other partners that will be joining in on the project, and then senators to and of course looking forward still to developing that on farm policy with code pink. And this is just our strategy of getting the citizenry engaged, you know, to combat all the lobbyists, we need a countervailing force that speaks up for the people for the planet. You know, there's so much detail about these infrastructure bills, and we are really pushing hard to have no fossil fuels subsidies in the infrastructure bills. This is going right up against the force of the big oil lobbyists. And it's going to be an intense month as we push for that and hopefully have victories, and hopefully everybody can join us on that and of course that's a planetary global issue to everybody. So thank you Marcy. Thank you, Alan. Thank you. All right, so updates who else would like to give an update Madison are you there oh wait here. We're gonna, we'll hear from Madison on the China campaign, but first I see that representative Jaya Paul is joining us. She is here and before she speaks I want to give her a proper introduction. Jaya Paul is as you know the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus which has 90 plus members. She also serves on other committees such as judiciary budget labor and education. She is a former Washington State Senator and a lifelong organizer for immigrant rights and civil rights. She was recently elected reelected to Congress her third time with more votes than any other House member. She was the fourth Asian American woman ever elected to the House. She came to the United States alone at the age of 16, and went on to start the largest immigrant rights organization and the State of Washington, before becoming one of only 14 immigrants serving Congress today as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Congresswoman Jaya Paul is the lead sponsor of the Medicare for all act, the college for all act, the housing is a human right act, the ultra millionaire tax act and the roadmap to freedom to the freedom immigration resolution congressman congresswoman Jaya Paul lives in West Seattle with her husband Steve welcome congresswoman Jaya Paul. Thank you so much it is so great to be with all of you and I apologize for being in the car, but they called votes just now so I literally voted and then I ran downstairs down the steps of the capital and I'm sitting in the car before they call the second vote. So hello code pink. Hello, we love you. So tell us, tell us what's going on with progresses in Congress. Absolutely well first of all I just have to say, thank you so much and media. It's so great to see you and wonderful to be able to be with you and with all of you, long before coming to Congress as you said I am an organizer, and I'm still an organizer so I was organizing for government civil human and workers rights for economic racial and gender justice I took to the streets for $15 minimum wage, better working conditions racial justice I've been arrested multiple times, not as many as media but several times for any number of issues like family separation immigration reform. And so my whole premise here in Congress is about whether we can have organizers on the inside and really build an organizing platform, our work on international human rights issues on domestic human rights issues. And so it's a great honor to be elected the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I have spent the last four years really building the power of the Progressive Caucus to be in sync with the progressive movement on the outside as well. And so I want to, you know, first say thank you so much for your wonderful support for my legislation to prohibit the use of facial recognition and for my domestic workers bill of rights that I'm introducing this week with Senators Gillibrand and Lujan. I couldn't be prouder of those bills and the impacts that they have. We are working very hard with the entire CPC membership to align our priorities to get the boldest the most progressive priorities implemented not only in the images that are before us right now the infrastructure package, the jobs and families plan, but also to push on issues that have been near and dear to Code Bank for many years or many decades now I guess I should say. And that is ending our endless wars, you know, cutting our defense budget. Just this morning I had a classified meeting with several progressives at the White House on Yemen and ending the war, the Saudi backed war in Yemen. And so all of these things occupy a lot of time and energy but they are the bold vision that we as progressives hold and that we as progressives are fighting for. The Progressive Caucus started this Congress off with a bang when our good bang that is when our top priorities for the House rules package reforms were all included. And they automatically exempted thanks to our work all climate change pandemic relief and related public health measures from the House pay go rule, which means that they don't have to be offset by revenue measures. We also strengthen the truth and testimony disclosures so that anyone who's testifying before the House committees have to reveal a conflict of interest, and it protected privilege for war powers resolutions, so that if for example the administration were to not do what we think is necessary to stop the blockades in Yemen as an example, we would then be able to bring up a privileged war powers resolution for a vote. So, these are changes that are sound like inside baseball but they actually have major impacts on our ability to win progressive policy. The other thing, you know another example of where our voice and our power brought about a very different outcome was when the White House first announced that they would only maintain the cap at 15,000 for refugee admissions, which was a record low that was actually set by the Trump administration and due to our immediate pushback public and private, along with the movement's response that policy decision was changed to finally raise the cap on refugee admissions and bring it back up to 125,000 from that historic low. Now we're in the throes of another round of negotiations around the American Families and Jobs Plan and because the CPC organized so early and with our movement partners, we identified five top priorities three months ago, and then we pushed for them in every possible way, publicly and privately, and we were thrilled that all five of those top priorities are part of the Senate's first proposal working with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, other progressives in the Senate. And so those include a road back to citizenship for essential workers, dramatically lowering drug prices and then using the savings to expand Medicare by lowering the age and expanding benefits to include dental vision and hearing, making key investments in climate, the care economy and housing. So we're not done with this package yet we're still pushing for as much as we can get, but it's a huge initial win for progressives and for the CPC. So we are making enormous strides, we have a ways to go I think one of the areas that is the most challenging from this administration has been in the area of war and diplomacy as you know the Senate Democrats with the exception of one person voted to increase Biden's proposal for DoD top line numbers by 25 billion. And we of course were pushing for a 10% cut, which didn't, which was going to be very, very difficult at a minimum, we wanted was a redirect of DoD funding to a whole bunch of other areas. So if it was still going to be kept within the Department of Defense, how do we put it towards the things that we actually want to see. And we can call it defense spending, but it's not. And so we are still working on that but I can tell you this is one of the areas that's very difficult. And I think on foreign affairs we are still pushing on any number of issues, including Yemen including a number of other things. But I will say that the withdrawal from Afghanistan which you all have been pushing for since the very beginning. It's actually, you know, just before I when I met Medea the first time I think we were, we were organizing against the war in Iraq and I think, you know, the AUMF victory that we've had with Barbara Lee, and then now the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think is finally coming through in terms of the some of the things we've been pushing for. So we're trying to encourage the administration where they do good things and then we're also trying to push where we feel that there isn't attention. So lots going on and we're going to start with Alan, the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan. Yeah, thank you so much. And we have a partnership with Code Pink and great to see you again, Representative Jayapal, always an honor. And you spoke a little bit to what I had a prepared question for which is about reducing the military budget. I think probably most people on the call know what you just spoke about. It's of course much higher than it was in the Obama years. We haven't been in a period of war, so to speak, during these past five years. One of the, I want to have asked you about this thing that sort of floats around almost like an urban myth, but the idea that the defense spending is allocated to say all 435 districts, at least all 50 states, and this creates this incentive not to cut the military budget How much is that true? And two, yes, you spoke to the second half of my question, which was the goal of reallocating that money. I love the idea, even if you have to keep it in the defense department. How realistic is that when you come up with barriers from communities that would be economically depressed if the defense spending is taken out? So thank you. Yeah, thank you, Alan, and thank you to PDA for all the work that you do. It's always wonderful to be working with you on all these things. So it is real that there are a lot of people who have defense spending in their districts and so they don't want to cut. You know, I've always thought that the way to deal with that is to allocate the same amount but towards something else in their district. But there's a bigger question, which you very well know and Colin Pink very well knows, which is this whole idea that surrounds defense spending, that somehow defense spending is patriotic, and to vote against that or to vote for a lower defense budget. Every year we increase the defense budget. I mean this year, you know, we actually under Benny McCollum, the number from the house, which I don't think the DOD bill is going to come to the floor because I don't think we have the votes for it from many of us who don't want to vote for a $700 plus billion defense budget. But it is a little lower than even what the president proposed, a little lower than last year's budget plus inflation. But any kind of indication that you're going to vote against defense is considered unfatriotic. And last year, when I had several amendments to cut the nuclear spending which I, by the way, took Shalonda Young to task on in terms of Biden's, you know, upping, in some cases, upping the amount that was being spent towards nuclear after he had said on the campaign that he can support many of those investments. Now they've said that they're waiting for the nuclear posture. We're working on a letter around this. But I think that this is the thing we have to fundamentally redefine is that it is not patriotic to continue to vote for a higher military budget. It is patriotic to take care of our veterans, to provide their families with education, with healthcare, and to protect the American people through economic security and through investments right here at home. And, of course, to increase diplomacy and the other means of supporting other countries. We certainly don't want to be isolationist, but war cannot be the answer. So it is true, Alan, and I think, you know, with your help, we're trying to shift the framework of this, but the redirect might be the best way to try to get some cuts and then maybe as we withdraw from Afghanistan to take money that was supposed to be there. And, you know, and, and, and, and use that as the cut. Thank you. Thank you, media. Well, we wanted to give a chance to ask a question to our dear friend from Seattle, a high school teacher, Cuban American who walked all the way from Miami to Washington DC, to push Biden to lift the economic sanctions embargo blockade whatever you want to call it on Cuba. Carlos lasso Carlos. I'm a congresswoman for allowing me to talk to you. Actually, I'm in Washington state still and Washington DC still trying to talk to as many members of Congress as I can. And a veteran from the US Army from the Washington National Guard live in Seattle and have been teaching there for the last 10 years. So talking about blockades and about endless war, I thought I think about my, my, my homeland, the country where I was born, Cuba, and how, how many years we have had this blockade that affect the Cuban people that punish the Cuban people. Instead of bringing prosperity and democracy to Cuba is just bringing pain to the Cuban people. And, and I just want to tell you that if he's possible, include in your priorities, lifting this embargo this blockade right now we are not even to able to send money to our families through Western Union, because Trump prohibited that and President Biden promised that he will leave those restrictions, but because of electoral politics in Florida, he have done nothing after seven months and our family, our families are desperate in Cuba, and they, they are hungry, and they need the help of their families in the United States. Yeah, if I could just add that we have been working very hard with Congress in fact, Chui Garcia just introduced an amendment to end Trump's cool restrictions on remittances, but Speaker Pelosi is not letting that get to the floor. And so we see ourselves blocked by Democrats, we see Biden in the White House following Trump's policy instead of Obama's policy, and we really need you desperately to lead the way on this and get the progressive caucus to lead the way. Absolutely. Well, I want to say thank you so much, Carlo for for your question and for your courage and for not giving up hope that we have to continue to fight for human rights in Cuba and for and to stand with those who are demanding political and human rights in Cuba. And we share your feelings about the embargo, we know that the embargo has contributed to food insecurity and to lack of access to medicine, and we absolutely need to separate humanitarian needs from the very real demand for political rights. I spoke to Chui who is a who's a dear friend and and on the executive board of the CPC about his amendment I will tell you that the other dynamic that is happening is there is a push to support a resolution in the opposite direction, an amendment in the opposite direction. That amendment has also been blocked so I think leadership's approach to this is to say, we're going to block the amendment that forces a vote on an absolutely intolerable which I have said I will not vote for that for that amendment. That is from one of our Florida Democrats, but also then they are blocking this one so I think we're going to have to have a multi prong strategy to try to do on Cuba. What, what we are trying to do on Yemen and obviously Yemen has taken too long we can't. I mean, all of these things all of these humanitarian crises take too long for us to get help to people. So, we will continue to work with all of the members of our caucus I think most of our members have been pretty good on this. But not everybody has spoken out so we'll try to make sure that that happens and we'll try to push for an end to this, you know, to the, to the embargo because we've got to be able to get that humanitarian aid in. Congresswoman Giapal. Thank you. This is Marcy Winograd. I wanted to ask a hardball question, and that is you have a caucus and 90 plus members. To what extent have you or can you leverage the power of this caucus to cut the military budget to say no to new nuclear weapons production to demand to go to march into Pelosi's office and demand that she put this on the agenda this vote to lift the embargo to what extent can you meet with Biden as a caucus and say you know what we're going to withhold our votes on the American families plan if you continue to fund a nuclear weapons. What do you think. Well, it's complicated I mean last year I was able to pass and it was not easy but I was able to pass a whole set of rules reforms for the progressive caucus that allow us to for the first time leverage our votes as a block. And we also passed a whole set of new requirements to be in the progressive caucus which includes supporting flagship bills that was not there before. I will tell you that was not easy but I'm an organizer so we won that vote and we want it. You know, with with good numbers, but the, the leverage only happens in certain situations defense is one of the hardest, because the defense bill doesn't pass with Democratic votes, I cannot get Democrats, including including me I don't want to vote for the defense budget, when it's 700 billion. So unless we have votes to deliver and we can say that we're going to get every single one of the Democrats voting for it. They will go to the Republicans they will not not fund the fence defense is always going to be funded. So it's very difficult to move to to use leverage. If you have none. So if you have a bill that includes Republican votes, then we can say whatever we want we can march into Pelosi's office we can do whatever, but it's not going to stop the movement forward on that bill, because there are Republicans to replace the Democratic votes. So there are times when and this year we we looked at it you might remember a couple of years ago Marcy, we actually made a decision to try to vote for the NDA a in order to get a number of things into the NDA a that we cared about including the ending the war and Yemen going back to then. And we passed the NDA a and it went to a conference committee and then it came back stripped of all of those things, and it passed with Republican votes none of us voted for it. And so you can't just you have to look at the places where you have leverage, you know, would we get progressive saying we're going to vote against the family's plan. If you don't, you know if you don't stop the war in Yemen. No, there would not be because the family's plan also has progressive priorities it's packed with our progressive priorities right we want to make sure we're getting childcare we want to make sure we're continuing Medicare expansion we have to make sure that we are continuing to fight for long term care workers for immigration essential citizenship for essential workers so it's difficult on to like hold one bill hostage for another thing. The best leverage comes when you're in that bill, and it can only pass with Democratic votes. If it can only pass with Democratic votes, that's where we have the leverage, and that's what makes defense so particularly difficult because it is always going to pass with Republican votes so I feel very proud about the leverage we've been able to exert and the fact that we got, we have gotten so many of our priorities through, and I will tell you that my approach on Yemen is one of a stick, as well as a carrot so our conversations have been about bringing the work hours resolution to the floor. And, you know that is part of what we are saying to the administration but there, there are different sticks for every, you know for every situation we just have to find the right ones to use. And I promise you it's not for lack of trying. So follow ups. Do you think there will be the Congressional Progressive caucuses support for the legislation being introduced by Bernie Sanders Mike Lee and Chris Murphy to revise the war powers resolution to include arm sales that Congress has authority over arm sales, and Congressman Adam Smith, he's chair of the House Armed Services Committee, what kind of conversation are you going to have or have you had or can you share with him about not going forward with this request from the Senate Armed Services Committee to add an additional $25 billion to the Pentagon budget. Well we'll do everything we can, but the Senate often trumps in these situations and, and the, again because we're not going to get all the progressives to, you know, we're not delivering votes if they, if they keep it at 705 I did a, I did a assessment of my caucus and people don't want to vote for a $705 billion budget so it's not like we're going to deliver progressive votes if they keep it to 705. So it's just a, it's just a complicated issue but on the Sanders Lee bill I do think that there's going to be support for that let it we have to get through this, this round of things. They are calling me to vote. So I'm sorry I have to go to my, my next to vote, but I want to say thank you so much. Can we all unmute and have a screen. We have. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. My primary stand is. No, not defense. Thank you. It's not defense. It's military spending. Thank you. Abolish the filibuster. Abolish the filibuster. Well yes. We're working on it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for HR 17 1976 from. Yes. Well, we need more. In Congress, don't we? And we're going to, and we're going to, and we may get another one. We have to work hard to get another one. All right. So now we're going to turn it over to a few different people to give us updates on their campaigns. I'm going to turn it over to the other person. I'm going to turn it over to Carly Town is the, one of the national coordinators, co-chairs of code pink. And she also oversees the guide desk campaign. Carly, you want to give us an update? One or two minutes. Sure. Yeah. Thank you so much. Marcy. And thanks everyone here. It's great to see you. So I'll just talk really quickly. As you know, Congress is now deliberating on the military budget for 2022. And I think that every single member of the Senate armed services committee, except for Senator Warren approved a $25 billion increase over the Biden administration's record high military budget request for 2022, which would raise the baseline military budget to $740 billion. So, you know, obviously this vote is unfortunately unsurprising because senators on the Senate have approved a $7.4 million in campaign contributions for military contractors just in the 2020 election cycle. But this doesn't mean that a $740 billion baseline kind of gone budget is a done deal. The House and the Senate must agree on a final defense policy bill as Congress when Diapol just discussed, which likely won't happen until later this year. And in August, Congress will be on recess and in their districts. So I'll be posting a congressional advocacy training about how to set up and meeting with your representative to ask them to reduce the Pentagon budget and support other peace legislation. And that's happening on Thursday, August 5th. So I'll post the link in the chat now. And people can RSVP to join us for that training. So thank you, Marcy. Great. Thank you. Carly. I have one question. How likely is it that they're going to get away with adding this new budget to the military budget? Well, you know, like Congresswoman Diapol said, what happens in the Senate is very important, but it is also important to note that the House Armed Services Committee passed a budget that looks much more like the president's proposed budget, which was a $715 billion base budget. So the Senate Armed Services Committee is at odds with the administration at this point. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees still have to approve such an increase in military spending. So there is some time and work that we can do to actually influence that. Thank you, Carly. Now, Madison, she's working hard on our China is Not Our Enemy campaign. Madison Tang, do you want to give us an update? Yes. Thank you, Marcy. So great to see Representative Diapol. So one of the main pieces of legislation that we've been mobilizing against in the Code Pink China is Not Our Enemy campaign is the EGLE Act, HR3524, because the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act did pass out. The EGLE Act passed out of committee, out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and will now go on to a full House vote. So please look out for that action that will be done and released through an alert and on our website this week. So it'll be an action on that House vote to get your representatives to vote no on it. And the reasons are many, but most importantly, kind of going off this conversation here is because there's more funding for military education and training of our troops in the Asia-Pacific region. There's some other aspects of it. There's some coercive provisions about loans in Latin America, how nations there can't accept any loans from the U.S. if they accept any loans from the nation of China. There's a lot of anti-China rhetoric that's rooted in a lot of racist xenophobic sentiment. And when we witnessed the House Foreign Affairs Committee's markup of this bill, that was pretty much the overwhelming sentiment is all these Congress members saying that they don't want to grow up, have their grandchildren grow up with Chinese people being in power over their grandchildren, et cetera, et cetera. There were even comments made about Chinese culture as a whole being essentially deceitful, full of deception, malice, trickery, et cetera. So it really quickly verges into complete racism and xenophobia here. And what we're seeing in tandem with this push for legislation because we really, as a campaign, see this war on China as a hybrid war. So that means, of course, information warfare. I'm sure you've seen propaganda against China every day in the mainstream media, even about things that are positive that's happening there. Military, legal, academic, the FBI's China Initiative, which began under Trump, is being further heightened. So we're seeing Chinese American professors in places like University of Tennessee, Philadelphia, we're seeing them subject to intense scrutiny and investigations that are later proven to be completely based on no evidence. So it's very similar to McCarthyism, which is not positive for Chinese Americans. And militarily, we're seeing a massive buildup right now in the Asia Pacific region. And what is important to understand is that the transfer of our military power from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific has been planned for a long time. And it's important to note that when we're celebrating our troops being removed from the Middle East, they are being transferred to other parts of the world, namely the Asia Pacific region. And we should be aware of that and cognizant of that as we celebrate those wins. And one of the biggest issues right now when we talk about the escalation of war is the undermining of indigenous rights and sovereignty in the Asia Pacific region. So the victims right now of this war are all of the indigenous communities in islands like Guam, the Mariana's, Jeju Island, Hawaii. So a lot of places like Guam are occupied colonies, colonies still of the US. So we have jurisdiction there. And this is very important for our climate as well. So I just want to make sure folks know about that because so many people I know do not know about it. And right now we are building a massive firing range in Guam. And in order to do so, we're clearing out carbon sequestering forests and places in places like Okinawa, we are pouring concrete to create new marine bases onto endangered coral reefs. So this is a kind of environmental destruction that's going to affect all of us, all of the planet right now. We're seeing there's flooding in places like Germany, there's fires and intense heatwaves in the US. There's also flooding in China right now. And that's not unique to one place or one government or people. It's impacting everyone on the planet. And this is a time for cooperation. Otherwise we are going to see planetary extinction. And ramping up the military around Asia Pacific and destroying these pristine islands is not going to help anyone. Yeah. So I wanted to share tomorrow we have a webinar, a joint webinar with Massachusetts Peace Action that Jodi Evans is going to be speaking on, on preventing this new Cold War with China. That is going to be at 4 p.m. Pacific tomorrow. I'll put the link in the chat in a moment. We also have an ongoing petition on PBS's censoring of its documentary on China's Allegation of Poverty. And I can also share some articles that our campaign has written on the EGLE Act, which is really helpful if you haven't heard a lot about it because there's not a lot of writing about it right now. So feel free to share that. I'll put it in the chat after. And an article on Senator Ed Markey in Boston where we went to his office in Boston last week and we delivered a letter about his failure to really follow through on his campaign promises as a progressive because he did in fact vote in favor of the Innovation and Competition Act, which gives more military funding to surround China. So Madison, why don't you put these links in the chat and then people can explore and during the campaign. Yes. Thank you so much for that update. Great. Okay. I want to now turn to Nancy Mancias, who is in charge of our BlackRock campaign and she's working hard with people from all over the world on the COP26 protests that are planned for November. Nancy, let's hear the latest. Hey, Marcy. Thank you everyone for inviting me at the last minute to this. I'm really, really excited to be with you all. It's like a hundred strong this evening. So I'm going to be brief and then I'm going to drop some links in the chat so we could all follow up together on what's going on. So the most important climate talks since Paris Agreement will begin in Glasgow, Scotland on November 1st world leaders will come together to discuss climate change solutions. We know that militarism and the climate crisis are intertwined. However, world leaders continue to neglect this fact. We are demanding that this year in Glasgow that the United Nations climate conference includes reducing military greenhouse gas emissions. We have a list of webinars and in-person events coming up and we want you to be part of this historic push to bring anti-militarism to the center of the world's largest climate change gathering. So I'm just going to drop in a list of key events, key dates coming up. So I'm going to put that in the chat so you all can copy it and keep it in your calendar. Oh, is it going to Oh, it's not going to copy. Darn it. Well, while you're doing that, I'll just mention that I've been working with Veterans for Peace and they have a climate militarism working group, terrific group, and they will be presenting at the Veterans for Peace Convention, which is coming up August 12th through the 15th. You can learn more about it at veteransforpeace.org. There is a fee, but it should be a great convention. And they have a slideshow, which if anyone's interested in working on that and showing it to other groups, it's an excellent slideshow that shows the connections between climate and militarism. Yeah, for some reason, I can't cut and paste the information into the document. So I'm not sure how to get help. What's the best way to get the information? If you just want to email it to me, marciaatcodepink.org, then I'll send it out to those in the Google group. And if you're not in the Google group, do join us and you can just let me know, marciaatcodepink.org that you'd like to get that information. And at this point, we're going to go. Is there anything else that you wanted to add? I think that's it. I will send you everything. There is a petition on our website to stop excluding military pollution for climate agreements. You can go to our website to learn more about that. I do have a Google form for you to fill out, but it doesn't look like I can copy and paste. There we go. I put it in. I'm going to go ahead and ask you questions too. Absolutely. There we go. There's the form. And yeah, I look forward to connecting with you all. Thanks. Great. Thank you, Nancy. All right, John Kiriakou is also with us and I asked him to join us tonight to give his insights, to share his insights and his response to Daniel Hale sentencing today, 45 months in prison for being a heroic whistleblower and blowing the whistle on the back that was shot in the back. And I think most of the people, like 90% of the people that were supposedly terrorists and to be targeted with drone attacks were not the intended targets. Yeah. Of those attacks. John, are you there? I am here. Thanks very much for having me. And, you know, I was excited when you asked me to, to come on and say a few words about the events of the day. I'm even more excited because I just hung up the phone with him. And he sounds like a million bucks, which is not the way he has been sounding over the last few weeks. So I'll start by, by talking about the sentencing hearing today, Medea was there, of course, and Tom Drake. And it was just, it was a jam packed courtroom and every single person who was there was there for Daniel. Daniel was the last of something like six people who had business in the court this morning. He was last, of course, because his case was the, the most complicated, but everybody who was there was there to support Daniel. And I can't tell you what that meant to him. He told me that he made, he made a true effort to make eye contact with every single person in the courtroom. And I saw him doing it, but he said it was the only way he could express his gratitude for everybody and for everything that, that everyone has done for him to show support. So I also want to say, I won't go through the blow by blow. I'll give you some highlights. One of those highlights is that he gave a speech when the judge asked him if, if he had anything to say, he gave a speech that was one of the, the finest bits of oration that, that I've ever heard. And this is a guy who is uncomfortable in front of crowds. This is a guy who is in his own words, painfully introverted. He made me just proud to be an American today. He never backed down. He reiterated the things that he stood for. And even though he, you know, legally took responsibility for his, for his actions, he convinced the judge, like he had convinced all of us that he did it because he had a moral and ethical objection to the government's drone program. He just would not back down. And believe me, the prosecution tried to break him and they tried to break him up until the very last minute. There was one point where they had to clear the courtroom for an hour and a half, two hours because they wanted to make classified objections to the letter that he wrote to the judge. And in our phone call this evening, he said that they tried their best to get the judge to throw out his guilty plea to force him to go to trial. So he would be facing something like 40 or 50 years, rather than what he ended up getting today. He was tough. He was strong. I, I can't imagine him having done anything differently today. Anything that would have, that would have changed the outcome. Now I happened to be sitting next to Tom Drake. And you know, Tom's a dear friend of mine, like a brother to me. Tom really, and Jesslyn Radack and Medea and a handful of other people, Dan Ellsberg, who got me through my own situation. So I was sitting next to Tom and, and one of the first people to go before the judge was a guy that's committed multiple robberies and he, he got out of prison on probation and what did he do? He went and robbed another place. And it was his third robbery. Well, he said that he used a starter pistol. He didn't have any intent to hurt anybody. And the judge said, well, clearly prison isn't, you know, getting you to where you need to be. So what you need is, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, what you need is counseling and therapy. And Tom and I looked at each other and Tom mouthed WTF. And I said, I'm liking the way this is going so far. Well, there was another poor guy who was in on a drug charge and, and he's out on, on probation and he tested positive for marijuana. Well, rather than send him back to prison, the judge sent him to a drug rehabilitation program. And I said to Tom, now I'm really liking the way things are going. Well, finally they called Daniel. And there was this back and forth and this big fight. And we were out in the hall for, as I said, an hour and a half or so, we went back into the courtroom and the judge started off by saying that, you know, what you did was a violation of the law. And you took these documents and, and you shouldn't have taken the documents. And I'm like everybody else. I was probably starting to get a little bit worried. But then he said that he just simply did not believe the government's position that Daniel did this to ingratiate himself with the media. There was no evidence to show that there was any such calculation. He told Daniel, I believe you when you say that you had a moral and ethical objection to the fact that civilians were being killed with the use of drones. And each point that the judge made fell exactly into line with what Daniel's outstanding public defenders had been saying in court. And so rather than sentence Daniel to 108 months, which is nine years, the government does its sentences in months rather than years. And he sentenced Daniel to 45. Now Daniel's attorneys had been asking for 18 to 24. But let me explain the 45 and I know from firsthand experience, this is what went into the judge's calculations. 45 months with good behavior is 39 months. Minus three months already served. That's 36 months. And one of the things the judge ordered was that Daniel be enrolled in a drug and alcohol program called our DAP, the residential drug and alcohol program. If you complete that and all it is, is once a week, you go to the prison library and you watch a DVD of the television series intervention. I've seen it with my own eyes. You do that every week for a year. And they take one year off your sentence. Now that knocks him down to 24 months. Well, he's also entitled to six months of halfway house time slash home confinement. That's 18 months, which is the minimum that Daniel's attorneys had been asking for. I know that most people didn't catch it. They didn't think of it that way. But that's just about as low as the judge could have gone without having the prosecution file a complaint against him for not observing the, the guidelines. So when Daniel called this evening, I said, how are you feeling? You're not depressed, right? And he said, no, I feel relieved. I feel wonderful. And I said exactly because there's no reason to fear the unknown anymore. Now you know, and you know that you've already got an expiration date on this sentence. I said, you can start marking off a calendar now. If you want. You're going to be fine. I told him and he said, yeah, he is. He's going to be fine. Thank you, John, for that. And now it's this. I appreciate how you laid that out. And I feel a little bit better myself. Great. And you know, when we started this call, Daniel had called me and so we put the mic up and. Oh, fantastic. Game early, got a chance to hear him, but you really broke it down beautifully for us. And definitely makes a lot of us feel better. Thank you. I feel much better. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. And for those of you who have not met John before, John Kiriako is a whistleblower himself. He was a former intelligence analyst, the first US government official to confirm that waterboarding was used to interrogate prisoners, which you described as torture, rightfully. Thank you for your service, John. Thank you so much. Thanks for everything that you do. All right. Great. Now we're going to move into our action portion. We have 156 people with us. And I urge you all to stay with us. This is a very important segment of our code, pink Congress calling parties. We are going to, before as Mary is putting this up on the, on the screen, I just wanted to let everybody know that we will be engaging in an August recess ourselves. But we will be coming back in September and we certainly want everybody. We'll be working to, to work during the August recess. And by that I mean to be organizing or joining delegations to meet with your representatives, your house representative, your US representatives in the Senate, and to urge them to vote against this outrageous military budget. To support this new war powers resolution being introduced by Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy to demand this embargo be lifted on Cuba and an end to these sanctions that are strangling, I don't know, 36 countries and end to the militarism in the South China Sea. I, I mean, it's, it's frightening. Right. And just today I, I read that Lloyd Austin, our secretary defense former member of the board of directors of Raytheon was appealing to Australia and Japan, other countries to further militarize and more exercises that these are like mock nuclear strikes and, and rockets launched toward China. These are mocks in preparation for what this is called deterrence. So we have a lot of work cut out for us and I know everybody will be busy.