 Thank you again everyone for joining our Could Pink Defund the Pentagon Demilitarized the Economy webinar conversation with Maryam Pemberton. It's a couple minutes past the hour so I think it's about time that we get started. I see people are still streaming in and we're also live streaming on Facebook so if you're joining us there welcome. We're excited to have you here today. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen and we can go ahead and get started with our webinar. So again thank you to everyone for joining us today and welcome to the Could Pink Defund the Pentagon Demilitarized the Economy webinar with Maryam Pemberton. My name is Carly Towns. I'm co-director of Could Pink and I run our Defund the Pentagon campaign here. Could Pink is an anti-war women-led organization and as you might have heard last week President Biden recently released the budget what he's calling blueprint for fiscal year 2022 which included a proposal for the Pentagon budget which would increase the Pentagon budget by about 13 billion dollars from last year which is really a disturbing continuation of the trend that we've seen under the Trump administration to increase the Pentagon budget year after year. But we know at Could Pink that the real threats to our national security, pandemics, the climate crisis, mass inequality, white nationalism will not be solved by continuing to increase the Pentagon budget, padding defense contractors bottom lines or building more nuclear weapons which is why I'm really honored to have the opportunity to speak with our guest tonight, Maryam Pemberton. So Maryam Pemberton has been thinking about how to demilitarize the economy for decades. She was an editor and then director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament and for 20 years a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where she directed its peace economy transitions project. Between 2006 and 2012 she headed up the coalition that produced the annual unified security budget from the United States and through 2015 led the budget priorities working group. With William Hartung she edited lessons from Iraq avoiding the next war and does that work on six stops on the national security tour warfare economies and other ambitions. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan. So welcome Maryam to the webinar I'm very excited to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us and in just a minute we're going to get started and start discussing with Maryam a whole range of topics and I'm really excited about this really excellent conversation but just before we get into that I just have a few reminders for everyone on the call. So first if you're just joining us make sure you introduce yourself in the chat box tell us your name where you're coming from and if you're affiliated with an organization and while Maryam and I are in conversation if you have any questions you can go ahead and type them in the chat box or you can use this zoom Q&A feature right at the bottom of your own zoom box and at the end of our conversation we'll have about 10 minutes for Q&A and just for everyone here the webinar is being recorded and as a participant you will be sent the recording after we're done tonight. So without further ado I want to welcome Maryam and again thank you for joining us tonight Maryam. Thanks so much for having me. So we're just we're just going to get started with this conversation I think everyone here is really excited to have you. So you're an expert on on military spending and demilitarizing the economy like I just talked about. So let's sort of start off by setting the stage a little bit because there are a lot of numbers floating around about how much we spend on the military on the Pentagon every year. So first can you sort of take us through how much do we actually spend on the military every year? Well the answer is about three quarters of a trillion dollars every year. I always liked the quote from Robert Gates who was George W. Bush's defense secretary and then he was a holdover in the Obama years for a little while and he said if the Department of Defense can't figure out how to defend the United States on half a trillion dollars a year then its problems are much bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships or planes. All right so he said half a trillion now we're up to three quarters of a trillion. Right and I think that's really important context that's always an excellent quote and you know I think something also that I wanted to ask about is we hear like the Pentagon budget but then sometimes people talk about something called a quote unquote militarized budget. So how are those different and what would a militarized budget encompass? Yeah so the Pentagon so this 700 plus billion dollars that this militarized budget is going to get this year certainly the Pentagon gets the lion's share. In the Biden budget it's about 715 billion but that does not include the budget to cover the nuclear weapons arsenal that is in the Department of Energy budget actually about two-thirds of the energy budget goes to our nuclear weapons arsenal and it's again not included in the Pentagon budget and then there are some other features like our militarized foreign aid in the State Department that goes to give money to other countries to buy U.S. weapons and when you put all of that together then you get the so-called top line for the national defense budget which this year is being proposed at 753 billion dollars. Right exactly and in the world does that include actually the militarized border which is in the Homeland Security Department which is another 50 billion dollars. Right exactly I was going to ask about that right so we have that 753 billion number that you mentioned but then that doesn't include right what you said which is even more money to militarize our border. So that's that's really helpful context and I like to start with that because I think a lot as I said a lot of numbers are always floating around. So so we just ended you just talked about the 753 billion dollar Pentagon budget that was proposed by Biden and he he just released that proposal last week and I said it's you know it's a budget blueprint for 2022 so you know this kind of caused quite a bit of controversy so can you take us through what was included in President Biden's blueprint for the Pentagon budget that he released last week and also maybe what wasn't included like what did he leave out from that blueprint. The blueprint is just what they call the top lines and so so it's every department's overall budget without going into the details of you know what we're going to spend it on and I would say that there is cause for celebration in in that budget. I think many of your listeners will have seen this budget pie that the National Priorities Project does so it's a pie including a slice for every part of the federal budget and for about 80 years one the the budget for the military has taken up more than half of the pie and this year however that is going to change because the Biden administration has proposed about a 16 percent increase in the non-defense portion of the budget that is everything that Congress votes on every year that is not military spending and so you know that slice it'll be nice to see that slice getting a little bigger and the military slice getting smaller that does not mean however as you mentioned that they have cut the military budget they've just expanded that pie and so the military budget has gotten a you know they they basically are right that that it is a flat budget it is what we spent last year with as you said $13 billion which is you know the inflation effect and so so well I think we should celebrate that we're spending more money on non-defense expenditures this coming year than on defense however we haven't managed to cut the defense budget so we have worked it. Right I I definitely agree and I think that's also another important piece of sort of context around military spending that you know you mentioned right it is it certainly isn't you know still an increase in actual numbers from last year right but as I mentioned right this is a trend that we saw in during the Trump administration as well and the increases then were much much higher right over the course of the four years in the Trump administration we increased the Pentagon budget by 133 billion if I remember correctly and so also how does you know the current Biden Pentagon budget proposal how does that compare to you know Obama era Pentagon budgets and also military spending historically because I also like to sort of zoom out and think that through. So the post Cold War budget came down by about a third and then you know eventually we get 9-11 and the budget soars and then we get to the Obama administration which in its first two years actually increased Pentagon spending to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the surge in those wars and so for the first couple of years we were spending more on the military than at any time since World War II then the budget came down the military budget came down a little bit about 10% in the following years and then as you said the Trump administration you know jack set up again and that's where we are now the Biden budget has not has not cut from the levels that the Trump administration had so we are still spending nearly more now on defense than we have spent since World War II you know including the Reagan build up including you know all the war years now we're spending more. Right I think yeah thank you for that I think it's really important to put it into that historical context as well and you know when we talk about the fact that we want to cut the Pentagon budget even by 10% would just bring us back to Obama era levels or not even close right so I think that's really important so yeah thank you so much for that. The other part of this this webinar that I think we wanted to have a conversation about too is talking about demilitarizing the economy overall so first you know before we get into that what does it mean to say we have a militarized economy? Well let's think about industrial policy so that is the government organizing its industrial resources for a particular goal now we haven't even been able to talk about industrial policy for years because it comes with it's sort of a taboo topic it comes with the idea of you know there's a soviet five-year plans we can't do that it's not the American way we want free markets when of course we have an industrial policy and it is a militarized industrial policy and the consequences that we lead the world in making weapons and hundreds of communities across the country are dependent on Pentagon contracts and all of that spread is by design we can talk about that a little if you want we have hundreds in addition to the the private contractors we have hundreds of military bases around the country and communities are dependent on them and by tooth and nail to keep their bases meanwhile the rest of the industrial base has been neglected so we are way behind for example the Chinese you know the Chinese are supposed to be our big military competitors when in fact they've been kind of eating our lunch at things like building solar panels and electric vehicles so President Biden talked about building a whole bunch of offshore wind farms off the east coast which will be great and they'll create a lot of jobs but they will not be jobs manufacturing the wind turbines and the whole apparatus because we don't do that in this country because we've been you know putting our eggs in that other military basket and and so you know a Danish company is going to be building the first wind farm off the coast of of Rhode Island you know then you think of university research most of the the research money available is military money and so you you have academic researchers kind of skewing their research to have some sort of military application so that they can get the money to do the research you know skewing our research priorities and then of course you have trade the US seeding the world in weapons and subs with our tax dollars subsidizing countries to buy our weapons so this is what I mean by a militarized economy yeah I mean that's that's very helpful right I mean I think again as I said we talk about the the Pentagon budget but you know that puts into context like the ways in which our spending priorities at the federal level affect the way that our local communities are are organized like you talked about and you did mention briefly um sort of this is this is how it's done by design it's spread out across our country could you could you speak a little bit more to that because I think that's important yeah sure um so this was a strategy that really took off after the Cold War when the contractors were finding that they you know they didn't have a peer competitor country to to justify you know increasing military spending and so they came up with this deliberate deliberate strategy to spread contracts in as many congressional districts as they possibly could this is clearly not you know going to increase the efficiency of production it it's I call it a political protection racket you know it's it's just making sure that they can make the argument that you know jobs are dependent on keeping military spending high and growing right exactly and I think you know it's something we talk about all the time uh I could think as well right and I think it's an important part of the conversation if we're really going to be serious about reducing the Pentagon budget um and so you know I as I mentioned I think one of the most common arguments right against cutting the Pentagon budget is that military spending generates jobs like you talked about um so what kind of jobs and how many jobs does Pentagon spending actually create across this country you said it's not necessarily the most efficient way to spend our money um so I feel like you know maybe one of the best things I have done in my career was uh commissioned the original study that showed that a billion dollars invested in fields like education, healthcare, clean energy, you know all of those sorts of investments are going to create more jobs than investing them in the military and I actually found and and now that that study has been replicated many times um it's now sort of taken over by the cost of war project that I bet people know about at Brown and BU uh and um you know I was just talking to the author the other day and and she said there's going to be a new job study coming out so um that is I think an invaluable tool for making making our arguments um but I also just came across an interesting study actually from the U.S. Commerce Department that I think dovetails nicely with um this this main job study which was they were looking at exports and they said that a billion dollars for in arms exports creates about 3,900 jobs but uh if you look at a billion dollars invested in exports across the board that generates 5,200 jobs so again corroborating we are backing the wrong horse for self-interested reasons as well as moral reasons right I mean that's definitely true right I mean we of course have to make the moral argument but there are really practical arguments to make as well like you mentioned um I think it's a really interesting uh way to frame it and of course we cite um your work and and the work of cost of war project is a lot all the time to really reframe the conversation rather than does spending on the Pentagon budget create jobs to what could we have if we spent on other um you know elements of of the federal government or other sectors like like education or that sort of thing so I think that's really important um another you know kind of element to that that I wanted to also discuss is that I think some people would be surprised by how much of the Pentagon budget actually goes towards private defense contractors um and why is our Pentagon budget so commercialized and does that have a connection to um the fact that spending on the Pentagon budget doesn't necessarily generate as many jobs as as we would like it to I mean uh this has been true really since uh uh world war two and followed by the cold war um you know beginning what I think should be called a permanent war economy um so for world war two uh you know large swaths of the of the American um economy and industry were uh redirected toward uh producing for the war so you know Ford Motor Company stopped stopped making cars and started making tanks and you know on and on and um so um many of those companies kind of started to uh you know convert back to what they've been doing and um and then comes the cold war and many of them are saying this is a good deal and uh we're just going to keep keep on doing this and uh the fact that um so much of the private economy uh the the private uh uh military economy is um you know exists is uh because uh you know of this protection rack that they've got going that that um you know they're gonna uh you know make sure their campaign contributions go to the key committee chairs of the committees that vote on military spending and and so on and that you know every member of congress is told about all the jobs that are that are dependent on on military spending. Right yeah I think it's um you know something that people are familiar with even if they're not familiar with it in this context right congress people getting campaign contributions from corporate donors and then voting in their interest plays out all the time when we're talking about approving Pentagon spending as well. Someone in the chats of the only beneficiaries of war spending are Raytheon, General Dynamics Boeing and these companies and all the people who sit on their board of directors which I think is a really accurate representation um yeah they talk about the the revolving door of um you know people may be starting out in in the military um overseeing the contracts of private contractors and then you know going easy on them because it's it's uh you know when they retire it'll be nice to get hired by that same contractor um and of course you know we've seen problematic appointments in the DeBiden cabinet that uh you know that have you know strong ties to these big military contractors yeah absolutely yeah mm-hmm oh sorry I think we're gonna say something but uh yeah I was gonna say you know that goes all the way to the top right uh the Secretary of Defense himself was on the on the board of directors for Raytheon so absolutely um well now that we've talked about how much of a problem obviously are depending on budget is you know our militarized economy and how entrenched it is it is um within our society I hate to ask this question but how do you think we can demilitarize the economy like what can we actually do to fix it um I know it's a huge question but it is also right like why we're here today um so how can we start to demilitarize the economy I mean you know it basically comes down to you know the the key is moving the money you know uh from the Pentagon to the civilian side of the economy to sort of create demand pull toward a civilian economy to create new markets and new opportunities for the economy as a whole and in some cases for for defense contractors to um move into um civilian areas um and so you know that's that seems to me to be the key and it seems like we do have some exciting possibilities here I think um this infrastructure bill really does open up you know we're gonna want to expand it but but it really does open up some possibilities for the kind of new and green industrial policy that we that we absolutely need so um you know as we're making arguments uh uh two members of congress um you know even the Pentagon um says that climate change is a security threat um that you know allowed to fester uh is going to create problems security problems that no uh military on the earth is going to be able to um to solve um and um you know the kinds of investments that they're talking about in that jobs bill um are you know really some of the elements of uh you know a new industrial policy that can uh potentially um you know shift the economy from a militarized to a civilian oriented economy but as we know the inertia of an entrenched militarized economy um is a powerful force it will require it's not enough to just invest on the civilian side it will require you know cutting the military budget and we haven't done that yet uh I had a couple of other ideas or one one idea um at least uh we were talking about communities and how dependent they are on Pentagon contracts uh and uh as I was saying to you earlier I I spent too much of my time on earth um trying to um create this vehicle for communities to um kind of have uh you know set up a planning process uh bringing together stakeholders uh the public officials economic development folks uh you know the nonprofit sector all all different stakeholders in a community that is defense dependent and saying you know what kind of economy do we have what kind of economy do we want how might we get there um and as I say um there's a program in the Pentagon uh it's an agency called the office of economic adjustment so uh it's supposed to be it gives planning grants to communities um uh to fund and give them assistance in setting up one of these planning processes bringing stakeholders together and planning a community transition um however last year they changed the name of this uh of this Pentagon agency from the office of economic adjustment to the office of local defense community cooperation and so uh you know they want to keep those communities where they are they don't want them to have any kind of transition and so um I was though talking to um some folks who have um been talking to folks in the commerce department there's an economic development administration EDA and um it has been really anemic for many years um but the Biden administration would like to kind of beef up that that agency and uh transitions of all kinds planning grants are you know part of what they do and so it occurred to me that that Code Pink is um very good at uh you know creating community conversations um and so uh you know if we're going to relax the grip of Pentagon contracting on communities across the country um this might be a place where you know activists could be important that's really excellent to hear yeah I mean I think you're you're right I mean only half of the puzzle is is sort of defunding or we talked about divesting for more I mean the other half is investing in a piece economy and sort of um imagining new sort of political horizons around that so I think that's that's really exciting and and I think we'd love to talk more about that um and you know another question that I had too you talked a little bit about um stakeholders and you also talked about Joe Biden's infrastructure bill um I'm I'm wondering if um you could tell us a little bit about what it would take to really institute sort of a just transition away from um a militarized economy to one that's um you know demilitarized and and what role would we have to play in bringing in like labor unions and made the labor movement into that just transition um well as you probably know the the term just transition um is is mainly uh when they talk about it it's mainly about um just transition for fossil fuel workers into good paying green jobs um and uh you know so a just transition would include you know retraining funds and bridges to jobs that actually exist you know that you're being trained for and ideally um some income support now these are the things that they mainly talk about for uh fossil fuel workers um but uh you know we want to think about them uh for for defense workers also but I have been um talking to a great guy who is um a former head of the machinist union in the state of Connecticut wonderful guy who's really very interested in in climate change and moving his union more to focus on climate change and so I asked him about uh a just transition you know for defense workers because because his union has been mainly defense workers um and he said well he thought defense workers were kind of um not first in line so first in line he says for just transition funding would be fossil fuel workers that's where you know most of the energy is but he also said he's been in conferences where um people of color are saying um you know okay you want to give just transition to fossil fuel workers um we never got the chance to be fossil fuel workers we were excluded from those jobs and so how about a little just transition assistance for for us and so um you know he was um not um you know too optimistic that uh the kind of just transition assistance that we'd love to see for defense workers moving into um civilian manufacturing um was going to be that popular with defense workers because as we know defense work is very highly paid or or more highly paid than most um other manufacturing jobs um but I'd say you know in in thinking about how to bring the peace movement and the labor movements together um you know I think this infrastructure bill is is an absolutely golden opportunity um to uh to make some of that happen and to ban the job space um but you know the peace movement and the labor movement have worked together in the past uh you know the notable examples tend to come from situations where defense cuts have been made and defense workers are casting about for for solutions um to their jobs problem and so um they are you know likely to be there have been some very interesting examples of um you know of coalitions between the peace movement and and the labor movement but we got to get those defense cuts because um well back to my labor leader in in with the machinist union in Connecticut um he having to represent um the workers at Pratt Whitney which makes the engines for the F-35 fighter jet um but uh also in the state are you know it's a very defense dependent state and there's also electric boat which makes all the nuclear powered submarines or many of them um and he said there was an interesting split so the the workers at Pratt Whitney would um would be fine if today we're making engines for the F-35 and tomorrow we're making wind turbines you know they'd be they'd be okay with that they're you know some of them would actually welcome that um electric boat tends to hire people with security clearances because of this new because of all the nuclear uh aspect of their work and so um uh they tend to be more resistant um so that was an interesting divide but uh he also said that you know the real problem he goes back to world war two that in world war two we were not asking you know how are we going to pay for this war um we were asking uh you know we need 50 ships uh you know where are we going to get the materials who's going to build them and they just you know kind of organized around that goal and he says you know now we have a climate crisis that is uh you know in some ways as big as world war two and that's the kind of mobilization uh we need to have where we're not so worried about you know can we afford this um because we absolutely can't afford not to so right exactly I think that's that's a really important point um and I think it's something that the climate movement has been really um important in driving home is you know flipping the conversation to actually climate change is happening now and um it's something that uh we're going to have to we need to deal with immediately and I also think um same similar situation when talking about um you know demilitarizing the economy it's it's going to be incumbent on us to explain to people how we can do that without like you said having people lose their jobs and I think um studies that you've done and the cost of war project have done showing that um spending uh and in almost any other industry will create more jobs and and good paying jobs as well is is really important to information um so that that sort of wraps up um some of the questions I wanted to ask you but did you have any last thoughts you wanted to add before we move into we have a couple of questions from the audience as well um why don't we do that okay sounds good great um so I have a couple of questions from the chat box and then I also have some from the q&a it looks like a couple of people had um a few more questions about pentagon spending and what that encompasses so somebody was asking what is the discretionary budget and how much goes to defense like what's discretionary versus non-discretionary yeah so the discretionary budget is the budget that congress votes on every year doesn't include so-called mandatory spending on social security uh medicare medicaid um that's basically the the distinction right great um and um I have a couple of other questions specifically about what the pentagon budget encompasses as well so there's two that I kind of want to fold together so it's is there a component of the military budget reflected in the cia dea and in the other agents like covert operations so is that is their funding covered in the pentagon budget and then is the veterans administration budget included in the pentagon budget um so the intelligence budget is sort of a black budget it's it's they don't reveal what it is um you know people have gotten some inklings but um but you know basically we don't we don't know about that one it's certainly not included is a line item in the in the in the federal budget that that gets released um so when I used to do this unified security budget the idea was um security is not just military we need to look at uh diplomacy and uh foreign aid and non-proliferation spending and when we look at that we say we're spending a lot on what I called offense just to say military and not very much on defense and not very much on prevention meaning the state department's diplomacy budget and and so on and it was always a question of whether when we were doing this analysis whether we should include veterans affairs it is a separate budget um and uh you know we could have used that I I sort of focused on what are we spending now for you know current conflicts but veterans affairs is certainly an expenditure um from our war fighting and so there's certainly an argument to be made um for including that in a consideration of what do we mean by by security national security spending um but it is not included in the in the um part of the budget including the Pentagon called national defense right that's really helpful thank you I think um as I said a lot of numbers floating around and people it's it's can be confusing um I have another question um from from Nancy it says is there a map of where all of the manufacturers are in the United States that have weapons contracts from the government or something a resource like that uh no um at least not that I've found um there's a there's a useful website uh called government contracts one w on dot com and it's a private site um but you can plug in uh your state or your county um and they will tell you all the you know all the contractors it's a little unclear to me you know what they're counting sometimes but it certainly gives you a lot of information about um uh contractors in your area yeah it's an interesting question and also I think you know something we didn't touch on but it's very true is that the Pentagon is the only agency that has yet to to pass an audit um their budget is also really difficult to actually understand what they're spending their money on um I've been doing that for for many years and I still have a hard time I don't necessarily want it to be uh transparent absolutely yeah it's in their interest for sure um and you know every once in a while we get stories about how expensive things are and the money that they're actually spending this outrageous budget on um I have some other questions as well this is a little bit about strategy and maybe congress as well so somebody asks is there much of a contingent in congress who are for reducing the military budget and are willing to engage in efforts towards that end well um just last year uh was created a new caucus in the congress called the defense spending reductions caucus and so um if you're doing a legislative lobbying I would say um go and find out if your member of congress is uh a member of that defense spending reductions caucus and if they're not uh talk them into it so um you know there it is uh and the progressive caucus um has uh been a leader to some extent in um efforts to cut the pentagon budget and the and the the two co-chairs are uh you know definitely making that pitch uh this year so um so I would say the defense spending reductions caucus and the progressive caucus um are definitely places to uh to look and you know I'm sure there's quite a bit of overlap yeah there definitely is and I think that's a really good question I mean it's something that um it is really exciting I mean to have a congressional defense spending reduction caucus is it's historic um and I put a link in the chat box for everyone here you can go to codepink.org slash um DSR caucus to see if your representative is in that caucus and if they're not to ask them to become part of that um because it's an important way to build up support um to reduce the pentagon budget um so we have just a couple more questions um some of them have been similarly themed so kind of group them together but this one I think um also speaks to a question about tactics and it's why not create a department of peace as proposed I think by Mary Ann Williamson they're saying to work on the transitions you're mentioning um and maybe removing money from the pentagon budget and into the department of peace. Yeah um that's an interesting idea that that has been floating around for for a long time um and uh you know I'd be fine with it um I think uh you know mostly what I've done is look at the structure of the government as as it is and um think about you know what departments in the civilian part of the of the government you know such as the state department uh you know EPA the energy department uh uh you know HHS uh education you know how those can be um you know used for peaceful purposes um but and there is a you know a U.S. Institute of Peace um but in my view you know they do some nice seminars and and um some nice studies and they have a beautiful building that looks like a dove on top and everything um but they're not really um they're not really pushing any envelopes I would say in in the direction of a demilitarized economy so another another department um you know would need to really be pushing and not just kind of uh doing nice studies I guess um so you know um I'm I'm certainly open to it right and I think um you know I I couldn't agree more that you know having the idea around you know putting more of our energies and efforts into creating something akin to a peace department department um sounds like a great idea and also I think um at this moment particularly in history it's interesting because um Joe Biden announced his Pentagon budget proposal and then also very soon after announced troop withdrawal um from Afghanistan and so at Code Peek we've been trying to talk about you know listen if we're ending if we're starting towards a trend of ending forever wars that should be reflected in our Pentagon budget as well right why have this enormous Pentagon budget um if we're still if we're no longer engaging in these forever wars um so we have to be really vigilant about that absolutely absolutely excellent um well I think that's about all of our questions um from the audience and I you know I want to thank you for for being here with us today Miriam I think it was really educational and people learned quite a bit I know I did myself um and you know I just wanted to say any any last things you wanted to touch on before we sort of wrap up here today uh I guess um you know I would make a pitch for as you're doing your congressional work um and your work in the community um I'd make a plug for the national priorities project many of you have used their their resources before but if anybody doesn't know um you can go to nationalpriorities.org and you can plug in you know your community uh and or your your congressional district or your county and um generate a whole set of trade-offs of you know this is what we are spending on the military this is what we could be spending and and I've always found that those sorts of trade-offs are a really valuable tool tool to um to use it with individual members of congress um uh in your own congressional district so I would I would just make a plug for that tool and then finally to say that um I have been working on this book uh and I am really enjoying doing it and I'm getting to the end um it's it's about six communities around the country that are very defense dependent and you know so I I look at you know how they came to be that way and you know what part of the military industrial complex do they uh do they feed into and each in each case I've um uh looked for communities that at some point in the past have done some kind of demilitarization effort and so um I am looking forward to finishing up that work and getting it out to uh folks like I think hope it'll be useful. It will be so useful I'm really looking forward to that book as well and I would love to know when it comes out so we can let everyone you know know I could think because I'm sure everyone will want to read it um so thank you so much for that Miriam and and thanks thank you also everyone for joining us um it's been a great conversation some really great questions um and chat generated um together and so I think that about wraps up everything for tonight um again thank you Miriam for an excellent conversation it's been really helpful um you know for the movement to just have a better understanding of our militarized economy everyone here will receive um a recording of the conversation and of the chat box so don't worry about trying to um copy that down and that wraps us up for the night so thank you so much everyone and have a good rest of your night wherever you are Zooming in from thank you so much thanks so much