 Yes, we have 52 and we're growing. I'm Marcy Wingrad, coordinator of Code Ping Congress with Medea Benjamin, my co-host. And tonight's a very special night because this show will be hosted by members of the Youth Peace Collective as we look at abolishing the selective service and not signing women up for future wars, which is what some Congress members would like to do. I will also discuss sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military and how that relates to U.S. foreign policy. I'd like to introduce our co-host tonight on the Youth Peace Collective organized. Danika Katowicz is the Middle East and Peace Collective coordinator. You've met her before on Code Ping Congress. Danika graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in political science. Since 2018, she has been working towards ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen. At Code Ping, as I mentioned, she works on youth outreach as a facilitator of the Peace Collective, Code Ping's youth cohort that focuses on anti-imperialist education and divestment. Welcome, Danika. With Danika tonight, we have another member of the Code Ping Youth Peace Collective, Isaac Roth Blumfeld. He is a composer and sound artist living in New York City. Danika is coming to us from Chicago. As an activist, Isaac has worked on focusing on Jewish-American community support for Israel's, for advocating for Palestine and for Palestinian rights. Whoa, and Isaac is thrilled to be working with us tonight and to be part of the anti-war movement. I turn it over to you, Danika and Isaac, thank you. Thank you so much, Marcy. And everyone remember to introduce yourselves in the chat and we're gonna hear from speakers, but to remember to stay after the speakers for our Capitol Hill calling party. But first, for some updates, Al Jazeera reported that Norway's largest pension fund announced that it's divested assets in 16 companies for their links to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including telecom equipment giant Motorola. From Associated Press, top Biden administration officials hosted a brother to Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman. In the highest level, such a visit known since the U.S. made public intelligent findings linked to the crown prince killing of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. And the Biden administration did not make this meeting public and they didn't disclose the meeting in advance. This comes at a time when Saudi dissidents and Saudi prisoners of conscience still remain in prison. Women's rights defender, Lou Jean Al Hathlou is still on a five-year travel ban out of Saudi Arabia and her families also cannot exit Saudi Arabia in the meantime. Meanwhile, today in Santa Clara, California, Hands Off Yemen was outside of Representative Rokana's office asking him that he introduce a war-pourish resolution. And today we also remember Philando Castile who was shot by St. Anthony police officer, Toronto Mo Yanis five years ago today on July 6th, 2016. Philando was a beloved employee of the St. Paul Public School System as a supervisor in the Nutrition Services Department. And Medea, do you have any updates on Cuba for us? Yes, there is a fantastic march that's happening from Miami, the heart of right wing Cuban-Americans, but these are progressive Cuban-Americans and they are marching all the way in the hot sun to Washington, D.C., where they will arrive on July 25th and we're organizing a big gathering to greet them when they come in. I'll put in the chat something about the trip up because if you're anywhere along the Atlantic Coast on the way between Washington and D.C., they might be passing through your city. We're doing events every evening. And so when they get to D.C., we're gonna have a big rally in Lafayette Park and people are coming from different parts of the country. I know there's people flying in from Miami. So if there's any of you that can make it, we're gonna have a lot of events that day and the following week be doing lobbying to try to push Congress and the administration to do something about lifting the blockade on Cuba. We also have a syringes campaign that we've been raising money to help Cuba buy the syringes it needs and now we are over $400,000. It took us two months to get GoFundMe to actually let us put up a GoFundMe because you put the word Cuba in and they suddenly have 10,000 questions for you. So even though we're starting to, it's towards the end of our fundraising, we just opened up the GoFundMe and I'll put that in the chat as well. Even if you can just give $10, $5, $20, whatever you can give, it's good to show GoFundMe that people care about Cuba. And then we also are organizing a flotilla from Key West, I'll put the chat there. There are different organizations, we hope veterans for peace, Adrienne, National Lawyers Guild, some other groups are going to buy very inexpensive votes to make their way from Key West to Havana in case they're confiscated by the Biden administration. So it will be a good challenge to his ridiculous policy. And lastly, I wanna say that there are other travel opportunities. We're organizing a trip to Honduras for the elections there in November. And we have a trip to China that will be happening in the summer of 2022. So those are my updates, thank you. Thank you, Medea. Wow, Code Pink has been busy. That's so inspiring, $400,000 to send syringes to Cuba. I'd like to give an update on the, I'd hate to say defense, well, Department of Defense Department of Energy's submissions for military spending for 2022. Congress right now is the appropriations committees are marking up the bills, writing the bills that will be voted on, I imagine after the August recess, that's when they'll be looking at the details of the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. In the meantime, Code Pink is sending out a petition next week urging everyone to contact members of the House Armed Services Committee to say, we don't want new nuclear weapons. And we absolutely do not want a new submarine, a nuclear-tipped cruise missile submarine. This is a submarine that's capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons and an adversary might not know what this weapon is that's being aimed at them. So it's very scary and could increase the likelihood of an accidental launch. In addition to that, I wanted to report that a number of organizations, including a nuclear watch New Mexico is suing the federal government over the plan for replacing the 400 Minuteman missiles with 600 new underground missiles in Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota. Specifically, they're suing the government over its plan to ramp up production of plutonium pits. Plutonium pit is the core of the nuclear weapon. It's the trigger. And currently, I guess the most that these laboratories, for example, at Los Alamos in New Mexico and Savannah River in South Carolina have produced is 20 plutonium pits. And now they want to ramp it up to 80 plutonium pits. The Department of Energy held some public comment periods on this in 2020, one for Savannah River, one for Los Alamos, but not a comprehensive one. And there are a few more sites that may be involved in the production of these pits. So the point is we want to support them. And I imagine Code Pink will be sending out an alert. I'll send out an alert to the Google group. If you're not on it, please request to be on it in the chat. We will ask members of Congress, for example, Katie Porter, who I believe is a mover and shaker on the oversight committee, to hold some hearings, to look into why haven't we had a period of comprehensive public comment, which they've had in the past on big projects like this. So that's my update. Thank you. Thank you, Marcy. Medea, you looked like you were going to say something. No. OK. All right, thank you so much, Marcy. So for today's program, we're going to hear from our first speaker, Rivera Sun, and our second speaker, Ed Hasbrook. And then our third speaker, Adrian Kinney, for about seven minutes each. Then we'll have a 10-minute Q&A session. And then make sure to stay for our Capitol Hill calling party. Our first speaker is activist and author Rivera Sun. She's a Code Pink member and also serves on the advisory board of World Beyond War. She's written numerous books and novels, including the Dandelion Insurrection and award winning RERA series. Rivera is the editor of Non-Violence News and part of the network working to abolish the military draft system for people of all genders. And her website is www.RiveraSun.com. And I thank you so much for being here today, Rivera. And I'll pass it over to you. Thank you so much, Danica. And thank you to everyone at Code Pink for hosting this Capitol Congress calling party and putting the issue of the expansion of the draft onto the schedule. So maybe you've heard about this. Maybe you haven't heard about this. But now that the military, the US military, is required to allow women to aspire to all positions within the military if they enlist, a group of anti-feminist men, let's say, pro-men's group, sued to actually expand the draft to women, because they think it'd be fair if women got drafted along with men. Well, that's only one way to look at this issue. So I want you to just think for a minute, if you are a man on this call, thank you for being on this call and just raise your hand if you have actually had to register for the draft. It's probably every single one of you. Right, Isaac's nodding over there, raising his hand. If you're a woman, raise your hand if you've never had to register for the draft. And that should be every single one of you. So this is one of the few privileges, quote unquote, that women have enjoyed, that men have not enjoyed. And now they'd like to create gender justice by get this, drafting women as well. But gender justice is not found by subjecting women to an injustice experienced by men. Gender justice is found by liberating men from an injustice that they bear that women are already free from. So I grew up hearing stories about my dad as a content subjector, as an anti-Vietnam War organizer, as someone who would help people flee the country when they were drafted. And so when I heard that the Congress was thinking about drafting young women, I stood up very boldly and said, this is wrong. It's completely wrong. Now the cool thing is that they have a choice. Congress doesn't have to draft young women and they don't have to keep drafting young men. There is a bipartisan bill that has been introduced in the House and in the Senate that calls for the repeal of the entire selective service system. And it's being supported by feminists like myself, anti-war advocates, people who oppose militarism, and then people who maybe don't care about any of those things but think it's a good example of wasteful government spending because even the former head of the selective service said that this is an outdated and wasteful system that is not doing its job. When we think about what gender justice would look like around this issue, the only just answer is to repeal the selective service for all genders. If we think of this in terms of what the draft actually is, which is involuntary conscription into the military, basically involuntary servitude, which is another word for slavery. And we've already had this conversation in the United States. It wouldn't make it right to enslave yet another group of people in addition to African-Americans in slavery times, right? It doesn't make it more just to subject yet another group to an injustice. The way we find justice is to liberate both groups from the threat of this injustice. So this seems very logical to me. I hope it seems logical to you, but apparently it doesn't sound very logical to pro-war feminists who have been trying to advance the military draft. That's why we need you to call your Congress members and explain this to them very nicely that they have a great out. Nobody really wants to expand the draft to women. They're all kind of tiptoeing around it. They're trying to avoid it. Nobody really wants to like spearhead this charge because they know that both the feminists will get on their case. The peace activists like us will get on their case and the sexists who don't think women can do anything will get on their case. But they need to know there is an out and that they can repeal the selective service and that this is actually the best historic moment for them to do so when the pressure is on them to create gender justice. And when we don't really need a draft, we haven't had an act of draft since Vietnam. We don't really need to use it in the wars that we're fighting. And if you're here for Code Pink, then you already know that we don't want to give them an endless cannon fodder credit card to subject young people's bodies to expanding and fighting their already obscene wars. So the other point to consider, and this comes up a lot and so I'm just gonna bring it right up, is that many times when I'm talking about why it's time to abolish the selective service, people start to say, well, doesn't that put an unfair burden on poor people and people of color who are already subjected to the poverty draft? Wouldn't it be better to draft everyone and then everyone supposedly equally serves? This is yet another one of those examples of false logic. The way to solve the poverty draft problem is not to draft all young people against their will. The way to solve it is to make affordable college education or jobs guarantee opportunities for people in that regard so that nobody is signing up for the military to simply get a college education or employment. We think it's really important that we take advantage of this moment when Congress needs to make a decision about this. They could dance around it for another 10 years but they're probably going to make a decision. They've already put some hints that they're gonna roll the expansion of the draft into the next NDAA. We're trying to stop that. But your Congress people need to hear from you because they need to know that women especially and young women especially and those who are feminists of other genders are really clear that feminism which has historically stood up for the rights of men as well as women for gender equality not just women over men but for men and women and people defining gender differently to share equality says that the way we're going to resolve this situation according to feminism is to end the draft system for everyone. So we will make sure that the bill number gets into the chat box. I'm sure my colleague Edward can help me out with that. I also want to let you know that there are a lot of groups and organizations backing these bills to abolish the selective service. Code pink of course will be on war, center on war and conscious even veterans for peace has now endorsed it. It enjoys the endorsement of Ilan Omar which is wonderful and Eleanor Holmes Norton from DC and Mark Polkin who's the chair of the LGBTQ caucus. And I just want to give a little hat tip to LGBTQ persons because they have really set the bar for understanding the politics of liberation versus the politics of simply inclusion that as feminists we want to liberate everyone from an unjust system which is drafting women and men against their will and we will not accept the notion that feminism can be achieved through enlisting our bodies to fight in unjust wars that cause untold trauma and devastation around the world. So I thank you for this time and I'm just going to pass it over to my colleague Edward which I think Isaac is going to introduce. Thank you so much Rivera for that really great informative overview of this whole situation. Our next speaker is Edward Hasbrook. He's an activist against the draft and for peace human rights and youth liberation. From 1980 to 1991, he worked with the National Resistance Committee and local draft resistance collectives in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco and as co-editor of Resistance News the national journal of the draft registration resistance movement. He was convicted in 1982 of willful refusal to present himself for and submit to registration with the selective service system and served four and a half months in a federal prison camp in 1983 to 1984. He is one of only 20 people who were selected for prosecution for refusing to register in the 1980s before enforcement of the registration requirement was abandoned in 1988. He was prosecuted by ex-Marien Robert S. Mueller III in one of Mueller's first high-profile cases as an assistant US attorney. Ed, we're ready to hear from you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Isaac. It's an honor to be here with a group like Code Pink that's certainly been in the forefront of articulating the argument that- But we can't hear you well, Ed. We need you to speak up. Hi, can you hear me now? Much better. Yeah, but even closer, louder. All right, sorry about that. It's an honor to be here with a group like Code Pink that's certainly been in the forefront of articulating the argument that war and militarism are part of the patriarchy. I wanna speak to a question that I think implicitly, Medea was getting at in the chat and that others may have in their minds as to why this even matters if it seems like the draft probably isn't that imminent. Anyway, and why are we talking about this now? Where did this come from? The present requirement for men to register with the draft and actually to report, every time they change their address until they turn 26 so the government knows where to find them, which almost nobody complies with, dates back to 1980 as part of a resurgence of American militarism in the post-Vietnam era. And from the start, it's been a failure. Most young people don't comply and it proved unenforceable as the introduction suggested. It became quite clear early on that it was not going to be unenforceable. Even the former director of selective service as Rivera alluded to said recently that the current database is so incomplete and inaccurate that it would be less than useless for an actual draft. So why has the government put such a priority on continuing a program that's failed? Well, because the government does not want to admit that its actions are constrained by popular willingness to comply. That would empower the resistance, that would empower young people, that would empower the peace movement and it would require the government beginning to incorporate popular support or lack of support for war into its war planning, something that is adamantly opposed to. So for decades, we've had a stalemate where draft registration remained on the books, but there was no face saving way for Congress to end it. So as a result of a court case challenging the current requirement for men but not women to register, this got put back on the congressional agenda. Congress debated it five years ago, stalled by appointing a national commission which I testified before and Rivera and I were part of meetings with them, although it turned out they'd already made up their minds months before they talked to any anti-draft activists. And now this year, bills have been introduced in Congress, one to find the end draft registration but the other officially endorsed both by President Biden and by my unfortunate representative in Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, that would double down on the failure of draft registration for men by trying to expand it to women as well. So, and even though the Supreme Court last month decided it wasn't gonna hear this case, the momentum has developed for Congress finally to make a choice on this issue. It's been evading for decades and this is our best chance. If we don't get this address this year, it could go back on the back burner and the government could go along continuing to pretend that the draft is always an option. It's not their first choice. They'd rather use active duty troops or turn to the reserves, the National Guard. But as we heard before the National Commission, they really want to have the draft in their back pocket as a fallback so that there's always something to fall back on. Why? Because they don't want to have to think about limits on their war making or their war planning. And this is why this is so important. I think there's a common misperception that supporting draft resistance is about protecting young people against the draft. But the primary victims of a draft are not the draftees, but the people, primarily civilians, many of the women against whom draftees would be weaponized and deployed in war. And the real phenomenon that's going on here through resistance to draft registration, ongoing spontaneous sustained over decades by generations of young people is that young people are taking leadership in protecting all of us from war. And it's up to us older people to push this across the finish line to get Congress to acknowledge that the draft is not a possibility and more importantly to begin to incorporate that recognition about constraints and limits to war into their war planning. And in an era when the primary peace issue or certainly a primary peace issue is the government's insistence on waging and preparing for endless ever-growing war without limits, this is a concrete place where popular direct action can put constraints on war making and change the narrative about war and war planning to one that begins to take into consideration the constraint that this place is on war. I was at a talk not long ago with Daniel Ellsberg where he talked about, was asked about this. He said, yeah, sure, we've been able to fight wars without a draft, but if we'd had a draft, those wars would have been even larger and worse over the past decades. I'd flip it the same way. We'll have wars with or without a draft, but if we take the draft off the table as part of the war maker's arsenals, we can begin to constrain that ability of the government to wage war. That's why this is so important. And that's why it's so important to take advantage of this opportunity. I've been involved in the anti-draft movement and the draft resistance movement for 40 years. And I say without exaggeration, that the coming month is the most critical month in that 40 years because we have Congress finally being poised to make a decision it's been put off. This is a tremendous opportunity. This is one of the greatest victories of the peace movement in decades, actually, that we've stopped a draft and we've gotten close to getting that prevention of a draft admitted by the government. Let's carry this through the last mile. Let's support young people and their leadership for peace. Let's help them protect us all against war by letting Congress know that the right way to move forward is to end the draft. There's a letter that Rebara and I and leaders of Vets for Peace and other groups sent to the House Armed Services Committee where this is gonna be taken up on July 28th. Earlier this year, we said, this is a choice about militarism, not a choice about gender equality. Expanding draft registration to women would bring about a semblance of equality and war, although women in the military would still likely be subject to disproportionate sexual harassment and abuse. The next topic in this webinar, so stick around, ending draft registration would bring about real equality in peace and freedom. Let's help make that a reality. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I just wanna remind everyone, if you have any questions throughout the event, please put it in the chat. We'll direct them at our speakers after our last speaker is done. Thank you so much, Edward, for that. Our next speaker is Adrienne Kinney. She's the president of Veterans for Peace. She served in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves from 1994 through 2004 as an Arabic linguist in military intelligence. She was activated in the reserves for two years following the events of 9-11 and served stateside in direct support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as a voice interceptor. She worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs as a health science specialist in psychology and as the New England Regional Coordinator for Iraq Veterans Against the War. She is currently living in Vermont. And go ahead, Adrienne. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you. It's been an incredibly fascinating topic and discussion so far. And I was just thinking, listening about the selective service and people trying to push women to have to register for the draft. How dare anybody force anybody to register to take part in a system where military sexual trauma, sexual harassment, and rape is not only incredibly common that despite decades-long no-tolerance, commands are still reluctant to pursue people who have been accused of sexual harassment and rape and retaliation is at all time high. Despite the fact that the military has over the past 20 years said that they are doing everything they can to try to address military sexual trauma, it is still a problem. The rates have gone up over the past year. And despite efforts over the past 20 years to remove the chain of command from the investigating process and put it into the competent external hands of an impartial body that has yet again stalled. Unfortunately, Chris Angelo Brand's bill that would have moved the investigations of military sexual assaults out of the immediate chain of command in the military was filibustered. So we yet again hope that perhaps the military will see some sense, but regardless, it's deplorable. I have always thought that it's deplorable that when kids go to join the military, they are not, recruiters are not mandated to give full disclosure about the possible harms that they may experience as a result of their service. And by far and large, the perpetrators are members of the military. So, a lot of this is stuff we already know. Military sexual harassment, military sexual assault in the military in the United States is incredibly high. It is high for women and for men. It's statistically a higher proportion of women are assaulted in the military. If you look at the numbers though, males are more likely because there are more men in the military, there are more males who have been subjected to sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military. So as we know, military sexual trauma comes with a whole host of lifelong repercussions to include depression, anxiety, MST, PTSD, physical problems, chronic pain, problems with weight, infertility. And I would say that for me, I think about this a lot. I was a counselor, my last job in the VA was five years as a readjustment counselor in Vermont. And the numbers of women that I saw serving from the 80s right through today who had experienced military sexual trauma and then retaliation and eventually being kicked out of the military. Some of them losing their military benefits as a result. It's frustrating and infuriating and not taken seriously enough by I think anybody because in the United States we have this hero worship complex where there's this constant bombardment in the media that we have to support our troops and honor our heroes. And essentially acting as if the military and members who serve are godlike. And that requires the people, the Americans to turn a blind eye to the horrors that go on in the military. And the Congress and the Pentagon certainly aided in about that happening as we've seen by them for solving any attempt to bring in some really basic standard external oversight that most of our allies have already embraced and as part of their judicial process within the military they already embrace the idea of external people coming in and investigating and taking it far more seriously than the United States does. And I would say that that is incredibly directed and connected to US imperialism. I mean, the United States we want Americans to think of everybody else as lesser human beings that's certainly part of military training. In basic training they break you down and they build you up in the image of what would be best serving a serving soldier and the goal of the military and the goal of the military is to go along with US imperialism. And as a result, I sought myself in basic training. You, they pet soldier against soldier, unit against unit, squad against squad, heck, the army versus navy. The military uses our own soldiers to get us to dehumanize one another. No wonder that has, just horrific ramifications for everybody involved but certainly for people who are subjected to military sexual assault and rape. And you know what? I have to say that is a member of a veterans organization over the 10 plus 15 years I have been doing peace work. I have seen it within veterans groups that are connected with peace work. It is not something that can just be turned off. And unfortunately too few peace activists realize the interconnectedness of all of these issues that we face and how, you know, we've had, we've had members of veterans for peace upset that members want to Black Lives Matter rallies because they say we're not supposed to be here to oppose racism, we're here to oppose war. But then they don't see the connection between racism here in our country and the racism that we unleash and use as a reason to motivate people to want to invade other countries. And it's the same with views towards women. It's all about dehumanizing and otherizing people and it is completely connected with everything the United States does in the world. And it definitely, I think hinders unless we're able to talk about it freely and openly our ability to actually work towards lasting peace as peace activists. And so I don't know, I know that there is, there's been a lot of work that has been done. I have been really fortunate to see veterans for peace take a lot of steps to try and address how we all interact with each other and how we treat each other as members of the FD. But yeah, there's pushback, you know? For instance, in the chain of command in the military say some officer knows some guy who some woman says, assaulted her and their friends and they dismissed the case. They don't want to take it because obviously she's lying. You know, I see the same thing in our organization where people will dismiss bad behavior because they're like this person has been a peace activist or this person has been here, I don't believe it or I don't think it is bad enough to dismiss all the decades of peace work that they have done. It's the same, you know, there are other veterans organizations too, common defense has gone through its own issues where they had a whole rash of women, particularly BIPOC women who resigned very publicly because they said they were hired to make the organization look good but when actually came time to them sharing their opinions and being taken seriously, they were ridiculed and dismissed and so they quit. And I unfortunately, yeah, it's a lot of stuff that still kind of, I'm personally working through as a member of Veterans for Peace who is also incredibly committed to our effort to work for peace and social justice in the world forever for everyone. So that is my spiel and I appreciate you all having the space in this time and continuing the discussion. Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Adrienne and to all of our speakers for their great points and a great conversation so far. Now we're gonna open it up for about 10 minutes of Q&A and we have some great questions in the chat already and if you have any more questions that come up, feel free to either raise your hand or put them in the chat. Great, so I think Danica, we have a first question. Yes, this one is from Medea. I think this will be directed to either Ed or Rivera. Don't these new hybrid wars require fewer people in the military, drones, proxy wars, special operations? Do they require less people? Basically, yes, but again, keeping, as I said, keeping the draft in the arsenal of policy options is not because they can come up with any plausible scenario. When the National Commission was questioning me, the best scenario they could come up with for when they would want a draft was suppose we're being invaded simultaneously from Mexico and Canada and there aren't enough volunteers to defend the country. It's not realistic, but it's not about actual wanting a draft, it's wanting to be able to plan for war without limits. Just the very, it's the idea of putting any constraint that's the problem for them. So another question that came up for Rivera is how do you think we can best mobilize young people to resist the draft and call for the abolishment of the draft? Yeah, great, great question. So in my personal experience, it's not hard to get young people fired up about this. Particularly young women, as soon as they hear about it, they're like, what? Say what? The challenge to all of us in our peace organizations is to make sure that we're saying this, that we're making sure our membership knows about it, that we make sure that our membership reaches out to the young people in their life and that we work with young people to come up with strategic actions which seem viable and successful, including legislative pressure, but also including sharing stories like Edwards and other people who have been draft resistors to know that, if we want Congress to ditch this idea, we want them to abolish the selective service, we have a long history of draft resistance and we know how to do it and we know how to raise that specter up high enough, but it makes possible the realistic threat that was lifted in the 80s when Edward was resisting that people will not just go along with this blindly. So yeah, trust the young people, they have a great sense of justice. Make sure that we're doing the groundwork as allies across intergenerational organizing to get the message out there because we know that if you wanna reach draft age people, their moms or dads or aunties, their teachers in public universities, college institutions are gonna be really important allies and make sure the key points about why it is important to stop the draft, get made, thanks. Thank you. I'll direct this one from Richard to Adrienne asking about sexual trauma perpetrated by US military onto civilian populations and countries occupied militarily by the US. So I guess this question is about like, how do we hold the military accountable for sexual violence kind of as a whole? I think that's what the question's asking. I would say that we get the United States to withdraw troops and close our bases overseas, period. My experience in Okinawa, despite any effort that the military has to try and be a good neighbor to the communities that they're nearby, it's hogwash. And honestly, very few times have I ever seen or heard of somebody who is perpetrated or rape against somebody in the civilian, in the local environment being prosecuted. I don't know if that's change, but certainly it seems like the military has always been there about saying that this is somebody who has to be subjected to the military code of justice, which is code for nothing happens. And I don't know if that has changed, but considering how little military chain of command takes seriously military sexual assault and rape against our own soldiers, I doubt that is very different in bases overseas. And another question that came up kind of for whoever has an answer for this is, does the training that service people go through that includes dehumanizing the enemy also lead to dehumanizing women or dehumanizing others general? I mean, when you go through basic, they don't say this is the enemy. Like there's no way to target that dehumanization process to an external other. Heck, even a station in the United States, we were told what areas in our local neighborhood like off post not to go to, because it was deemed unsafe or unfit for service members. So, there's the idea that even Americans are somehow ill fit or unsafe to be around and to be thought of less. Thank you, Adrienne. This next question is from Leonard. This can either go to Rivera, right? I think Elizabeth Warren comes from a military family, but is on our side on most issues. What is her position on this one? I assume that means that's about abolishing the draft. And I see some chatter about Elizabeth Warren in the chat, so it would be a good thing to address too. Yeah, well, Elizabeth Warren is one of those who's undecided. She's actually in a key position, so I'd particularly encourage those of you in her district. She is somebody to target. She's on the subcommittee on military personnel of the Senate Armed Services Committee. There are a large number of key people who are undecided, some of whom have said to activists that they're looking for input. And I think it's partly trying to get arguments, but it's much more, they're trying to do sort of assess which way the political wins blow. And they may not be persuaded not to like a draft, although I think most of them know that really it's not that realistic. What they need to know is that there's political support for their taking a position against the draft that it's not gonna be something that they're gonna get flayed on. And they also need to know that if they support expanding draft registration to women, that there are people that there are young women who will resist and that there are old people, men and women who will support them. They're really taking the temperature of what the political opposition to trying to force women to sign up for the draft would be, they need to hear from people saying, look, are you prepared to lock me up? Are you prepared to put our movement on trial? Are you prepared to face the kind of sympathetic defendants that that would create? And what exactly is your enforcement plan? Given that you haven't been able to get this to work for men, you think that women are pushovers and it'll be easier to drag them in to fight a war they don't wanna fight. What are you doing? So they really do need to hear from you on that and Warren is certainly among those. This is another kind of question on the same topic from Toby saying, many people, including sometimes people who are activists against war and for peace argue that we should have a return to the draft because there would be more citizens who would protest and resist US wars, which would decrease the US government's success. And even if you don't agree with this, what is your response to that idea that a draft could maybe create more anti-war sentiment? Yeah, thank you. It's a great question. It gets raised a lot. The challenge with that thinking is that historically it hasn't always been true. It certainly was true with Vietnam, but it wasn't true in other wars that we've had drafts with. So first of all, it's a risky strategy for the peace movement. Second of all, it's a morally bankrupt strategy for the peace movement. Because what that means is that we are accepting that something like 30,000 young people if we're gonna use Vietnam as an example are gonna get drafted and killed in the process of pursuing peace. That is morally bankrupt of us to assume and prepare for as a peace movement. It is not an okay strategy to let stand to replicate to say that we're planning on this. Of course, if there's a draft, probably people are gonna get upset about it, but we need to be better activists than that. We need to get in front of things. And even beyond that, if we want to really fight militarism, really fight the war machine, then we need to make sure that our young people are not having to sign up to be participant in it as a right of passage. This is literally language they use on this commission as a right of passage to becoming adults, right? So we need to challenge ourselves as a peace movement to push back on that one. Thanks for that question though. Thank you, Rivera. Basil has tied his hand up. We'll have this be our last question. Basil, if you wanna unmute and ask your question, you can go ahead. You have your zoom hand up. Oh, I can't, you're, oh, there you go. First of all, hello, everybody. How are you doing? I was invited to this by Hennett and I and Marcy. And I must say, this is what war looks like. For those who can't see it closely, that's what it looks like. I'm not for war at all. One of my issues, I just have to be currently the vice chair of the Democratic Party of Independence Caucus. One of the things I fought for as I ran was to make sure that when a woman gets sexually assault, it needs to be dealt with. Let me give you an example. When you have a private, maybe you have a sergeant. And let's say a sergeant male has sexually hit a female. Well, where does that female go? She can't go to the next one up or the one before him. And if she tries to go above him, he gets railroaded. So I'm totally against that. And I would love to work with Adrian as I text you, you are absolutely right. Everything you have said is absolutely correct. I just got on and I heard part of it. And so whatever I can do as activists as well, I would love to help. I go to 55 million people daily. My wife and I are different blogs. I really appreciate what I've been hearing since I've been on. I didn't realize we had so many people my age on this. I'm so happy to see that as well. But you are correct. We have to address the young ones. When I went in, it was like G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe. That's all they kept telling us G.I. Joe. But no one told us about the after effects until years later. And I think that our women that are there now, they need to be protected. And this draft system, man, I need more information, but I came from the war where take me I'll go. But what I've seen of war and what I have on my arm, I'm definitely for veterans for peace. I would like to be part of that organization as well. And anything that I can do to help. I'm in guys, I'm in, I'm all in. Just someone call me and tell me what the deal is. I was surprised that you only have one African-American audience, which is me. There are a whole lot of African-American men and women who've been there who would love to have been on this to voice their opinion, but. Basil, this is Marcy and you can help us expand. Oh, Marcy, where are you? Oh, you're the one with the people? Oh, Marcy and Jamie, I support at 100%. Okay. Come on in, Marcy, come on in. Anyway, thank you so much, Basil. And have a great week. Thank you. I think now what's happening, Danika, we're gonna go to the calling part. Yes, that sounds good. I'll pass it over to you. Okay. Thank you all, our guests. Let's unmute and thank our guests. Thank you.