Endless Wars = Few or No Gains for Working People

Saturday, March 20, 2021 at Noon
230 S. Dearborn St, Chicago IL 60603

~ Respect the safety of all in attendance: Wear masks and practice social distancing ~

Every new Presidential administration starts with attractive promises made to working class people: Good jobs, healthcare, prosperity for all.

If the economy does well, working people may make modest gains – these are pennies compared to the unimaginable wealth shoveled into the pockets of America’s richest people. More often, there’s stagnation and, for the poorest, outright regression. Rightwing populists build their careers and dangerous movements – blaming immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, and Jews for the nation’s problems. They inflame bigotry against LGBTQs, women and others.

Few Americans realize that, compared to other industrialized nations, the richest country in world history has by far the WORST public benefits for working parents and their children.

The reasons are not hard to find. Since the end of World War II, U.S. rulers have dominated the world with a huge military apparatus designed to intimidate other nations into doing its bidding or, failing that, brutally punishing them. Like police forces on the local level, the U.S. military eats up an enormous part of spending: 50% of the federal discretionary budget.

Meanwhile, much poorer nations suffer wholesale death and devastation unimaginable to people in the U.S.

For all the U.S. soldiers killed, traumatized or otherwise disabled by war, there are many more times that number of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians and others with destroyed homes and shattered lives. Thanks to the U.S. conducting constant drone bombings, its support for brutal dictators, sanctions, threats of invasions and coups, the working people of these violated countries have far fewer resources to recover from wars and climate disasters. Many are forced into desperate migrations from their homes and communities in Central and South America, northern Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and elsewhere.

In addition, the U.S. military is the world’s biggest polluter. It is the #1 contributor to the growing climate catastrophe. While politicians debate the proposed $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, none mention the U.S.’s projected $3 trillion nuclear weapons “modernization” program.

We must end this death spiral. At best, the leading politicians of both parties have tinkered around the edges of these massive, deadly problems. At worst, they’ve thrown more gasoline on the fire. Either way, their measures fall far short of what working people need, especially Black, Latinx and Native American people.

For all the “change” they promise, both parties stay committed to preserving and extending U.S. domination of the world. They each have an iron-clad commitment to funding its massive nuclear and conventional arsenals with a devastating cost to working people here and abroad.

History has shown that the only times we get changes of the magnitude we need are when masses of working people, organized and with clear strategy, take matters into their own hands. This was the power behind the union struggles of the Great Depression, the struggles of Black people and their allies in the Civil Rights Movement, and the anti-war, Black Power, Chicano, feminist and LGBTQ movements of the late 1960s.

In the spirit of those earlier movements, on Saturday, March 20th – the 18th anniversary of the United States’ second longest Forever War, the invasion and occupation of Iraq – please join us as we demand:

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said when he famously broke with the Democratic Party, calling out “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government”:

“There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America…. I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such….

“This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

From “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence,” delivered at Riverside Memorial Church, April 4, 1967

Co-Sponsoring organizations:

To endorse the March 20th action, please message us or send an email to chicagoantiwar@gmail.com

Demandas en español

Debemos hacer demandas proactivamente a la nueva administración de Biden-Harris:

Main Content

Endless Wars = Few or No Gains for Working People

Saturday, March 20, 2021 at Noon 230 S. Dearborn St, Chicago IL 60603

Saturday, March 20, 2021 at Noon
230 S. Dearborn St, Chicago IL 60603