Media and News
Global day of action on military spending
On Monday 14th April, as part of GDAMS – the Global Day of Action on Military Spending – Action AWE were out in sunny Reading. Eight of us ran a ‘People’s Budget’ game, asking members of the public how they would move the money being wasted on Trident, and handed out leaflets. People were very much split on whether education, the NHS, jobs in green energy or housing were their top priorities – but crucially, no one who played the game wanted to see £100 billion wasted on Trident!
Events like this are really useful for getting the word out about Aldermaston and Burghfield, too; most people we spoke to were against replacing Trident, but very few connect this up with the billions being spent every year at the Atomic Weapons Establishment, even though it is just a few miles down the road. Some didn’t even know that AWE existed, that the missiles were driven in convoys up to Scotland, or that the government was making plans to replace Trident.
This nonviolent action (organized after the seminar “War starts here. Let’s stop it from here!, which took place during the previous week) was organized by the network Alternativa Antimilitarista.MOC as part of their campaign “Recortar lo Militar” (Cut the military), which aims to make visible and question the present social remilitarisation and the increased social control necessary to impose on the population policy of capitalist “adjustments”.
While the majority of the population is suffering a worsening of their living conditions, the different governments cut labor and social rights, and social services. At the same time they maintain, if they don’t increase it in a covert way, the military apparatus and the one needed for social control with all the expenses this requires.
The actions of the Global Day on Military Spending, which during these days take place all over the world, denounce that the present amount of global military spending has increased to 1.75 trillion dollars, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
“We denounce these immense and immoral expenditures. We demand that military spending should be reduced to zero and that the so freed resources should be invested into the people, in their development and in satisfying their basic needs”, says Andreas Speck, a German peace activist.
NONVIOLENT antiMILITARIST ACTION IN THE LAS PALMAS NAVY BASE
