Menu
LATEST UPDATES
Check CAPA’s Events Page for our latest Defund/ Divest from the Pentagon events!
Check out CAPA’s awesome Defund/ Divest friends and partners, including Dissenters, Codepink, World BEYOND War, and more!
OUR GOALS
We know that tremendous needs exist in the U.S.: healthcare, education, racial justice, economic justice, and the list goes on. In the face of these urgent needs, spending nearly a trillion dollars yearly on self-manufactured threats is unconscionable.
As noted in this article by the American Friends Service Committee, in a 2022 national YouGov poll: “56% of survey respondents supported cutting military spending. Key findings include majority support for spending cuts among veterans, current service members and those with family members in the military. The survey also showed strong support for cuts from people of color and people under the age of 45, as well as a plurality of support from Evangelicals.”
The Defund the Pentagon campaign educates Chicago area constituents about the excessive amount of money the Pentagon eats up every year. We will start by supporting a proposed 10% cut to 2022 National Defense Authorization Act–which is only the beginning.
Join the campaign! Email CAPA@ChiPeaceAction.org to get involved.
Support our campaign by sending a letter to your legislators asking them to join the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus and take the first step to reclaiming the US’s financial resources away from war and reinvest them to meet human need!
Unless you are a major corporation like Amazon, you likely paid income tax last year and will again this year. But do you have any idea what our taxes buy? Would it surprise you to learn that in the 2021 budget, military spending will total $969 billion dollars? That is roughly 54% of the discretionary budget. That’s right, over half the money Congress authorizes each year goes to national defense. A reasonable observer might ask, defending us from what? That is more than the next ten countries combined spend on defense and ten of those are U.S. allies.
The U.S. maintains over 800 military bases all around the globe. What is the purpose of all this overkill? We would argue it is not to protect the U.S. and its citizens. It is for global power projection and to protect the interests of an empire we neither need nor desire as a people. For an egregious example of this, see the U.S. support of the brutal Saudi war on Yemen resulting in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Will defunding the Pentagon make us unsafe? Not when there are proven, weaponless alternatives like Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) for local and national protection. Read here to find out why we must invest in life-affirming models of safety instead of life-destroying ones.
DEFUND THE POLICE SOLIDARITY
As were many others, we were deeply inspired by the calls from BIPOC organizers in the summer of 2020 to #DefundThePolice. As peace activists, we know that the key to peace, globally, locally, and interpersonally is not to escalate conflict through state violence or punitive measures, but rather to address the root causes and meet human need.
It is from that movement from which we drew inspiration for our Defund The Pentagon campaign, and in solidarity, we are endorsing the #DefundCPD campaign calling for a 75% decrease of Chicago Police Department budget for it to be reinvested in social services and community programs.
CONTACT US
If you would like more information, to volunteer, or intern for CAPA please contact us