Friends,
The two letters below
will be delivered on Tuesday, December 31 to the local offices of Ben
Cardin and Chris Van Hollen. They will also be emailed to Cardin aide
Katherine Close and Van Hollen aide Afreen Akhter, both of whom work in the
D.C. office. Let me know if you would like to sign on to the letters.
Also note there
is interest in direct action in D.C. in early 2020. The theme of this
action would be to link up militarism and climate chaos. This NDAA will be a
disaster for the environment and should provide an impetus to consider taking action.
The actual action needs to be planned, but it could include an occupation of
legislative offices in D.C. Let me know if you might have some interest
in participating.
Kagiso, Max
Senator Chris Van
Hollen
#110 Hart
Senate Office Building,
Washington,
DC 20002
December 31, 2019
Dear Senator Van
Hollen:
We were very disappointed to discover that you and another 37
Democratic members of the Senate voted for the 2020 National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA), which increases the Pentagon budget by $22 billion.
This legislation gives President Donald Trump his "Space Force," the
opportunity to engage in saber-rattling, and a green light to continue fueling
the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. It has to be noted that this is a
president who claims that the government cannot afford Medicare for All or a
Green New Deal.
Instead of
cutting the Pentagon budget in order to fund much needed social services and a
broken-down infrastructure, Democratic senators helped give Donald Trump
unlimited resources to engage in military adventures and to consort with the
likes of Mohammed bin Salman. It is sad to think that we had hopes that the
Senate would work to end U.S. military involvement in the Saudi-led war in
Yemen.
No, the Trump administration will not provide food, medicine and
humanitarian care to the people of Yemen. Instead, our government will
assist Saudi Arabia in a war with U.S. weapons which has led to famine, cholera
and diphtheria epidemics and thousands of dead Yemeni civilians. "People
are eating leaves because they have no other form of sustenance… In Aden, I met
emaciated children so malnourished they could barely open their eyes," said
Mark Lowcock, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator during a visit to Yemen in 2018.
Today, 15 million people are still on the brink of starvation and malnutrition,
and two million are children.
All of the anti-war and anti-nuclear amendments were
stripped from the final bill, including the repeal of the 2002 Iraq
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). This is very ironic as
the release of the Afghanistan Papers revealed how three administrations lied
to the people about the success of the war in Afghanistan. Also there is
the awful realization that the Trump Administration is cutting funding for so
many programs, including education, healthcare and the environment. Thirty
progressive advocacy groups condemned the bipartisan $738 billion National Defense
Authorization Act as a "blank check" to the military-industrial
complex. It does nothing to restrain President Trump's reckless foreign
policy. And it accepts social services cutbacks as a fait accompli.
We will not
accept that this legislation makes us safe. We had great hope that the
Senate Democrats would stand strong against Trump, but for whatever reason it
did not happen. How could the House and Senate Democrats allow nearly
every provision progressives fought to include to be stripped from the 2020
NDA?
On November 14,
several of us met with you at your D.C. office, and you urged us to keep
working hard against “usable nukes,” the trillion dollar upgrade on the nuclear
weapons arsenal and the Space Force. That is why we are having so much
trouble understanding why you supported President Trump’s policies, which we
thought were antithetical to the principles of the Democratic Party. We
intend to continue to bring to your attention our concern about a variety of
issues.
In peace,
Senator Ben Cardin
509 Hart Senate
Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
December 31, 2019
Dear
Senator Cardin:
We were very disappointed to discover that you and another 37
Democratic members of the Senate voted for the 2020 National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA), which increases the Pentagon budget by $22 billion.
This legislation gives President Donald Trump his "Space Force," the
opportunity to engage in saber-rattling, and a green light to continue fueling
the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. It has to be noted that this is a
president who claims that the government cannot afford Medicare for All or a
Green New Deal.
Instead of cutting the Pentagon budget in order to fund much needed social
services and a broken-down infrastructure, Democratic senators helped give
Donald Trump unlimited resources to engage in military adventures and to
consort with the likes of Mohammed bin Salman. It is sad to think that we had
hopes that the Senate would work to end U.S. military involvement in the
Saudi-led war in Yemen.
No, the Trump administration will not provide
food, medicine and humanitarian care to the people of Yemen.
Instead, our government will assist Saudi Arabia in a war with U.S. weapons
which has led to famine, cholera and diphtheria epidemics and thousands of dead
Yemeni civilians. "People are eating leaves because they have no other
form of sustenance… In Aden, I met emaciated children so malnourished they
could barely open their eyes," said Mark Lowcock, the United Nations
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief
Coordinator during a visit to Yemen in 2018. Today, 15 million people are still
on the brink of starvation and malnutrition, and two million are children.
All of the anti-war and anti-nuclear amendments were
stripped from the final bill, including the repeal of the 2002 Iraq
Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). This is very ironic as
the release of the Afghanistan Papers revealed how three administrations lied
to the people about the success of the war in Afghanistan. Also there is
the awful realization that the Trump Administration is cutting funding for so
many programs, including education, healthcare and the environment. Thirty
progressive advocacy groups condemned the bipartisan $738 billion National Defense
Authorization Act as a "blank check" to the military-industrial
complex. It does nothing to restrain President Trump's reckless foreign
policy. And it accepts social services cutbacks as a fait accompli.
We will not
accept that this legislation makes us safe. We had great hope that the
Senate Democrats would stand strong against Trump, but for whatever reason it
did not happen. How could the House and Senate Democrats allow nearly
every provision progressives fought to include to be stripped from the 2020
NDA?
You and the
other senators voted for legislation which will fund “usable nukes,” the
trillion dollar upgrade on the nuclear weapons arsenal and the Space
Force. That is why we are having so much trouble understanding why you
supported President Trump’s policies, which we thought were antithetical to the
principles of the Democratic Party. We intend to continue to bring to
your attention our concern about a variety of issues.
In peace,
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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