Hello, hello, everybody. This is Nico from Unicorn Riot. We are in Chicago at the People
Summit. This is the third and final day, and today we are joined by Medea Benjamin. How
are you today? I'm doing great. Good to be with you. All right, all right. So we have
Medea here, and Medea is going to talk about Code Pink. She's going to talk about some
other things. We're going to start with People Summit. This is the third day. How have you
enjoyed it, or what is your perception of this time so far at the People Summit? Well, my group
Code Pink has focused a lot on foreign policy issues, and so I've loved the summit in terms of
the energy, and Bernie gave a great talk, and there have been exciting workshops. But from the
point of view of somebody who really focuses on foreign policy issues, it's like, where are they?
And that's so strange to me because it seems a criticism that we had throughout Bernie Sanders'
campaign is why isn't he addressing the issue of the empire, the huge Pentagon budget, if we want
to fund health care and free public education, and the needs of this community and infrastructure,
where is that money going to come from? The bloated Pentagon budget. And now Donald Trump has
handed us the perfect vehicle to talk about it, because in addition to the big Pentagon budget
that already existed, he wants to add another 54 billion. And this time he's saying we're going to
take it from the APEPA, we're going to take it from Meals on Wheels, we're going to take it from
preschool child programs. You'd think we would all be able to come together and say at least no to
that extra 54 billion for war. And yet, I haven't heard that mentioned at all in the entire three
days. So you bring us some really good points. Also bring up maybe an oversight in the People
Summit bringing this up. But let's talk about this more a little bit further. So we have this
Pentagon budget that's massive. Can you maybe talk about some stats, percentages of military
expenditures, maybe even comparing. And you bring up the good point, those resources could be used
for other means. So when it comes to this Pentagon budget, what is the deal with it? How is it so
expensive? Well, the U.S. has always had a budget that is enormous. And in recent decades, we never
got the peace dividend that we were supposed to get after the Vietnam War. And the Pentagon budget
is without the extra 54 billion already bigger than the rest of the eight next countries combined.
So massive. And then along comes Donald Trump. He says our military is decimated. We need more
tanks. We need more planes. We need more troops. We need more Marines. We need more this. We need
more that. And you would think that the most progressive voices in this country would be the
loudest ones out there saying no way. That's not why we're not winning wars. We're not winning
wars because we're in wars we shouldn't be in. And we should be getting out of those wars instead
of throwing more resources and more of our soldiers into them. While we were here at the Summit,
two soldiers got killed in Afghanistan. It's now 17 years we're in Afghanistan. The longest war
the U.S. has ever fought in our entire history. I have not heard the word Afghanistan mentioned
at all in this summit at a time when Donald Trump wants to send more troops to Afghanistan
to guarantee that we will continue to be in this unwinnable war. So we're now with thanks to Donald
Trump going to spend more than 60% of our discretionary funds on the Pentagon. And yet
we're arguing to see where we should be taking the money to provide things like free college
education. Really good point. Really good point. So when it comes to Code Pink, can you talk about
a little bit about Code Pink and the mission of Code Pink and what you all do? Code Pink started
when George Bush was threatening to take us into Iraq after the 9-11 attacks. And we, like so many
people around the world said, no, no, no, no, this makes no sense. Little did we know how
absolutely catastrophic it would be, but we know it was the wrong thing to do. So we formed around
that. It's called Code Pink because George Bush, for your younger listeners who might not know
where your viewers, he had at that time a color coded alert system. You remember that? The terror
alert, there was the yellow, the orange, the red, make you feel scared, justify things like military
invasions. And we said Code Pink was a different way of dealing with 9-11, which is deal with the
individuals who attacked us and maybe even the country behind it, Saudi Arabia, because we should
talk a little more about that, but not use it to attack other countries like Iraq that had nothing
to do with 9-11. So we have been working ever since then against the perpetual state of war
that our country is in and calling for a reduction in the military budget, a closure of the 800 plus
foreign bases that we have around the world that's only making enemies and not protecting us, and
instead use our military to defend us at home and take these hundreds of billions of dollars we would
save and invest it in things that we need at home, as well as things that would do good for people
around the world, like the millions of refugees that have been created in large part because of
our policies. I mentioned the catastrophic results of the invasion of Iraq. We'll look at the millions
of refugees created, and the U.S. doesn't want to take in those refugees, and we don't want to
give the massive amounts of money that are needed for the refugees from Syria, from Iraq, from Libya,
from places that we are militarily involved. So that's been the mission of Code Pink.
Okay, okay. And so you bring up a very, very, very good point about the refugees. This is
probably the biggest refugee crisis in the history, and right now it's caused by the western
imperial forces, military forces that are, as you said, responding to this war on terror.
So when it comes to these refugees, when it comes to Afghanistan, Iraq, Code Pink,
you all are sort of gearing your opposition to that at the Capitol. And can you talk a little
bit about that? Like, how are you going about maybe picking your people that you're going to
protest, and how you're doing that? Well, first let me say about the refugees. We also send people
to places like Greece, to the border in Syria. I myself was at the border of Turkey and the refugee
camps. We go to Jordan. We try to get people to care about the refugees, raise money for
refugee projects. And then we also want to get at the root of the problem, which is the militarism.
And so we go to, I live now in Washington, D.C. We go to the hearings. We go through the
halls of power. We try to support bills that are being introduced in Congress,
but we're really trying hard to rebuild an anti-war movement that was so strong under
the Bush years, but fell apart under Obama, and is still not building itself up under Trump,
which is hard to understand because Trump is now not only increasing the military budget
that we talked about, but is taking some of the worst of what Obama did and increasing it, for
example. Obama sold massive amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the one country
most responsible for the spread of terrorism. And here comes Donald Trump, and he's going to
want up Obama and sell even more weapons to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, Saudi Arabia is destroying
the neighboring country of Yemen, creating a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions
with 17 million people facing famine right now. And we're having a hard time injecting it even
into a place as progressive as the People's Summit. So if you detect my frustration, it's
because I'm trying hard to find ways to get people to understand the connections between
all the issues that we care about and the perpetual wars that we have been involved in,
and the fact that we are still an empire squandering so much of our resources on trying to invade and
occupy other countries, as well as supporting repressive regimes like the government of Israel,
the repressive coup regime in Egypt. And I think that if we managed to get people to connect these
issues better, we would be better able to confront the policies that both the Democrats and the
Republicans have colluded on to continue to spend so many billions of dollars of our money on wars
that are creating death, agony, and millions of refugees. When it comes to these wars, do you
think it's a mechanism of them perpetuating their monetary gain and their continual expansion?
What do you think is driving these wars? First of all, we should recognize what
General Eisenhower told us in the early 60s, beware of the military industrial complex.
It is so strong. The power of these weapons industries is amazing. It can even take the most
progressive of elected officials and have them voting for things like money to Saudi Arabia,
because they have Raytheon factories in their districts. So I would say it's money, money,
money. If you look at the Saudi policy, it's oil, big oil, and it's the weapons industry.
And unfortunately, the weapons manufacturers are so smart that they produce a piece of their
weapons in every single congressional district. And then come election time, they give money to
the Congress people. This is a corrupt system that is made up of a revolving door that people go
in and out of these companies into Congress. And it's part of a system that's become so corrupt
that war is extremely profitable. And the voices of the war makers are unfortunately right now a
lot stronger than the voice of the peacemakers. So even when the peacemakers were in the streets
millions deep in 2003, 2004 in the anti-war campaign, it still couldn't stop this impenetrable
war machine. What is the avenue out of this? What are ways that people can do at home,
people can do in wherever to get out of this? So what we have decided to do is take it to
the institutions that invest in the war machine. And a divestment campaign like the fossil fuel
industry has done that goes to universities, pension funds, to all of the institutional investors,
cities, our own cities, and say we have to pull our money out of the military complex.
The other thing we've been doing is going city by city and passing resolutions saying we want
money pulled from the Pentagon and put into our cities. We're taking that nationally to the
mayor's conference that meets at the end of June and trying to pass it nationwide.
So these are some of the ways to come from the bottom up because unfortunately from the top
down it's too corrupt. Maybe a couple last questions. When it comes to
touch on it already you have a refugees welcome shirt on. There was a refugees welcome
banner that got dropped from the Statue of Liberty. Can you talk about just like
the movement even around in the United States of America around welcoming refugees?
I think we should connect it to the movement of welcoming immigrants because
this is a nation that's built by refugees, immigrants, slaves, Native Americans.
But this is a nation that has become so cruel looking at the people who are in desperate
situations whether or not it's caused by our policies. We should be caring about people
in desperate situations around the world. It's a basic moral issue. I know I'm a mother. I've
taught my children and now my grandchildren to care about people who are lacking in food and
lacking in clean water and lacking in medicines. Do what we can for them and as a nation unfortunately
we have a guy in power now who's the top dog in the dog eat dog world and wants to cut out the
refugees, wants to take families who've been here, immigrant families for decades and throw
them out of this country. The very opposite of what we need to be as a nation, a kind,
compassionate nation that welcomes people into our country when they're seeking refuge.
Alright so maybe the last question here, the People's Summit. I'm hearing that they'll
probably be planning this next year. There's going to be other such types of conventions.
What do you hope in the future to tackle not only just the foreign policy needs that you're
talking about that people need to be recognizing but also just other things in general?
Well I think the elephant in the room is the third party issue and people are more and more
critical of the Democratic Party and it's great to hear the fiery speeches saying we don't have
to stick with the Democrats but then what do we do? I like the Green Party. I think it's great
but there's a lot of people who feel we need a new party that's going to come out of perhaps
the Bernie Sanders movement and that's why there's this campaign draft Sanders for People's Party.
I think it's a great idea but I think it has to be clear that whether or not Bernie Sanders decides
to join that we're going to build up this party and this party can incorporate the Greens and the
Socialist parties and all the smaller groups to have a significant alternative to the two-party
system. So I hope that next year we have a much more open forthright conversation about that.
All right thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
People's Summit, Code Pink, Refugees Foreign Policy, anything?
We obviously are at a time when people are desperate for alternatives. A lot of people
who voted for Trump were doing that out of disgust for politics as usual. I think we have to do a
better job at reaching those people. We have to do a better job of having a big tent that people feel
is a tent where there's a lot of good parting going on inside and they want to be part of,
that we have to show the alternative lifestyles that are good for our planet, good for our community,
good for our spirits, show the joy and the beauty and the fun that you can have by being part of
a movement, make it so attractive that people really want to be part of it.
Thank you for joining us. I'm Adia Benjamin from Code Pink and thank you all for joining us. This
is Nico from Unicorn Riot. We are here at the People's Summit. If you like our work go to
Unicorn Riot.Ninja support our work tab and give what you can. If you can, monthly micro
donators help us a lot. Again, thank you so much and we'll see you again soon.
