by Liz Moore, PJALS Director

What I love most about PJALS is being part of a community of people who take action together based on the connections between human rights, economic justice, & peace.

Our Steering Committee asked you, PJALS members, to guide strategic planning for 2013-2014. We learned that you overwhelmingly support organizing to raise revenue & reject cuts as well as to counter the costs of militarism and to demand money for people, not for war. You’re also passionate about alternatives to incarceration & police accountability. You value that we create community together through our events & campaigns. You strongly support our Young Activist Leaders Program & our interns. You love our Action Conference. You want PJALS to continue to strengthen our connections with communities of color & with rural people.

Why prioritize those areas? Read more »

Update: Check out our photo petition on the National Day of Action to Pull the Pentagon Pork here!

By Lucy Vazquez

On Tuesday February 19th PJALS members met with John Culton, the Eastern Washington Director for Senator Patty Murray as our second mobilization, following up on our December action, where we delivered over 1,100 signatures of individuals and 18 different organizations that have signed on as part of PJALS’ Bring Our Billions Home Campaign. As the fight over the budget continues and more cuts to social programs are on the chopping block, PJALS decided to make a stance and urge Senator Murray to protect our communities and fight to reduce wasteful Pentagon spending.

Sitting in Senator Murray’s Eastern Washington Director John Culton’s office with seven PJALS members–veterans, students, farmers, mothers and fathers, and other everyday people–and listening to their stories made me realize this is not about numbers, it’s about impacting real people and communities. Read more »

by Liz Moore, PJALS Director

I hope you will join us on Thursday February 7,  in the Community Building Lobby, 35 W. Main from 5:30-8pm  for our panel discussion of the culture of violence

Like you, my thoughts, heart, and sorrow have been with the families, children, teachers, and entire community of Newtown, CT, in the wake of the devastating tragedy of 28 people, including 20 children, shot and killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School. I have felt the need not to engage with much media coverage of this heartbreaking event, but I do feel the need to share some reflection and thoughts with you here.

This horrible atrocity is part of a pattern of violence in our country. A timeline of most deadly mass shootings from 1989 to the present is a shocking and saddening set of information, showing increasing frequency in more recent years. And at the same time, our federal budget puts 47% of our national budget into past and current Pentagon spending, Read more »

“If corporate interests cared about ‘creating’ jobs in the U.S., NAFTA and subsequent greased skids for ‘Made in the USA’ would be dismantled, and Americans would be building solar and wind power components for global energy needs.”

Rusty Nelson on Peace and War

It’s exciting to watch PJALS cram meaningful meetings, public events, and activist opportunities into your monthly schedule.  It reminds me that, halfway through our tenure at PJALS, Nancy and I realized Spokane had undergone drastic changes regarding things to do, places to be, and live and interactive education and information.  These days, of course, I have options. Sometimes, I feel free to simply stay home or even be detached about significant issues.  But there are times I miss the action, being in the trenches or on the street.

One week in December, there were two opportunities I couldn’t resist.  Read more »

By Mike Nuess

Capt. Wayne Porter, USN, proposes that a new world vision and strategies for strategic security and prosperity that he presents in Mr. Y: A National Strategic Narrative (NSN)  should replace those presented in George Kennan’s 1946 document, Mr. X: The Sources of Soviet Conduct, which defined the U.S. government’s Cold War vision, strategies and tactics still in place today.

Last April Pax Christi-Spokane and Gonzaga University’s Departments of Political Science and Religion hosted Capt. Porter in a one-day conference. Porter explained the new vision in terms of the need to respond to new threats requiring new ways of thinking. For examples, we are confronted by a global resource crisis where shortages of food supplies, water and the impending demise of fossil fuels challenge us to think of sustainable solutions that bring security; we must understand and adapt to an extremely turbulent change in climate, which will likely affect large populations around the planet, further impacting strategic and economic security. Read more »

by Josh Neil

The fight over the fiscal bluff continues to heat up.  Members of PJALS, Veterans for Peace, the Progressive Democrats, the EWU chapter of MEChA, and leaders in the faith community came together to lift our collective voice in order to tell Senators Murray and Cantwell, “Money for People, Not for War!”

Our country has a choice to make: we can either work towards prosperity for our working families and the middle class (who make up the majority of our population); or we can continue to pour money down the drain, into the mouths of the millionaires and CEOs.  I think the choice is crystal clear.  Forty-seven percent of income taxes for 2013 will go towards Pentagon spending–spending that creates fewer jobs than spending on education, healthcare and other social services. Read more »

By David Swanson, originally posted at War Is A Crime

“There is no correlation between personal liberties in a nation and its gun ownership.”

We’re in the grip of twin madnesses, and those who have overcome one of them can still be completely controlled by the other.

The first madness is the idea that spending a trillion dollars a year on weaponry and war preparations makes us safer, that 1,000 military bases abroad protect rather than provoke, that nuclear arsenals discourage terrorism, that drones have civilized the act of blowing up somebody’s house, that the Pentagon’s business really is “defense.”

Why should our 4% of humanity need more weaponry than the rest of the world for protection?  Read more »

With the support of 18 faith communities, businesses, and organizations, we delivered 1123 signatures to Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell, urging them to vote for “Money for People, Not for War!” Thank you for signing in support! You can still endorse this important campaign here: www.pjals.org/billions.

Rusty Nelson on Peace and War

Remember School of the Americas? School of Assassins? Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation? Some of us will never forget our experiences at Ft. Benning or the U.S.-sponsored atrocities that made us passionate about being there, but we might forget our country still maintains a facility to perpetuate terror against impoverished Latin Americans who dare to act, or even speak, against their own oppression.

Perhaps you get emails from SOA Watch and know that thousands of opponents of our anachronistic U.S. policy on Latin America gather each November to observe the grim anniversary of the massacre at the University of Central America and try to shame our military into eliminating our own haven for state terrorism.You may know our tax dollars pay for this institution of human misery which has few enemies in Congress and a ‘wall of honor’ for many of our hemisphere’s worst abusers of human rights. Read more »

Col. Ann Wright

by Michelle Little, intern

I have often felt that many of the wars we are waging in foreign countries were wrong. I remember watching the initial bombing in our second war with Iraq played live on my television screen in a campaign we called “Shock and Awe.” I remember feeling scared, confused and borderline disgusted. I always feel a little disheartened when I watch crowds of Americans cheering about the death of “terrorists.” I never exactly understood why I was having those feelings or what it all meant, but after listening to Col. Ann Wright speak at the Unitarian Universalist Church on October 11, I no longer question whether those feelings are justifiable.

Col. Ann Wright told those who gathered at the church about her journey in the military. Read more »