Fight Back
Our sustained resistance is essential to the fight back against the Mayor's intent to cut back and privatize.
As in 1975, today, we face another crisis fighting to save our city's public services and institutions. The People's Budget Plan activists are leading the way against the Mayor's draconian attack on agencies that help, care and educate many residents the most. They are now the ones to be hardest hit by his austerity measures.
At the same time large sums of our federal taxes are going to the Pentagon and its weapons contractors, the Military Industrial Complex, that President Eisenhower and Dr. King warned us about.
As our city was dying and the Vietnam war was ending, the war hawks persisted saying there's light at the end of the tunnel, with more money the war can be won! After a half century, addressing the fatal effects of poverty and racism remains secondary to funding US military projects around the globe.
In New York, just one F-16 jet fighter costs as much as a couple of schools.
Cutting an F-35 fighter could fund additional remedial and advanced studies programs at CUNY.
Instead of an Abrams tank, how about 500 units of renovated public housing and additional teachers in nearby public schools. This can be true for other cities, too. The new B-21 nuclear stealth bombers cost $750 million each (Project On Government Oversight). Their production is an existential threat to us all that must stop and the savings invested in programs that save lives.
Our sustained resistance is essential to the fight back against the Mayor's intent to cut back and privatize. It needs to be bolstered by a demand to repurpose the money from war to restore the city's productive possibilities for all New Yorkers.
Our City Council needs to get behind a domestic agenda to save our cities and engage congressional members to join in. Let's follow the examples of the city councils of Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan who recently passed Move The Money resolutions. Now we need to have NYC, the largest city in the US, to pass a resolution urging Congress and the President to Move The Money from War to our Communities!