For Tax Day, CODEPINK activists attended tea party rallies in various parts of the country to survey the right-wing activists on their military spending views. After all, if tea partiers are displaying so much rage over the national debt and paying taxes, they must certainly oppose the massively bloated Pentagon budget and the various wars that the United States is waging without due cause.
Reports are trickling in that the conversation was actually civil between the two groups, with CODEPINK relatively more surprised and also more organized. That certainly beats the confrontational health care protests from last month. CODEPINK did interviews with over 50 participants in the Tea Party rally, getting their input about the cost of war and empire. We will soon be releasing the results of that survey.
On Tax Day, Tea Party members from around the country will descend on the nation's capitol to "protest big government and support lower taxes, less government and more freedom. CODEPINK, a women-led peace movement advocating an end to war and militarism, will be sending some representatives. While we come from the opposite end of the political spectrum and don't support the goals and tactics of the Tea Party, there is an area where we are seeking common ground: endless wars and militarism.
As Tea Partiers express their anger at out-of-control government spending and soaring deficits, we will ask them to take a hard look at what is, by far, the biggest sinkhole of our tax dollars: Pentagon spending. With the Obama administration proposing the largest military budget ever, topping $700 billion not including war supplementals, we are now spending almost as much on the military as the rest of the world combined.
Friday, April 16, 2010
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