Friends,

I served 6 years in the Marine Corps as a Field Radio

Operator.

I was drafted into the military because my family and I needed

financial security. I needed housing, healthcare, and access to

education. I was ready to sacrifice my life for all of it.

For every one of those years I served, I

wondered what Memorial Day represented.

What kind of sacrifices were made? At whose

expense? At what cost? What are we

benefiting from millions of lives being lost

and trillions of dollars spent? 

I learned I was just another disposable poor person being

manufactured into the military industrial complex— signing

my life away at 18 years old, not knowing if we would come

home alive. I didn’t have a chance to grow up and live yet. The

only people in our country that benefited at all from the sacrifices

and wars, raging for the last two decades were politicians and

corporations. Companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin

make the majority of their revenues from selling arms to the US

Government. They profited off of wars created on lies in Iraq

and Afghanistan. We lost thousands of service members at

their expense and millions of innocent civilians throughout the

world from US imperialism.

The lessons I learned from serving inspired me to be a fierce

advocate for oppressed people around the world and try to put

an end to these unjust wars. We should not be shipping off

poor people into profiteering wars so that they could have

access to basic needs. We deserve better opportunities than

this. Families should not have to worry about losing loved ones.

Instead of investing in trillions of dollars for wars, we can

prioritize Medicare for All, Free Public College Tuition, and a

Federal Homes Guarantee.

Help me be a voice for peace in Congress. 

Contribute today!

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As a member of Congress, I'll commit to ending global military

interventions, withdrawing military bases, and repealing the

Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), and

reasserting check and balancing powers back to Congress. No

president should have sole power of making decisions over

military matters when so many lives are at stake. People like

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Henry Kissenger should be

charged with war crimes and human rights violations.

It is not corrupt politicians and war profiteering companies who

are fighting these wars. It is people like us who are fighting

for them. I am tired of pretending that everything is okay. I’m

tired of celebrating and remembering the lives lost, to war

profiteering, on Memorial Day. Maybe if we all stopped

pretending, then we can finally stop the slaughter.

In Solidarity,

Shaniyat Chowdhury

  Not me. Us!