Dear John,

We have spent years talking about what we could have if Congress didn't spend so much on war and weapons. In 2023 CODEPINK will be highlighting what our war funding takes away. The real cost of war is bigger than the $860 billion Pentagon budget. War costs us our dignity. It costs real human lives. It costs people their homes. Their livelihoods. Their future. And it is destroying the planet we rely on for life. War costs us everything. 

Reverend Barber gave a beautiful sermon on Christmas Eve highlighting our calls for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine. He said the cost of war was over 1 million lives since 9/11. It cost 38 million people their way of life because they were displaced. "The human cost is too high," Reverend Barber said. 

So many of your tax dollars go to funding war. Will you help fund peace instead? 

Reverend Barber's sermon highlighted the Christmas Truce that took place 108 years ago during World War 1, when the warring parties laid down their arms and stopped fighting. He pointed out they're not more human than we are now, we could end this war if we wanted to. It is absurd that thousands of people are dying in Ukraine and people think the solution is to keep fighting. To stop the killing you have to stop the fighting. The soldiers in Europe on Christmas Eve 1914 understood that, and we can too. 

Reverend Barber pointed out that both Russia and the United States have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the entire world several times over. There is no political interest in the world worth risking nuclear annihilation over. The cost of war is already too high, the cost of nuclear war could end life as we know it. 

Will you help us expose the cost of war in 2023? 

World peace begins with human dignity. There is no dignity in war. 

❤️ With love,
Danaka Katovich
CODEPINK Co-Director

P.S. Join us with your time and be a peacemaker with us. In case you missed it, here is what we did last week at CODEPINK and don't forget to read Medea's 10 Surprisingly Good Things that Happened in 2022!