Dear John,
Just as this newsletter was set to go to press, we heard the news: a U.S. F-22 fighter had shot down the Chinese balloon that spent several days over the U.S. last week.
While we’re still waiting to learn the full story of the balloon, this is a disturbing development. It’s a reminder of how easily relations between the U.S. and China can spiral into military confrontation - and that diplomacy is more necessary than ever to avert worsening outcomes.
The U.S. has a real violence problem. This month, the U.S. saw news of more mass shootings, learned horrifying details of another brutal police killing, and saw signs that the U.S. and its allies are digging in deeper in the Ukraine war. Everywhere on the news, it was violence.
These events don't seem connected, but all of them speak to a deeply rooted problem in our country: the way that we treat violence as a solution to problems rather than a problem to be solved. And then we use our tax dollars to support more violence.
We are failing Black and Brown people, communities, and mothers. Instead of funding education, health care, and housing to build strong communities, we create virtually lawless special police forces like the SCORPION force in Memphis whose members killed Tyre Nichols - and we use our tax dollars to fund them.
We are failing schoolchildren, shoppers, churchgoers, seniors just trying to enjoy an evening of dancing, and people with mental illness who die by gun suicide. We underfund mental health care and treat mass shootings as something to be solved by more guns and more policing, putting armed police in schools and other public spaces, arming teachers, and fortifying public spaces – all using our tax dollars.
And we are failing the world. Congress just passed an $858 billion war and military budget largely justified by preparations for an imagined war with China. The U.S. shooting down a Chinese balloon isn’t likely to lead directly to war, but it’s a frightening reminder of how slippery a slope it might be. As NPP’s Lindsay Koshgarian noted in The Washington Post this week, there’s plenty of room to cut the Pentagon budget while making us safer.
This is why we work with movements that are working for nonviolent alternatives, like diplomacy, investment in communities, and resistance to violence as a solution. Check out our online calculator to see what we could do if we stopped investing in violence, and instead invested in solutions.
In peace,
Lindsay, Ashik, Alliyah, & the NPP team
