No MAS! No Military Air Shows

No MAS! No Military Air Shows!

Photo credit: Gary Butterfield

As the climate crisis worsens and the US military’s budget approaches $1 trillion dollars the impetus intensifies for climate, environmental and peace groups to abandon their individual silos of influence and come together and voice their collective outrage with a single, coordinated focus. Protesting military air shows provides just the opportunity to engage these stakeholders in the broader conversation concerning the U.S. military’s enormous contribution TO the climate crisis as well as the tremendous financial burden burgeoning militarism causes.

The No MAS (No Military Air Shows) campaign was successful last year in expanding the air show protests sites and we have an ambitious goal this year to engage even more people in these actions. With the assistance of members of national groups 350.org US, Code Pink, World Beyond War, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and others, we anticipate educated protests at many of the nearly 65 scheduled military air shows in 2025.

Possible actions:

Please see the attached spreadsheet for a list of scheduled military air shows for 2025: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZF-sDyPFyoSAeNxcjGRj-X0Fawcr4aQJ 

To find out how you can participate, or with other questions and suggestions, please email climate@veteransforpeace.org. Before your local action, we recommend our zoom presentation on the climate crisis, war and militarism; to schedule a presentation, please click here.

Military air shows are a wa$te – of our tax dollars, jet fuel, pilots’ skills, and greenhouse gas emissions. When the Navy started the air shows program in 1946, the global level of atmospheric CO2 was only 310 ppm (parts per million), but now it is 428 ppm and rising, far above the safe ceiling of 350 ppm. The US military is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels. NONE of those fuels need to be used for entertainment. 

View/download this handy 10-point guide:  No MAS! How To Protest a Military Air Show


Please click on the links below to access resources, articles and videos to support your actions.

Two short videos: 

Articles:


Case Study: Miramar Air Show in San Diego and San Diego Veterans For Peace, Chapter 91

Chapter 91 in San Diego has been protesting the annual Miramar Air Show since 2016.  We began by focusing upon the military’s glorification of war and its overt appeal to youths as young as 8 years old as it allowed kids to aim automatic weapons at each other and climb atop tanks, romp inside helicopters and “fly” Top Gun jets.  We sought community support, and, although we did receive some local media attention, we found ourselves with few allies.  That changed in 2021 when we refined our focus to that of the Blue Angels as gross polluters.  We had three local climate/social justice organizations endorse us and attend our actions.  We saw that we were connecting with an issue beyond Peace groups.  We amplified our efforts to gain supporters earlier in 2022 and ended up with 18 local organizations endorsing our actions!

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