The War Industry Resisters Network is a coalition of groups opposing their local war companies, joined together to focus on corporate control over US foreign policy.
Organizations in the network include:
Massachusetts Peace Action • Veterans For Peace • Code Pink • Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space • Nuclear Resister • Reject Raytheon AVL • Brandywine Peace Community • Maine Natural Guard • RAM INC • Planet vs. Pentagon • Baltimore Peace Action/Baltimore Nonviolence Center • North Alabama Peace Network • War Resisters League • Raytheon Anti-War Campaign • Wage Peace (Australia) • Connecticut Committee for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons • Peace Action Maine • WNC4Peace • CODEPINK SF Bay Area • North Texas Veterans For Peace • CODEPINK Greater Dallas • Dallas Peace and Justice Center • California for a World BEYOND War • Taxes for Peace New England • Environmentalists Against War • Peace Action WI • Demilitarize Western Mass • Mass World Peace Now • Safe Skies Clean Water Wisconsin • NuclearBan.US • World BEYOND War • North Country Peace Group • UpState Pax Christi • Peace Action of Broome, NY • Friends of Franz & Ben • UpState Drone Action • National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee • Peace Action Network of Lancaster
Is your group interested in joining the network? Email wirn@veteransforpeace.org plus all this great stuff!
Check out the photo album of WIRN actions!
It's time to take our country (planet?) back from the War Companies!
Clearly, there are no winners in the terrible war in Ukraine — except one: U.S. and British military contractors who will carry all their increased profits all the way to the bank.
Big Campaign contributions. 700 lobbyists. Militaristic think tanks. Government advisory boards. Hiring 1700 former Pentagon officials and stacking the government with their own people. These military contractors have numerous ways to determine Pentagon budgets, shape our foreign policy, create war fever, and pick our friends and enemies.
The result is $850,000,000,000. That’s $850 billion dollars. Democrats and Republicans in Congress just passed the most bloated military budget ever. That’s also $850 billion worth of new fossil fuel emissions to be created by the single biggest single source of carbon pollution on earth: the U.S. war machine.
Since 2001 these war budgets have totaled 14.6 trillion. That’s $14,600,000,000,000. Of that, $6 trillion went to military contractors. Those trillions have funded some very big wars, supported occupations, destroyed ecosystems, poisoned ground water, tortured legions and inflicted suffering on a scale hard to imagine. But the devastation of this war machine doesn’t end abroad. It comes home in the form of militarized police departments, surveillance of indigenous water protectors, the grooming and recruitment of our children into a culture of war and violence, and of course the pain and suicides of so many soldiers.
When 55% of our discretionary budget gets spent on war and military contracts, there is not enough left to provide for affordable housing, public transportation, raising up low-income people, student debt relief, pre-school education, green jobs and so many other things we need to truly thrive.
And yet, while we spent trillions on military engagements abroad and at our borders, a tiny virus was able to bring us to our knees in a way no enemy ever could: 900,000 dead; millions of wrecked lives; a mental health catastrophe. Our million dollar Raytheon missiles could not shoot the virus down. Our billion dollar General Dynamics battleships could not sink it. Our most sophisticated Boeing jets could not bomb it to pieces – the way they do to the homes and bodies of people abroad.
Our weapons, our armies, our adoration of the military may protect us from phantoms, but they are useless in defending us against the actual threats to our national security: pandemics; an approaching climate catastrophe; the growing danger of nuclear war; and of course the racial, class and political divisions that militarism and our economic decisions only exacerbate. Here the solutions are an effective and well-funded public health system; a green new deal; the abolition of nuclear weapons, and a commitment to building a society and a world in which there is a place of respect for all of us.
We are calling on you to organize an action in your community that targets the war machine and promotes investment in a peace economy. We are demanding that war companies convert to useful production and we demand a cut in the Pentagon budget for the sake of people, planet, peace and a future.
- Join us for our next educational webinar: Nuclear Weapons Today - Peril & Promise, with Ralph Hutchison and Jay Coghlan, March 22. Register here
- Join our Facebook Group here
- Can't make the meeting times or want to join our mailing list? Email wirn@veteransforpeace.org!
- Already organizing against a war industry? Send us the details (wirn@veteransforpeace.org) so we can uplift your work! See our Events page for upcoming and past events
- Send us photos from your events!
- Upload pics from your actions here.
- Check out past and upcoming actions and events from around the country!
- Watch our previously aired webinars and more on our Resources page!
- Check out our list of Campus Groups on our Campus Resources page!