Peace activists protest Trump’s budget
Protestors slam military spending call for social program increases
Gathering outside Upham’s Corner Health Center in Dorchester last week, activists and elected officials held a Tax Day rally to protest President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget, which would give more than half of federal tax money to military spending, cutting spending on programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
“We live in a nation where we have health insurance but not health care,” said U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who spoke at the rally. “We live in a nation where our infrastructure is crumbling and so are our people, where our schools are understaffed and underfunded, where people don’t have the peace of mind to feel safe in community … We should not be investing in endless wars.”
Trump’s proposed budget would allocate 57 percent of discretionary funds to the military, a 10 percent increase, not including budget portions for the CIA, NSA, Department of Homeland Security and a Pentagon “slush fund” known as the Overseas Contingency Operations budget.
“We have created a society where war is one of the chief engines of our economy,” said Hayat Imam, an activist with Dorchester People for Peace, the lead organizer of the rally. “As a result, we are a nation that is perpetually engaged in war. By some accounts, out of our 239-year history in the United States, we have been at war for 222 years.”
Many of the speakers advocated for an alternative “People’s Budget,” which would redirect military spending to domestic areas such as health care, education, transportation, renewable energy and others. There is also a Massachusetts People’s Budget being proposed at the State House, which state Sen. Jamie Eldridge promoted at the rally.
“You don’t have to wait for the federal government to pass Medicare for All. We can do our own version of Medicare for All in Massachusetts,” Eldridge said. “We need to make sure that things like healthcare and air and water and clean energy are rights, because they’re public goods, they’re not commodities.”
Maryellen Kurkulos, of Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization promoting the People’s Budget, also spoke in favor of it, and added that current military spending does not include benefits for veterans; in fact, the 2020 budget proposal includes cuts for veterans programs.
“The truth is, those amounts don’t go to troops or vets, but to weapons contracts,” Kurkulos said, naming Waltham-based Raytheon as one of the country’s biggest defense contractors.
Other speakers named different causes that they felt the government should put more money toward, like climate change and the housing crisis.
“Trump has proposed to raise rents for 4 million low income families … wiping out deductions for seniors, the disabled, children and medical expenses,” said Ronda Jackson, a member of the Massachusetts Alliance of HUD (Housing and Urban Development) Tenants. “This is a real hardship for people like me and my neighbors, and it’s not just housing.”
Jeff Klein of Dorchester People for Peace, who emceed the rally, summed up all of the speakers’ words before the group marched down Columbia Road.
“There is no money for healthcare, no money for education, no money for housing, but there are trillions of dollars to waste on wars that do not make us safer, in fact, make enemies for us,” Klein said. “There need to be different priorities.”
