August 22, 2019
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) believes that along with the issue of climate change, the interlocking issues of war, militarism and normalized, illegal U.S. interventionism represent the main existential threats to global humanity. However, both mainstream elite political parties and the corporate media continue to minimize the impacts of morally indefensible and lawless interventions by the U.S. state, as well as the militarization of police forces nationwide and the obscene theft of public resources in the form of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
During the series of Democrat party “debates,” a mere 22 minutes were devoted to these issues under the rubric of foreign policy.
To address this dereliction of public responsibility, BAP is launching a petition campaign and candidate pledge process to demand that these issues receive the critical attention they deserve. Going straight to the public, BAP is asking that the public demand that their representatives and all candidates for office address these issues by adopting a set of demands that we believe represents a commitment to a “people(s)-centered human right framework.”
The BAP petition is calling on the public and all endorsing and participating organizations to demand that every candidate running for elected office, at every level of government, sign our candidate pledge form that commits them to:
Support efforts to cut the military budget by 50% as a first step in reducing military spending, and reallocate government expenditures to fully fund social programs to realize individual and collective human rights in the areas of housing, education, healthcare, green jobs and public transportation;
Oppose the militarization of the police and specifically the Department of Defense 1033 program that transfers millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to local police forces;
Promote the closure of the more than 800 U.S. foreign military bases and the ending of U.S. participation in the white supremacist NATO military structure;
Call for and work to close the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) and the withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Africa;
Demand that the Department of Justice document and investigate all instances of the use of lethal force by domestic police officers and agencies against non-white populations as demanded by various United Nations human rights treaty monitoring bodies;
Commit to passing resolutions at every level of government that commit the U.S. to upholding international law and the United Nations Charter, and to opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades that are acts of war) and political interventions in the internal affairs of sovereign nations regardless of the political party controlling the office of the presidency; and
Sponsor legislation and/or resolutions at every level of government calling on the U.S. to support the United Nations resolution on the complete global abolishment of nuclear weapons passed by 122 nations in July 2017.
BAP believes that candidates who refuse to sign the pledge reveal to their would be constituents their complicity in upholding the U.S state as the premier interventionist of the global community, while also revealing their refusal to emancipate U.S. residents from militarized police states across the nation.
