Bring Our War $$ Home Message To Break Through Apathy Over U.S. Wars

I spent a pleasant afternoon yesterday in an old barn helping to make t-shirts for the Bring Our War $$ Home campaign. Steve Burke swiftly screen printed about 135 organic cotton shirts in all sizes which will be shared with the public at Maine's big annual Common Ground Fair in late September. We'll ask for a donation of $5 for the shirts, which would just about pay for our material costs. All the labor has been freely donated -- including artist Nora Tryon's design -- submitted as part of the campaign's ongoing collaboration with the Union of Maine Visual Artists via Draw-A-Thons and Print-A-Thons.

Steve and Bruce Gagnon helping to make BOW$H t-shirts.

We've produced several t-shirt designs in the past, but "Babe in Arms" has been super popular as a poster, and as a t-shirt image seems to be the one that pops best in photos.

I'm shipping off a few at the request of women and men who'll be at the Republican National Convention in Tampa next week, and hope to see them on tv news coverage if there is any of the "free speech zone" located far away from the convention venue. (Such is what passes for rights guaranteed to citizens under the 1st amendment to our Constitution.)

It's a good image to pair with CODEPINK's campaign to "Bring our vaginas to the RNC" which responds to GOP fear mongering about abridging women's reproductive rights. Young women will never stand for this, and a new generation embodied by the Russian punk band Pussy Riot will be formidable opponents for the likes of men who want to control vaginas, but try to silence female lawmakers who speak the word.

Sign reads: VAGINA Can't say it? Don't legislate it!!

Bring Our War $$ Home is a campaign based on the notion that one can hardly get fellow citizens to pay attention to the fact that the U.S. is still embroiled in its longest war ever, that soldier deaths in Afghanistan were higher in July, with about one per day, that recruiting aimed at children roars on, and that many fear war on Iran is next. Since all those things are far less interesting than, say, the Olympics (viewers who watched daily reported gaining an average of 4.2 pounds while doing so), our campaign uses a pocketbook-aligned message to point out that cuts to any social programs could be avoided by re-directing even a fraction of the Pentagon's budget.

As hard working people continue to falter economically -- losing their homes to foreclosure, their jobs to outsourcing, and their prospects for solvency to a lifetime of crippling student debt -- will they look up from the television and notice where all the money is flowing?

Source: NationalPriorities.org

The President asked for a budget next year with a whopping 57% for the military. How is it that anti-war Democrats can continue to support his losing policies? Why do voters continue to send people to Congress who enable the destruction of our health and prosperity as a nation? (Interview here with Bruce Gagnon with his views on the Pentagon's death grip on our government and the globe.)

Seven out of 10 people in the U.S. surveyed said they no longer support the war in Afghanistan. But who cares what they think?

And yes, in case you were wondering, CODEPINK women and allies will also be in Charlotte to protest at the Democratic National Convention over Labor Day week. So Wall Street South will see our t-shirts, too.

Source: Occupy the NH Primary