Why Fund War While Our Cities Die?

Release date: November 19, 2009 |

Goucher College’s Peace Studies Program, along with the Baltimore United for Peace and Justice Coalition, is presenting “Why Fund War While Our Cities Die?,” a lecture by Phyllis Bennis, the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.
 
This event will be held Thursday, November 19, at 7 p.m. in Kelley Lecture Hall and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Fran Donelan at fdonelan@goucher.edu.

During the lecture, Bennis will argue that U.S. domestic policies regarding health care reform, education, social services, infrastructure, a healthier environment, the creation of “green” jobs, and many other beneficial initiatives are being neglected and underfunded while the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money on military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries in the name of national security and building democracy in the Middle East.

Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. The Middle East component of the project challenges the United States’ role in that region and beyond, focusing particularly on ending the U.S. wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting a just and comprehensive peace in Israel.

She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and United Nations issues for many years. While working as a journalist at the United Nations during the run-up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, she began examining the United States' role in the U.N. and stayed involved in work on Iraq sanctions and disarmament, and later the U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bennis works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, co-chairs the U.N.-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine, and since 2002, she has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. She continues to serve as an adviser to several top U.N. officials on Middle East and U.N. democratization issues. Bennis is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute, an international think tank for progressive politics in Amsterdam.

United for Peace and Justice is a coalition of more than 1,400 local and national groups throughout the United States that have joined together to protest the Iraq War and oppose U.S. governmental military policy.