This past Monday, the Ban All Nukes Generation and PNA crew set out to the Greater Philadelphia's 15th Annual Martin Luther King Day of Service at Girard College with a big question: "What would YOU do with the $52.4 billion dollars a year that the US spends on nuclear weapons?"
With roughly 200 responses, almost half of the people, varying in ages from second grade to retirees, mentioned Haiti somewhere in their response. Wanting to help rebuild, do disaster relief, and feed all the hungry, displaced persons in Haiti figured prominently in people’s minds a week after the earthquake struck.
A number of people said that they would use the money for education, starting with kids, but also including paying for tuition for anyone who wanted to go to college.
Almost all of the kids who answered the question mentioned that they wanted to either buy a house or to give the money to their families. Their parents too wanted to pay off loans, mortgages, or buy a house for their families.
Others wanted to build community centers throughout Philadelphia, improve the city's infrastructure, and offer better resources for the homeless.
There were some funny responses too! One kid’s eyes got very big and he looked at our sign. “That’s a lot of money for weapons,” he said seriously. Many people were shocked by how much money we spend as a nation each year on nuclear weapons, especially when they thought about all the hungry people, all the homeless people, and their struggles with getting their kids into good schools and schools with adequate resources.
Not everyone knew off the top of the heads how they’d spend this mammoth amount of funds. But they knew one thing. “Definitely not on nuclear weapons!” we heard time and time again.
Read more of the responses on Twitter! TweetIntern was at MLK Day of Service, sharing the answers live-- go to www.twitter.com/BanAllNukes and search for #NukeFreeatMLK.
Based off of a report released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United States spent about $52.4 billion dollars on nuclear weapons in 2008, directing only 10% of those funds toward nonproliferation efforts. To understand this study more, watch this interview between Bang-USA leader, Emily Gleason and Stephen Schwartz, a co-author to this very important study.
