Anti-War Resolution

Resolution Against U.S. Threats of War and Nuclear Annihilation on North Korea

*This resolution was submitted but has not yet been voted on in the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates

Delegates:  Please support with your voice and your vote this resolution  being raised from the floor  demanding a negotiated settlement with North Korea.  NO WAR – Money for education and social services.

The  U.S. spends billions on wars abroad and on 700 – 800 military bases outside our borders. All to support the interests of corporate America. Resources wasted on war, whether they involve direct intervention of U.S. troops or the support of surrogates like Saudi Arabia,  are resources diverted  from social  needs, including, of course , schools. Foreign policy is the other side of the coin from domestic policy. We all have a stake in this, and progressive unionists shouldn’t feel that they have to avoid political involvement. We don’t avoid elections, do we?

President Trump’s recent  nominations of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and John Bolton as National Security Adviser stoke the flames of war yet higher.  Money wasted on war is money denied  to communities and their schools.

Whereas…

1.       Public schools in working class communities and communities of color  in Chicago and  across the U.S. are consistently underfunded and in many instances subject to closure.

2.       The  federal government is fully capable of remediating funding shortfalls that occur on the state and local levels.

3.       An ongoing and intensifying state of belligerence against North Korea on the part  of the Trump Administration is now deflecting about 68%  of the discretionary federal budget (up  from 62% in recent years) to the military and away from  public education and other social needs.

4.       U.S. administrations have refused to take the next step beyond the 1953 cease fire agreement which would be to conclude a peace treaty officially ending the war.  All the while U.S. governments have cast themselves as humanitarians and benevolent saviors.

5.       Mainstream media in the U.S. and in the West generally present North Korea as an aggressor nation despite its not having attacked any other nations.  (Contrast this with U.S. interventions such as in Vietnam, Libya, and Iraq.)

6.       The U.S. government is using sanctions against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea to block most exports and imports, trying to starve and freeze the North Korean people with the aim of having the DPRK eliminate its defensive force of nuclear weapons.

7.       Mainstream media, parroting the U.S. State Department’s positions rarely acknowledge that North Korea’s nuclear missile tests are conducted for defensive purposes as a deterrent to invasion from a U.S. military that possesses about 900 nukes (NY Times, 1/3/18).  North Korea has less than 10.

8.       President Trump has on multiple occasions literally threatened to destroy North Korea, and shown the sort of extreme hostility that is unlikely to persuade any nation to let down its guard.

Therefore be it resolved that the Chicago Teachers Union calls upon the current administration to cease its threats of war and annihilation and, instead, move toward an official peace treaty with the government of North Korea without any preconditions as a starting point for reaching other agreements.

Further be it resolved, that monies saved by a reduction in spending on war and military bases be redirected toward alleviating the funding crises in public schools in Chicago and across the country.

Submitted by Steve Livingston, retiree delegate