• THANKS to the CNJ for opening its pages to women’s campaigning voices.

As a men’s network based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre in Kentish Town, we know that women are often the best defenders of people and planet.

Unsurprisingly, women were the majority at the recent COP26 march in London. We joined that march to demand the defunding of the military in favour of paying for desperately needed caring work.

As Claire Glasman of WinVisible said in her CNJ article: “We want a Care Income for all of those, of every gender, caring for people and the environment – both we and the planet have been disabled and plundered.”

Amazingly after COP26 militaries and their carbon and other pollution remain excluded from international agreements on climate change, their destructive impact on all of us concealed.

Wars destroy human life (162 million in the last 120 years, the majority women and children) and the land.

One example from Reuters, “Large-scale deforestation driven mainly by four decades of war has contributed to widespread flooding throughout Afghanistan.”

As the world’s largest single polluter, the US military creates 750,000 tons of toxic waste every year: depleted uranium, oil, jet fuels, pesticides, defoliants, lead and other chemicals while emitting more than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide.

The United Kingdom military, the largest arms dealer in Europe, selling illegally to Saudi Arabia for its obscene war in Yemen, emits some 11 million tons of CO2 annually.

Invest in caring not killing.

BEN MARTIN
Payday Men’s Network
www.refusingtokill.net