July Conscious Choice

Yay for internships, Conscious Choice, the Peace School, and Upside-down school buses!

US Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey

U.S. Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey
By Jessie Tierney

What do an upside-down school bus and a stack of Oreo cookies have in common with U.S. military spending?

It's not the start of some random joke — it's "Topsy," an "art bus" created by Ben (as in Ben & Jerry's) Cohen — and it's following candidates along the Primary Trail this election season.

Part of a campaign co-sponsored by True Majority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the Topsy bus takes aim at the U.S. government's upside-down budgetary spending. Bearing the message "The U.S. Budget is Topsy-Turvy," Topsy follows in the tracks of earlier Cohen projects, like the animated flash "Oreo cookie video" which made web rounds in 2004. In the video, a cartoon Cohen stacks Oreo cookies representing the U.S. budget. A 40-cookie tower equates the Pentagon's share of the federal pie, an annual allocation of $463 billion. The tower dwarfs the 4 cookies allotted for K–12 education, the single cookie allocated to world hunger, and the piddling quarter of a cookie parceled out to alternative energy projects.

The total annual cost for American "security," including defense expenditures for the Departments of Energy, State, Justice, Veterans Affairs, Treasury and NASA, is a whopping $934.9 billion — more than the total defense expenditures of all other nations combined. This incomprehensibly large sum still does not include the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — an amount which, growing by the minute, has already surpassed half a trillion dollars. Cohen and his coterie propose that the "cookies" allocated to defense spending are supporting outdated and ineffective measures.

"A bunch of the candidates [on the campaign trail] have admitted that there is a tremendous waste in the Pentagon and that they would seek to compact that waste," says Cohen, who is marshalling 8,000 volunteers to spread the word in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. "People are talking about how the military is so stretched now. It's beginning to become mainstream."

"Wars of the future," according to Cohen, "are not going to be against other countries — they're going to be against guerillas and terrorists. Nuclear submarines don't really play a roll in that."

The Sensible Priorities campaign proposes to take that $60 billion (or 6 cookies) and rebuild schools, eliminate need for Middle Eastern oil, feed the six million starving children worldwide, provide all children with health insurance, and give Head Start to every kid who needs it. To find out when Topsy rolls into your town, check out www.sensiblepriorities.org/topsy.php.

Watch Cohen in the cookie flash movie at truemajority.org/oreos.

— Jessie Tierney

Breathing Peace: The Peace School Celebrates its 35th Year(scroll down, it's the third article)

Breathing Peace: Chicago's Peace School Celebrates its 35th year

"Inhale wooorld ... exhale peaaace," Master Charles Kim's voice vibrates, filling the room with his relaxing tone. This year, the Peace School celebrates its 35th anniversary, where peace breathing is one aspect of the multi-faceted practice taught in the Lincoln Ave. storefront studio.
In 1972, the late Grand Master MyungSu Y.S. Kim moved his family and Martial Arts practice to Chicago from Korea, where he started a training program combining peace breathing, yoga, meditation and Martial Arts. This unique practice dedicates each breath and movement to world peace. The approach even works for those with hectic lives — in the words of Head Instructor and Education Coordinator Jennifer Kim, "You always have time to breathe. You're breathing right now, so why not utilize the breath in a positive way?"

In addition to peaceful practice, the founder worked to establish a global day of peace. Mayor Bilandic acknowledged Peace Day in Chicago in 1978, which, with thousands of letters typed by Peace School volunteers and sent across America, spread to 540 cities, then to all 50 states in 1980. In 1986, the United Nations designated the school a Peace Messenger because of its work in getting proclamations of peace days from governors and mayors throughout the nation. "And it all started here," says Jennifer Kim, "with a little group of volunteers and typewriters!"

Head Instructor Greg Garrett, who started at the Peace School when he was 17, says that working alongside the late Grand Master Kim "was like sitting down with Mahatma Gandhi — he just had that presence — he was a magnet, a personality you just couldn't refuse."

Grand Master Kim's momentum and energy continue to flow through the school after his death.
Current Peace School president Master Charles Kim hopes to continue the work accomplished by his father. He has aspirations for the school to become an educational institution, training leaders to work sincerely for humanity while spreading ideas of world peace through the U.S. and beyond."

Peace Day 2007 will be held at noon on Friday, Sept. 21, in Daley Plaza. Visit peaceschool.org or email for more information.— Jessie Tierney