Listen: The Link Between War and Poverty

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By Bob Hennelly

Over the weekend, the United States asked the UN Security Council to consider its most recent ceasefire resolution to “bring about a full and immediate ceasefire with the release of the hostages” in Gaza. The Netanyahu government came under increasing pressure with the resignation of Benny Gantz, a centrist with Israel’s Resilience Party from the Israeli War Cabinet.

Humanitarian conditions on the ground in Gaza continue to deteriorate with the British Red Cross reporting there is nowhere safe for the residents of Gaza to go as they are trapped in “a “catastrophic hunger crisis” that will have generational consequences.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch reports that West Darfur has seen some of the most brutal atrocities of the year-long  civil war in the Sudan—raising the specter of ethnic cleansing on a genocidal scale. 

With just 20 days to go before the June 29th Mass Poor People’s & Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly & Moral March on Washington D.C. and to the Polls,” activists from around the nation are mobilizing against a U.S. war economy that devours nearly a trillion dollars of borrowed money for planet-wide death and ecological destruction.

Is it any wonder that here in the United States, the richest nation in the world, poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death ahead of homicide? 

I can announce that the Pacifica Radio Network [along with Work-Bites] has committed to covering the historic June 29th events, along with both the Republican and Democratic national conventions and presidential election live, when we will report on the most consequential race since the one in 1864 that tested the union amidst the  Civil War. 

We open this week’s edition of the Moral Monday Labor Radio Hour with an in-depth conversation with Rev. Dr. William Barber about the state of the world and the week ahead. In the second half, we check in with John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers of America who talks about Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to put the brake on the MTA’s controversial congestion pricing plan. 

We close out this week’s show with Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, just a few days before the June 13 Worldwide Flight Attendant Day of Action to demand flight attendants get a fair and equitable share of the tens of billions of dollars in annual profits they help generate.

Listen to the entire show below: