A 90-minute live event recorded on October 13, 2026

• U.S. military spending is twice what we’re ever told and more than the rest of the world’s combined
• It’s over three-quarters of proposed discretionary spending and stripping funding from urgent needs
• It’s driving a global arms race, wars, and the risk of nuclear war
• We have the power to reverse its dramatic annual increases

Speakers:

David Vine is the author of a trilogy of books about war and peace including The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. David is a founder and steering committee member of the Network to Dismantle the Military Industrial Complex, among other projects. David is a fellow at the Transition Security Project and a contributor to TomDispatch.com and Foreign Policy in Focus. David has also worked and published with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Center for International Policy. David was a professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC for 18 years before resigning with the rank of full professor in 2024.


Hanna Homestead (she/her) is a policy analyst and strategist with over a decade of experience spanning grassroots organizing, international development, and electoral and issue-specific campaign work. She served as a congressional staffer, a Global Health Corps fellow in Uganda, and worked on the intersection of climate crises and militarism at the Center for International Policy. In her current role at the Institute for Policy Studies, she researches federal budget priorities and the costs of war, with the goal of moving tax dollars from the Pentagon to beneficial public goods. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Politico. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).


John Reuwer is Treasurer and a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. He is a retired emergency physician whose practice convinced him of a crying need for alternatives to violence for resolving tough conflicts. This led him to the informal study and teaching of nonviolence for the last 35 years, with peace team field experience in Haiti, Colombia, Central America, Palestine/Israel, and several U.S. inner cities. He worked in South Sudan with the Nonviolent Peaceforce, one of the few organizations practicing professional unarmed civilian peacekeeping. He also serves on the Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons with Physicians for Social Responsibility educating the public and politicians about the threat from nuclear weapons, which he sees as the ultimate expression of the insanity of modern warfare, so blatantly displayed in the current war in Ukraine.


Sunjeev Bery serves as People Over Pentagon campaign director at Public Citizen, where he coordinates a coalition of hundreds of organizations, advocates, and scholars working to reduce wasteful Pentagon spending and redirect resources toward critical human needs. Over the course of his career, Bery has held a range of advocacy and campaign leadership roles focused on democracy, human rights, climate, and education. As a regional director for the American Civil Liberties Union, he organized and advocated on civil rights issues including post-9/11 government surveillance, immigrant rights, and police accountability. As executive director of Freedom Forward, he built and led international human rights and climate campaigns focused on ending U.S. alliances with repressive oil monarchies in the Middle East. As advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA, he lobbied U.S. and international officials, diplomats, and policymakers on foreign policy and human rights concerns during the Arab Spring. Bery has also worked as a lobbyist on college affordability issues and as a fundraiser and digital campaigner for environmental organizations. Bery holds a B.A. from UC Berkeley and an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Harvard Public Service Fellow. He is a recipient of the 2007 Asian Law Alliance Community Impact Award and has received commendations from the California State Senate and State Assembly for his human rights advocacy. He has spoken widely in national and international media, and his commentary on U.S. foreign policy and human rights has appeared in a wide range of newspapers and other publications.


Moderated by David Swanson. David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is Still A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and hosts Talk World Radio. On November 10, 2024, Swanson was awarded the Real Nobel Peace Prize by the Lay Down Your Arms Foundation in Oslo, Norway. Swanson was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. He was also awarded a Beacon of Peace Award by the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans For Peace in 2011, and the Dorothy Eldridge Peacemaker Award by New Jersey Peace Action in 2022, and a Global Peace Leadership & Excellence Award in 2024. Swanson has been on the advisory boards of: Nobel Peace Prize Watch, Veterans For Peace, Assange Defense, BPUR, Military Families Speak Out, Fields of Peace, and Peace in Ukraine Coalition. He is an Associate of the Transnational Foundation, and a Patron of Platform for Peace and Humanity. He is on the Consultative Council of the SHAPE Project. He is on the International Coordinating Committee of No to War – No to NATO. He is on the Steering Group of Warheads to Windmills. He is on the board of the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.