War Resisters League - Current Activities

Current Activities

Today, the War Resisters League is actively organizing against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the impact of war at home. Much of its organizing is focused on challenging military recruiters and ending corporate profit from war. It publishes an annual peace calendar, the quarterly magazine WIN: Through Revolutionary Nonviolence, and other materials and is involved in a number of national peace and justice coalitions, including United for Peace and Justice and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Since 1958, WRL has awarded almost annually the War Resisters League Peace Award to a person or organization whose work represents the League's radical nonviolent program of action.

The War Resisters League annually publishes a pie chart showing how much of the U.S. federal budget actually covers current and past military expenses, listing the total as 54%:

"The figures are federal funds, which do not include trust funds — such as Social Security — that are raised and spent separately from income taxes....The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller. "

These figures are at odds with official government figures:

" out that the 2004 military budget would represent 16.6 percent of all federal spending, compared with 27.3 percent in the late 1980's."

"...War Resisters....count moneys appropriated for veterans' benefits and payment of the national debt as "taxes to support past wars." The group does this because the only way it can arrive at the figure of 47 percent of the federal budget going to the military is to count what they see as past military spending."