As the hottest summer in recorded history burns across the world while the climate crisis escalates, in order to create awareness and take action the necessity to Stand Up and Speak Out about the role of the military in climate chaos intensifies.

Climate Crisis – Veterans Respond!  Veterans for Peace  Convention, August 25-27, 2023

Veterans for Peace  Friday, August 25, 2023
Part of the Veterans For Peace 2023 Online Convention

Moderator: Janet Weil
Presenters: Matt Hoh, Miriam Pemberton, Janet Weil, Sharon Abreu, Aniya Butler, Woody Powell, Ian Mooney, and Gary Butterfield

In a time of both wars/militarism and the climate crisis, VFP CCMP members and our allies are educating the public and taking action, on the street and online. Veterans For Peace has a unique and often much-appreciated perspective on these existential threats – we have presented over 120 slideshows and taken direct action in DC and NYC.

Join us to hear VFP Advisory Board member Matthew Hoh speak about the urgency of our current situation, followed by former Peace Economy Transitions Project Director and author Miriam Pemberton, who will present her research about the military’s impacts on, and transitions in, local communities. Our session will include poetry by youth climate activist Aniya Butler and songs by peace singers Sharon Abreu and Michael Hurwicz (The Irthlingz Duo),  then we will host an intergenerational discussion by our oldest CCMP member and former Executive Director Woody Powell and our youngest member, Afghanistan War veteran and PhD candidate Ian Mooney. The Q and A session will be moderated by Associate VFP member and climate activist Janet Weil – we look forward to a lively discussion.

Find out how CCMP has already changed the discourse around the climate crisis and reached out to both veterans and civilians, and how YOU can be part of this inspiring work in your local VFP chapter and/or your community.

Matt Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network, an organization of expert former military, intelligence and civilian national security officials who seek to reach broad, cross-partisan audiences in diverse media outlets and among the American people – who increasingly sense that U.S. foreign policy today is not making them, or the world, safer. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain, Afghanistan State Department officer, a disabled Iraq War veteran and is a Senior Fellow Emeritus with the Center for International Policy.

Matt has been a prolific writer and speaker about issues of war and peace. Matt serves on the advisory boards of many peace organizations including Veterans for Peace and World Beyond War and is an associate member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Miriam Pemberton has worked for decades to redirect our militarized economy toward preventing climate catastrophe, first at the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament and then at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her new book is Six Stops on the National Security Tour: Rethinking Warfare Economies (Routledge, 2023).

Janet Weil is a Lifetime Associate Member of Veterans For Peace and serves on the Climate Crisis and Militarism Project. A former CODEPINK national staffer and a longtime peace advocate, Janet has recently moved to the militarized California desert, where she enjoys watching birds, photographing plants, and strategizing about how to deprive the war industry of funding and popular support.

Sharon Abreu and Michael Hurwicz comprise the Irthlingz Duo and have been singing together for peace and environmental healing for 25 years.  They’ve sung in concert with legendary folksinger Pete Seeger and provided music for a wide variety of events, from the World Beyond War conference in Washington, D.C. to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. Their musical revue Penguins on Thin Ice was performed by high school students at the United Nations in 2007.  Sharon performed her one-woman musical show, The Climate Monologues, in the United Solo and Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festivals in 2016.

Aniya Butler is a high school senior from Oakland, California. She is a spoken word poet and performer and a leader of Youth vs Apocalypse.  She works to dismantle systems of oppression that cause the climate crisis and build a world of equity, sustainability, and love.

Wilson (known by one and all in Veterans For Peace as “Woody”) Powell is a Korea War veteran, a former consultant in hazardous materials management, and the former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace, from 2001 to 2005. Woody founded the War and Environment working group in VFP, a precursor to the Climate Crisis and Militarism national project, and serves as our mentor and inspiration.

Ian Mooney is a veteran of the US Army and a graduate worker at the University of Kentucky’s Philosophy Department. Their research focuses on questions of environmental ethics, police and military abolition, and new political ontologies. In addition to serving on the CCMP steering committee, Ian organizes with UCW local 3365, the Kentucky Poor People’s Campaign, the DSA, and the Red Black Alliance.

Gary Butterfield was drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War and then declared as a Conscientious Objector and opposed the war while in the military.  He is resolute in acting on his commitment to Peace.  He is President of the San Diego Chapter of Veterans For Peace and currently on the Steering Committee of the National Veterans For Peace Climate Crisis & Militarism Project.   He is also a member of San Diego 350.org and is keenly interested in the effects of militarism on the climate crisis.

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