by Jasmin Maurer, PEP Executive Director<\/p>\n
It’s been a week since I stepped into my new role at the Peace Economy Project, and it appears that I haven’t burned the place down yet. I suppose I should thank everyone who trusted me to accomplish this, but I feel like maybe that should wait until we’ve made it a bit farther down the road.<\/p>\n
All joking aside, this has been an exciting week for me as I get my feet wet with what it means to be the new PEP director. I joined the organization over the summer as a lobby intern, but had been connected with it through my work with Young Activists United St. Louis for awhile now. It’s always been an organization that I admired in the community. Who else is reminding us of the dangers of unchecked military spending? Not too many other places around here.<\/p>\n
I’m glad that there are people promoting this cause, though. I didn’t intuitively know that our military spending was outrageous. This is a real revelation, right? What happened was I was interested in environmental concerns and ending wars, so I went to a workshop about how the military aids in environmental degradation, and this idea of the military-industrial complex was introduced to me there.<\/p>\n
Of course, this wasn’t the end of it. I was all caught up in this social justice service-learning curriculum that I was working with at the time, and kind of forgot about how much the military spends. This happens. We all have a lot going on, and a lot to care about. (I still really like the environment by the way, and educating young people on how to become change makers.)<\/p>\n
Luckily, military spending was reintroduced to me when I joined YSTL. Tila Neguse came in with a workshop about the military-industrial complex, and as I was frantically trying to understand where countries were on a world map (please forgive my crummy rural public school education), it became obvious to me that this information was important.<\/p>\n
Working with PEP has given me such a wonderful opportunity to continue to learn about the military-industrial complex and educate others. It’s connected me to all of you, a group of wonderfully passionate people, some of whom have been working around this issue a whole lot longer than I have and could teach me a lot. That is so exciting to me.<\/p>\n
And as this was my way of introducing myself to all of you, the members of PEP, I hope that you’ll introduce yourselves to me. Stop by, give me a call, send in a blog post, and tell me who you are and why you care. Let’s work together to continue to educate others about the dangers of an unchecked military budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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