Jo provides evidence that our growing military spending is starving “Main Street” services,including schools, libraries, police and fire departments, and health and human services.  She addresses, specifically, how the costs of the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq contribute to our recession-ridden economy and describes what citizens can do to move the government toward a peace economy.

Jo Comerford is Executive Director of the National Priorities Project, a project which provides real-time data on war and national defense spending and the trade offs in local social welfare, education and renewable energy which result. She is former Director of the Food Bank of western Massachusetts and a board member of the War Resisters League.