Bring our war dollars home so we can educate our children, fix our roads, feed the hungry, house the homeless, improve community development, lower local property taxes and create sustainable jobs by diversifying our military jobs spending.

“Apparently we need more bombs than social workers.” That’s what I said when my contract with DOD was suddenly cut in half immediately after the “Shock and Awe” campaign in 2003. I was working for Fleet and Family Support at Brunswick Naval Air Station as the social worker for the new parent support program.

The program served young, 18- year-old first-time parents who struggled while spouses or partners were deployed oversees, living far away from home and family. I learned a great deal about military life.

My dad was a 20-year-old Marine sergeant in the Pacific during WWII. Dad would never talk about the war experience, yet he led our family of six on the 1969 March on Washington against the Vietnam War. A child of the ‘60s, I became a nonviolence trainer, ordained minister, social worker and pacifist. War begets war. Violence begets violence.

I have twice been to Palestine (2012, 2013) which is bombed with the support of U.S. tax dollars. The attacks on Palestine have gone on for years, starting in 1948 with the Nakba. During the 1948 Palestine War, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, and over 400 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed.

I lived in inner cities (Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Dorchester) for 25 years, places certainly in need of economic development and investment.

I have roots — nine generations — here in Bath. I care about this small town of 8,000 where my mother brought us home to her family every chance she could; my grandfather was a dentist on Washington Street and lost his home to cancer and medical bills, and my great, great, grandfather was a banker.

Many of us in Bath and elsewhere are having a difficult time struggling to make ends meet. There are few jobs. Many have given up even looking so are not counted as unemployed.

At different times, I have been both a food pantry recipient and volunteer.

I also work with the Bath Collaboration on Homelessness, where we are examining possible solutions for those among us who are truly “homeless,” and often invisible. My 10-room 1840s home is a rooming house for formerly homeless, low-income working or disabled folk, or people in transition.

I worry about the big, old houses on Washington Street that are vacant and for sale because people cannot afford to maintain them.

I worry about the apparent squatters blocks from my home who, it appears, have been camping out this summer next to the condemned home of an elderly couple. I worry about squatters living in the south end that members of our Bath Coalition know.

I worry that my home purchased in 2002 now has half its former market value.

I try to connect the dots and understand.

People are tired of war, yet we can hear the war drums beating against Syria and ISIS. It seems to me if we were to diversify our military spending we could better help those in need. Midcoast Citizens for Sustainable Economies (MCSE) reports almost 10 percent of Maine’s economy is dependent on defense contracts, much higher than most states. A recent UMASSAmherst study reports military spending is the least effective way to create real, sustainable jobs.

Military job diversification is a place to start, a place where the benefits of wide-ranging, long term, sustainable jobs (think communications, transportation, renewable energy) can create funding to improve our schools, our roads, the supply of nutritious food to those less fortunate, and housing for the homeless. Many studies have shown that non-military job creation is the healthiest for communities.

You can find links to the above, UMASS study and other information on MCSE’s webs site at www.mainemcse.com.

———

The Rev. Carol L. Huntington is a member of Peaceworks. She lives in Bath.