Peace: Well-Being for the Poorest
Peace has always been fundamental to me.
My first forays into activism were for peace: as an elementary school student blowing up balloons for a protest when the white train carrying nuclear warheads passed through my hometown in Idaho, organizing a protest of the first Gulf War in junior high school, writing letters to protest Army recruiters being allowed on school grounds in high school. I love peace so much that I studied it in college – my bachelor’s degree is in Peace and Global Studies.
So it was with some surprise that I found myself sobbing tears of gratitude recently during a military speech. September 2nd was the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Nicaraguan Army, and President Daniel Ortega began his speech to the troops by talking about peace.
“Today we are able to hold this celebration in times of peace, and how much has it cost to reach this stage of peace. Peace meaning well-being for the poorest.…In peace we can fight poverty. In peace we can ensure education for all families, for the children of working-class families, rural families, poor families with low incomes.”
As I listened to the President’s address, I didn’t just tear up, I sobbed tears of gratitude. Gratitude to the Nicaraguan Revolution for identifying poverty as its number one enemy and fighting against that enemy with everything it’s got. Gratitude for being able to see with my own eyes the alleviation of so much suffering in my time. Gratitude that I’ve been able to contribute my grain of sand to this struggle.
Gratitude that we are not alone in this, that we are working in concert, struggling shoulder to shoulder with the government of the people of Nicaragua to vanquish poverty together in this beautiful country.
My tears, however, were also tears of sorrow for my country of birth. I have always held a vain hope for a similar struggle against poverty in the United States. I went to school with kids who didn’t have enough to eat, with kids who were constantly sick because their parents couldn’t afford to take them to the doctor, with kids whose families didn’t have running water or a good way to heat their house. In the thirty years since I left home, the situation for families like theirs has only gotten worse, for the simple reason that the well-being for the poorest is not in the interests of those that govern the United States.
When I was growing up in the 1980s and early 90s, my sister and I attended public school in Idaho. Every year, like schoolkids all around the U.S., we were required to raise money for the school: selling candy bars door-to-door; making desserts for bake sales; asking businesses to sponsor us for each mile we’d ride in the annual Bike-A-Thon when we would pedal five and a half miles with our classmates, then go back and collect the money…all just to get enough cash to keep the school going.
Yet, 43% of the U.S. annual budget goes toward military spending. As the old protest poster says, “It’ll be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” So, during President Ortega’s speech to the Nicaraguan Army, I was also crying for all those who are suffering in the U.S., with no hope of poverty alleviation from their government.
Unlike the U.S., Nicaragua has actually been invaded by a foreign country in recent history – mostly by the U.S. Nicaragua suffered 10 years of U.S. proxy war which targeted civilians, health centers and schools. Nicaragua suffered a U.S.-led and funded coup attempt in 2018, is currently suffering under illegal unilateral coercive measures – sanctions – and suffers continued destabilization attempts by the U.S.
Yet, even with such real threats to national security, Nicaragua’s total military spending is only 3% of the national budget.
Where does Nicaragua invest the majority of its funds? In peace. In, as President Ortega says, the “well-being of the poorest.”
Social spending is 53% of Nicaragua’s annual budget – free education from preschool through university, universal free health care, low-income housing, low-interest loans and much more.
Nicaragua knows what it is like to live in times of war, and therefore peace is truly precious here. It is such a privilege to be able to experience living in a country that is truly at peace, and to see what can be accomplished when peace, the well-being of the poorest, is prioritized. May peace always reign in Nicaragua!
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