Converting the War Economy

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For decades, the US economy has been deeply intertwined with war-making — from Cold War-era aerospace and nuclear weapons to today’s AI-driven military technologies. But this wasn’t always seen as inevitable.

In the 1970s and ’80s, organizers built unlikely coalitions across the peace, labor, civil rights, and faith movements to challenge military spending and push for an economy that served people instead of perpetual war. Their work helped popularize the idea of economic conversion: redirecting public resources away from weapons production and toward jobs that meet human needs.

In this episode, we revisit that history — and ask what it can teach us now. As communities organize against new defense-tech projects and local governments continue to subsidize weapons manufacturers, activists are once again grappling with how to confront the war economy — and what a more just, peaceful alternative could look like.

This is the final episode of our season, MIC Drop, reporting on how the military-industrial complex shapes local economies — and how communities are organizing in response.

Guests: 

Dr. David Cortright, former Executive Director of SANE; Larry Frank, former Development Director for Jobs with Peace LA; Nathan Kim, Graduate Research Associate at DAIR

Additional Resources:

Cortright v. Resor Reenactment and details about the Waging Peace event at George Washington University

UCLA: Memory Work Los Angeles project on Jobs with Peace

Recording of the 1982 Central Park Rally 

Brown University Costs of War Project