Tell Congress to Stop Taking
Campaign Donations from Weapons Companies!

CODEPINK

WASHINGTON, DC (December 18, 2021) — We are excited to announce that Representative Ilhan Omar just became the 13th member of Congress to sign our pledge to refuse money from weapons companies! 

The New Year is coming up and CODEPINK is going after arms sales in 2022—and the people in Congress who benefit from those sales. The United States is the largest exporter of weapons and is arming conflicts all over the world. Not only are weapons companies responsible for murder but their products are also responsible for environmental destruction that threatens our ability to keep living on the only planet we have. CODEPINK is launching a Call to Disarm where we will pull weapons company dollars out of politics and make sure that money stays out. 

ACTION: We are already winning. Tell Congress to join the other members who have signed the pledge. They need to listen to us, not their corporate donors! 

Members of Congress take thousands and thousands of dollars from weapons companies, and then turn right around to hand them billions of our taxdollars. Bribery? Corruption? Conflict of interest? We think so. 

And guess what? All of the members of Congress who have signed the pledge vote consistently better when it comes to issues like arms sales and war spending. 

This petition will help get campaigns started in districts all over the country to pressure our Reps to refuse campaign donations from weapons manufacturers. Make sure to add your name!

Thanks to Representative Ilhan Omar signing our pledge, the people she represents in Minnesota don’t have to worry about her being beholden to those kinds of companies. In Chicago, my representative Mike Quigley takes thousands of dollars from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Naturally, we are standing outside his office telling all his constituents about it and demanding he do the right thing: sign the pledge and listen to us, not his campaign donors! 

Every year big weapons companies like Lockheed Martin donate millions of dollars to political campaigns. Our sitting congresspeople should be beholden to us, not corporations. CODEPINK is launching a Call to Disarm, a campaign educating members of Congress on the harm in taking money from weapons companies. Already twelve members of Congress have signed a pledge to refuse money from those companies in the future. Tell all of Congress to take the pledge!

ACTION: If you live in the states of Massachusetts or Oregon or in the districts represented by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (NY-14), Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), Cori Bush (MO-1), Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Mike Quigley (IL-5), Chuy Garcia (IL-4), Katie Porter (CA-45), Debbie Dingell (MI-12), Andy Levin (MI-9), Eric Swalwell (CA-15), Mark Takano (CA-41), or Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) and want to help ask them to sign the pledge, please email danaka@codepink.org.

This campaign is key to ALL other war resistance efforts in Congress. Dirty money in politics prevents us from cutting the Pentagon budget, stopping arms sales, and stopping wars. As long as Congresspeople are taking campaign money from the very companies that benefit from war, our issues will be harder and harder to push. It’s time we change that. Join us. 

Towards peace,
Danaka & the entire CODEPINK team

THE LETTER

Dear sitting Members of Congress, 

We, the undersigned, are urging you to make a commitment to stop taking campaign contributions from the top five US weapons manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.  

We know that money in politics causes corruption. As long as members of Congress take campaign contributions from weapons companies they are more likely to be beholden to corporations rather than us. These companies are also complicit in murder all over the world, building the arsenal for governments engaged in conflict everywhere. We are also concerned with the impact that weapons companies have on the environment. Not only does the use of weapons harm the environment for generations, but the manufacturing and transport of weapons does as well. 

Already, some of your colleagues have signed the pledge to refuse money from the top five weapons contractors including: 

Yvette Clarke, NY, District 9

Bonnie Watson Coleman, NJ, District 12

Jim McGovern, MA, District 2

Ilhan Omar, MN District 5

Raul Grijalva, AZ, District 3

Pramila Jayapal, WA, District 7

Ro Khanna, CA, District 17

Barbara Lee, CA, District 13

Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC, At-large

Jan Schakowsky, IL, District 9

Maxine Waters, CA, District 43

Nydia Velazquez, NY, District 7

As an individual who makes foreign policy decisions, you should be refusing money from companies that profit off war and destruction.