ONLINE: The F-35 Can't Help us Thrive or Even Keep us Alive (in a Pandemic)

media release: Madison peace activists, environmental groups and community members have been fighting for several years against bringing the F-35 to Wisconsin. The National Guard Bureau plans to bring a squadron of 18 F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Stealth jets (+ two back-up aircraft) to the Madison airport. The jets will make life unbearable for a large number of Madison and other Wisconsin residents with excruciating noise levels, four times louder than the current F-16 aircraft. 

F-35 engine emissions will bring thousands of tons of deadly pollution, while the airbase has already been polluting local water with dangerous PFAS contaminants for a half century.  The jets will emit almost 50,00 tons of global warming-causing carbon dioxide at a cost of $44,000 per flight-hour. The F-35 is the most expensive weapon in history, with a projected lifetime cost of $1.7 trillion.

These three people will participate in the forum:

Rosanne Greco, retired Air Force Colonel who spent 30 years in active service and specialized in strategic intelligence, nuclear weapons and arms control. She worked at the Pentagon for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and negotiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the Soviets in Geneva, Switzerland. She also worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Offutt Air Base in Omaha, Nebraska.

Greco is the former chair of the South Burlington City Council and has been fighting for over seven years to prevent the basing of the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Jets at the ANG base in that city as a leader of the Save Our Skies Vermont Coalition.

Eugenia Highland Granados is the director of the Restorative Justice Department at the YWCA in downtown Madison. Granados has a master's degree in life sciences communication, focusing in centering the voices and stories of youth of color expressed through art and culture within social justice movements. Granados believes in the power of Restorative Justice and the circle process to collectively heal from the harm and trauma of punishment, resist and dismantle white supremacy culture, share truth through stories, and transform hearts and communities.

She is a key leader of the Eken Park Resistance, a neighborhood-based organization challenging the racism, militarism and environmental injustice of the F-35 basing project.

Tom Boswell has been a community organizer and peace activist since his days as an undergraduate at Marquette University during the Vietnam War. He was active with the Mobilization for Survival and Pledge of Resistance in Milwaukee, while also working as a neighborhood organizer.

He is the founding organizer for the Safe Skies Clean Water Coalition, which has been fighting to prevent the basing of a squadron of F-35s at Truax Field in Madison for the past two years.

Watch for a link to register at peaceactionwi.org or check back here.