What Keeps Us Hooked on the War Economy

Emily Franko

For the past several months as CODEPINK’s Local Peace Economy Coordinator, I’ve had the unique opportunity to glimpse into people’s wrestling and reckoning with the ways that their lives are tied to the war economy and inquiries into how to use our lives to cultivate peace. So many of us don’t want our time, energy, and money to contribute to the violence that’s happening not just across the world but also in our own communities. It’s been beautiful to witness people’s care and concern for the wellbeing of others and the earth and their passion and excitement for creating new ways together.

Over the course of these months, I’ve noticed one place where people seem to get stuck as they go deeper into this work of growing their local peace economies. As we talk about the pivots to peace and our war economy “addictions,” as we often refer to them, there’s one addiction that people seem deeply resistant to letting go of: the idea that fighting against the war economy is going to bring us the world we long for. It feels like many of us are “hooked” here, caught on the idea that if we just push harder, if we just yell louder, something will change. That being against the war economy is all we must do.

Through these observations, I can’t help but wonder if hooking our identity to the idea of being against the war economy actually keeps us attached to it and defined by it. Before moving on, I want to be clear: this is not to say that we shouldn’t resist, organize, and stand for love, humanity, and compassion in the face of the war economy’s violence. We absolutely must. What I’m speaking to is not the actions we take but the ways in which we limit those actions by defining ourselves within the terms of the very thing we are trying to move away from. How does this inhibit the extent to which we are able to create something new? How does this keep us looking outside of ourselves for answers–and therefore ultimately limit our willingness to be responsible for ourselves?

Amidst all this, what is keeping us on the “hook?” What is keeping us from letting go, not of what we know to be right, but of the ways we continue to identify with and give our energy to the thing we say we do not want?

I think a lot about belonging in my work and life. Perhaps this stems from my own wounds around belonging, which I know many of us carry–not just personal wounds from our caregivers but also wounds from the culture(s) we inhabit; wounds from being cut off from our ancestries and traditions; wounds from living in a nation-state that is set up to extract from us rather than support us; wounds from feeling like we need to neglect or eliminate parts of ourselves to be accepted or safe.

I sense that many people’s unwillingness to unhook from their identity of “being against” has something to do with belonging–a fear of no longer being worthy of care or welcome into the peace economy we’re cultivating if they don’t make themselves known as being against the thing creating so much harm and violence. That is deeply understandable and human, and also, I think it is holding us back from truly creating the cultures of care we say we want to create. Because ultimately, this stance is still one of needing to prove your worth by doing something–the same logic of the capitalist system we’re trying to move away from. Can we be worthy of care because we are a being on this planet, because we have inherent dignity–dignity that was not given to us and therefore cannot be taken away? My own journey has taught me that if we’re not rooted in our own inherent dignity, our own belonging, we’re always going to be chasing its affirmation elsewhere. That leaves us easily used by powers outside of ourselves–a vulnerable place to be in a war economy culture.

I sense, too, that this unwillingness to unhook is rooted also in a deep pain at seeing what’s happening in our world. Again: deeply understandable and deeply human, especially as we can witness a genocide happening in real time from across the world, from the safety of our homes, in a country supplying the weapons being used to carry out the very violence we’re witnessing. And, if we move into action without also tending to that pain, we often unintentionally and unconsciously contribute to a cycle of reactivity and violence that we want to see end. If we don’t tend to our pain, we’re often at war within ourselves as we are trying to end war in the world. This internal war, I believe, creates the conditions for being at war in the world, and if that isn’t a sign of our personal power–the power the war economy tries to make us forget–I’m not sure what is.

It’s hard to be self-responsible when we’re always moving from a place of striving to belong or trying to find a relief valve for the pain we feel about the horrors we witness each day–because we’re always moving from a place of avoidance rather than our agency and power. To me, the line between responsibility and power is quite blurry; we can’t reclaim one without the other, and we need both to move toward the world we want to live in, where sustainable peace is part of our reality.

So, what does it take to be self-responsible? What does it take to reclaim our own power and agency amidst the domination of the war economy? I’m certainly no expert, as I’m on my own journey of reclamation and return to self-responsibility, and I question the ways I’m using my power and responsibility every day. Many days, it doesn’t feel like enough. What I can offer to this inquiry, from where I am right now, is that returning to my body has been foundational for me–because that’s where I believe my power, and therefore my ability to be responsible for myself, resides. I’m sure there are many paths back to the body, and mine has been greatly informed by the field of somatics and the ways its wisdom has been communicated and taught by Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Staci Haines, and Resmaa Menakem. Without their offerings, I would have many more wars raging inside me.

Returning to our bodies and rooting into our own inherent dignity and power is often seen as too small or self-centered of a move in the face of the war economy’s violence. But if our ability to be self-responsible and reclaim our power, and therefore our capacity to cultivate peace in our communities, is rooted in our bodies, I don’t see a sustainable path forward that doesn’t include this step of returning to ourselves in this way. The U.S. empire is going to fall–because nothing lasts forever. When it does, what will we know ourselves as? Who will we know ourselves to be? Will the death of these systems of violence feel like our own because of the ways we’ve identified with them, or will this death be an affirmation of our power, our liberation, that we always knew to be ours?

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Emily Franko is the Local Peace Economy Coordinator at CODEPINK.

Emily’s past work in nonprofits and philanthropy deepened her commitment to dismantling systems of domination, within herself and in collective, and creating conditions where people can get what they need. She aims to cultivate cultures of belonging wherever she is and is excited to be doing work that supports people in creating those cultures in their own communities as CODEPINK’s Local Peace Economy Coordinator. Emily holds a Master’s in Leadership for Sustainability from the University of Vermont and a Bachelor’s in Sociology from Boston College.