I finished up by saying that we all have to work so much harder to stop this war as well as fund our schools and that the two were connected. This budget gap would be a difficult dilemma under the best of circumstances, but against the backdrop of war and calamity, it feels indicative of a much deeper problem than a few-million-dollar local budget holes. As I concluded. I made eye contact with the school board members and thanked them for their time.
Making my way back to my seat, I noticed that I was a little sweaty and that my hands were trembling. Why was I so nervous? Why was that so hard?
The Hopes of Its Children
Eisenhower's speech is a rhetorical master class, well worth revisiting in this age of imperial fiat by tweet. Ike went on to intone: "This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities". We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people" This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
After some formalities and hearing from a handful more people, the school board voted to shutter the CB Jennings Elementary School, a remarkably modern school in the heart of our city with a new playground and a beautiful library. The vote was unanimous. The board members were sad but resigned. It was treated as an inevitable but unfortunate outcome or even as a forward-looking, resolute action. They were "doing something" in the face of a huge budget gap.
And indeed, the school budget will be back in the black -- for now -- once a $1.4 million shortfall is settled by cutting more positions, shaving costs, and looking for grants. Meanwhile, the local schools that remain are indeed closer to a balanced budget (at least until utility costs spike even higher and yet more global war-making costs hit home in this country).
Humanity Hanging from a Cross of Iron
The cost of the war against Iran is just one reason to be against it. The wanton violence, the indiscriminate death-dealing, the gold-plated hubris, and the gargantuan stupidity of Trump and crew, as well as the massive long-term impacts of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, are something to try to take in.
Every war is bad, stupid, and represents a colossal failure of the imagination, but this one, with the Trump trademark on it, should be considered the ur-war to oppose, resist, and refuse to pay for. And sitting in that makeshift meeting room of the New London Board of Education, I felt like a tightly wound, somewhat muted Cassandra, requesting that people who are probably against the war, too, somehow consider it part of the reason we are being called upon to close a school and reduce the quality of our kids' education.
We have a well-worn poster in the back hallway of our house. It's an image of kids playing on a metal jungle gym alongside the words: "It will 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."
A bake sale to buy a bomber? A car wash to get a Tomahawk? A dime drive for the next generation of nuclear submarines? This administration's officials aren't even pretending to enlist the public in support of their latest war, nor did they even try to get Congress to rubber-stamp it. They care that little for democracy, the rule of law, or even our hearts and minds. This White House grows fat on our outrage, our protest gestures, and our well-mannered critiques. They are printing money and telling lies in a frenzy of impunity that will (hopefully) finally be checked by the November elections. But there is so much violence and scapegoating and scaremongering coming out of Donald Trump's White House and his Florida compound that many people are checking out on all of it just to carry on with their lives. But nothing now is NORMAL and we can't allow ourselves to normalize any of it.
How do we stop this war? How do we redirect the money being wasted into the schools and health centers, bike lanes and sustainable-energy infrastructures that we all so desperately need? How do we take care of those victimized, maimed, and orphaned by our military? How do we take care of those rendered homeless, stateless, limbless by our wars?
The answer: We do something to protest, undermine, and challenge militarism every day. We work to connect those faraway wars, framed as invisible or normal or too complicated for us to grasp, to our everyday lives. We make all the awkward speeches we can. We hold up homemade antiwar signs. We refuse to pay for the wars we oppose. We continue to demand that butter, not guns, schools, not heavy bombers, homes, not destroyers be the focus of our lives.
Copyright 2026 Frida Berrigan
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