Local police throughout the U.S. are direct beneficiaries of the military-industrial complex’s overproduction of hardware designed to dominate the globe. The Pentagon’s 1033 program provides police departments with excess military-grade equipment—including tanks, armored cars and weaponry—meant for war, not for keeping the public safe. When police are dressed and equipped for war, studies have shown, they are more apt to act as though the population is their enemy.

William Hartung is director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). His articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.

Dan McFadden joined the ACLU of Massachusetts as a staff attorney in September 2018. He has extensive experience litigating a broad range of civil rights and civil liberties issues, including in the areas of immigrants’ rights and criminal justice reform.

Yasmine Taeb is Senior Policy Counsel for Demand Progress. She’s an experienced human rights lobbyist and previously served as Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Victims of Torture directing the organization’s advocacy on refugees and asylum seekers. She directed the Human Rights & Civil Liberties Program at the Friends Committee on National Legislation where she lobbied for increased resettlement of refugees, repeal of the 2001 AUMF, and the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, among other issues. This year she coordinated a 1033 Strategy coalition of advocacy groups that sought to include reform or abolition of the 1033 program in July’s NDAA votes in Congress.