Petitions Ask Less Spending on Arms Programs

With an ear-splitting send-off from blaring car horns and chanting humans, petitions bearing 145,000 signatures were delivered to the Los Angeles city clerk’s office Thursday by backers of a measure that would set up an advisory council to direct federal grants and local pension funds away from the military industry and into social programs.

The proposed initiative, if approved for the Nov. 4 ballot by the city clerk, would be the second petition drive to reach voters on the strength of a grass-roots movement known as “Jobs With Peace.” Seventy thousand valid signatures are required to put the measure on the ballot.

The first Jobs With Peace initiative, approved by 61% of the city’s voters in the November, 1984, election, ordered a study each year of how much of the taxes collected from city residents wind up in the nation’s defense budget.

The City Council is expected to soon award a contract to conduct the first such annual study, and Jobs With Peace organizers said they hope it will be published before the November election to give them ammunition with which to persuade voters to approve the advisory council. The first-year cost of the study is estimated to be about $60,000.

Overall, the organizers said, their goal is to lessen the nation’s military spending and create more jobs in such non-military areas as education, public transportation, housing, the arts and human services.

“We believe that money being spent on military weapons . . . robs the people of this city and this country,” said Anthony Thigpenn, executive director of Jobs With Peace.

Similar Jobs With Peace groups elsewhere have won passage of 81 voter initiatives similar to the successful 1984 initiative here, but Los Angeles would be the first city to consider the second step of establishing an advisory council.

The council, as envisioned by its backers, would consist of unpaid commissioners who advise the mayor and City Council on ways to prudently invest both federal funds that come into the city and city-controlled money, such as employee pension funds. The board, which would be appointed by the mayor and the council, would not have actual control over the money.

Organizers describe the development council concept as a necessary step in a process leading, ultimately, to a halt in the international arms race. “The absolute goal is in fact to stop the arms race,” said executive board member Larry Frank. “The only legitimate base of a peace movement is in fact a jobs movement.”

The petitions were delivered to Piper Technical Center downtown by a caravan of volunteers who deposited the petitions, carried in second-hand grocery boxes, on the city clerk elections division’s loading dock.

Honking their car horns, chanting “Jobs With Peace,” and singing protest songs with the aid of two guitarists, the group drew curious looks from city employees, who gathered near windows to witness the hubbub. Among those declaring their support of the Jobs With Peace effort were Councilman Robert Farrell, Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, county Board of Education member Jackie Goldberg and actor Robert Foxworth of “Falcon Crest.”