Jewish Voice for Peace-Albuquerque Chapter put up seven billboards yesterday! The group is launching a campaign asking the Albuquerque City Council to issue a proclamation telling Congress to spend federal funding on Albuquerque rather than on Israel’s occupation of Palestine:

Every year, $3 billion of U.S. taxpayer money pays for Israel’s illegal repression of Palestinians through the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Over $9 million of this comes from Albuquerque pockets. This money could be and would be better spent on local health, local jobs, and local police training.

Albuquerque City Council should tell the federal government to stop the aid until Israel abides by international law and to use Albuquerque money to fund Albuquerque’s needs.

In this spirit, we urge the Albuquerque City Council to pass a proclamation calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel until the Occupation ends. We further urge the Albuquerque City Council to call for the money currently being used to oppress Palestinians to be redirected to meet our community’s needs, such as affordable housing, retraining unemployed workers, teaching reading skills to disadvantaged school children, providing basic health care to those without insurance, or pay increases and improved training for our police force.