NATO held its 2025 Parliamentary Assembly in Dayton, Ohio between May 22 and 26. Though it promotes itself as a force in defense of peace and security, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s history exposes its true purpose: propping up Western imperialism and hegemony. It’s an international body started with the goal of containing and threatening the Soviet Union, and since the fall of the USSR has expanded well out of its target areas of North America and the Northern Atlantic, causing death and destruction from Ukraine and Yugoslavia to Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond

NATO is an existential threat to countries that seek to challenge the U.S.-centered status quo and manage their own path of development that doesn’t include subservience to the capitalist global order.

People from Dayton and around the area recognized the severity of this threat and called for protests outside the Parliamentary Assembly. CovertAction’s Rachel Hu was there to cover the events and reports on how the city spent millions of dollars on security, keeping residents away from the summit and holding extravagant fireworks events while people go hungry and don’t have their basic needs met on the ground.

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