Denver protesters host car rally outside home of Lockheed Martin’s plant operations manager
Highlands Ranch, CO – On Saturday, June 29, protesters led by Denver Anti-War Action (DAWA) paid a visit to the home of Martin Pitre, the plant operations manager for Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Campus in Littleton, Colorado.
With a line of nearly 30 vehicles, the protesters circled in front of Pitre’s house and around his neighborhood, honking and chanting about his war profiteering.
After a short rally to decorate cars with slogans like “No need for Lockheed,” “Lockheed out of Colorado,” and “Genocide pays your mortgage,” the anti-war group coordinated a plan with all participants and set out for the Northridge neighborhood in Highlands Ranch. They caravanned a loop by the house and through the affluent suburban neighborhood, making the loop three times at low speeds over the course of 40 minutes. With the help of a powerful portable speaker and some focused chants, they made sure Pitre and all of his neighbors had no doubts about why the protest was there.
Many of those neighbors peeked at the car rally through curtains and blinds in their homes, but some came out to the sidewalk to observe, mostly wearing expressions of bewilderment. The protesters waved and smiled at the observers, inviting them to join the cause. Though it was a quiet and sunny Saturday afternoon, many other motorists waved and honked in encouragement of the caravan.
After three loops through the neighborhood, two Highlands Ranch Sheriff patrols showed up in front of Pitre’s house. Only then did Pitre, accompanied by a woman, go outside their house to stand behind the officers, where they yelled obscenities at the cars passing by. The woman was visibly upset, holding up a shaking middle finger and screaming at the activists to “get a job.” The protesters continued chanting and honking and rolled slowly by the house without interacting with the police.
The Northridge neighborhood is a rich suburb in Highlands Ranch. According to the popular real estate website Zillow.com, Pitre’s home is worth over $1 million, as are the homes of his neighbors. Just a 15 minute drive from his house is the 4 million square foot Lockheed Martin complex that he manages. This site designs, tests and produces satellites used by the Air Force for weapons targeting and intelligence. It also produces parts for military aircraft and their weapons systems, such as Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jet, which has been used by Israel to drop white phosphorus on the civilian population of Gaza in addition to numerous other war crimes.
Lockheed Martin has deep ties to the apartheid state of Israel and its occupation forces, and even doubled its office space in Tel Aviv in 2014. On their website, Lockheed Martin boasts that they have been supplying the state with military aircraft since the 1970s. They are also the largest single recipient of Pentagon funds in the world, with roughly 10% of annual Pentagon expenditures going to contracts with Lockheed.
Denver Anti-War Action used these facts when deciding to target Martin Pitre as part of its ongoing campaign against Lockheed Martin.
The car rally on Saturday certainly succeeded in bringing the fight of Palestinian resistance home to the profiteers at Lockheed Martin. It is one, but certainly not the last, step in Denver Anti-War Action’s campaign against Lockheed’s use of public funds for Israel’s genocide.