North Charleston, SC – Members of the Elbit Out of South Carolina Coalition met with Major Michael Aiken of the North Charleston Police Department (NCPD)’s Office of Professional Standards on April 29, to discuss the disturbing patterns of behavior by off-duty NCPD officers working as paid security at Elbit Systems America’s facility in Ladson, South Carolina. That location is a subsidiary of Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.

For the past year and a half, organizers from the coalition have picketed outside of Elbit’s Ladson facility weekly to bring awareness to its role in manufacturing Howitzer cannons for the Israeli use in the Palestinian genocide.

“Over the course of the past year, we’ve seen Elbit employees act aggressively towards picketers, all while NCPD officers have stood by in their uniforms and cars, fraternizing with Elbit security and doing absolutely nothing to protect community,” said Miranda Xiong, one of the coalition members who attended the meeting. “Elbit employees have hit us with their cars, swerved onto the grass and pavement where we’re standing, and threatened us verbally.”

Throughout the meeting, Mayor Aiken claimed that off-duty NCPD officers have an obligation to protect private citizens, collect reports when crimes occur on scene, and act in an unbiased manner. However, members of the coalition brought up the fact that Elbit pays NCPD officers $60 per hour, a number Aiken himself confirmed during the meeting.

“North Charleston Police Department leadership is lying when they claim there is no conflict of interest between Elbit and NCPD officers,” said Matt Colburn of the Lowcountry Action Committee (LAC) and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). “It just shows that even when cops are off duty they exist to protect profits of companies like Elbit and not Lowcountry residents.” Colburn was arrested at a picket in front of Elbit in August 2025, but won a not guilty verdict.

During the meeting, coalition member Collin Holloway discussed his experience of being verbally threatened by an Elbit employee and forced to call NCPD’s non-emergency line because the off-duty NCPD officer present refused to file a report.

“The officers that work for Elbit are openly corrupt by pretending not to notice Elbit workers committing crimes, while treating us as criminals,” said Holloway.

Throughout the meeting, Major Aiken repeatedly resorted to explaining the perspectives of NCPD officers and the “potential” security threats that picketers posed. When pressed for more information on what exactly he meant, Aiken cited instances of vandalism and fears that the Elbit facility in Ladson would be “hijacked.”

Coalition member Christopher Newhard expressed his concern that such language is frequently weaponized to demonize organizers and activists within the pro-Palestinian movement.

Xiong added, “It’s clear that NCPD doesn’t see us as equal because if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to gaslight us into thinking that we are somehow the threat here, when Elbit is a multimillion-dollar corporation profiting directly off the Palestinian genocide.”

Another area of conversation surrounded the failure of existing NCPD channels for community feedback, such as CRIMEWATCH. In December 2025, LAC led a conversation with NCPD Chief Ron Camacho and North Charleston Mayor (former Police Chief) Reggie Burgess to discuss community control of the police.

Denise Scott, the sister-in-law of Walter Scott, the unarmed 50-year-old African American man shot and killed by an NCPD officer in 2015, was also present at the December meeting. When LAC representatives raised similar concerns related to NCPD officers’ behavior, whether on or off duty, Chief Camacho and other NCPD officers present explicitly urged community members to file complaints about misconduct through the CRIMEWATCH website.

The CRIMEWATCH website was launched haphazardly in response to the recommendations from a 2021 Racial Bias Audit, which determined “community members have not filed complaints even after negative experiences with NCPD personnel, and the complaint process is confusing to most.”

At a NCPD town hall meeting officers the day before the LAC’s December meeting with the mayor and chief, officers prided themselves at having fulfilled 89% of the audit’s recommendations. Yet, since the December meeting, coalition members have submitted at least five complaints concerning officers’ behavior at Elbit, four through CRIMEWATCH and one over the phone.

Major Aiken admitted that he had not seen anything regarding these complaints and that they must have “fallen through the cracks” via technical difficulties because CRIMEWATCH was supposedly a “new” system.

The Racial Bias Audit recommended NCPD revise the complaint process to make it more accessible and ensure residents are updated on the status of their complaints and involve community members in the complaint review process, among other suggestions made back in 2021, but NCPD only launched the new process days before the December 2025 meeting. “The inability of NCPD to acknowledge the concerns of their community is yet another unfulfilled and false promise to the community by NCPD,” said Xiong.

Erica Veal of LAC and FRSO said these inconsistencies are precisely why they advocate for community control of the police, “Law enforcement has proven they are unwilling or incapable of adhering to protocols and recommendations to keep communities safe and are not committed to transparency and accountability,” Veal said. “We have presented ample evidence of their officers’ unequal enforcement of the law at pickets, we used the channels they insisted we use to document the misconduct and we have been met with excuse after excuse.” She went on to say, “The Racial Bias Audit was not enough. We demand community control of police now!”

#NorthCharlestonSC #SC #AntiWarMovement #Elbit #EOSC

Charleston, SC – On January 19, Charleston’s Elbit Out Of South Carolina (EOSC) coalition marched with a large contingent in the city’s Martin Luther King Day parade. Around 40 community members carried Palestinian flags, large banners, and a variety of signs criticizing Elbit Systems of America for producing weapons for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The coalition handed out hundreds of flyers with information about Elbit’s Charleston County facility as well as ways to get involved with the coalition's efforts to shut the factory down.

“It was so great to see families watching the parade from the sidelines light up when they saw a contingent in solidarity with Palestine,” said Alfred Peeler, of the Charleston District of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). “It showed that the community supports our efforts to do our part locally in demanding an end to the U.S.’s role in supporting the genocide.”

Elbit Systems of America opened its Charleston factory in 2023 to construct Next Generation Sigma 155 mm Howitzer cannons for Israel, and at least two loads of weapons and other munitions have already been shipped.

“It’s important for us to take every opportunity we can to publicly show our support for Palestinians and bring attention to the ways our community is wrapped up in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” stated Nate Hubler, an EOSC organizer. “Most people are unaware that Elbit was given tax breaks by our county council to operate here, depriving the public of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.”

The Elbit Out Of SC Coalition formed at the end of 2024 to shut the factory down and has pursued a variety of tactics including weekly pickets in front of the facility for over a year, regular teach-ins at community meetings, speaking at county council to scrap the tax breaks, and appealing to labor unions and religious institutions.

The Coalition consists of Free Palestine Charleston (FPC), Charleston DSA, the Lowcountry Action Committee and FRSO Charleston as well as numerous at-large organizers.

The coalition kept the energy up for the entire length of the parade, chanting for an hour and a half. Attendees were led in chants like “Free, free Palestine!” and “Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation!”

“It was so great to see the people chant along with us, especially the kids,” said Autumn Waddell, an organizer with FPC and EOSC.

Volunteers with the Charleston Linea Directa Comunitaria Inmigrante, the local Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) verification hotline, also marched with the coalition. Representatives handed out flyers to spread the word about the hotline’s phone number and made connections between attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and attacks on immigrants in the U.S.

“It looks like the local news covering the parade turned off their coverage as we approached, which they did last year as well,” said Alfred Peeler. “But it’s all good, we’ve been getting more and more coverage, more and more engagement, and Elbit facilities are shutting down across the globe. We are winning!”

#CharlestonSC #SC #AntiWarMovement #OppressedNationalities #AfricanAmerican #MLKDay #FPC #EOSC

Elbit provides 80% of Israel’s land based weaponry and 85% of its drones. In the summer of 2023, Elbit built a facility in Ladson, South Carolina which produces the SIGMA Next-Generation Mobile Tactical Cannon – a massive 150mm vehicle-mounted gun – for the Israeli military.

“Make no mistake, there will come a day when everyone, including members of this council, act as if they were always against the genocide, just as people now act as if it was obvious to oppose Jim Crow or South African Apartheid,” one speaker told the council. “However, we will not let anyone in Charleston County forget that members of this body not only did not stand out against this genocide, but instead used their positions of power to financially incentivise these genocide profiteers to move into our community, and then y’all remained silent as they shipped weapons of death to erase generations of Palestinians.”

Elbit was subsidized financially by the Charleston County council to set up shop via a $700,000 grant awarded through the state and, more importantly, via a Fee In Lieu Of Taxation (FILOT) agreement signed with the county. The FILOT agreement awards Elbit decades of property tax breaks. Charleston County schools are funded with business property taxes, so the FILOT functionally takes money away from our local children and gives it to Elbit to produce weapons to murder Palestinian youth.

EOSC has been organizing for a year and a half to shut down the Ladson factory. Every Thursday since the one-year anniversary of Al Aqsa Flood, the group has held pickets in front of Elbit, including a massive rally on May Day 2025. Members have also canvassed nearby communities, tabled at local events, flyered the streets, held numerous teach-ins to educate the public, and disrupted a job fair where Elbit attempted to recruit employees from a local community college.

One condition of the FILOT agreement includes a hiring requirement of 300 employees, which Elbit has yet to reach. The coalition has been using agitational tactics to prevent Elbit from hiring the workers it needs to legally maintain the tax breaks. This would effectively will cost Elbit millions over the five-year term of its contract with the county.

These efforts have begun to yield results. Elbit officials warned the Charleston County Council they are uncertain about the future of the Ladson facility. Meanwhile, EOSC is continuing to escalate their tactics.

EOSC’s most recent action at the County council was prompted by news that, in mid-July, ships in the Mediterranean Sea were said to be carrying cannons that activists have reason to believe were produced at the Ladson facility in Charleston County. This is the first news of this kind to surface since the facility opened two years ago.

After coalition members left the council chambers, Larry Kobrovsky, a council member who frequently leaves the chambers and refuses to face EOSC organizers when they share public comments, compared the group to the KKK and nazis. While ESOC has developed a positive working relationship with some councilmembers, there is still more work to be done on this front.

“Ultimately, attacking the FILOT tax breaks is one tactic among many that our coalition is using to shut down this factory,” said another coalition member. “It will take a mixture of agitation, base-building, education, local labor and community solidarity to accomplish these goals. But we will win!”

For more information about the Elbit Out of South Carolina Coalition visit ElbitoutofSC.com.

#CharlestonSC #SC #AntiWarMovement #Palestine #WeaponsIndustry #Elbit #EOSC