News and Views from the People's Struggle
Wilsonville, OR – On Monday, June 24, 20 pro-Palestinian protesters rallied at the office of Collins Aerospace in Wilsonville, Oregon. The rally was called by PDX for Palestine to protest the company’s involvement in the genocide in Gaza. Collins Aerospace is a subsidiary of Raytheon, and the Wilsonville facility produces weapons components that go to the Israeli military.
Littleton, CO – On Wednesday, June 12, Denver Anti-War Action (DAWA) furthered their fight against Lockheed Martin with a rally outside the weapon manufacturer's Space Division headquarters in Colorado.
Dozens of protesters showed up between the hours of 3 and 6 p.m. as employees finished up with the workday. While vehicles lined up at the intersection to begin their commute home, protesters denounced the corporation for their contribution to the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza.
St. Paul, MN – On Saturday, June 1, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) members had their 17th annual Walk Against Weapons of War. The day was sunny as 125 WAMM members and supporters rallied at Langford Park within a residential community. They then continued with a march to Forward Edge ASIC, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin.
Littleton, CO – On Wednesday, May 29, the Denver Anti-War Action (DAWA) continued their pro Palestine actions against weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin with another all-day picket at the corporation’s Colorado headquarters.
Around 50 protesters engaged in direct action throughout the day, forcing Lockheed employees to take fact sheets that laid out their location’s specific role in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, attached with explicit imagery of carpet bombing and the brutal effects of white phosphorus.
The fliers pointed out the connections between Lockheed Martin and Israel, included graphic imagery of war crimes, and the specifics of the activity that Lockheed Martin is engaged in in Colorado. Lockheed Martin’s primary roles in the genocide are sending F-35s, F-16s and C-130-Js to the occupation as well as providing the tools for mass surveillance and missile and drone targeting with satellites and GPS systems that are produced in Littleton.
One protester with the DAWA, Solveig Swain, explained, “We have to see these traumatizing images constantly by following the news coming out of Gaza. Those actively contributing to the genocide, the people providing the satellite surveillance used to target Palestinians, need to see the results of their crimes as well.”
These engineers of a genocide at Lockheed Martin did not appear out of thin air but were hand picked by Lockheed Martin. Tom Chaney, an organizer with the Students for a Democratic Society Denver (SDS) explained, “These young engineers are brought in with promises of money, with promises of safety and security for the future. There is no security when you’re funding a genocide.
Lockheed Martin, through “donations” and funding for “research” provided to Colorado universities, has deep ties to these institutions which allow them to aggressively recruit Colorado’s students. The end of this relationship is one of the demands of the SDS,and DAWA is also fighting to break the ties with corporations that arm Israel.
Another speaker with the DAWA, Julia Swezy, laid out the future of the movement, “We are building our discipline and militance daily. We will fight until the resistance achieves the victory they deserve, the liberation they are entitled toAs the resistance forces in Palestine wage their struggle against the occupation, those in the United States fight to end the supply of weapons that facilitate the genocide. By building militant people power in a similar fashion to the protests against the war in Vietnam, these activists hope to strike blows against domestic weapons manufacturers in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance.”
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