Texas pro-Palestine activists protest CYBERQUEST
Fort Worth, Texas – On March 29, a small rally of pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside the entrance of Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth Location, the site of CYBERQUEST, Lockheed’s annual programming competition held for students.
CYBERQUEST is a security competition and STEM event for high school students created by the weapons manufacturer. These competitions are held around the U.S to recruit students in major cities; some on this year's list including Denver and Orlando. The previous competition, Code Quest, was held in Grand Prairie, Texas earlier this month.
Josh Rudd from the Dallas Fort Worth Anti-War Committee said, “This CYBERQUEST event we’re here protesting is trying to recruit high school students to work for genocidal war profiteer Lockheed Martin. We condemn our tax dollars, our labor, our natural resources, and our students’ futures being churned up into the war machine. We’re here to demand an end to CYBERQUEST, an end to Lockheed Martin, and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
Jumana Saadeh, a local member of Code Pink, also spoke out, “Working at Lockheed Martin is not just a job, it is a choice you make to support and work for a company that is arming a state that is currently committing a genocide.”
While protesters chanted, “Stop the killings stop the crimes! Lockheed out of Palestine” and “Lockheed what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” a Navy plane was spotted leaving the base, to which Josh Rudd brought up to the crowd how many much money was spent into the weapons plant compared to the homeless and poor people in Fort Worth.
Lockheed’s Fort Worth location is known as U.S Air Force Plant 4 and is jointly owned by the government as a key production hub for the F-35, the most expensive military project in U.S history. Annually $21 billion dollars in defense contracts are given to Lockheed's Dallas-Fort Worth facilities, most of it to the Fort Worth location. This amount is equal to a fourth of the discretionary budget of the Department of Education.
Members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, DFW Anti-War committee and the Party for Socialism and Liberation participated in the protest.