The Pratt & Whitney Problem

 

On Saturday we'll turn out early for a protest at the gates of an air show in Maine that will feature the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Activists will distribute flyers designed to push back on recruiting kids and to make clear the connection between the U.S. Air Force and Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza.

U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolated at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC last February saying he could not live with his complicity in genocide. He shared how his job in the U.S. Air Force was to provide surveillance and targeting information for Israel’s war planes. Since Bushnell’s death, numerous U.S. Air Force personnel have offered resistance by hunger strikes, burning their uniforms, applying for conscientious objector status, and going AWOL.

The Thunderbirds' proud sponsor is Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of RTX (formerly Raytheon). P&W is drenched in blood money as this genocide profiteer makes the engines for the F-15 and F-16 warplanes Israel uses to drop bombs in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and now Iran. And it makes many of the drones they use, too. The U.S. Air Force is also a big customer.

On an October 24, 2023 call with investors, P&W CEO Greg Hayes said, “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking.” Restocking is the kind of euphemism that genocide profiteers use to conceal that they mean selling weapons to genociders.

P&W's factory in Maine, North Berwick Aero Systems, was on our radar in March when it teamed up with the tax-payer supported community college system to produce workers for the war machine. Some of us stood out at their big pr event announcing creation of the Maine Defense Industry Alliance. Fascism is really the marriage of industry and government to the extent that they operate in tandem to ignore the will of the people or to subvert it by offering "good" jobs.

A "good" job is defined as being one that provides benefits like health insurance, paid time off, full time employment under a union-negotiated contract, and enough income to afford a home plus toys like 4-wheelers and snowmobiles. This kind of job is scarce in Maine, and politicians leverage this to ensure that the war machine always has enough contracts to keep the willing workers engaged.

Air shows recruit future Aaron Bushnells. Not only will the noise and air polluting Thunderbirds enrapture crowds of children brought to the show, but inside there will be flight simulators and video games aimed at creating a desire for future enlistment. Nowhere will the truth about suicide rates among military personnel be shared, nor will attendees learn that the Air Force in particular is experiencing a wave of resistance in its ranks. Turns out that killing children from on high either with a jet or a drone tends to make people suicidal. Who could have predicted that?

P&W doesn't care. It predicts profits, not human suffering. The unholy alliance of P&W with the Pentagon is dangerous. It subverts the will of the people, most of whom don't want genocide conducted at their expense.

Fascism subverts democracy. That's the P&W problem.

Join us to protest while you still can.