"Get A Job" & "I Love War" Say Workers @BathIronWorks, While Others Desire Change From Building WMDs

When working class Mainers encounter peace demonstrations, hostility often gets expressed in the form of shouts to "Get a job!" Yesterday at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard we heard a lot of that. Being unemployed is just about the worst fate some who are employed building destroyers for the U.S. Navy can think of. Besides, if we're standing around on the pavement at noon on Saturday speaking what's in our hearts we must be in need of something better to do -- right?

"I love war" was another thing we heard amid the jeers and catcalls that greeted one of our speakers in particular. Hee Eun "Silver" Park seemed to anger the BIW workers, or perhaps it was the banner in Korean that her husband, Paco Michelson, held behind her as she spoke. Translated it says NO NAVAL BASE but to many of the BIW men changing shifts at noon it was Chinese, and they didn't like it.

Silver spoke movingly in English saying that the people of Jeju whose coral reefs have been trashed to make a deep water port for U.S. destroyers in South Korea don't hate the workers who make the ships, and don't consider them enemies.

Post by Lisa Savage.

The Chorus of the Unemployed song from my play Canteen Annie at the Bomb Factory expressed what many BIW workers have told protesters there over the years: we need our jobs, but we would love to build windmills or trains instead of weapons of mass destruction. BIW workers are like Brecht's Mother Courage, the basis for the character, Annie, making a living off the war machine out of necessity. Do they, like Annie, try unsuccessfully to save their children from recruiters? Do they go on working for General Dynamics because it's the largest single employer in Maine? 

We live in a state where full-time, full benefits jobs are as scarce as daffodils on the first day of spring. Also, some workers shared with us that many have had their hours cut lately and are no longer full-time. So they must feel scared about the prospect of being unable to pay their mortgages and keep food on the table at home.

Post by Lisa Savage.

Annie's dreadful bargain doesn't save her children in the end. Neither will the BIW shipyard workers you can hear shouting at Paco in the video be able to save their children from the effects of a fully militarized economy. Younger generations will also experience coastal flooding and other effects of environmental degradation caused by the Pentagon's massive carbon footprint.

Children everywhere are teetering on the brink of inheriting a planet that won't support life. 

I'll be sending a letter to Maine's congressional delegation signed by many in Bath yesterday. It calls for a budget that serves people's needs over those of the Pentagon's many wealthy contractors. It reminds them that Congress is supposed to represent the people, not General Dynamics.

Peace Activists Aging As Manufactured Consent For Endless Wars Rolls On

At times the aging activists, mostly baby boomers, who still turn out to protest the endless, endless wars of empire get a bit discouraged. We look around at the handful of white-haired peace demonstrators (ok, I color my hair but you get the idea) and wonder: What happens to the antiwar movement when we're all gone?

Sure, there are a handful of young people who are passionate about this issue. Youth Rise Up, a manifesto was issued in 2014 by young people expressing their sense that There Is No Future In War. It's a strong statement and I encourage you to read it.

Plus I know that there are millions of young people who are passionate about important issues that tug at their heart strings. 

Source: Portland Press Herald, "Huge crowd turns out to denounce possible transport of tar sands in region"

Saving humanity from environmental disaster is a big one. 

Standing up to racist police brutality and the savage inequalities that spring from white privilege has also attracted many generations to its urgent truths.

Reproductive freedom and other issues of feminism also stir many of the younger activists I admire. Ditto access to quality affordable education without incurring a lifetime of debt.

So I'm not putting down younger generations or saying they don't care about important things. Still, I continue to wonder why we oldsters join their march of thousands against tar sands but youngsters don't join our march of lucky-if-we-get-into-double-digits-sometimes-in-Maine against the war machine. (Yes, we use social networking to get the word out.)

This morning I was reading my personal digest of news recommended by people, not corporations, and saw a review of a book about how waging wars via robots has been and will continue to be a game changer. From Neve Gordon in Counterpunch, "Drones And The New Ethics Of War":

...author Grégoire Chamayou argues in his new book, A Theory of the Drone... drones are a technological solution for the inability of politicians to mobilize support for war.   

In the future, politicians might not need to rally citizens because once armies begin deploying only drones and robots there will be no need for the public to even know that a war is being waged.

"No need for the public to even know that a war is being waged." That phrase fairly leapt off the page at me. 

Indeed, high school and college students today barely know where myriad wars are waged in their name with the money we should have spent on their tuition. War in Afghanistan -- Obama ended that, didn't he? War in Iraq and Syria -- but Obama's State of the Union address assured us there were no more U.S. grounds wars in the Middle East, right? Troops to Ukraine? Hundreds of U.S. bases in the continent of Africa, what? Jeju Island, where?

But younger generations should care. And in the end, like all civilian populations in empires that run out of resources waging endless wars of expansion, they will care. Because the consequences will be so far reaching for their planet, their families and their health that they will be forced to care.

A nationwide mobilization against endless U.S. wars is being called for spring. In Maine we will observe Saturday, March 21 at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard where nuclear-equipped Zumwalt destroyers and other battle weapons are manufactured. (More info here.)

Whatever your age, join us! Come to the microphone and tell us why you care that more than half the federal budget goes to the Pentagon and nuclear weapons each year. Sing us a song, read us a poem, paint us a banner. We need your intelligent heart. You're welcome.