Bad Boss, Bad Job: Why NOT To Work For General Dynamics / Bath Iron Works

  

Several of us camped out in front of a hiring event held by General Dynamics/Bath Iron Works at the Maine Bureau of Labor's Career Center yesterday. Based on Augusta Police and Capitol Police cruising by without stopping, we were on public property. Our goal: offering information to prospective job applicants about how GD/BIW profits from its support of Israel's Gaza genocide.

Current employees of GD/BIW wore t-shirts with the slogans depicted above -- reminding potential new hires of the shipyard's culture. 

BIW is a notoriously wretched place to work. Women hate it, young people hate it, and it's not difficult to see why. Still, as one young woman with the appearance of an education worker (she was carrying a tote bag with a famous children's book cover on it) told us, I need a job.

Our response: Of course, but there are so many other places you could work.

Top 5 reasons not to work at GD/BIW

#1 Genocide profiteers

One job seeker commented at our display, I did not know that General Dynamics owned Bath Iron Works.

#2 Terrible management

BIW stonewalls workers during contract negotiations and then hires outside the contract using loopholes to bring in workers from out of state.

BIW lives off taxpayers as it builds solely for the Navy, has lots of cash (in 2023 GD's CEO Phebe Novakovic was paid $22.5 million), and is indicating they are increasingly short of workers to fulfill the warship orders they've already received. 

They have an online job application for a multitude of openings. It would be shame if unserious applicants were to gum up the works.

 #3 Bad neighbors

From the Times Record August 13, 2024:

Bath Iron Works has withdrawn a pair of requests to rezone a section of Bath’s South End neighborhood after pushback from neighbors who want to know more about what the shipyard is planning.

BIW was looking to amend zoning for parts of the South End neighborhood because the company’s office building at 580 Washington St. is outdated and requires significant upgrades..

BIW has been acquiring real estate in the neighborhood along Washington Street as well as residential properties on Wesley, Bath and Middle streets since early 2023, according to city records.

#4 Health hazards

Any industrial job carries risks to workers' health. Former BIW tool shop worker the late Peter Woodruff developed aphasia (loss of the ability to speak) due to manganese exposure similar to the neurological problems experienced by others who worked with the substance. Woodruff was dropped by BIW's company doctor for raising the issue and lacked the deep pockets to take on GD's corporate lawyers pushing back on his claim.

#5 There are viable alternatives

The job market in Maine favors workers at the moment. That is, unemployment is low and myriad jobs working for the man (military, police, BIW) are experiencing persistent staffing shortfalls. The misnomer "best job in Maine" applied to BIW indicates that full-time jobs with benefits are rare and especially ones that offer a living wage. 

What are some alternatives?

The biggest employers in Maine are public education followed by health care providers like hospitals. Both need workers of all kinds, not just folks with college degrees. Many offer union membership to protect workers' rights and to engage in collective bargaining over contracts.

Paper mills still exist, like SAPPI in Waterville. Jobs there include ongoing education at your employer's expense.

Bath Iron Works Employee: You're On U.S. Government Property

Sometimes it seems to me that our corporate overlords learn nothing from experience. We've reached the stage where they now think glorifying the U.S. war on Vietnam is acceptable because most of the people who remember how brutal and unpopular that losing war was are dead. Here's some of the blathering about that in yesterday's coverage of a warship celebration at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine:

The christening of the Patrick Gallagher honors the memory of a 23 year-old Irish citizen who was killed fighting for the U.S. in the Vietnam War..

“As a proud Irish-American myself, I want to thank you for strengthening the bonds between our two nations,” Sen. [Susan] Collins said during her remarks..

At other times, I see how General Dynamics manages its ceremonies in response to relentless protest and pressure from dissenting taxpayers. A brief list:

• The ceremony is no longer a public event. This is in response to a judge acquitting us of criminal trespassing charges from a protest in 2017 on the grounds that the sole reason we were arrested rather than allowed in to a public event was the content of our signs. Political speech is protected under the 1st amendment.

• The main parking lot at BIW has restricted access for attendees. This is in response to blockades of parking lot entrances, other gates, and the road running alongside the lot i.e. Washington Street.

• The U.S. Coast Guard is deployed on the Kennebec River side of BIW. What are they afraid of, a protest flotilla?

• A BIW security guard is posted across from the administration building very early on christening day. What are they afraid of, someone vandalizing the offices of the fat cats who profit from supporting genocide? 

A person I know who used to work in those offices reported that BIW execs spent a lot of time planning how to deal with the protesters they know are inevitably on hand when a celebration occurs. Nowadays I bet they also talk about whether they were awakened at dawn by activists calling out BIW execs as war criminals to their neighbors, and spilling non-toxic watercolor "blood" in the gutters in front of their comfortable homes. Who has received this attention? Who might be next?

Here's one thing they haven't learned: GD/BIW is not the U.S. government. (Don't they read my blog LOL?) The BIW employee in the plaid shirt warned me yesterday that I would be arrested for trespassing "on U.S. government property" when I sat down to block an entrance to the mostly empty main parking lot. Then he stepped away and a Bath Police officer cuffed me and put me on a school bus with my friends. We'll see what a judge has to say about that.

This great livestream captures some of the bystanders pointing out that cops should be arresting genociders, not those protesting genocide. "We're just doing our job," said some of the cops. "That's what Nazis at Nuremberg said though, isn't it?" asked a videographer who was on hand.

Some of those just following orders yesterday were Bath PD, county sheriffs and deputies, state police, and even a few cops from nearby towns. 

Not nearby Wiscasset, though. They stationed twenty officers on Route 1 downtown because about 30 of us showed up after Bath to hold signs and do some chanting.

Below, more images from yesterday and a newspaper story about the arrests of nine with a citation issued to a 10th protester, my husband, as he gathered up banners and other items left behind.

I'm especially grateful to artist Natasha Mayers who created the dead child puppet I was cradling. She created several puppets, a sign expressing solidarity with all the grieving parents, and this sadly beautiful collage called Flavors of Genocide.

I missed most of the rally, speakers, and music at yesterday's protest due to my arrest, but when I find documentation of those events I will share them.

Gaza Casts A Shadow As State Colleges Are Yoked To War Profiteers

Members of the Statewide Coalition for Palestine protested outside the unveiling of the Maine Defense Industry Alliance at the York County Community College’s Instructional Site in Sanford on March 1, 2024. (Maine Morning Star)

The U.S. sees a problem: our economy is not on a war footing. Not only can the U.S. not recruit even close to the number of soldiers and sailors they say the Pentagon needs, their wealthy contractors like General Dynamics also report they cannot recruit enough skilled workers to fulfill their Pentagon contracts. 

And despite accepting hefty tax breaks from my state, ostensibly for the purpose of funding job training, GD and others have now maneuvered the state's public post-secondary education establishment to train students in the needed skills.

By accepting funding from the Pentagon to train workers in jobs like welding that are necessary for building war ships and other weapon systems, Maine's community colleges and universities will be pushed to abandon liberal arts or mathematics education and instead fund job training programs. That's what the MDIA is all about.

Founding partners include the State of Maine, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, the Maine Community College System, the University of Maine System, Maine Maritime Academy, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Pratt & Whitney

To add insult to injury, the companies getting this deal -- GD/Bath Iron Works and also Pratt & Whitney -- are directly profiting from Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. (Details on that in my previous post here.)

link to video here

So on very short notice a group organized by the Maine Coalition for Palestine showed up at York County Community College to let Sen. Angus King, Sen. Susan Collins (invited but only zoomed in), and Rep. Chellie Pingree know: "USA your hands are red! Thirty thousand people dead!"

The event was swarming with journalists eager to interview Maine's congressional delegation, and many of them also wanted to interview and film our protest. Especially after two of us snuck in to the event and raised a ruckus about profiting by participating in the massacre of 13,000 children in Gaza.

Maine Morning Star's Evan Popp and Lauren Macauley published, "At unveiling of defense workforce initiative Maine's top officials fail to escape shadow of war in Gaza"

And WGME local tv news had this piece: "Maine coalition for Palestine protests before Maine defense industry alliance reveal"

A quote from our press release that resonated with an unnamed WGME journalist:

This MDIA effort to make war a core component of the Maine economy is dystopian in the extreme. We should never find ourselves in a position where peace is bad for the Maine economy. War should not be a jobs program.

But warmongering for profit has always been justified in terms of allegedly many good jobs it generates. This enormous lie deliberately sidesteps the fact that a similar investment in several other sectors of the economy would actually generate as many as double the number of full-time jobs with benefits. 

Source: Costs of War presentation of research, Robert Pollin & Heidi Peletier, June 13, 2011

Rep. Chellie Pingree once lectured me on presenting this research to her. In the supercilious way of liberal Democrats she pointed out that her previous gig with Common Cause had her presenting the very same research around the country. Doesn't sound like she learned much.

Or maybe the status and wealth that accrues to a long run in the U.S. Congress proved too seductive.

Whatever the reason, she claims she's proud of selling Maine post-secondary students' futures to General Dynamics.

To quote one of many chants yesterday outside the venue where our elected officials were being glad handed by corporate lobbyists: "How do you sleep at night?"

 

Gaza Genocide Profiteers Doing Business In Maine

The Navy destroyer Carney fires missiles to counter drone and missile fire by Houthi rebels in Yemen on Oct. 19, 2023, in the Red Sea. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau/Navy)

Folks are looking for facts about genocide profiteering in our state (Maine) that they can identify sources for so I made a one-pager that's more like two.  I relied on AFSC's fairly current research published here and also Christian Sorensen's deep research into military contracts available via his substack The Business of War. 

I tried to arrange things so that you can tell which sources apply to which info. Note that within AFSC's section there are many more links to sources for claims.

General Dynamics (source: https://afsc.org/companies-2023-attack-gaza)

• The world's sixth largest weapons manufacturer, General Dynamics, supplies Israel with artillery ammunition and bombs for attack jets used in Israel’s assault on Gaza.
• General Dynamics is the only company in the U.S. that makes the metal bodies of the MK-80 bomb series, the primary weapon type Israel uses to bomb Gaza. The bodies of the bombs are filled with explosives by the U.S. military, and then can be made into a guided bomb using Boeing's JDAM kits.
• It is also the only company in the U.S. that makes 155mm caliber artillery shells, which have been used extensively to attack Gaza. One source reported that, by Nov. 25, one Israeli brigade fired some 10,000 such shells using BAE’s M109 howitzer.
• 155mm shells have been part of the U.S.’s recent weapons shipments to Israel. The U.S. is planning to send “tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells that had been destined for Ukraine” to Israel. Their use by Israel, according to Oxfam, is “virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.” On Nov. 13, more than 30 organizations issued a letter opposing the transfer.
• General Dynamics also partnered with Flyer Defense to develop an armored patrol vehicle that Israel is testing.
• On an Oct. 25 call with investors, General Dynamics CFO, Jason Aiken, said, “I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of [the attacks on Gaza], the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

Evidence of carpet bombing in Gaza

source: https://thebusinessofwar.substack.com/p/mapping-the-business-of-war)

General Dynamics OTS -  Saco, ME

Aircraft and crew-served weapons (e.g., Gatling guns, 40 mm grenade weapon system, .50 caliber machine gun); guided missile director (MK 82).

General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (BIW) - Bath, ME

Many supporting facilities in neighboring towns, particularly Brunswick. For full list, see: www.gdbiw.com/contact-us/directions

War ship (destroyer) production. 

Examples of BIW-built ships in action supporting Israel:

sources: CNN https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/politics/us-warship-close-call-houthi-missile/index.html 

CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houthis-target-u-s-destroyer-carney-british-merchant-ship-missile-attacks-red-sea-gulf-of-aden/)

Future plans

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/uss-zumwalt-pioneering-hypersonic-might-for-the-us-navy-amidst-fleet-modernization/ar-BB1iEb9R

excerpt: 

The Zumwalt, initially conceived as a littoral combat ship, has seen its mission evolve significantly. Initially, it was to support ground forces with precision-guided naval artillery shells. However, exorbitant costs and technical setbacks saw the ambitious program for 32 vessels slashed to a trio of ships, compelling the Navy to pivot towards the hypersonic upgrade. The Zumwalt, alongside its sister ships, the USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) and the Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG-1002), are the beneficiaries of this redirected focus, with all three poised to receive the CPS systems.

Destroyers built in Maine are deployed in both the Mediterranean and Red Sea to support Israel.

RTX/Raytheon subsidiary Pratt & Whitney - North Berwick Aero Systems​​​​​​​,     North Berwick, ME

source: https://afsc.org/companies-2023-attack-gaza

The world's second largest weapons manufacturer and largest producer of guided missiles, RTX supplies the Israeli Air Force with guided air-to-surface missiles for its F-16 fighter jets, as well as cluster bombs and bunker busters, which have consistently been used against Gaza's civilian population and infrastructure.

• Pratt & Whitney manufactures engines for F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.
• On an Oct. 24 call with investors, RTX CEO, Greg Hayes, said, “I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking.”

source: MaineBiz https://www.mainebiz.biz/sponsored/article/pratt-whitney-north-berwick-aero-systems-nbas

Pratt & Whitney’s North Berwick Aero Systems facility produces world-class modules, components, and parts for commercial and military engines. The plant is more than 1 million square feet, and is the largest manufacturing facility under one roof in Maine. This site supports the full life cycle of its products from design and development to production, assembly, overhaul and repair.

 

How Does Your State Profit From Genocide In Gaza?

Screenshot from "Mapping the Business of War" by Christian Sorenson

Today I am reposting my Op-Ed published by Maine Morning Star January 6:

Does Maine profit from genocide in Gaza?

Quite simply, the genocide in Gaza is good business for General Dynamics, which employs thousands of Mainers. How are we to feel about that blood money fueling our economy?

by Lisa Savage

 Demonstrators, led by the Maine Coalition for Palestine, protest at a General Dynamics factory in Saco, Maine Jan 3

(courtesy of Schaible, Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights)

Saco students and parents arriving at school on Jan. 3 saw protesters demanding that General Dynamics stop arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It was an unintended consequence of the company locating their bomb factory — that sounds like hyperbole or an exaggeration, but I assure you it’s not — across the street from an elementary school. Maine law won’t let you have a gun on school property or discharge one within 500 feet of a school, but it says nothing about making bombs across the street. 

Nor do these bombs just sit in a warehouse somewhere. Rather, since October, more than 5,000 of the 500-lb Mk-82 bombs, parts for which are manufactured by General Dynamics in Saco, have been given to Israel by our United States government for use in their “war” in Gaza. These munitions play a particularly direct role in what many scholars and analysts, including a professor of Holocaust studies writing in Jewish Currents, believe is an ongoing criminal genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli government, for instance targeting densely populated areas such as the Jabalia Refugee Camp.

They also make 155mm artillery shells in Saco, which Oxfam has labeled, “virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.” 

General Dynamics Chief Financial Officer Jason Aiken told investors on a call October 25, “I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of [the attacks on Gaza], the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”

Up the road, in Bath, at the General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works, Mainers have built a number of warships currently deployed in the Red Sea — including the USS Laboon, which launched from BIW in 1993 — to protect Israeli commercial vessels from being attacked by rival nations that do not approve of its actions in Gaza. 

Quite simply, the genocide in Gaza is good business for General Dynamics, which employs thousands of Mainers. How are we to feel about that blood money fueling our economy? Is it contributing to the future we want here in Maine?

Mainers are continually told that we must tolerate weapons of mass destruction being built here because we need the jobs. And it is undoubtedly true that thousands of people make a living from working for General Dynamics, Raytheon, and other contractors for the Pentagon. Some hold union jobs with full benefits, but many are increasingly out-of-state laborers working outside the contract on temporary assignments.

And we never seem to ask the question: If we’re spending U.S. taxpayer money to create jobs, why do we have to make weapons to be used by other countries to maim and kill people? Why couldn’t we use that tax money to pay Mainers to build something we actually need here in Maine?

Ironically, building weapons is not even a good jobs program. Research by economists at UMass Amherst over several years has found that a similar investment in other sectors of the economy – such as clean energy construction – would produce far more good union jobs. Workers at Bath Iron Works have tried for years to argue for conversion of the shipyard away from depending solely on contracts from the U.S. Navy, to no avail. Opportunities to build a light rail system, or offshore wind platforms, or even hospital ships are ignored while Maine’s congressional delegation accepts campaign funding from military contractors and continues to vote for sending taxpayer-funded contracts their way.

How much do people in Maine really know about the military contracting businesses in our state? If they knew that there was a bomb factory directly across the street from an elementary school, would they care? 

As the genocide in Gaza continues and war in the region widens, Mainers would do well to take an honest look at their own involvement. While the war in Gaza — and Ukraine, for that matter — can sometimes seem far from our shores, there are thousands of Mainers who are intimately involved. These wars are part of their very livelihoods. 

Regardless of how much money flows back to our state, do we really “profit”?

##

My additional notes to support others in discovering how their state "profits" from genocide.

Source for what is built in Saco is from AFSC research published here, organized by corporate entity so scroll down to see General Dynamics: "Shrouded in Secrecy": The Companies Profiting from Israel’s 2023 Attack on Gaza, American Friends Service Committee article in Global Research, December 26, 2023

Christian Sorensen’s research which includes an interactive map that drills down to the GD Saco facility: https://open.substack.com/pub/thebusinessofwar/p/mapping-the-business-of-war?

Hundreds Rally At General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works To Kick Off Stop Arming Genocide Campaign in Maine

Photo credit: Robin Farrin

Yesterday a mass rally took over the street in front of General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard and a die-in held the space for about an hour. Especially gratifying: seeing my old activist friends, many of whom came from far away to lay down and risk arrest, together with the much younger demographic of the Maine Coalition for Palestine. 

While Penobscot speaker Lokotah Sanborn drew parallels between land theft in Palestine and land theft in the unceded territories of Wabanakiya, a small handful of counter protesters modeled settler colonialism shouting "Get off our lawn!" from the union hall steps adjacent to the protest. There is no line of demarcation between the post office side lawn where speakers were gathered and the AFL-CIO property, and a scuffle that broke out when someone strayed onto the union's lawn was the only police intervention witnessed by legal observer Mark Roman yesterday. No one was injured, and no arrests were made.

Photo credit: Robin Farrin

There was considerable outreach to the union prior to the event and not all workers at BIW were hostile, but some predictably disagreed with our analysis on Palestine and/or were angered by our presence at their workplace. Also, it's hard to be told that your work supports the slaughter of infants.

Happily, no basketball bats were observed.

I did witness some protesters chastising a t.v. cameraman and reporter for interviewing the two very vocal counter protesters who spent most of the rally inexplicably chanting "Gaza to the sea!" or calling protesters "commies" and "Nazis" in the same breath. The reporter told those objecting that newscentermaine wanted to give coverage to "both sides" but the ratio of  250 pro-Palestine voices to about 10 pro-Israel voices wasn't clearly reflected in any of the mainstream news coverage I saw. The camera operator ended the confrontation by snarling, "How about you get out of the way and let us do our fucking job?"

Local police attempting to do their job simply closed the street for a couple of hours and declined to arrest anybody. The Chief told our police liaison Bruce Gagnon that the Bath PD was short staffed and when Gagnon asked if he planned to call the county sheriff for backup he replied, "They only have a couple of guys, too."  I did see the (warm) sheriff's van often used to transport arrestees from BIW but eventually it departed without being used.

Here's news coverage we've seen so far:

'Die-in' held outside Bath Iron Works to protest US military support of Israel | WGME

More than 100 protest at BIW over support for Israel's war in Gaza (bangordailynews.com)

Pro-Palestine Protestors Block Road Outside Bath Iron Works, Demand Shipyard Stop Arming "Imperialist Genocide" - The Maine Wire

Hundreds rally outside Bath Iron Works to protest U.S. military aid for Israel (pressherald.com)

The Maine Coalition for Palestine is waging an extensive campaign to support people in Gaza and the West Bank right now, with many more events and actions planned. Today, folks can join Bowdoin SJP on campus in Brunswick to demand alumnus Sen. Angus King support a permanent ceasefire now.

As a Bowdoin alum myself, I am happy to see our mascot wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. Go Polar Bears!

REVISED: Updated to include photos just in from Robin Farrin.

How Are U.S. Warships Supporting Israel's Genocide In Gaza?

Gaza has been under military blockade since 2006. Its one harbor, in Gaza City, was heavily bombed by Israel recently. Repeated attempts to reach Gaza with boats carrying humanitarian supplies have been thwarted by Israel with U.S. backing and we've seen activists beaten and even killed for trying to deliver cargo like medical supplies.

Bringing this question closer to home, How is the genocide in Gaza supported by General Dynamics and Bath Iron Works?

General Dynamics is the world’s fourth largest weapons manufacturer and Bath Iron Works (BIW) is one of its many locations for building weapon delivery systems. In this location in Maine shipbuilders historically profited from building slave ships.

Today, both destroyers and cruisers are built to be nuclear-capable meaning they are designed to be able to deliver first-strike attack nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-3 'missile defense' interceptors which would take out an enemy’s defenses following a first strike by the U.S.

Currently there are multiple Bath-built warships in the vicinity of Gaza including the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The USS Kearny, an Aegis destroyer built at BIW, is deployed there as is the USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer which on 27 November engaged in a firefight with Yemeni forces on behalf of an Israeli merchant ship it was sent to rescue. U.S. ships have been reported as routinely shooting down drones launched from Yemen that target ships in the vicinity.

Map dated May, 2020 Source: https://iranpress.com/infographic-military-assets-in-eastern-mediterranean

On 15 November Aljazeera published a video report, “What does the Western naval build-up in the Middle East look like?” with this comment: “The Middle East is witnessing a Western naval build-up that hasn't been seen there for decades: aircraft carriers, destroyers, missile cruisers, amphibious assault ships, a nuclear-powered submarine, and many more.”

U.S. warships are deployed to deter resistance forces in the region -- such as Hezbollah -- from intervening to stop genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. So far they’ve been apparently unsuccessful, however, their presence increases the likelihood of escalation as in the case of the USS Mason fighting Yemen on behalf of Israel.

Since the resumption of Israel's bombing of Gaza on December 1, these confrontations have indeed escalated.

https://twitter.com/BTnewsroom/status/1731400524962861406

https://twitter.com/LumpyLouish/status/1731391459478180288

Treating U.S. warships as inherently different from Israeli warships is mythology. The two nation states have never been in closer lock step as they do the bidding of their corporate overlords.

Israel has been described as "America's unsinkable aircraft carrier" but the U.S. and Israel have never been so reviled in world opinion as they are today. Their collective reputation is sinking like a warship that's taking on water.

Join us in Bath this Friday if you're able. Help us communicate to workers that we know Bath Iron Works only has one customer -- the U.S. Navy -- but it wasn't always like that. So many useful things could be built there and even more good union jobs generated, like hospital ships to provide relief for the bombed out children of Gaza.

Injured Palestinian kid receives medical treatment at Al-Nasr Children's Hospital after an Israeli attack in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 18, 2023. Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images

If you have the courage, watch or read: "A harrowing video shows decomposing babies in a Gaza hospital after they had to be abandoned amid Israeli attacks."

Then, wherever you're located, get out in the streets to demand an end to genocide in Gaza and to the military blockade that supports it.

Christening A Warship: What's Wrong With This Picture?

Gov. Janet Mills at the podium, Senators Susan Collins and Angus King seated at right.

Yesterday, General Dynamics in collusion with the U.S. Navy held a "christening" of their latest warship, a nuclear-capable Aegis Destroyer attended by elected officials.

After decades of determined protest and, at times, civil disobedience leading to arrests outside Bath Iron Works' gates, the shipyard's glorifications of war making are no longer open to the general public. (They're also announced at the last minute in obscure channels, so how our group is able to get wind of their plans in time to organize a response is anybody's guess.)

That 24 of us gathered on short notice was one of the things right about yesterday. (Protester Bruce Gagnon's favorable report is here.)

Some of what was wrong:

🕱 Christening is an obnoxious term for naming a ship that will be used to menace China. 

Jesus Christ taught turn the other cheek and love one another. Co-opting his name to do pr for your nuclear weapons system is obscene.

🕱 The destroyer is named after a Vietnam war "hero" (an oxymoron if there ever was one) who's incidentally still living and attended the ceremony. Most people who could remember the moral stain of the U.S. proxy war on China using Vietnam are dead. So, imperial narrative managers figure it's time to refurbish the reputation of a wildly unpopular war that killed millions, poisoned thousands with chemical weapons, and spread cluster bombs that are still killing people in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

🕱 The cost to the U.S. taxpayer for this warship: around $2 billion.

🕱 The Pentagon just failed its fifth audit, so we'll probably never know why the ship cost so much. The U.S. military also just got the biggest budget ever authorized by Congress, a whopping $832 billion, and an undercount at that as nuclear weapons are funded through the Department of Energy budget.

🕱 As a friend pointed out to the reporter for the Times Record yesterday,

Outside the shipyard celebration, Mary Beth Sullivan of Brunswick was one of about 20 people who gathered to protest, holding signs that decried military spending and aggression.

"The money should be going to human needs in our own community," Sullivan, a social worker, said. "We could be building solar panels or windmills. There're so many other projects we could be building if only we had a different mindset.

There's so much profit in war."

🕱 The reporter chose to follow MB's quote with a rebuttal from Senator Angus King who was in attendance to kiss the ring of General Dynamics:

"There are people who say we shouldn’t spend so much money on defense and we shouldn’t build these ships,” King told the crowd. “The problem is there is evil and aggression in the world. If there’s any doubt of that: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The whole purpose of building this ship is notifying our adversaries … we have the capacity to punish them if they commit an act of aggression against the United States or its allies.

We are building these ships so they will never have to be used.”

🕱 King was there to demonstrate that no matter whether you have an I (he's an independent), a D (Governor Janet Mills), or an R (Senator Susan Collins) after your name, the war machine owns you.

🕱 All military contracting is sold to local entities (who are then pressured to cough up tax rebates for the wealthy corporations they are lucky enough to attract) as a good jobs program. It is nothing of the kind, producing the lowest number of jobs generated per dollar invested in various economic sectors.

🕱 Ramping up a World War 3 with China is the Pentagon's worst idea yet. If an Aegis is capable of carrying nukes, how is China supposed to know that a war ship menacing the South China Sea isn't about to annihilate Beijing?

🕱 The environmental destruction to places like Gangjeong Village on Jeju Island in South Korea via construction to port U.S. war ships is tragic.

🕱 The climate harms of U.S. militarism are well-documented yet never included in the corporate news reporting that puffs gala events like the war ship celebration.

I'll leave you with more of what went right:

☮ We did get a bit of coverage in local newspapers, both in advance and on the day of -- which amplifies our messages considerably. (Kudos in particular to George and Maureen Ostensen for their publicity efforts.)

☮ A local talk radio show had me on prior to the event to talk about how and why we protest war ships.

☮ A lot of wisdom was shared in our closing circle (depicted above is Mair Honan, who moved many of us by speaking about war-induced grief).

☮ Many hundreds of celebration-goers, cops, security guards, and passers-by saw our messages. Some honked and waved, or thanked us for being there. 

☮ Our presence demonstrated that it's possible to dissent from sailing full speed ahead toward nuclear world war.