Denied Entrance To Warship Christening[sic], #Aegis9 Arrested For Criminal Trespass

The Aegis 9 about to be arrested at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard on April 1, 2017 protesting the christening [sic] of a destroyer warship. 

Artist Russell Wray at left wearing his Maka the dolphin hat and calling attention to the harmful effects of Navy sonar on the world's ocean dwelling species. 

Organizer Bruce Gagnon's message "Where do these Aegis go?" calls attention to environmental destruction of places like Jeju Island, South Korea, where a fishing village and soft coral reef were destroyed to create a deep water port for Aegis destroyers and other warships.

Artist Natasha Mayers at right created an awesome carbon footprint costume to highlight the massive contribution of the U.S. military to climate chaos.

Here is Natasha Mayers sans footprint but cum handcuffs being loaded into the police van. The Bath police officers set aside our signs as they arrested us so that our friends could return them to us later.

Jessica Stewart, 37, was the youngest of the Aegis 9, but this was hardly her first time in action at BIW. 

A young cop chatting her up at the station asked what her graduate work had been about.
Jessica: "My area of study was the history of capitalism."
Me: "Is it over yet?"
Cop: (sounding disgruntled) "Oh, that will never end."
Jessica: "History shows all systems come to an end eventually."

Jason Rawn in costume as Maine's Senator Angas King. His remarks stressed King's role in promoting commercial exploitation of fossil fuel reserves in the rapidly thawing Arctic. King was inside with the bigwigs from General Dynamics while Rawn was outside in the snow speaking to the 30 or so concerned citizens who came to protest building weapons of mass destruction instead of sustainable energy solutions.

Me in my Senator Susan Collins costume a la NASCAR drivers. Typically Collins is inside paying homage to her corporate sponsor General Dynamics during these events. Due to the snowstorm it was hard to tell who was being whisked through the gates in limos with tinted windows. It certainly wasn't the Aegis 9, as we weren't allowed in at all.

Aegis 9 defendants charged with criminal trespass for standing in front of the gate after being denied entrance to General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard:

Bob Dale – Brunswick, 92, VFP former Navy pilot; Russell Wray – Hancock, 61, Artist; Bruce Gagnon – Bath, 64, VFP (Veterans For Peace & Global Network); Natasha Mayers – Whitefield, 70, Artist; Mike Tork – Cape Cod, MA, 69, VFP former Navy Vietnam vet; Jessica Stewart – Bass Harbor, 37, Catholic Worker activist; Lisa Savage – Solon, 60, Teacher & Maine Natural Guard campaigner; Mark Roman – Solon, 69, Woodworker; Jason Rawn – Lincolnville, 45, War tax resister.

Thanks to a press release from the Bath Police Department, news of our arrest was reported in the Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald. Reporters have told us in the past that Bath Iron Works has threatened to bar them from covering events inside the shipyard if they interview or photograph protesters outside the gates.

The arraignment of the Aegis 9 is set for May 14 at 1pm in West Bath District Court.

Ann Wright: The Warmth Of Solidarity #NODAPL #FreeGaza

Ann Wright (center) at JFK Airport with supporters after being deported from Israel
this month for attempting a humanitarian mission to Gaza.

Just back from detention in Israel, arrested in international waters on the "Women's Boat to Gaza" (read her report here), activist Ann Wright went directly to North Dakota to join those facing militarized police attacks that have included dogs and pepper spray. 

It can sometimes seem like Ann Wright is everywhere in the struggle for justice. Since retiring from the State Department in protest of the Iraq war in 2003, this Veteran for Peace has devoted her life to what she describes as "the warmth of solidarity."

In North Dakota Ann joined in the resistance to corporate takeover of the water supply under tribal lands of the Standing Rock Sioux. She went to stand shoulder to shoulder with water protectors like Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle who has been arrested, strip searched and slapped with a restraining order for engaging in peaceful resistance to running an oil pipeline through the watershed that supplies millions in the U.S.



From Camp Casey in Texas to Hawaii (where she hails from) to Jeju Island, South Korea, Ann can be found in the struggle for justice in the face of corporate government.

Ann Wright with Father Mun Jeong Hyeon of the
Catholic Church Solidarity to Make Peace on Jeju Island

This month we are lucky enough to have her in Maine for a speaking tour that begins tomorrow, October 28, in Brunswick. Her full schedule:

Saturday, October 29 Curtis Public Library, Brunswick, noon
Saturday, October 29 Belfast Free Public Library, Belfast, 4pm
Sunday, October 30 Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Bangor, 3pm
Sunday, October 30 Blue Hill Library Blue Hill, 6:30pm
Tuesday, November 1 State Street Church, Portland, 7pm

The title of her talk, "Never Silent Until Our Sisters Are Free," comes from a song that the international band of women on the boat to Gaza sang about the suffering of Palestinian women and their families under Israeli occupation.


You won't want to miss hearing from Ann. 

We can't rely on the corporate media to tell us what is happening in the world, but we can rely on Ann Wright and activists like her to bring us real news.

 Ann Wright at the University of Hawaii to greet President Obama as he arrived
to promote militarization to Pacific Island leaders in September.

The (Exceptional) American Way Inspires Resistance All Over The Planet

Photo credit: Roger Leisner, Maine Paparazzi

Meet Jason Rawn, the youngest member of the Zumwalt 12, arrested for civil disobedience in the street outside General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard on June 18.

Jason recently returned to the U.S. from participating in protests of U.S. military presence in Okinawa that look like this:

Photo credit: Reuters via Irish Times, "Huge protests at U.S. bases after Japanese woman's murder" June 19, 2016

Much of Jason's recent trip to Asia was also spent in solidarity actions, including planned arrests to block ongoing construction in Gangjeong Village, Jeju Island, South Korea. The Bath action on June 18 was in solidarity with the resistance group whose soft coral reef was entombed in concrete by South Korea's Navy working under the direction of the Pentagon to port large warships such as the Zumwalt class destroyer. 

Photo credit: Jason Rawn

Here's Jason being arrested by South Korean police for civil disobedience outside the navy base on Jeju Island:

Photo credit: Jason Rawn

As you can see from these photos, Jason has the gear and the determination for civil disobedience to resist militarism in every season. Here we see a banner displayed by activists on Jeju with Jason's trademark slogan, Dive$t from the Pentagon:

Photo credit: Jason Rawn

I have followed Jason's posts from Jeju and Okinawa these past several months with interest. He often highlighted the creative components of resistance there including performances, songs and visual displays.

Photo credit: Jason Rawn
Singers lift spirits at naval base resistance on Jeju Island

Photo credit: Jason Rawn
Artists at work on Jeju Island

The role of artists in lifting the spirits and supporting the solidarity of resistance movements cannot be overstated. It, too, finds a parallel in Maine where those arrested on July 18 held a banner created by the Artists Rapid Response Team (AART!) of the Union of Maine Visual Artists:

Photo credit: Regis Tremblay from "One More Warship: Remarks at the Launching of a Stealth Destroyer" by Dud Hendrick in Common Dreams, June 20, 2016

Photo credit: Roger Leisner, Maine Paparazzi

Another of the Zumwalt 12, artist Russell Wray, created and displayed a sculpture entitled "Maka the Dolphin" and a banner as beautiful as it is clear about why to resist the militarization of our oceans. Many children who passed by the display in Bath on June 18 remarked with excitement about the lovingly rendered dolphin.

Photo credit: Regis Tremblay of Rosie Tyler Paul harmonizing with singer-songwriter Mike Hasty in Bath.
From "More Photos From 'Stealth' Destroyer Protests at BIW in Maine" by Bruce Gagnon in Organizing Notes, June 18, 2016

As is evident from the reflection in Jason's sunglasses at the beginning of this post, the photographers who document resistance actions are another integral part of the movement resisting militarization. I have credited many of them here but it would be difficult to note them all; no matter what the corporate press in the U.S. lead you to believe, there are many of us working to resist the Pentagon's encroachment on our natural resources, our financial resources, and on innocent people around the planet. 

One more photographer whose contributions I'll note is Jenny Gray, who provided some of the most compelling photos of the civil disobedience sit-down action to block Washington Street in Bath:

Photo credit: Jenny Gray

Photo credit: Jenny Gray. Note Russel Wray in the dolphin hat he created for the occasion.

Can you find Jason Rawn in this photo? He's right there amid his blessed community of those not afraid to speak out and act out for peace. This is his rightful place and he often looks the happiest there. Let's join him.

"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.

Stand On The Side Of The Planet And Free Speech

When we become aware of a great moral issue, it's good for the soul to decide which side we will stand on: with the riot police, or with the defenders of the coral reefs? This anonymous woman visiting South Korea from Hawaii was honored by villagers of Gangeong village on Jeju Island. They gifted her with the traditional Korean robe she wears so beautifully here, and she responded by playing a concert to lift the spirits of the activists. They have been standing firm for years now against the entombment of their beloved coastline and fisheries, against the destruction of the natural resources that gave them life for so many generations.

The photo above was posted by one of the bravest of many brave activists, Sung Hee-Choi, who has been arrested as well as physically attacked for putting himself between the UN World Heritage Site and the trucks that the Samsung corporation is using to destroy it. 

Source: http://www.iied.org/iucn-world-conservation-congress-begins

South Korea has been required by the U.S. to build a deep water port from which to menace the South China Sea. It needs to be big enough to handle ships like Aegis destroyers.

Aegis nuclear-equipped destroyers are ships which are built far away, at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Maine's newest Senator Angus King visited the General Dynamics facility this week to pay homage to his campaign contributors, and to vow to fight cuts to the Pentagon's budget (currently at 57% of total discretionary spending) to save the 5,500 jobs there. "Jobs" being a mythically powerful word that is repeated like an incantation by politicians looking to deliver on the favors that corporations purchase at election time.

Angus was once a hippie who hung around in the north woods smoking pot and building geodesic domes. Somewhere along the line he succumbed to either greed (he became quite wealthy on industrial wind investments) or the lust for fame. Possibly both. 

Now Angus favors fracking because his aide told me "it can be done safely" and anyway we must do it because heating oil is too expensive and we need natural gas as a "transition fuel."

Source: 8020 Vision -- Use their inteactive diagram to see what fracking does to ground water.

The inspiring example of the Jeju Island resistance will be useful when Mainers are resisting the planned corporate looting of our own wealth of natural resources. Tar sands pipelines, an East-West Corridor with mining rights and hundreds of feet wide right of way, private-public partnerships to cash in on eminent domain, a mammoth (13 stories high) LP gas tank on the Penobscot Bay, mountain top removal open pit mining, and expansion beyond the seven already existing wells to pump out the spectacular Maine aquifer are all planned.

Hearings where you can stand on the side of Mother Earth include Searsport High School on Monday, Feb 25 at 6pm with Thanks but no tank, and Fryeburg.

SAVE THE DATE - Mark your calendars! There will be a PUBLIC HEARING in Fryeburg, Maine on Thursday, March 7, 6pm at the Fryeburg Legion Hall on Bradley Street across from the Fryeburg Academy gym next to the baseball field about Nestle having an unprecedented long term contract with the Fryeburg Water Company, a public utility.

Source: Defending Water For Life in Maine

Indigenous people of Hawaii have lived for generations with corporate degradation and pollution of their island paradise. Jeju Islanders have called on international solidarity in their struggle. Idle No More has connected the First Nations of Canada with earth defenders all over the planet.

Which side will you be on? I'm happy to say I will be on the side that has the best culture workers -- the artists and musicians and dancers and writers who lift our hearts while we struggle on in the face of the obscene wealth and greed of corporations who think they own the Earth.

Today I'll be standing in Portland, Maine for information hero Bradley Manning. February 23 is his 1,000th day in jail for sharing news of war crimes and U.S. State Department complicity in corporate hijacking of resources all over the planet. Here's the poster that Kansas artist/activist Marc Saviano made specially for the occasion:

#Gangjeong: "To Honor Our Descendants, We Cannot Stop"

I am re-posting these most recent reports from Carolyn, who is on Jeju Island in South Korea helping with the resistance to the naval base under construction there.

Where the Winds Blow

The weather is changing. In March, Gangjeong fishing boats used to go out for 20 days.

But last year they went out for four;

in November, not at all.

The winds were blowing too hard.

The southern part of Jeju, the area chosen by the navy for its base, is the area of the island most severely impacted by typhoons. Though many fishing villages on Jeju Island were built close to the sea, the villagers of Gangjeong built their village further inland, knowing the power of its stormy seas.

In August, a typhoon blew away the plastic tarpaulin and damaged the frame arching over my host’s house. But “I was so happy!” she says, gesturing the way the season’s typhoons also upturned and damaged seven caissons at the base construction site. (They weigh 8,800 tons.) Many tetrapods were also broken.

Two days after the storm, members of the community came to fix her roof. With ten people atop her house, she feared the roof would collapse with their weight or that their cigarettes would burn a hole in the new plastic, but all ended well.

Now she hopes for another big storm.

__________________________

Dolls

DG displays her dolls on a low table across from the gates.

One by one, she places them against small cement blocks, propping up their heads.

Each one represents an activist who has joined the struggle against the naval base.

I push back one doll’s yarn hair to get a clearer photo of his face.

When I earlier saw photos of these dolls, 

S. pointed out one with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

Can you believe that’s me? she asked, smiling.

____________________________

The Guards

I

Guards haul away the huge sheets of plastic,

the logs and barrel stove, all blocking the upper gate.

One guard begins to hose down the pavement, clearing away the wood chips

and bark left behind.

I stand in place, a bit to the side, with my sign.

I wonder if he’ll spray me with the hose, perhaps my feet.

Instead he just scowls at me, saying words I don’t understand,

then turns off the hose.

Soon afterwards, the police officer whistles another line of cement trucks into the base.

II

Another day.

Cement trucks rumble uphill towards the upper gate

as we descend to the gate from higher up the hill. 

JD reaches the gate before the trucks and stands in front of the entrance.

She yells at the guards.

The guards growl in disgust.

What seemed an easy entry for the trucks is now delayed.

III

A quiet morning.

No trucks pass through the gates.

Small birds sing from the trees whose limbs stretch over the activist tents.

One door to the lower gate is open.

I watch a private security guard play with a dog on a long tether

just inside the gate.

Later, he takes the dog for a short stretch along the Gangjeong Cheon,

which flows beside the construction site.

Across the road sits a two-entrance dog house for a mother and puppy.

A blue peace sign, a yellow flower, and the cartoon-like image of a dog’s head are painted on the house.

No naval base is in yellow across the roof. 

The peace dogs are away for the morning.

IV

Confrontation ratchets up.

Only minutes after the activists have rebuilt the blockade, 

and arranged the chair backs to read Save Gangjeong Village,

the private security guards begin again to throw the firewood as far as they can away from the gate.

One activist lays his body over some of the logs, preventing their removal. 

When a guard lifts a wooden stool, 

the activist gets up from the log pile and grabs the other side of the stool. 

The guard releases it. 

Another activist exchanges yells with one of the guards

while a third begins tossing the wood back in front of the gate.

When I join her, one of the guards smiles at me 

and gestures for me to put the logs back down below.

My eyes smile back, then I walk the wood in front of the gate.

The interplay continues, guards throwing the wood back over our heads.

The tension builds, then subsides.

The guards stop throwing wood;

we stop returning it.

We sit in quiet around the stove.

__________________________

Rough notes of the mayor’s words:

It’s been a long time since this room has been filled. There’s a slogan: five years and eight months, but we will fight for more than 58 years. We have made an effort despite the result of the election and the National Assembly (budget) vote. History will remember us. . . .

We have fought to oppose the naval base. And in the court, I told the judge I think society should be where common sense is shared by the people. We live in a society in which common sense is not accepted. . . .

During these days, we have to stop construction. The only way to do this is for us to continue fighting. . . .

To honor our descendants, we cannot stop our fighting.

Carolyn

Maine

Defenders of the Planet in Gangjeong, South Korea

I am re-posting eyewitness reports from Carolyn about the struggle to save Jeju Island from having its coral reefs turned into a port and military base for South Korea and the US and NATO. 

The Gangjeong villagers and their supporters are exceptionally dedicated, strategic, and filled with love. The writings here do a wonderful job of reflecting this. Thank you to Carolyn!

A Thousand Bows

We will try to do a thousand bows in Seoul and on the bridge [in Gangjeong], a man tells me. 

We will try.

A light snow covers the ground.

He writes the word peace in Chinese characters in the snow. 

The bows begin at 9 a.m.

Three of us are on the bridge;

another, in front of the gate.

The wind snaps the yellow No Naval Base flags behind me.

After two bows, someone scoots an extra cushion 

beneath my knees.

Hands to the heart,

knees to the mat, 

hands and head to the ground, palms facing upward,

then a return to standing.

Despite the repetitive motion,

our hands and shoeless feet grow colder and colder.

Chimes bring to a close the first one hundred bows.

Mr. Rhee gives M. and I hugs.

He stays on the bridge, kneeling in prayer,

while M. and I walk across the road to the barrel stove

to warm ourselves.

The budget for continued base construction passed the next day.

___________________

The Rock Wall

A petite woman begins to unfurl a sheet of plastic atop a wall of volcanic rock.

I stop walking and grab the edge of the plastic to try to help.

She speaks to me, but I don’t understand.

Two activists behind me laugh. She wants to give me oranges, they say. 

Leaving us to make a tent of the wet plastic so that it can dry out,

she enters the grove on the other side of the wall to collect oranges in a round basket.

I accept a couple, so does Lou.

But she wants to give us more.

They’re organic, she says, and gestures for me to open my bag. 

After a dozen I pretend that my bag has become very very heavy.

She smiles and lets us walk on.

_________________

New Year’s Eve in Gangjeong

Women drummers lead a march from the village center to the port. Behind them are men and women with flags and streamers, some wearing papier-mâché conch shells and sea gulls on their heads. 

From 5 p.m. when the march begins to beyond midnight, the celebration continues. People visit the activist tables, eat rice cake soup and sweet pancakes, and visit with friends. Empty bottles of rice wine cover the tables. With the wind blowing in from the sea, some find warmth by standing beside fires; many, by dancing.

Dozens line up for the arrow-throwing contest. After the first participant lofts all five rubber-tipped arrows into a large ceramic vase, the line of contestants shrinks. Winners receive gift certificates to the farmers’ cooperative. 

Between singing acts, short videos show the struggle against the naval base, a labor organizer gives a brief solidarity speech, and people chant Hai GunGiJi GeulSaBanDai. (No Naval Base!)

When midnight arrives, flying paper lanterns are lit and sent with a prayer into the sky.

A bonfire blazes,

people hug

and dance some more.

The more joyful, the more powerful, said Mr. Rhee.

––––––––––––––

picketing2

Yuri told me she was so afraid of the police. Still, she stood with a sign in front of a cement truck, demanding that it back up and make a sharper turn into the construction site to avoid hitting her.  

oranges

Gangjeong had the tradition of pumashi, a work party. During harvest time, perhaps ten people would go to a family’s orchard to help, and the next day, to another family’s land. Conflict over the base has strained such collaboration. This year, it was difficult to find people to help.

As four of us de-seeded peppers today, the cook said pumashi makes the food taste better.

sos

Before a member of the Save Our Seas team got into one of five tandem kayaks, she said, “I can’t swim.”

Carolyn

Maine