Brunswick Police Beg Air Show Protesters Not To Block The Road

It was still raining when the assistant chief of Brunswick Police begged us not to block the road during our air show protest yesterday. I kind of regretted that we weren't planning to do that and I felt even more FOMO after a huge tanker trunk entered the main gate of Brunswick Landing and my husband called out, "Jet fuel!" A former pilot, he is aware as many of us are that jet fuel is among the worst petroleum products in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Forty people gathered to object to the promotion of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and their role in the Gaza genocide on opening day of the Great State of Maine Air Show. 

We were lucky to be joined by a large contingent from the IDEAL Maine Social Aid and Sanctuary Band which kept our spirits up during our three hour stand out. "The gestures of support for our messages, from vehicles entering, were way more numerous than in past years," Mark commented.

While the band took a break we heard from speakers including Trish, a U.S. Army veteran wearing fatigues painted with the words "I can't comply with genocide, can U?" A fitting message to mark the 300th day of Israel's assault on Gaza at an event registered with ShutitDown4Palestine.org. 

Faisal Khan spoke about the devastation in Gaza and the need for us to stay focused on supporting Palestinians, while Barbara West reported back on her recent trip to DC to protest war criminal Israeli PM Netanyahu speaking to Congress. 

Beckham shared some of the many grim statistics on death and destruction by Israel, and Tim Paradis spoke of the ongoing organizing of the Maine Coalition for Palestine and encouraged people to get in touch with that growing organization.

Lou Kimball reminded us of Aaron Bushnell's sacrifice and pointed out that, since February when U.S. Airman Bushnell self-immolated over his complicity in genocide, the assaults on Gaza have gotten much, much worse. And Bruce Gagnon, an Air Force vet from the Vietnam war era, reminded us that U.S. warplanes support imperialist aggression in West Asia, East Asia, Africa, and Europe. Connect these dots and we are well on the way to WWIII.

Screen capture from reporter Pearl Small's interview of Rosemary 

We also heard from Rosemary on recruiters in the Washington County high school she attended. Later she gave this powerful interview to News Center Maine on the recruiting purposes of air shows like the Thunderbirds. She was also among those handing out flyers linking the air show to recruiting, and sharing some dark facts about Thunderbirds sponsor Pratt & Whitney's complicity in genocide.

The local Times Record also gave our protest some coverage in a long article mostly glamorizing the Thunderbirds pilots. None of the corporate press noted that local residents were angered by the incredible noise levels as the warplanes practiced in the days leading up to the show. Maybe that would account for the dramatically lower number of cars passing through the main gate yesterday? (All of us who've protested past air shows at that venue noticed this.) That tickets were $68 a pop may have also been a factor -- my husband reported a lot of grumbling about this on social media.

Special thanks to Maine's Artists Rapid Response Team (AART!) for inspiring images we used at the air show

The most interesting conversation I had yesterday was with a woman from Connecticut whose family had gone into the air show while she boycotted it. She reported that her 14 year old son is fascinated by planes and other military hardware, and that she walks a fine line between living her own values while also supporting her kid's autonomy and developing ability to make his own judgements. We agreed as moms that raising kids in this toxic militarized culture is difficult. But we won't stop speaking our truths even when they're drowned out by the obscene roar of bombers over the settler colony called New England.

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.