Reject Raytheon

  It was cold and raining last night, but 20 of us showed up on a busy corner in South Asheville just outside of Biltmore Park to hold our bi-weekly Reject Raytheon vigil. We chose this location because Biltmore Park, a private residential and commercial enclave, is home to the offices of Biltmore Farms LLC, the corporation that donated the 100 acres for the Pratt & Whitney plant.  A few of us walked from the corner into the private community with some signage intending to deliver a letter to Jack Cecil, the CEO. We weren't sure if we'd be confronted for trespassing and evicted or not. I had called the Asheville Police Department, which has jurisdiction there, a week or so ago. They told me that if they got a complaint, they would ask us to leave and if we did, that would be that, no arrest. But in a kind of aside, they also said that the sidewalks are public access and that as long as there was no obstruction, we should be okay. So we figured we'd try our luck walking ...

  Melody learned and worked, and learned and worked, and got our new Reject Raytheon website up and running this week. What a chore it was for her, a beginner at this, but what a beautiful thing she came up with. We've got plenty of text, video, podcast, and photos on it so far and now we just need to keep feeding it. Virtual reality has a life of its own and can be the tail that wags the dog. We need to keep our movement going so we can get new stuff online! 😊 Speaking of which, I've been working to organize our next demo. This time, we'll converge on the office of Biltmore Farms LLC, which gave the land to Pratt & Whitney for its 1.2 million square foot plant. The office resides in the private community and shopping area of Biltmore Park, so we will be trespassing on private property with our banners, signs, and flyers. And we might even make some noise. Just today, I talked with a member of the very cool radical band Brass Your Heart which shows up at various activ...

  I'm getting a banner made with the image above, having walked up yesterday to the P&W site in the mud and rain to get the image. I want to use it when we do our vigil in Biltmore Park in front of the offices of Biltmore Farms LLC. Jack Cecil, the owner and CEO of the company is the one who donated the land to Pratt & Whitney for the plant. It is he who is responsible for the clear cutting of the forest that can be seen in this image.  The Biltmore Farms company was founded by George Vanderbilt, the local oligarch who created the Biltmore Estate, now a local tourist attraction. Here's how the Vanderbilts lived: Cecil is the grandson of Vanderbilt. Wikipedia says this about the Vanderbilt family: The Vanderbilt family is an American family of Dutch origin who gained prominence during the Gilded Age . Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt , and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthropy. ...

We had about 15 of us this evening on the side of the road, bearing witness. In between trying to get people to take a flyer while they were stopped at the light, I managed to chat with my friend Ethan. It was his first time to join us on one of our actions and he had some questions and ideas. Ethan is a national staff member for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and is grounded in the moral basis for our peace work. He wanted to know how much outreach we had done with local churches. My answer was not much, just that one of our active members is a member of the Asheville Friends Meeting and has spread the word in that direction. But we wanted to do more. He suggested that he could do a little outreach to the UCC church that he attends, one that Melody and I are also fond of and have visited a few times for Sunday service. Having a discussion forum there would definitely be a blessing. The conversation with Ethan reminded me of why I am doing this work. It's not a practical or...

  I've been in the garage today making signs for our next roadside vigil to Stop P&W. It's one of those chores that comes with organizing events for a campaign, and - truth be told - it's kind of a fun thing to do. It's a little art project for the cause. You can mess with stencils and paints, occupy your hands, not just your head, and even listen to loud rockin' music. All good. Besides the satisfaction of having a new visual for our demo, I also appreciate the lesson in patience that comes with this task. And it's also a nice way to accept my own imperfections. So, you know, there are spiritual benefits to this work as well. Actually, the spiritual benefit comes from doing the resistance work in the first place. Making signs is not going to change the world and won't persuade the powers that be that they should just forget about this Pratt & Whitney deal. But it's part of my witness, humble as that may be. As Dan Berrigan once said, " I do...

  It's one thing to know in your head that there is an atrocity or an injustice or evil going on, but it's quite another to see it face-to-face and feel it in the pit of your stomach. Today, I watched the destruction of a mountainside and it affected me emotionally. I knew this was happening, but seeing it actually in process hurt. I stood across the river and stared at a large swath of deforested hillside and at the heavy equipment and dump trucks continuing to hack away at the trees and soil. They are making a road to site of the new plant up the hill. All in the name of economic development. Here, right in front of me, were some of those jobs so coveted by the locals, tearing away at Mother Earth. I trembled in sadness and anger. Do the movers and shakers who are so proud of bringing us such economic development actually come out to the scene of their crime to see what they have wrought? If so, are they at all conflicted with the decisions they have made? Do they think about...

  I had a camera crew in my living room this afternoon. The two men had driven up to Asheville from Greensboro to film my 3-minute comments for Rev. Dr. Barber's annual Moral March on Raleigh and HKoJ event. Usually this event takes place in Raleigh, but this year it is virtual. As a representative of Veterans for Peace, I was asked to speak for the peace groups in the state. Here's what I said: Greetings from Asheville, where our Veterans For Peace chapter has joined with environmentalists and other grassroots movements to oppose Raytheon, the 2nd largest defense contractor in the world. Raytheon’s subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney, has just gotten approval - and financial support - to build a plant that will make engines to power the state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets. These killing machines are sold and used in conflicts all over the world, and could be used by Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the genocidal war against Yemen. What’s happening here in Asheville is not unique. The m...

  The site for the Pratt & Whitney (P&W, a division of Raytheon Technologies) plant being planned for Asheville is now being cleared of trees so that construction on the 1.2 million sq. ft. plant can begin soon. It looks like mountaintop removal, a not unfamiliar occurrence here in the Appalachian Mountains.  It breaks my heart to see it. P&W builds engines for commercial and military jets, most notoriously for the state-of-the-art F-35 Lightning Fighter Jet . Raytheon is the 2nd largest arms manufacturer in the world, a major war profiteer. Our local coalition of resistance to this project, called Reject Raytheon, is now just over 2 months old. We started out as members of 3 organizations - Veterans for Peace (VFP), Sunrise, and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - who showed up at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to object to the $27 million incentive agreement being offered for P&W to locate here. Since then, we've gotten organized and are acti...