Synopsis of Lockheed Protest -- we rocked. :->

[ First: i also took over 50 pics and plan to post them later today ]

[ Also, i know many IMC readers will object to my "moderate" tone here --
that's ok, go ahead and flame away! complete free speech is what IMC is
for, after all.. :> ]

As one of the organizers (among many many hard-working folks) of the LM
action, i want to first say that my assessment, along with many core DASW
organizers' from SF, is that the action yest. was an unequivocal success
-- it was the largest direct action that i'm aware of in the SouthBay in
many many years, and it transformed the landscape of the power dynamic
between the people and the war profiteers -- henceforth, LM, and all other
war profiteers, are on notice that they *are being watched closely*, and
we're not just unorganized "rabble-rousers" that randomly go up to SF and
block traffic to vent our frustration with the US's unprovoked invasions,
and more deeply, an utterly unjust, env'ly destructive, violence-steeped
system that seeks to sell the maximum amount of weapons to both the US and
foreign govts, and in fact promotes as much warfare and human suffering as
possible simply to sell their products and line the pockets of the CEOs of
their companies with dollars.

They now know we are watching their ways -- and we can, and will, disrupt
their business of war profiteering until and unless they change their
lobbying efforts in promotion of war (see the flyer on the
actagainstwar.org website for details of all this).

Again: at the LM site in Sunnyvale, among other things, they make Trident
II nuclear missiles, and are working on the insane, inane, and int'l
treaty-breaking development of "Ballistic Missile Nonsense" -- i.e. Star
Wars (though their systems in tests keep failing, they keep getting
billions of dollars to develop, that's how it goes in the very coddled arms industry).

i also want to say that *not* every single thing LM does is inherently
evil: they work on e.g. good space science applications, such as the
Gravity Probe B project, a satellite to test a specific feature of
Einstenian General Relativity theory -- and if any LM employees are
reading this, i would urge them to move to these areas of more productive
human endeavor, and away from those areas of LM which develop weapons
systems of various forms and contribute to present and future modalities
of human suffering.


--- Now, as far as the morning goes:

All three major vehicular entrances (1st, 3rd, and H st.) were attempted
to be blocked by about 6.45 am, and were, to varying degrees. though i
saw all three, i was mostly at 3rd and since the site is so massive (the
distance between 1st and H is about 2 miles, and it is not easy to go back
and forth between those two locations, even taking the lightrail between
the two).

could we have done better? oh yes. will we look at both things that were
done rightly and wrongly this time, and correct for next time? oh yes.
will there be a next time? *OH* yes. you can count on it.

1st:
1st street was generally a porous block, and there were various reasons
for that that we will be looking at closely. still, it was highly
successful in traffic disruption for entering LM employees -- all
employees *knew* about us as they entered work today, and knew we'd made
true on our promise to effectively close down their operations for part of
the day.

3rd:
3rd was a fully effective block from about 6.30-9.30am, when the final
activists were cut out, and the horse-mounted police pushed the rest of
the activists onto the sidewalk. it was also where i saw the maximum
amount of confrontation as the protesters resolutely but completely
non-violently stood their ground, and the police did have to push them
with batons onto the sidewalk. This is where the most serious injury also
occurred, when early on a fireman drilled partway into SCU student Blair
Thedinger's hand, partially cutting one of his tendons.

H St.:
H st. was held with lockboxes until nearly noon, with quite a festive
atmosphere, the BLO playing away, and people dancing right in the
street happily for quite some time (even with police in riotgear just a
few feet away).

at noon, they finally made a decision to declare an unlawful assembly and
move people from the area -- for no really good reason other than them
getting tired and regain control. the dirt spaces on the side of H St.
are public property, and there was no real justification for moving
people, as H st. is a back (though primary) entrance, and we really could
have stayed there indefinitely. except the police clearly simply didn't
want to have to stay there all day, and i'm sure orders came from LM that
they didn't want us there all day, either. and, realistically, we had
made our major show of force by that point, gotten our essential message
across, and any remaining time there would've simply been for us to
celebrate our success -- and most of us were damn tired and wanted to go
home and sleep in any case! (and later, of course, go and pick up our
compatriots from the jailhouse, too).

Police:
my assessment of the police behavior is that it was essentially
decent -- more than *anything* i did not want to see them opening up
unprovoked on protesters with more firepower than needed, as they had in
Oakland -- and thankfully, they stuck to the agreement we had hammered out
last Thurs. during our sit-down conversation with them: that if no one on
our side provoked them by throwing something at them, they would not open
up with unnecessary force. and i saw nothing thrown, and though all the
guns were clearly out: tear-gas, pepper-spray, possibly even bean-bag shot
etc. launchers, none were ever used.

so apart from Blair and Lynn Stone (one of the police liaisons) who was
hit fairly severely in the ribs with a club, there were no serious
injuries to report on either side.

and the people who "lost" were the execs of LM and other weapons
manufacturers, who now stand more exposed than ever in their warmaking
greed -- we hope the employees of LM will think seriously about their
choice of work, and departing from the trite and facile rationalizations
of their daily banally evil activities, will think carefully about how and
what a productive life's work would do. and perhaps, in some time, they
will move away from the creation of weapons of mass destruction and all
their accouterments, to the creation of something scientifically useful,
or some technology that is directed to help and sustain, rather than smash
and destroy, their fellow human beings.

as a postscript, i also want to say that as one of the co-webmasters, i
*saw* the effect of our work as thousands of people hit the site, with all
its downloadable well-made fliers on the specifics of LM and why we were
protesting there -- and the single largest company to be visiting the
site? none other than LM, with hundreds of hits to the site daily. so do
i think that LM employees (and lawyers) were interested in why we were out
there? you bet i do.

in Peace and Resistance -
X