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I recently wrote about how little our country's elites, particularly journalists and editors, seemed to learn [ [link removed] ] from the corrupt invasion of Iraq and subsequent exposure of lies from Washington that enabled it. At the same time that America’s institutions have seemed to remain criminally ignorant, however, We the people of the United States have also risen to the challenge.
Today, the peace movement repeated a feat unrivaled over the past generation. 21 years ago this month, 5,000 Bay Area residents swarmed a Lockheed Martin complex [ [link removed] ] in Sunnyvale, CA to shut down the facility as part of an organized direct action in which dozens of activists were arrested, and one seriously injured.
This morning, activists mobilized again to shut down the facility for the first time since then.
None of us have the power or resources to arrest, prosecute, and imprison everyone who profits from international crime by working at a U.S. military contractor. But, with enough organization, and patience, we can at least keep them from going to work for a day.
The shut down of the Sunnyvale Lockheed Martin facility in the spring of 2003 brought together students and workers from across the bay area. It was one of the first major direct actions for which I played an organizing role, and it more or less consumed the spring of my third year in law school.
Seeing a new generation of activists grow inspired to take similar action in the face of disturbingly similar human rights abuses offers not only an indication of dissent from the bipartisan genocide continuing to unfold in Gaza, but also a critical escalation from mere dissent to actual resistance [ [link removed] ]. Given the militarism and international belligerence shared [ [link removed] ] by each of the major political parties, today’s action offers inspiration, and a blueprint for concerned Americans in other places who want to defend the international human rights principles that Washington & Tel Aviv have conspired to erode so dramatically.
Help inform your friends!
Returning to the scene of the crime
International human rights abuses are criminal acts. Full stop.
But the people who pull the triggers are not the only ones responsible. The legal precedent [ [link removed] ] set by the Nuremberg trials after the allied victory in the Second World War established strict liability for human rights abuses [ [link removed] ], meaning that anyone who enables them shares legal culpability. Moreover, there is no defense: it doesn’t matter who gave the orders, and it doesn’t matter if someone thought there was an emergency. 
Human rights violations are criminal acts. And everyone who enables them shares responsibility.
Our nation once fought a world war to establish that principle before tragically losing it to criminals in Washington [ [link removed] ], many of whom remain in office.
The outrageous and disturbing reality is that the ranks of criminals include nearly every elected official in Washington, certainly Biden and senior officials [ [link removed] ] at the departments of State and Defense. They also include any number of corporate leaders and workers who earn a living by manufacturing weapons that end up in the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces.
To the extent corporations are legally considered persons entitled to infect the political process with their own interests and capital [ [link removed] ], they are also legal entities that should be held criminally responsible for complicity in human rights violations. Because our justice system is so co-opted that it can’t recognize institutional crimes even when they grow ubiquitous, enforcing those laws falls to civilian activists.
None of us have the power or resources to arrest, prosecute, and imprison everyone who profits from international crime by working at a U.S. military contractor. But, with enough organization, and patience, we can at least keep them from going to work for a day.
Second verse, same as the first: a little bit louder, since the need is much worse
This morning, activists assembled in the hours before dawn, braving not only the hostility of local law enforcement, but also a rainstorm that began as the sun rose. Those who locked down to occupy each of the three entrances to the Lockheed facility in Sunnyvale committed to staying there for hours despite remarkable inconvenience and risk to their health. 
Especially impressive to me was the organization behind today’s event. Like those who joined us 20 years ago, participants received robust training and resources for participants in nonviolent direct action. Organizers recruited dedicated liaisons to interface with law-enforcement, as well as the press, and provided music, food, and transportation.
This is not a movement of casually committed observers, but one of a deeply rooted conviction shared across many communities.
The voices of the participants help reveal why their resistance to Washington's crimes is so critical today.
“We have gathered here to disrupt Lockheed Martin's operations and demand that the U.S. stop all arms sales to Israel,” said Maramiya Yensoon. “We urge Congress and Biden to push for a permanent ceasefire, and fellow communities to take up calls for ceasefire themselves until Biden acts.”
As participant Kaiyah Ari observed, “Our elected officials will not act quickly or boldly enough to halt the genocide. Until Congress blocks the bombs, we will.”
Like a mirror, the proud conviction of today’s activists reverberated with the voices of my friends & allies who joined me in organizing the action that shut down the Sunnyvale Lockheed Martin facility 21 years ago.
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According to physicist and community organizer Mandeep Gill, “As one of the original co-organizers of the Lockheed Martin blockade that responded to the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, I am so very proud to see another blockade at a site which is manufacturing weapons used in a racist genocide of tens of thousands of men, women, and children in the Mideast yet again, 21 years later.” Gill currently works as a research astrophysicist at the University of Minnesota, while organizing with Unidos, a community organization advancing social, racial, and economic justice.
Another organizer of the 2003 action, civil rights leader and author Valarie Kaur Brar, said, “It is painful to witness the genocidal violence in Gaza decades after my classmates and I joined a global movement to end war crimes. I am grateful and inspired to see a new generation of activists following in our footsteps, as we followed our predecessors, raising our voices for a world of justice and peace.” Her most recent book, “See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love [ [link removed] ],” has been described as “a moral compass for our time” by Michelle Alexander, author of a groundbreaking 2010 book titled “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [ [link removed] ].”
Second year Stanford student Carlos Enrique Ramirez is exploring Urban Studies. As a student whose family originally hailed from El Salvador, he shared an especially fascinating perspective on the issues that drove him to take action today. As he explained to me:
“Much of the immigration of Salvadorans to the United States was driven by a proxy war between the United States and Russia during the Cold War. Much of the ammunition used by the right wing government at the time was supplied through Israel. My connection with that history is deeply personal: my family had some sympathies with the opposition. My mom went to sleep hearing the noise of gunshots and bombs. My father lived in fear that one day, he might get shot, or that his house might get blown up.
Those bombs are the same bombs that are being dropped on the Palestinian people today.”
Organizers noted that Israel is continuing its criminal bombing campaign in Rafah during the holy month of Ramadan. Over 30,000 have died already, driven to early graves by a combination of political impunity in Israel, American belligerence [ [link removed] ] enabling it, artificial intelligence reportedly identifying civilian targets [ [link removed] ], a controversial Israeli policy encouraging [ [link removed] ] civilian deaths in order to serve military objectives, and widespread propaganda and misinformation in the international press [ [link removed] ] supporting Israel’s official narrative despite the realities on the ground.
Meanwhile, the world's largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, supplies Israel with a wide range of weapons and instruments of destruction. They include F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles, other weapons, and surveillance technology actively used in its ongoing genocide in Gaza. The company describes [ [link removed] ] its F-35 Lightning II as “the most lethal” fighter jet in the world (conspicuously failing to mention its renowned test failures [ [link removed] ] and absurd lifecycle costs [ [link removed] ]), and the company’s Hellfire missiles have been recently used to assassinate Palestinian journalists and health workers, while targeting hospitals and other critical civilian infrastructure. 
Why today’s action matters so much
While California enjoys a progressive reputation, it is generally undeserved. While a socially liberal state, it has long supported the imperial machinations of Washington around the world. That’s been true not only of the Members of Congress elected by Californians [ [link removed] ] to make policy in  Washington in the past, but also those chosen by the state's unfortunately ignorant voters today [ [link removed] ].
Santa Clara County is a particularly conservative part of California, encompassing incredibly wealthy suburbs between San Francisco and San Jose in which any number of companies  maintain offices, research facilities, and headquarters. Unlike San Francisco, where organized dissent is almost facilitated by a police department that has grown quite accustomed to accommodating it, the county of Santa Clara is not nearly as frequently the site of mobilizations, and police there have a generally much more brutal reputation.
It was earned.
In 2003, when we organized the direct action at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Santa Clara, a student at a local university participating in the lockdown passed out after law enforcement authorities drilled through his hand in order to remove him from the blockade and allow traffic to move through the facility's entrance. 
While that story seem like a powerful disincentive to participate in direct action, it has a happy ending—at least for the young man who suffered the severe injury. I ran into him many years later on the other side of the country, and learned that he had not only gone to medical school in Kansas in the interim, but also gotten what amounted to a free medical education, effectively paid for by the county of Santa Clara as the result of a lawsuit.
The groups and individuals participating in today’s action reflected a similarly diverse coalition of bay area residents drawn from the ranks of students, workers, and teachers. And they faced similar risks: this morning, a Lockheed Martin employee reportedly threatened to drive over protesters while brandishing a weapon and yelling that “Somebody’s gonna die.”
Another reason that today’s action is so significant is because it represents an escalation beyond declaratory marches. Rather than merely assert the principles that Washington should be following—like international legal rules that we once won a World War to create—participants in today’s action took direct action at the site of a military contractor.
There are hundreds of other such facilities all across the country. One hopes others in some of those places might be watching, and growing inspired.
The view from 20,000 feet
Biden's support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza has effectively doomed [ [link removed] ] his chances [ [link removed] ] for reelection in November.  At this point, Democrats who whine about the possibility of a second Trump presidency have no plausible means of stopping it beyond various legal processes [ [link removed] ] that could potentially disqualify him.
They, of course, are far from the first time that Democrats have pursued attempts to disqualify a figure who they effectively created [ [link removed] ], and have politically enabled [ [link removed] ] at every turn. 
Having embraced an unapologetically genocidal president and engineered an illegitimate process to block any challenges [ [link removed] ] from within the party, Democrats have squandered any opportunity to claim human rights as a legitimate reason to vote for their candidate, instead of a would-be tyrant. Each of the major parties’ candidates have demonstrated outrageous disrespect for not only international human rights, but also democracy [ [link removed] ] in the United States.
Of course, other candidates offer alternatives. One of them, in particular, has consistently offered a brighter vision for America while rejecting the bipartisan militarism that has poisoned our nation's once storied legacy in the world. It should come as no surprise that Cornel West [ [link removed] ] has faced prolific smears [ [link removed] ] throughout his campaign, or that the most effective character assassins have come from the ranks of supposedly impartial journalists. Their biases ultimately reveal their unethical commitments to the corporate political parties.
But what would a free and brave people do in the face of such corruption? When the parties in Washington collude [ [link removed] ] and conspire to kill women and children [ [link removed] ] abroad, enabled by newspapers bending over backwards to cover up [ [link removed] ] human rights abuses and promote propaganda peddled by Washington [ [link removed] ], what can we each possibly do?
Under such circumstances, the last line of defense for human rights falls to us: We, the people [ [link removed] ].
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Activism promoting peace in the face of a seemingly unaccountable war machine not only stands as part of a reverberating cycle across history, but has achieved remarkable victories, both in the past and present.
Two generations ago, legions of committed Americans helped end the imperial war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos [ [link removed] ]. In retrospect, those international crimes were absolutely genocidal, particularly when considered in light of the subsequent events they enabled, like the brutal violence of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia that emerged as a response to the American bombing campaign and proxy war.
A generation later, activists helped expose a pattern of human rights abuses across Latin America. The ascension of George H.W. Bush to the presidency after having served as CIA Director could have portended an unending cycle of those abuses.
For better or worse, limiting him to one term may have helped end that cycle—even though, to be fair, it appears to have reemerged under later presidents. While Trump was in office, military coups conspicuously spread to countries including Venezuela [ [link removed] ] and Bolivia [ [link removed] ]—both of which harbor vast natural resources (including oil and lithium) for which industries in the United States salivate.
No one has yet leaked documents proving the CIA and Pentagon’s role in those coups. I perceive that discovery as a matter of time. Had I had been elected to Congress when I ran to replace a corrupt oligarch whose representation of San Francisco continues to prioritize the interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon [ [link removed] ], one of my first agendas would have been to investigate that history. 
I wish, with all my heart, that our elected officials in Washington deserved their positions or cared to honor their oaths of office. Understanding that they don’t, however, I feel tremendous pride in the fellow voices rising across this country to challenge its criminal hypocrisy in defense of international human rights, precious—and precarious—communities around the world, and the lives of innocent civilians subjected to arbitrary state violence [ [link removed] ]. 
Paid subscribers can access further material from today’s direct action in Sunnyvale, including more photos from the action, selected videos capturing the comments of organizers in their own voices, and more quotes from participants...

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