On Wednesday 16 July, I was one of five people entering Boeing headquarters in Chicago at five that afternoon to conduct an act of civil disobedience. Why Boeing and why civil disobedience?
For the past two years the Anti-War Committee – Chicago has been going after Boeing for their role as the second largest arms manufacturer. Four members of the Anti-War Committee purchased stock in the company. In April three of us obtained legal proxies and spoke briefly at the annual stockholders meeting at the Field Museum. I said, “I rise to ask Boeing to end its pursuit of the Navy UCLASS combat drone contract as well as to close the Phantom Ray drone project. Drone strikes as conducted by our government according to the Geneva conventions are illegal and immoral and inflict terror on civilian populations. My fellow Boeing stockholders and the Board of Directors, I ask that you get out of drone research and production. Do not be complicit in this illegal and immoral means of waging war.”
So when Jewish Voice for Peace identified Boeing, Hewlett Packard, Elbit Systems, and Lockheed Martin as producers of weapons being used by Israel in its assault on Gaza, and called for civil disobedience actions at each of these companies, the Anti-War Committee joined JVP in its action at Boeing.
The five of us (three from AWC and two from JVP) entered Boeing headquarters at five just as eighty people who had been at the Israeli consulate reading the names of those who had lost their lives in Operation Protective Edge arrived on the north side of the headquarters. We removed our outer garments and displayed “red”-stained t-shirts and began shouting chants about Boeing’s complicity in Israel’s attack on Gaza. When we refused to leave, Boeing security called the Chicago police who arrested and handcuffed us and took us to a police station at 18th and State Street where we were processed and released on I bonds at nine with court appearance set for 12 August.
I participated in this action of civil disobedience primarily because I knew EPF understands civil disobedience as active nonviolence and invites its members to practice such. I also recalled the nine persons who were arrested for blocking the site to the Hancock Air Base near Syracuse on Ash Wednesday 2013.
Finally theologian William Stringfellow’s words continue to resonate with me: “… in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.” (William Stringfellow : Essential Writings. Orbis Books, 2013 : 169)
For me Boeing’s production and sale of weapons used by Israel is an example of “death’s works.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrapKhIc7Jg&list=UUoNUtq2hO0VBcwoXX0-f4vA&index=4
-- Newland Smith is a long-time deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Chicago and a long-time member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and its Palestine Israel Network.
