Hundreds Rally At General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works To Kick Off Stop Arming Genocide Campaign in Maine
There was considerable outreach to the union prior to the event and not all workers at BIW were hostile
Photo credit: Robin Farrin
Yesterday a mass rally took over the street in front of General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard and a die-in held the space for about an hour. Especially gratifying: seeing my old activist friends, many of whom came from far away to lay down and risk arrest, together with the much younger demographic of the Maine Coalition for Palestine.
While Penobscot speaker Lokotah Sanborn drew parallels between land theft in Palestine and land theft in the unceded territories of Wabanakiya, a small handful of counter protesters modeled settler colonialism shouting "Get off our lawn!" from the union hall steps adjacent to the protest. There is no line of demarcation between the post office side lawn where speakers were gathered and the AFL-CIO property, and a scuffle that broke out when someone strayed onto the union's lawn was the only police intervention witnessed by legal observer Mark Roman yesterday. No one was injured, and no arrests were made.
Photo credit: Robin Farrin
There was considerable outreach to the union prior to the event and not all workers at BIW were hostile, but some predictably disagreed with our analysis on Palestine and/or were angered by our presence at their workplace. Also, it's hard to be told that your work supports the slaughter of infants.
Happily, no basketball bats were observed.
I did witness some protesters chastising a t.v. cameraman and reporter for interviewing the two very vocal counter protesters who spent most of the rally inexplicably chanting "Gaza to the sea!" or calling protesters "commies" and "Nazis" in the same breath. The reporter told those objecting that newscentermaine wanted to give coverage to "both sides" but the ratio of 250 pro-Palestine voices to about 10 pro-Israel voices wasn't clearly reflected in any of the mainstream news coverage I saw. The camera operator ended the confrontation by snarling, "How about you get out of the way and let us do our fucking job?"
Local police attempting to do their job simply closed the street for a couple of hours and declined to arrest anybody. The Chief told our police liaison Bruce Gagnon that the Bath PD was short staffed and when Gagnon asked if he planned to call the county sheriff for backup he replied, "They only have a couple of guys, too." I did see the (warm) sheriff's van often used to transport arrestees from BIW but eventually it departed without being used.
Here's news coverage we've seen so far:
'Die-in' held outside Bath Iron Works to protest US military support of Israel | WGME
More than 100 protest at BIW over support for Israel's war in Gaza (bangordailynews.com)
Hundreds rally outside Bath Iron Works to protest U.S. military aid for Israel (pressherald.com)
The Maine Coalition for Palestine is waging an extensive campaign to support people in Gaza and the West Bank right now, with many more events and actions planned. Today, folks can join Bowdoin SJP on campus in Brunswick to demand alumnus Sen. Angus King support a permanent ceasefire now.
As a Bowdoin alum myself, I am happy to see our mascot wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. Go Polar Bears!
thank you again for being out there. The statistics make me a bit optimistic... no arrests. Fewer supporting Israel genocide. Important that you reached out to the Union before the demo.
Wow! I'm so impressed and incredibly grateful for everyone who took part in this protest. You are amazing people, and it's wonderful to see young people getting involved, so that there is a better age spread among the protestors. Keep holding the media accountable for their biased reporting, Lisa. However, the headlines were good. I have had a bad week over this war in Gaza, with dreams that took me into the war, and I melted down and started crying on a Skype call with a friend in Italy who I do a language exchange with. Our call got cut off then; I don't know if it was him. He says he didn't know what happened. I was posting on Redditt in the geopolitics section, and was savagely attacked and ridiculed, venturing into unknown waters that were shark-infested. Glad to see that some of the Bath ironworkers were receptive to your message, although the more they pay attention, the greater their cognitive dissonance has got to be about being engaged in work that gets people killed. However, if you ever succeed in getting the Bath Ironworks converted to peaceful projects instead of supporting the war machine, it's probably those workers who will carry on, with all of their skills and experience, and maybe they can train new workers. If we persevere in our efforts, eventually we will prevail. We must believe that. It's like turning a great, unwieldly heavy blanket. Getting started in changing things is the hardest part. However, it's feasible, it's necessary, and we must do it.