LOCKHEED MARTIN    THE PROFITS OF WAR    CRUCIFIXION TODAY
A Trail of Mourning & Truth, Good Friday Stations of Justice & Peace,
March 25, 2005, Lockheed Martin, Valley Forge, PA

Luke 23:33-49
    
Litany
Leader: Let us pray that we will break the chains of violence and war; that we may resist the making of war, empire, the works of Lockheed Martin, with  acts of Jesus’  love. May the cross  which over time was transformed from a means of violence to a symbol of liberation and peace  be our symbol of nonviolence and justice, a sign of nonviolent resistance to Lockheed Martin, militarism, and war.
All: May we face the world’s suffering with the love of Jesus.

Leader: By the cross and resurrection...All: We stand against war
Leader: By Jesus’ witness to truth...All: We Walk in Mourning and in Truth
Leader: By Jesus’ passion and death...All: We Resist Lockheed Martin
Leader: By Jesus’ victory over the grave...All:  We act for peace

After each  reading, the reader will plant a cross (remembering the casualties of Lockheed Martin and war) as all chant:
LOCKHEED MARTIN   THE PROFITS OF WAR    THE CRUCIFIXION TODAY


1st Station: Pilate Condemns Jesus to Death
2nd Station: Jesus Carries His Cross
(at Mall & Goddard Blvds.)

After the 2nd Station, people will walk in a Procession or Trail of Mourning and Truth on the sidewalk, up Goddard Boulevard, alongside Lockheed Martin. We will stop 4 times for  Stations # 3 - # 10, doing two Stations per stop, before concluding with the final stations at the rear of the complex. While walking, people are asked to remain behind the lead banner - “Halt the Business of War” - and in front of the bell which will intone our steps today.
The Stations will conclude at the rear entrance to Lockheed Martin, where those prepared to face arrest will engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.

3rd Station: Jesus falls the 1st time
4th Station: Jesus meets his most afflicted mother
5th Station: Simon of  Cyrene  is forced to help Jesus carry the Cross
6th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7th Station: Jesus falls the 2nd time
8th Station: Jesus consoles the women of Jerusalem
9th Station: Jesus falls the 3rd time
10th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments

11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross (at rear driveway entrance)

12th Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
(Period of silence and intoning of the bell)
At the rear driveway entrance to Lockheed Martin: Civil Disobedience proceeds; all others should remain on sidewalk

13th and 14th Stations: Jesus is taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb

Leader: We mourn  all the victims of war and war-making. We know that the profits of Lockheed Martin rest on war and militarism. That is the awful business of Lockheed Martin.  We know too that people suffer and die, through war and the denial of justice, so that a few may profit. We insist, however, that where war is business, as here at Lockheed Martin, there cannot be business as usual  We resist war and  the making of war. We resist Lockheed Martin with acts of Jesus’ love and a continuing commitment to the  cross of nonviolent resistance.
All: May we face the world’s suffering with the love of Jesus.

Leader: Jesus, by your cross and resurrection...All: We stand against war
Leader: By your witness to truth...All: We Walk in Mourning and in Truth
Leader: By your passion and death...All: We Resist Lockheed Martin
Leader: By your victory over the grave...All: We act for peace

All: RESIST LOCKHEED MARTIN    THE PROFITS OF WAR    THE CRUCIFIXION TODAY     
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If you are not already, you should be on the Brandywine Peace Community mailing and email list. Just call or email us.


Thank you and have a joyous Easter!

BRANDYWINE PEACE COMMUNITY
P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA 19081 (610) 544-1818
email: brandywine@juno.com     www.brandywinepeace.com
Brandywine Peace Community Monthly Potluck Supper*/Program,
2nd Sunday of the month, 4:30PM, University Lutheran Church, 3637 Chestnut St., Phila.
(*bring main dish, salad, or dessert to share)
April 10  -  30th Anniversary of the End of the Vietnam War (April 30, 1975), a veteran/peace activist panel presentation & poetry reading by W.D. Ehrhart, decorated Vietnam Marine combat veteran, renowned and award-winning poet, author of numerous books and poetry collections including: Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War (McFarland & Co.; 1989),and  Just for Laughs (Vietnam Generation Inc. & Burning Cities Press, 1990)

Sunday, April 3, 2005, 1PM -2:30 PM
IN REMEMBRANCE of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one day before the anniversary of his death, and of all other victims of gun violence -
1 PM: Motorcade departs from Rutgers University, Camden (N. 3rd Street parking lot, between Cooper and Pearl Sts.) and travels across Ben Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia; a procession of walkers begins in Philadelphia at Fifth and Market Streets; both groups convene at Ninth and Spring Garden Streets, outside of the notorious Colosimo’s Gun Shop.  IN PROTEST against a culture that allows the proliferation of illegal handgun markets to deal death and devastation to our communities.
1:30 PM:  Public assembly and press conference at Ninth and Spring Garden Streets to honor Dr. King’s message of peace and non-violence and to draw attention to patterns of illegal handgun trafficking on both sides of the Delaware River.  Speakers include Bryan Miller of Ceasefire New Jersey, Diane Edbril of CeaseFire PA, Dorothy Johnson-Speight of Mothers in Charge, Jerry Mondesire of the NAACP, and Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center.
For more information contact info@ceasefirepa.org or cfnj@aol.com

Twenty-five years ago, on March 24, 1980, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot to death while serving Mass. The night before, in a sermon transmitted by radio throughout El Salvador, he called on Salvadoran soldiers to stop the killing and repression in El Salvador - “...No soldier is obliged to obey an order against God’s law...In the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people whose cries rise ever more thunderously to heaven, I beg you, I implore you, I order you, in the name of God: stop the repression.”

Sunday, April 3, 3:30 PM, Episcopal Cathedral, 38th and Walnut, Phila., PA “Prophets & Martyrs: Interfaith Service Remembering Archbishop Oscar Romero and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”, marking the 25th anniversary of the death of  Archbishop Romero (March 24, 1980) and the 36th anniversary of the death of Dr. King (April 4, 1968), an Interfaith Service honoring their lives and remembering their prophetic vision and call for peace and justice.  Keynote speaker: Princeton Theological Seminary Prof. Mark Taylor.
Sponsored by: Romero Interfaith Center and Phila. Area Interfaith Peace Network. More information, call: 610-544-1818

May 15: Counting the Cost; Stopping the War (www.CountingTheCost.org)
A nationwide day to mourn all the war dead, to end the war, and raise $1 milllion for Iraq aid and anti-war work. Sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom
May 15 in Philadelphia - Counting the Cost “Die-in”
at Independence Mall Visitors Center, 6th & Market Sts.,Endorsed by Brandywine Peace Community

Summer ‘05 - 60th Anniversary of the Start of the Nuclear Age and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, July 16 (anniversary of the 1st atomic test) - August 6 and 9 : Commemoration & Resistance at Lockheed Martin.

Brandywine Peace Community   
P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA 19081 -  610-544-1818    
 brandywine@juno.com        www.brandywinepeace.com
Readings


1st Station: Pilate Condemns Jesus to Death

Reading #1

In a time of empire and military occupation, Jesus knew where he stood. Betrayed, denied, tortured, facing death, Jesus knew where he stood and what he faced. He faced the Cross, a means of execution, a symbol of imperial rule, of Rome’s might, an announcement of the empire’s will to maintain itself the only way it can: violence and war.

Formed ten years ago next month in the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta and becoming at the very moment of its incorporation the world’s largest weapons corporation, Lockheed Martin announced itself with the slogan “And This is Just the Beginning!” atop row upon row of pictured weapons systems.

The empire of U.S. war-making has its cross. Lockheed Martin is the common denominator in the production of every major weapon system–nuclear and non-nuclear–in the U.S. arsenal and sold by the U.S. around the world. Lockheed Martin annually receives from the public treasury more than $32 billion. Lockheed Martin is the chief beneficiary of the Bush Administration’s policy of “endless war on terror”, of a continued war of occupation in Iraq, of the resurgence in U.S. militarism. around the world and even unto the heavens.

Lockheed Martin–across the country and around the world, here in Valley Forge and throughout the Delaware Valley–means weaponry: nuclear weapons, Trident missiles, cruise missiles, combat satellites and computers, Aegis warships, the Airborne Laser System and a host of other “Star Wars” missile defense weapons for  the continued  militarization of space.

Among numerous Pentagon weapons contracts here in Valley Forge, PA, the Management & Data Systems division of Lockheed Martin has a $116.7 million contract to build Weapons Control Systems for U.S. Navy Tomahawk Cruise Missiles which have been used throughout the Gulf Wars and were the centerpiece of the “shock & awe” bombardment of Iraq two years ago this week.

Every weapon produced by Lockheed Martin means billions of dollars transferred from the public treasury to private wealth, from public need to corporate greed. Every weapon produced by Lockheed Martin means another bombing run, another cruise missile attack, another war.

In this time of war , military occupation, and the promise of more war, we stand before Lockheed Martin in resistance to the cross of empire and human neglect, of greed and environmental indifference, the cross of war. Today we stand before Lockheed Martin pitting our commitment to nonviolence and peace against Lockheed Martin,  the face of nuclear weapons, the face of war profits,  in Iraq and around the world, the face of war-making today.

2nd Station: Jesus Carries his Cross

Reading #2

“The revulsion against war not too long hence will be an insuperable obstacle for us to overcome and for that reason I am convinced that we must set in motion the machinery of a permanent war economy...It must be an ongoing program and not the creature of some emergency.”

So spoke the president of General Electric, Charles E. Wilson, in July 1944, one year before the first atomic bomb was tested. Today, we stand on the ground of the social order which Wilson called for - a culture of weaponry and militarism, a permanent industry of war.

Months before George W. Bush assumed office in January 2001, a report was drawn up by a group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The driving force behind the report was Richard Perle, a member of the Reagan Administration and currently head of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group to the Pentagon. Lockheed Martin is a key player in the Defense Policy Board.

Other founders of the Project for the New American Century include: Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary. Among its outline for the New American Century is the following: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in the Gulf region. While the conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

The New American Century blueprint for the future is a script for some kind of Orwellian period of unending war where the pauses between bombings and wars are called peace?

Weeks after the start of the U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Pentagon announced that Lockheed Martin would receive the contract to build the Joint Strike Fighter over the next several decades. At $200 billion, it is the largest military contract in human history.  

One week before the U.S. started the bombardment and invasion of Iraq two years ago, the Air Force tested in Florida the 21,500 Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)  bomb which sends a “wave of fire and blasts hundreds of yards to kill troops, flatten trees, knock over structures...and, in general, demoralize those far beyond the impact zone.” The latter purpose is what Donald Rumsfeld summarized as the “psychological component.”

Jesus carried a cross of wood. We too carry a cross. We carry the weight of empire–the weapons it builds, the wars it wages, the lives it destroys.

3rd Station - Jesus Falls the First Time

Reading #3

It certainly didn’t take long for us to see what four more years of Bush would  mean and what Lockheed Martin has in store for us.

Days after last Fall’s  presidential election the U.S. began the assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in the largest single combat operation since the Vietnam War. This in the wake of the findings of a study conducted by researchers at John Hopkins University, Columbia University, and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad and reported in the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, which concluded that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqis - a human figure significantly higher than previous estimates.  The medical study, which was never even mentioned during the presidential campaign, further revealed that most of the 100,000 Iraqis who died were “women and children  killed in violent deaths, primarily carried out by U.S. air strikes.”

Like the thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed, each of the more than 1500 U.S. deaths in Iraq and the more than 10,000 wounded and maimed are not only victims of a particular policy built on lies but also the casualties of a far deeper disease - the ambition of empire and the greed of militarism. That’s the real business of war and the weapons makers. That’s Lockheed Martin whose reach in weapons production and impact on war policy is without parallel or bounds.  

For the last fiscal reporting period, Lockheed Martin announced that its revenues rose by 41%, with an astounding $8.4 billion in profits for the quarterly period alone. It is Lockheed Martin, not Haliburton or the Carlyle Group - names commonly associated with profiting from war in Iraq - that is by far the war’s chief profiteer. Meanwhile, the weight of empire is making our society literally dysfunctional.  The New York Times conservatively reports that more than 34 million people in the U.S. live in poverty, what Gandhi called “the greatest form of violence”, that one in five children under the age of five in the U.S. are poor. Health care, mass transit, housing (an estimated 3.5 million are likely to experience homelessness this winter) are every bit the casualties of war.

4th Station: Jesus meets his most afflicted mother

Reading # 4
(The following message was posted on the web site of Military Families Speak Out)

I am an Army Nurse Corps Captain stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington D.C., and I feel compelled to share with anyone who will listen what I have seen. You see, when OIF troops are evac'd out of Germany, the huge majority are brought here to WRAMC by the Air Force flight nurses and docs. I do not have access to any of the numbers of how many wounded and what types of injuries, etc, but I can honestly tell you that the OIF wounded occupy more than half of our two major intensive care units (SICU and MICU) at any given time.

At times, we get so full and are expecting more to arrive, that we have to hound the docs to transfer somebody out of our unit to a ward upstairs so we have some beds for these soldiers. Most of these wounded soldiers come in to our unit on a ventilator breathing for them, with severe wounds caused by IEDs (improvised roadside bombs) or AK-47 GSW (gun shot wounds). Many, many soldiers have already lost arms, limbs, or eyes before they even get to us, and many have received dozens of units of blood before they left Germany.

I am very proud that I am privileged to take care of these brave men and women, but it breaks my heart to realize that their incredible loss that they and their loved ones will have to deal with for the rest of their life seems to have not been for the good of our country. Rather, their pain and sorrow has merely allowed a few greedy souls to make a power grab for more wealth and control. One of my dear friends has tried to convince me that this is all part of God's plan, and the death and pain is for some greater purpose that our leaders are not telling us yet.

I wish I could believe her. It would make my job and daily life much easier, but I cannot buy it. I apologize to the reader for my tangential thought processes, but this never ending situation is getting to many military nurses. Anyway, the following is my main point in reaching out to you.

As you might be aware, the press is being tightly controlled and what is being reported from a medical standpoint is only a fraction of the true reality. Yes, I do believe the daily number of killed that CNN and whoever report is accurate. What I am saying is that the walking wounded are being sorely ignored.

Don't believe me? Walter Reed is an open base, not a tightly controlled fort. Just have a valid ID and consent to a  vehicle search. Then park, and walk inside. You will see so many 20 something mostly men missing arms, legs, and eyes.  The blinders covering your eyes will be ripped away as you see the poor families making their daily walk from the Malogne house to the wards and units to see their son's or husbands.

It is so sad to see young wives and fiancee's cry over their honey who was in Iraq less than one month before losing both legs and have several abdominal surgeries which leaves his belly crisscrossed with staples, and now he is fighting for his life from the infection that the injuries have caused. And that is just one example of what I saw this week. I will spare you any more wrenching true stories.

God help our men and women in uniform. Please do something to end this madness


5th Station: Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry his cross.
Reading #5

There are (according to the US State Department) 190 independent countries in the world. Last year, 154 countries either took delivery of or signed new contracts for US arms. That’s about 80% of the world receiving arms made in the USA by arms manufacturers, the largest of which is Lockheed Martin.

The US policy on Foreign Military Sales explicitly states that the benefit to the arms industry will be considered when deciding on arms sales. The profitability of arms sales is assured with the US government providing loan guarantees and assistance worth of billions of dollars.

There was an adage of the British imperial construct that said, “Great powers have no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.”

Oil. Weapons. Markets. War is nothing but a market for Lockheed Martin.

6th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.
Reading #6

Lest we ever (ever) forget, it was the United States that created and unleashed the very definition and reference for global terror: Nuclear weapons.

One Trident submarine (there are 18) carrying 24 missiles, with eight nuclear warheads per missile, is capable of 1,000 Hiroshima. Lockheed Martin manages most the US nuclear bomb complex and is the manufacture of Trident missiles. Ninety-nine percent of all high-level radioactive material in the US has been generated by nuclear weapons production. Plutonium, which fuels nuclear bombs, has a toxic life of 240,000 years — 10,000 human generations.

Bush’s Nuclear Posture Review, affirms the centrality of nuclear weapons in US war planning, urges resumption of nuclear testing and production of new lower-yield (i.e., useable) earth penetrating nuclear warheads to destroy underground bunkers, and removes the taboo of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations.

Nuclear weapons have poisoned our earth, our spirits, our imagination, and our judgment with the threat of unimaginable death and destruction.

Oh, how The Christ cries out for our forsaken humanity.

7th Station: Jesus falls the 2nd time.
Reading #7
“We’re going to fight in space,” said General Joseph Ashy, former commander-in-chief of the US Space Command. “We’re going to fight from space, and we’re going to fight into space.”

Plans for “Star Wars” missile defense are but the next big step in a much larger plan for the full militarization of space. Lockheed Martin knows full well what “Star Wars” means because it is working on the extremities of the scheme, everything in between, and beyond.

The Navy’s Theater Missile Defense plan is to use Aegis cruisers, like the ones which a year ago were firing cruise missiles into Iraq as part of the “shock and awe” terrorizing strategy. With specially designed missiles adapted to shoot down missiles in their boost-phase,  Aegis cruisers, produced by Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, New Jersey and now being sold to Taiwan and Japan, would be deployed off the coast of North Korea and China. This first step in “Star Wars” missiles is now being called Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense

Further down the road but no less underway for Lockheed Martin is the development of the Space-Based Laser that harkens back to Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative plan to knock out satellites and missiles in space with laser beam technology.

Beyond Star Wars, though, there’s the larger and more chilling outline for the militarization of space summarized by the US Space Command in its Vision for 2020 document: “The globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-notes’...military forces have evolved to protect national interests, both military and economic. During the rise of sea commerce, nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests. During the westward expansion of the United States, military outposts and the cavalry emerged...The emergence of space power follows both these models.”

Plans for Star Wars and the militarization of space swept aside the Anti-Ballistic Missile  treaty (and with it, international law). The Bush Administration has combined the  “Fortress America” of National Missile Defense with the imperial designs inherent in  the militarization of heavens. And that’s no movie, it’s the real  “Star Wars”.

8th Station: Jesus consoles the women of Jerusalem

Reading #8
Curt Weldon is the vice chair of the House Armed Service Committee and represents one of the largest Congressional districts in the country. He represents the 7th district which stretches from Delaware County to much of Montgomery County and includes both Boeing and where we stand today, Lockheed Martin. Weldon’s Congressional committee oversees a U.S. military budget that for fiscal year 2005 will rise to $417.4 billion–20% higher than anytime during the Cold War, $95 billion more than when Bush took office in January 2001.And the $417.4 billion figure doesn’t even include the $81 billion supplemental bill just approved for war in Iraq.

The Bush Administration’s fiscal year 2005 increase in military spending ($48 billion),is (in real dollars): the largest increase since 1966 and the height of the Vietnam War.. The increase alone is larger than the military budget of any other nation on earth, except Russia which spends about $56 billion on its military.

The Bush Administration projects the spending of $3.5 trillion on the military over the next 10 years, at a time when State governments are running a combined deficit of $35 billion and anticipate a shortfall of $11.3 billion in education funds.

Lockheed Martin is the chief beneficiary of the surge in military spending. Curt Weldon is one of Lockheed Martin’s chief benefactors  and, in turn, has benefitted from Lockheed Martin’s political contributions.

The billions and billions of dollars, nearly half a trillion dollars during the current fiscal year,  that go into the making of weapons, that go to Lockheed Martin, means war and the theft of resources from those who need. Earlier this year, Lockheed Martin boasted the receipt of a $ 4 billion to engineer targets for “Star Wars” ballistic missile defense.  

In the face of every homeless person, of every person that hungers for community and justice, is a reflection of this time of war, the time of Lockheed Martin.

9th Station: Jesus falls the 3rd time

Reading #9

Yesterday, March 24, Holy Thursday,  marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop  Oscar Romero as he was saying Mass in the chapel of his church in San Salvador. The night before he had delivered his last sermon. In it he called on Salvadoran soldiers to stop the repression and violence which had engulfed the country at the time. The U.S. government was providing military aid and arms to the Salvadoran government in its attempt to smash the popular resistance movement.

The poor peasant population was increasingly the target of the U.S. backed Salvadoran government acting on behalf of the few families that owned most of the country. Priests, nuns, and religious workers were being murdered and disappeared. Archbishop Romero spoke directly to the soldiers saying: “...No soldier is obliged to obey an order against God’s law. No one has to fulfill an immoral law. It is time for you to recover your own conscience and to obey your conscience before obeying a sinful command. The Church cannot remain silent in the face of such an abomination ...In the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people whose cries rise ever more thunderously to heaven, I ask you, I beg you, I implore you, I order you, in the name of God: stop the repression.”  

Through  subsequent investigations of the the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador, all those involved in the the murder of Archbishop Romero and other murders in El Salvador were trained by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning’s  School of the Americas.  

In the knowledge and presence of the poor, the tortured and imprisoned - all those on whom, and at whose expense, war is made, whether that be in Afghanistan or Iraq, Colombia, or North Philadelphia, is also, paradoxically, the presence of the child born without dwelling, who would die the tortured death of a political prisoner

10th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments.

Reading #10

Like the child who was able to see that the Emperor was without clothes, can we see what’s before us today?

Can we see the greed, the lies, the violence that lay before us? Can we see the illusions of security that come from making war?

September 11, 2001, all of our imperial illusions of security based on nuclear weapons, or Star Wars shields, or corporations, shattered in a wink. We were vulnerable, just like everybody else on this fragile planet. If there be such a thing as real security then it must rest on something more than what we can do for ourselves with muscle or weapons, something that has to do with relationship with others and the earth, with fairness, with honoring the commonweal and the commonwealth, with being neighbor not the overlord. And that means justice.

Bombs may win wars and bring the false peace of victory, but justice will never be achieved with bombs and cruise missiles nor with Star Wars and out of this world plans (however profitable) for the militarization of space. The only victor in war is war itself.  

No, if you want real peace — not dominion or wealth or empire — then work for justice.

11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross
Reading #11:

“Non-cooperation with evil,” Gandhi preached, “is as essential as cooperation with good.”

There is an uncompromising difference between the privileged wealth secured through every weapon built by Lockheed Martin and the faithful demands for justice and peace. It is nothing less than the difference between crucifixion and resurrection, cooperation and resistance.

Exactly one year to the day before his death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King spoke out against the war in Vietnam from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City. In that speech, he described the relationship between US global policies and the domestic violence of poverty. Calling the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” he called for resistance to the “evil triplets of American society: racism, materialism, and militarism.”

We resist the war-making of Bush and Company, and his corporate  patrons, Lockheed Martin

The Dover Air Force Base is located 50 miles south of Philadelphia just outside of Dover, DE. It is where all U.S. troops killed in action are returned in anonymity. Since the end of the Vietnam War (the last televised war) the press has been banned from the  Base. Families of the dead, also barred from the Base, must wait on the military delivery plan of their loved ones who arrive not in coffins or caskets, but in “transfer tubes.”

Last March, at the gates to the Dover Air Force Base we  began, like today, a Trail of Mourning & Truth that would end at the White House as we attempted to deliver the names of the war dead - U.S., Iraqi.- and to confront the lies on which the war is based and the lies for which it continues.  One by one mothers and fathers read the names of their sons and daughters, and hundreds of other U.S. troops killed in Iraq, and of thousands of Iraqis, killed in Iraq. Fernando Suarez, who traveled to  Iraq as part of a peace delegation, read the first names as he said: "Bush lied and who died? My son, Jesus!". Bush lied and who died: Sherwood R. Baker, Inad Mohammad,  Seth Dvorin, Anood Talib,

The crosses before us today announce the fact of Lockheed Martin - weapons and war. These  crosses also bespeak the casualties of war and weapons, of human neglect and environmental indifference, of the greed and violence summarized daily and made corporate in Lockheed Martin. These crosses represent the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ today.

We stand in resistance to Lockheed Martin. We embrace the nonviolent cross of our time: resistance to war and militarism, the works of peacemaking and service  to the victims of war, resistance to the injustice that is Lockheed Martin, the face of war-making today.

Today, we remember Jesus’ words: “Peace, I leave with you; my peace I give to you...”(John 14:27)

11th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross (at rear driveway entrance)

12th Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross
(Period of silence and intoning of the bell)
At the rear driveway entrance to Lockheed Martin: Civil Disobedience proceeds; all others should remain on sidewalk.

13th and 14th Stations: Jesus is taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb.
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Nine people (Tom Mullian, Theresa Camerota, Marion Brown, Beth Freindlan, Carroll Clay, Joseph Clay, Vint Deming, Mary Jo McArthur, and Bob Smith) were arrested after carrying a  large coffin, with pictures of Iraqi and U.S. war dead. - the Human Price of Lockheed Martin War Profits - , and a cross into the rear driveway entrance to Lockheed Martin. All nine were
cited for disorderly conduct and released. The coffin and cross were
carried the length of the Lockheed Martin weapons complex. Both the large
cross and each of the crosses during the Trail of Mourning and Truth had
Lockheed Martin logos at the crucifixion nail points.