P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA, 19081-- brandywine@juno.com (610) 544-1818

A large banner reading: "Welcome to LOCKHEEDVILLE* : where the profits of war matter (and people don't)!" hung from a wall that sits in front of the sprawing Lockheed Martin weapons complex in Valley Forge, PA, a wall that faces the intersection of Mall and Goddard Boulevards directly behind the equally sprawling King of Prussia Mall.  Between the two on the Saturday following this past Thanksgiving sat "Lockheedville", three make-shift shanties made from plastic and cardboard around wooden frames. A few people held banners and signs.  "Many Suffer, Few Profit" was painted on the side of each of the shanties. photos

"Lockheedville" of this and previous years evoked the image of the "Hoovervilles" of the 1930's and the Great Depression when homeless men built shanty towns and named them after President Herbert Hoover who presided over another time of economic dislocation and misery. This year the representation of a shanty-town sitting in front of a weapons complex of the world's largest weapons maker, illustrated the domestic casualties of war economy and war profits, the "elephant in the room" never spoken of in the media coverage of the current economic meltdown.  Never spoken, but there nonetheless..."Lockheedville". 

What is LOCKHEEDVILLE?...
it's Lockheed Martin... the primary contractor for the F-35/Joint Strike Stealth Fighter, "the largest military contract in human history", $200 billion...Its Lockheed Martin's Aegis guided missile warship  ($1.2 billion per warship), the most used weapons system in the U.S. arsenal (from the Gulf War, January, 1991, to the U.S./NATO bombardment in the Balkans and the "shock and awe" cruise missile attacks and aerial bombardment of Iraq, March 2003) and its Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, the "Star Wars of the Seas"...It's Lockheed Martin, one the chief contractors in the Department of Energy's complex of  nuclear weapons facilities, including depleted uranium and waste storage sites...It's Lockheed Martin being one of the trio (along with Boeing and Northrop Gruman) of Ballistic Missile Defense - "Star Wars" -contractors,  the Airborne Laser system being just one of the space weapons under contract, from which Lockheed Martin receives about 10% of its $25 billion a year weapons contracting industry...It's Lockheed Martin being the recruiter of interrogators for U.S. run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

LOCKHEEDVILLE is really all about war and about money, where it goes and where it doesn't, who gets it and who doesn't, who gets bailed-out and who gets foreclosed on, who profits and who suffers, who lives and who dies.  
LOCKHEEDVILLE is the economy of war and societal priorities, of corporate greed at the expense of human need, a real place where more and more people live. 

Face the facts, http://www.nationalpriorities.org/, and tell the truth.