BRANDYWINE PEACE COMMUNITY

P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA, 19081--(610)544-1818

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Plowshares 8

Re-Dedication to Justice, Peace…and Nonviolent Action

September 5, 2010

Lockheed Martin, King of Prussia, PA

Video part 1, video part 2,video part 3, photos by Melissa Elliott, photos from 1981 by Theresa Camerota

 

 

Reading:  Isaiah 2: 2 - 4

Reading of the Plowshare 8 statement (Sept. 9, 1980)

The Hammer Has to Fall (Charlie King)

Speakers and readings…

Dexter Lanctot, Epiphany Plowshares and Epiphany House;

Peter Goldberger, attorney, appellate lawyer for Plowshares 8, and other Plowshares actions;

Letter from Molly Rush during her Plowshares 8 imprisonment to her children

Reading of Some by Daniel Berrigan

Elizabeth McAlister, widow of Philip Berrigan, who lives in Baltimore, MD, at Jonah House, a community, which she and Berrigan formed almost forty years ago, devoted to war resistance

John Schuchardt, attorney,  Marine veteran, and one of the Plowshares 8 who currently lives at the House of Peace in Ipswich, MA,

Song by Tom Mullian

Litany of Memory: (incense), Peace (water), and Hope (hope)

Thirty years ago, this Lockheed Martin building complex and other related plants here in King of Prussia bore the name General Electric, at the time the 5th largest US military contractor and nuclear weapons producer. Its slogan: “We bring good things to life!” Through a series of mergers and acquisitions in 1993, it became Lockheed Martin, at birth the world’s largest war and weapons profiteer. Lockheed Martin, like GE before it, is built on the social acceptance of a permanent war economy and a belief in the ultimate dominance of United States markets and interests around the world. That’s empire, and empire means endless war and the threat of war, even the threat posed by the ultimate threat: nuclear weapons, whose continued existence continue to poison our earth, our spirits, our imagination, and our judgment with the global threat of unimaginable destruction and death. Thirty years after the Plowshares 8, we continue to say:

All:  Swords into Plowshares.  We are filled with hope for our world and for our children … because we will continue to resist.

In a time of endless war, one war just folds into the next. In Afghanistan, the escalating war is accompanied by a whole new concept of bombing and war: unmanned aerial drones that deliver their bombs by remote control from the continental U.S. Lockheed Martin not only produces drones, but also the satellites that guide them to their targets, to their “kills.” The Pentagon budget this year will exceed $800 billion dollars, not including the wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Estimates are now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost $2.4 trillion.  So many suffer, so that very, very few may profit! With annual weapons receipts and profits now totaling more than $43 billion, Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest weapons corporation, international arms supplier, and war profiteer. Thirty years after the Plowshares 8, we continue to say:

All:  Swords into Plowshares.  We are filled with hope for our world and for our children … because we will continue to resist.

On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb test, code-named “Trinity,” took place in an area of desert in New Mexico called Jornada del Muerto – “Journey of Death.” J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs, remembered the passage from the Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three weeks later, foretold the world that we know and the society we’ve become. Sixty-five years of nuclear weapons, militarism and war, invasions and occupations, empire, and the corporate domination of the economy and our democracy, brings us to the places where war is made today. Thirty years after the Plowshares 8, for justice and for peace, we say:

All:  Peace is a plea to save ourselves, our children, the world.  Swords into Plowshares. We are filled with hope for our world and for our children … because we will continue to resist.

People are asked to come to where the nuclear war casing (like the ones that the Plowshares 8 disarmed) sits and the table where the incense burns. You are then invited to dip your hands into the water, and to take some sunflower seeds and scatter them in front of the Lockheed Martin corporate logo as an expression of our continued plea for peace. People are then asked to stretch, hand in hand, across and on both sides of the driveway entrance of Lockheed Martin for a few minutes.

Ceremony prepared by:
Brandywine Peace Community

 

After the ceremony, people are asked to return to their cars for the car caravan to the former GE plant (now: Lockheed Martin) that, on September 9, 1980 was the scene of the Plowshares 8 action. The plant is located on 5th Street, just off of Allendale Road.

Directions: down Mall Boulevard to Willis Road, left on Wills. At Allendale, turn left and proceed up Allendale to 5th Street, where you will turn left and almost immediately see the Lockheed Martin logo.  On 5th Street you are invited to go to the driveway at the bottom end of the plant, and to proceed around the back of plant (the Plowshares 8 entered at center doors in the back) and to come out the top driveway entrance. Park for the time of vigil

Additional Plowshares 8 Resources:

http://www.craftech.com/~dcpledge/brandywine/plow/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowshares_Movement