King's Anti-War Message   Proclaimed   -Lockheed-Martin

The annual Martin Luther King Day demonstration in front of Lockheed Martin in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, began with a program of speakers, poetry, and a peace choir. Loudspeakers broadcast excerpts of a number of King's speeches and sermons.

After a short walk to the main driveway entrance to Lockheed Martin, other shared readings prepared by the Brandywine Peace Community honored King's message for the present.

Today, we stand before Lockheed Martin in a time of war. Here at this division of the world's largest weapons corporation we remember a martyred prophet, a peacemaker and nonviolent revolutionary. We seek to walk in the steps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So we come to Lockheed Martin, the chief corporate beneficiary of the current surge in war, militarism, and military spending ... Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, speaks of a 40 - 50 year war on terrorism. Are we entering some kind of Orwellian period of unending war where the pauses between bombings are called peace?...

Lest we ever forget. It was the United States that created and unleashed the very definition and reference for the terror of our age: nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have poisoned our earth, our spirits, and our imagination with the threat of unimaginable death and destruction...

On 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 relationship with others and the earth, with fairness, with honoring the commonweal and the common wealth, with being the neighbor not the overlord. And that means justice. Dr. King would say: If you want peace, work for 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.

A dozen people engaged in civil disobedience, forming a human chain across the driveway with banners reading: "Remember King's Dream: Make War No More" and "Resist Lockheed Martin, the face of war-making today!"

The blockade remained some distance short of the police line farther up the entry road for half an hour. An impatient reporter with a deadline looming asked Bob Smith of Brandywine, "When are you all going to get arrested?"

Smith replied, "We didn't come here to get arrested, but to close Lockheed Martin." When the twelve finally began walking toward the main building entrance, all were arrested by police and released with criminal trespass citations. Prosecution is not expected.

For more information, contact Brandywine Peace Community, POB 81, Swarthmore, PA 19081, (610)544-1818, brandywine@juno.com