Every year, U.S. war profiteers — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Boeing — fuel violence here and abroad with billions of dollars of weapons manufacturing to arm violent regimes in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Philippines, so many other countries – and to local police departments across the U.S.
Our local event was held in response to a national call to action from The Dissenters (https://wearedissenters.org/). They say: “Our communities are rising up to break the power of the U.S. war industry, and halt the unjust war on communities of color around the world.”
In Buncombe County, we called out Pratt & Whitney, the Raytheon division that is building a plant here to make jet engine components for the F-35 fighter jets. We also urged our local governments, businesses, and universities to divest from war corporations, to say no more complicity with white supremacist militarism and imperialism.
We gathered with signs and speakers to express our dissent from the war industry and called for a commitment to peace, justice, and sustainability.