On Monday, April 15, 2024, on the National Day of Disruption in Solidarity with Palestine, an estimated sixty of us gathered at 6:30 a.m. to picket the Goleta headquarters for Raytheon, which supplies Israel with parts for its F-16 attack jets, 1,000 pound bunker buster bombs and night-vision goggles for genocide in Gaza. (scroll to links for speeches)
Raytheon, along with Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney, is a subsidiary of RTX, one of the largest weapons contractors in the world with 185,000 employees.
As Raytheon's guard snapped photos of us lined up in front of the headquarters on Hollister Ave., we called on Central Coast cities, counties, colleges and non-profits to sever their relationship with Raytheon and divest their funds from Raytheon & other war profiteers on the Central Coast, such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, also located in Goleta's "infra-red valley."
The picket line and rally were organized by the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition, CODEPINK-Santa Barbara and Dissenters, a national anti-militarist youth organization, and drew contingents from Santa Barbara, Goleta, Isla Vista, Saticoy, Ventura and Los Angeles.
Anti-war activists sang "Ceasefire Now" "Let Gaza Live" and "Give Peace a Chance" songs and shouted chants "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Raytheon has got to go" as drivers honked in support.
In addition to the sponsoring organizations, speakers represented UCSB's Black Student Union, UCSB's Academics for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, The Lab805 (public space in Saticoy), EcoJustice (program on KPFK, 98.7 FM, Santa Barbara), Veterans for Peace and others.
CODEPINK member Marcy Winograd delivered the following speech:
We are members of the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition, CODEPINK-Santa Barbara and The Dissenters joining in this National Day of Disruption, April 15, 2024, in solidarity with Palestine.
We are here today in front of Raytheon headquarters in Goleta to demand an end to collaboration with Raytheon, one of the most lethal war profiteers complicit in genocide in Gaza, where Israel subsidized by US tax dollars robbed from schools, housing, health care and climate has killed or maimed over 100,000 Palestinians, bombed their homes to rubble, starved their children and leveled every university in a crime called scholasticide,a Palestinian concept that refers to the physical destruction of centers of knowledge.
We are here to join cities across the world participating in the National Day of Disruption to disrupt the war industry executing this genocide, to disrupt business as usual, to disrupt Raytheon which supplies the Israeli military with missiles for its F-16 fighter jets, as well as 1,000 pound bunker busters to annihilate more innocent civilians in Gaza.
Locally, we call on cities, counties, colleges and non-profits on the Central Coast to divest from Raytheon and war profiteers, to refuse partnerships with Raytheon or RTX as it is called on the stock exchange, where its stock–much to the glee of RTX execs–shot up in value after October 7th.
We are here to educate the public about Raytheon, a war profiteer that boasts $69 billion in sales last year, and counts among its missile clients not only Israel, but Saudi Arabia, responsible for killing over a hundred thousand people in Yemen.
RTX’s subsidiary Pratt and Whitnney maintains the engine parts for F-16 attack jets and signed a 15-year contract with the Israeli military.
Raytheon touts itself as a company that takes corporate responsibility seriously, all the while sending the Israeli Occupation Forces missiles to kill and maim in Gaza–this while Israel auctions natural gas exploration contracts off the coast of Gaza during a genocide.
We call on community organizations like the Food Bank of Santa Barbara not to honor Raytheon as a Hunger Hero, as it did last December, for the nickels and dimes it donates while its bombs leave Gaza in ruins, with two million people facing famine, children eating grass.
It is a travesty that in the richest nation of the world 34 million people are food insecure, 40,000 of them in Santa Barbara County, while our Congress–sold to one of the highest bidders–Raytheon–hurls our taxpayer dollars at the war profiteers who then brand themselves as community partners to combat hunger while complicit in mass starvation.
Raytheon is not a community partner; Raytheon is a genocide partner–partnering with the US government to erase the Palestinians, who will not be eased, not now and not in 1948 when terrorists destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages–burning some to the ground to make way for the State of Israel, an ethno state now serving as a model for white supremacists.
We call on Goleta Valley Junior High School to sever its ties with Raytheon, which infiltrates our schools with a club called, “Girls Who Code” designed to groom our young girls for technical careers in warfare.
We call on Congress member Salud Carbajal to reject Raytheon campaign cash lest it influence his votes as a member of the House Armed Services Committee overseeing military spending and near trillion dollar military budgets which Carbajal routinely rubber stamps. We demand Carbajal vote NO on the next $95 billion war supplemental with over $14 billion for more weapons for Israel, more money for Raytheon. We demand Carbajal refuse to meet with lobbyists from Raytheon, which spent over $11 million dollars last year to peddle influence on Capitol Hill.
We call on Carbajal to serve us, the people, not Raytheon, the corporation.
We call on the University of California at Santa Barbara, a mile away, to end its partnership with Raytheon to develop infrared red imaging for missiles and for night vision goggles that allow soldiers to see night as though it is day while they hunt and kill in service to a US empire that employs Israel as its Middle East proxy.
We call for our public university to end its pipeline to the war industry–funneling students into careers at Raytheon, where this company exploits our engineering students’ talents for homicide, ecocide and ultimately omnicide–the eradication of all life on earth. Raytheon is a subcontractor for Northrop Grumman on The Sentinel, the new land based weapon of the nuclear triad, with nuclear warheads 20 times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki incinerating 200,000 people in a span of three days.
We call on UCSB to remove advertisements for Raytheon from the university website, where one post reads, “UCSB’s Technical Staff and Facilities allows Raytheon’s Vision Systems to do Technology Development at a Fraction of the Cost,” A more apt headline would read, “Our public university has given the keys to Raytheon to exploit graduate students as cheap labor for the war industry.”
We say, No More! Evict Raytheon from the University of California.”
In the midst of genocide, one asks, “Where is the hope?” The hope lies with us, with the people in the street, with CODEPINK confronting electeds in the halls of Congress, at the gates of the war-profiteers, in front of Raytheon’s headquarters in Goleta where people of conscience say not in our name shall genocide be waged. The hope lies at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the United Nations, where Israel is on trial for genocide, unmasked before the world to awaken the world to the crimes of settler colonialism; the hope lies at the union halls where our brothers and sisters are demanding the Biden administration support a lasting ceasefire. Where is the hope? The hope is in the historical record which tells us empires always fall and that people, when they organize, can win. Power to the people!
Below are clips from speeches:
Pastor David Moore of Santa Barbara
https://vimeo.com/935872313?share=copy
Leo Martinez of Lab805
https://vimeo.com/935112603?share=copy
Marcy Winograd (Central Coast Antiwar Coalition) (portion of speech) & Cindy Piester, Veterans for Peace
https://vimeo.com/935881697?share=copy
You can follow Central Coast Antiwar Coalition on Instagram at #centralcoastantiwarcoalition. For more information or to join the Google group email [email protected].
