WarCriminalsWatch Events

Earth Day this year is on Saturday, April 22. In Syracuse, NY, USA, peace and justice groups will bond in solidarity to commemorate it on the day before, April 21st from 12 noon to 4 PM. We'll expose the crimes of the war machine focusing on political, financial, church, industry, and military. The Upstate Drone Action Coalition, Veterans For Peace,  Peace Action of NY, Pax Christi, Code Pink, Ban Killer Drones, Catholic Workers, and university students will join us. Medea Benjamin, Co-founder of Code Pink will be with us in our actions.

1) Starting outside the local offices of Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand, we will spoof the crimes of both Schumer, who takes more weapons makers' blood money than any other US politician, and Gillibrand , who sits on the Senate Defense (sic) Committee and like Schumer, votes every year to increase the US military budget. We will deliver people's subpoenas to both, calling upon them to testify at our November 10-13 Merchants of Death Tribunal.

2) Two blocks away in downtown Syracuse at one of the many JP Morgan Chase banks, we'll do Fat Cats parodies outside and deliver the subpoena to the bank manager, Ms Lynn Nunez.

3) Processing with music, we'll stand before the headquarters of the Diocese of Syracuse and deliver a subpoena to the local Roman Catholic Bishop Douglas Lucia, calling upon him to break his silence and testify in our Merchants of Death Tribunal to the war crimes happening in his diocese. These include, just hiking distance from his office, the activities of the Hancock Killer Drone base, home of the NY National Guard's 174th Attack Wing.

4) We will then caravan just 15 minutes to one of Lockheed Martin's war factories near Syracuse. Lockheed Martin is the king of the Merchants of Death. No other war corporation makes so much profit spreading mayhem around the Earth as Lockheed Martin. We won't be allowed inside their gates but will attach a subpoena to their compound fence. Last fall, Brad Wolf, the mainstay organizer of merchantsofdeath.org, and others including Ret. Army Colonel Ann Wright, delivered a subpoena to the headquarters of Lockheed Martin's national headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland.

5) A short drive from Lockheed Martin will take us to the 174th Attack Wing of the NYS National Guard which once bragged that Afghanistan was their prime target. We don't know what unfortunate foreign people are their target now but we do know that their MQ9 Reaper drones are armed with Hellfire Missiles (made by Lockheed Martin in Orlando, Fl ) and Paveway bombs (made in a Lockheed factory in Archbald, Pa). Dayshift workers at the East Malloy Rd Syracuse killer drone base will be finishing their day's work when we greet them with our banners and signs. At the front gate, we'll attempt to deliver a subpoena to the base commander, Col. William "Rhino" McCrick III. We don't expect to be arrested this time but over the past 13 years of protest scores of us have been arrested, usually charged with trespass and disorderly conduct. And a bunch of us have done time in the local JamesvillePenitentiary for our scrupulosy nonviolent civil resistence to Reaper drone terror. Sometimes we die-in or or do colorful street theatre blocking the main gate (see video footage at upstatedroneaction.org). Hundreds of arrests have occurred and many of us have been jailed for nonviolent resistance to drone terrorism.