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| A scene from a recent street protest in front of General Dynamics weapons plant in Saco, Maine |
I had a dream last night. Maybe it was a vision. I was with a group of people who were going to see a movie entitled 'Eponeyous Substructure'. I woke up at 4:30 am with this in my head and went to my desk to write it down so I wouldn't forget.
Then I went back to bed and began composing this blog post in my mind. By 5:00 am I had the draft done so got out of bed again and turned my computer on and began to write.
In my dream before or after the movie a bunch of us were celebrating a birthday. A cake was brought forth which appeared to be made of a jello-like substance. It was eponeyous. I define that word as 'weak, fragile, flimsy'. When someone tried to cut the cake it didn't hold together.
(Once out of bed and on the computer I looked up the word online. I can't ever recall hearing the word before. I found a similar word eponymous which means 'An eponymous character in a play, book, etc. has the same name as the title'. This definition does not relate to my dream word - eponeyous.)
So back to my story.
Yesterday I drove south one hour to Saco, Maine for the weekly Friday Palestine (and now Lebanon) solidarity protest in front of General Dynamics (GD) weapons facility. I've been here about 5-6 times. They make the guidance systems for big bombs that the US is providing to Israel and are being used to level multi-story apartment blocks in Gaza and Beirut. (See this article)
We arrived at GD at 2:30 pm, just in time for the 3:00 pm shift change. Workers drove out in their vehicles and made a left or right turn onto the busy street in front of GD. If you look at the photo above I would be standing at the tail end of the line with my sign.
Just across the street from GD is an elementary school and while we were there lots of young kids were on the playground just yards away from us. Our folks were chanting using two bull horns so the kids were quite interested in the show. They were eventually chased away from the fence by their overseers.
There were basically two kinds of vehicles that came out of GD. Many of the workers were driving the big pick-up trucks that I would say are similar to US Navy destroyers. These are the power boys who turned right in a screeching 'pedal to the metal' rush. Many of them as they passed our protest line shot us the middle finger.
But the real story is the other kinds of vehicles that took the right turn out of GD and passed by where I was standing. They were men and women driving 'sensible' cars. Family cars. They did not screech when they turned onto the street. And the key point is that 7-8 of them flashed peace signs or waved in a way that they wanted us to notice.
This was a sign that things inside GD have become eponeyous.
(I consider myself sort of an expert on reading people inside vehicles while I am on the street holding signs. I have lots of experience doing the sociological research of public opinions during this process. I've been doing it regularly since 1978. I currently hold signs at least three times a week on the street. Over the years I organized 10 peace walks (5 in Florida and 5 in Maine) that were usually 2-3 weeks in length. We protest regularly at BIW where Navy Aegis destroyers at built in Bath, Maine. BIW is owned by GD as well. We see lots of big trucks there.)
So my point is that the protests in Saco have unearthed the eponeyous nature of the work force. Due to the protest there is some level of discussion (and debate) going on inside GD. And some number of workers want to let us know how they feel by screeching their tires or flashing us peace signs. This is a good thing.
My own history
The reason I love and believe in standing outside weapons production facilities and military bases is because this is how I changed from a Young Republican to an independent thinker and anti-imperialist peacenik.
In 1971 (during the US war on Vietnam) I joined the Air Force and after my training was sent to Travis AFB in California. This was an airlift base for the war. GI's came to Travis and got on planes to fly to Vietnam. When the planes returned they brought the walking wounded and body bags of dead troops. Most weekends there were small protests outside the base main gate.
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Protest outside Travis AFB in early 1970's
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These protests created much debate inside the base about the war. In the barracks at night, in the chow hall and on the job we talked about the war - our conversation enlivened by those standing outside the gate with their signs. Little did they know the impact they were having.The substructure of the war machine at Travis became eponeyous - weak, fragile and flimsy.
The OSI (Office of Secret Investigation) on the base would instruct all supervisors at Travis to warn their especially young underlings (like me) to stay away from the main gate on a coming weekend when they learned a protest was planned. They didn't want our minds tarnished. The OSI knew the debate going on inside the base got enlivened when the protests were held outside the gates.
You can't quantify or qualify the impacts of these kind of events in an empirical sense. You just have to believe they work which then compels one to keep doing them. The goal is to make the military machine eponeyous.
Freedom lost in Deutschland
Let me finish with a story from Germany. I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and saw a short video from some unknown German city. The scene was an outdoor cafe where several young men were drinking coffee. One was wearing a T-shirt with a Palestinian flag on it. Suddenly several police (die polizei) approached the table and grabbed the young man and hauled him to a nearby paddy wagon and threw him inside.
Another recent video that went viral was of a young boy (maybe 8 years old) being chased by a gang of polizei because he was carrying a Palestinian flag. They eventually caught him and arrested him.
These two examples from Germany are further indications of a growing international eponeyous substructure. It's a western collapse of culture - a collapse of freedom of speech - a collapse of democracy. The fear of truth by the ruling war mongers.
So this was my dream and my daily reality.
Feel free to join the movement and help expose the eponeyous substructure.
Bruce
