Hampton Roads is SHUTTING IT DOWN for Gaza: an Interview with HamptonRoads4Palestine
02/05/2024
In our recent article on Virginia and Israel’s numerous military ties, we mentioned that the ten largest American defense corporations operate out of Hampton Roads. If you haven’t read that article, you should totally check it out. But the important thing to understand is that the American and Israeli military industrial complexes are bedfellows, and all of our defense production is IDF defense production, too.
Understanding this, Hampton Roads 4 Palestine – a loose coalition of Tidewater region affinity groups – have carried out several actions against defense corporations in the Hampton Roads area. In December, they successfully shut down business for a day at the General Dynamics building in Norfolk. As the fifth-largest military company in the world, GD manufactures a huge amount of the American artillery heading to Israel. This war is hugely profitable for them: GD’s executive vice president Jason Aiken said himself that with the war in Ukraine, they were already “working ahead of schedule to accelerate that production capacity”, and the “Israel situation is only going to put upward pressure on that demand.”
That’s why Hampton Roads 4 Palestine blocked GD’s operations, and have taken action against other corporations such as the ZIM Israeli shipping company. As Hampton Roads 4 Palestine said about their action on Instagram, “every moment of lost productivity counts in slowing down the war machine.”
But when we went searching for further news coverage of the actions, we found nothing. If you didn’t follow HR4P on Instagram, you never would have known it happened! (On a much larger scale, this reminds us of western news media’s reporting on the genocide charges South Africa brought against Israel. While many American and British news agencies fully reported Israel’s opening defense, you would have been hard-pressed to find much coverage of the day before, when South Africa laid out their evidence and charges against Israel in minute detail.) In an effort to bridge that news gap even a bit, we reached out to Hampton Roads 4 Palestine. Below, they offer a further account of their action.
To the best of your knowledge, how did the plan for shutting down GD come about?
“From the start of our organizing conversations, we have recognized the vital role our region plays in the manufacture and shipment of arms, as well as the role our naval base (the biggest in the US) plays in supporting Israel’s occupation.
“We brainstormed several arms sites to target to shut down operations. GD made the most sense logistically and is named by Pal Action as a major international target. We previously protested and shut down a day of operations at ZIM shipping (the US headquarters are located in Norfolk), but felt a GD factory would be a more direct material target than the ZIM headquarters.”
And how did it go day of? Do you feel y’all were successful? Were there any notable incidents or observations (positive or negative)?
“We planned a surprise arrival to the factory and in that sense we were very successful. Nobody at GD or in the local NPD seemed to be alerted to our presence when we first arrived. We had a good turnout (about 3 dozen folks) given the surprise nature of the action. Almost immediately we had a confrontation with the GD security guards, who seemed both surprised and somewhat powerless to enforce any rules about blocking the road to GD. Within the first 20 minutes of the action it seemed we had successfully blocked the entry to GD, as a big truck was forced to reverse and not enter the compound and no further workers came into the later shifts.
“We caught the eye of many workers during the shift change. We passed out leaflets to the workers informing them of the company’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and how they could oppose it. Several members of our group had productive and thoughtful conversations with the workers passing by, but we hope to return for more!”
In terms of Hampton Roads, what do you feel folks need to know?
“ This is a moderately conservative area that's entire culture and economy is dependent on the US military. In many ways it is the ‘belly of the beast’. The resistance movement here generates hope for the many people who don’t feel represented by the military culture. We have many Black and immigrant communities here that have been left out for decades of the area’s prosperity. We have dockworkers, shipyard workers, and city workers whose labor the city is built on, who fight to have their voices heard and labor recognized with fair wages.”
How do you suggest folks in Hampton Roads get involved in the movement for Palestine?
“Follow @hamptonroads4palestine on Instagram and attend one of our events!"