Lockheed Lockdown

Facing prosecution for last year's trespass at Rick Santorum's office, the Brandywine Peace Community's Philadelphia 14 just can't stop protesting.

by Sam Tremble

protest

Photo By: Ray Torres (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It's Good Friday, but a dozen Lockheed Martin security guards joining hands are not engaged in prayer. Stretched across the entrance to the Lockheed Martin facility above King of Prussia Mall, they are forming a human barricade of criss-crossed arms and black boots, backed by another dozen Upper Merion township police, including one German shepherd.

On adjacent Goddard Boulevard, a paddy wagon is parked between two police SUVs with flashing lights. Ten members of the Brandywine Peace Community (BPC) walk toward the line, each holding a 4-foot-tall wooden cross. The crosses, part of BPC's annual Stations of Justice and Peace demonstration, bear anti-war messages and a picture of Jesus' crown of thorns. The words "Weapons & War" read across while "Christ Crucified" reads down. At the top of each is a picture of Christ's thorns and the names of three dead. On one cross, Kyle J. Renehan, 21, of Oxford and Hamza Reekad, 6, of Iraq are named as Iraq war dead. Ethel Freeman, who died abandoned in her wheelchair at the New Orleans Convention Center after Katrina hit, is named as a domestic poverty casualty.

Robert Smith, BPC's founder, inspired at 18 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in protest of the Vietnam War at Harlem's Riverside Church ("Somehow this madness must cease," exclaimed King of the violence), sees direct connections between the atrocities of war, domestic poverty and the manufacturing of weapons. Lockheed Martin is the largest weapons manufacturer in the world and the recipient of extravagant government contracts. BCP believes that if that money — the taxpayers' money — was redirected toward programs of social uplift, poverty and injustice would no longer plague the country. Smith founded BPC 30 years ago to direct the momentum of the Vietnam movement against corporate profiteers of war.

"One of the lessons we'd learned from the Vietnam war period was that there needs to be a community," says Smith. "And there needs to be a spiritual underpinning to that community [to] provide those communities with the strength to persevere."

It's the group's spiritual basis that has kept it together while other political groups that arose to meet specific challenges disbanded either after the goal was achieved or, as happens too often, met with repeated failures. BPC is in it for the long haul: Their continued campaigns are based less on results and more on moral and spiritual obligations.

BPC grew out of Smith's early political endeavors. In 1970, he spent seven months in Allenwood Federal Prison for resisting the draft. Upon release, he began working with local peace groups in Delaware County, where he attended Delaware County Community College. Their work consisted mostly of draft counseling, draft board blockades and getting arrested. During this period, Smith was in and out of various jails for five- to 10-day sentences. In 1971, he formed the Street Messenger Community Project in Media. The group committed one of the most famous acts of resistance in U.S. history in March 1971, when they broke into an FBI office in Media and uncovered files documenting the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign of surveillance and neutralization of anti-war and civil rights groups.

"There are some people who only know Media by that," says Smith. "It was reported around the world.

"In the wake of that, the FBI was, let's just say, on Street Messenger a lot," says Smith. "The woman who would become my wife was asked to become a government informant."

Out of this group, the Brandywine Alternative Fund was formed. Seeing a direct connection between taxes paid and wars waged, they refused to pay their taxes and instead gave out grants and loans to social change groups. Some of the groups, such as the Wilma Theater, went on to become very successful.

After the war ended and Carter pardoned the draft resisters, some members of the Brandywine Alternative Fund banded together to form the Brandywine Peace Community in 1977.

On April 23, 14 members of BPC (including Smith), calling themselves "The Philadelphia Declare Peace 14," face prosecution in Philadelphia Municipal Court (1301 Filbert St.) on three misdemeanor charges: defiant trespass, criminal trespass and conspiracy to commit trespass. On Sept. 25, 2006, they occupied the lobby of Rick Santorum's office at 1339 Chestnut St., hoping to have him sign a declaration of peace calling for the withdrawal of all troops by March 2007. Since it is a private building, it's up to the management who can enter. But the matter is complicated by Santorum's status as a public official, who should be accessible to the public.

While the trial is in session, BPC will hold a vigil on the northeast corner of City Hall at Broad Street and JFK Boulevard.

Though this is one of the first trials for nonviolent resistance to the Iraq war, the case is certainly not sensational. The trial probably won't set any precedents. If found guilty, the defendants are more likely to receive fines and community service than jail sentences. But winning it is far from inconsequential.

"It would be a vindication of First Amendment rights," says civil rights attorney Paul Hetznecker, representative and legal adviser to the group." And I think that's pretty important."

Hetznecker has known Smith since the mid-'80s and is currently collaborating with him on BPC's "Don't Spy on Me" campaign, launched last June. The main tactics so far have been to use the Freedom of Information Act in an effort to uncover government surveillance of innocent citizens, designed to disrupt free speech. Participants are encouraged to request information about their own political activities and about groups that they belong to. The goal is to legally achieve the same level of government accountability and transparency that the 1971 FBI burglary sought.

Back at Lockheed, the 10 BPC members holding crosses stop at the barricade, though their intention is to bring their message inside the doors. As nonviolent resisters, they stop at the line to avoid physical confrontation and simply hold their crosses. Beth Friedland, 46, of Center City kneels before the guards.

"I always kneel. It's my way of submitting myself. I'm just putting it all down for peace," she later explains.

A guard informs the resisters one by one that they are trespassing. They refuse to leave and are escorted to the paddy wagon. About 25 supporters watching from the sidewalk begin to pack up their signs and displays into cars parked in the IMAX and Champps parking lots across the street. Daniel Lanctot, 14, present with his father and three younger siblings from Lansdowne, picks up the discarded crosses left in the street. An officer approaches and towers over him.

"Thank you," says the officer. Lanctot stands up, looks at him but says nothing, and carries as many crosses as he can to the sidewalk.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

For more information on the Brandywine Peace Community, call 610-544-1818 or visit brandwyinepeace.com.