Police arrested two demonstrators who partially blocked access to the parking lot of Northampton’s L3Harris facility with a large sign early Wednesday morning. They were part of a group of about 20 protesters who said they intended to raise awareness of the weapons industry’s presence in western Massachusetts and its links to the genocide in Gaza.
“It’s kind of a big secret that we have a major arms manufacturer in the middle of Northampton,” one protester, Phil Wilson, said.
While Northampton’s L3Harris facility primarily manufactures nonlethal maritime technology, the company is implicated in border policing and war crimes in Gaza, according to the anti-war American Friends Service Committee.
Wednesday’s protest, organized by Demilitarize Western Mass, an activist group dedicated to combating the military-industrial complex at the local level, started at about 6:30 a.m. in pouring rain. Activists unfurled fake blood-stained banners and dumped buckets of fake blood at the two entrances of the L3Harris facility. Others placed blood-stained swaddling meant to represent the corpses of children. Activists sat on the crosswalks at each entrance, preventing employees from entering.
The protest is the latest of many at the facility since October, 2023.
Some L3Harris employees simply drove over the grass to get to the building’s parking lot, while others parked at apartment buildings across the street and walked to the facility, where they were met with chants of, “Get another job!”
Some L3Harris workers, huddled in the building’s windows, appeared to be watching the demonstration. Other employees laughed or smirked as they drove past the demonstrators, while many simply ignored them.
One protester carried a large sign featuring L3Harris CEO Christopher Kubasik with fangs and blood dripping from his mouth, others draped crime scene tape along the sidewalk. Another protester wore a costume resembling the Grim Reaper, with a black robe and a skull mask.
Marked Northampton Police cruisers arrived shortly after the protest started along with several unmarked cars and officers in plain clothes, one of whom identified himself as being with Northampton PD. Though officers came and went throughout the demonstration, there were around five officers who guarded the facility’s driveway and directed traffic for employees to get in.
Around 7 a.m., police officers gave demonstrators a final warning to move their materials and stop blocking the entrance. The protesters complied and moved to the public sidewalk, but the fake blood remained, which L3Harris employees carefully avoided while driving into the parking lot.
At about 7:25 a.m., a Northampton fire truck arrived to wash away the fake blood. Some protesters stood over the stains on the crosswalk to prevent them from being washed away but were quickly escorted aside by Northampton police.
As firefighters began to wash away the blood, activists chanted, “You can’t wash away their crimes!”
“You don’t like blood on the ground? What about in Gaza?” shouted Nick Mottern, a local veteran and activist with the pacifist group Veterans for Peace.
A goal of Wednesday’s protest was to get “up close and personal” with L3Harris employees and push them to confront the implications of their work, Mottern told The Shoestring.
Like many defense contractors, L3Harris produces a wide range of products and services — from the relatively benign, such as submarine periscopes made at its Northampton facility, to the invasive, including surveillance technology used by U.S. immigration authorities and the Israeli military, to the lethal, such as components for JDAM bombs and other explosives.
To Mottern, even periscope production is cause for concern. He pointed to L3Harris periscopes being used on nuclear-armed submarines. “A submarine is useless without a periscope,” he said.
At about 7:30 a.m., as firefighters continued to wash away the fake blood, Northampton police arrested two demonstrators partially blocking the road.
It was at this time that three unidentified people who appeared to work in a security role with L3Harris started coordinating with police officers. One of these people pointed to this reporter while speaking to a police officer, who quickly demanded the reporter move to the public sidewalk and threatened him with arrest.
After the arrests, the police presence dwindled and some protesters began to leave. A Hampshire County paddy wagon was seen leaving the L3Harris parking lot, though it did not appear to be transporting any arrested activists.
Wilson, a longtime Northampton resident, said he believes L3Harris’ presence often goes unnoticed. He said he and others have been meeting with Northampton’s Ward 3 councilor, Quaverly Rothenberg, in hopes of forcing the company out of Northampton. If residents were more aware of the defense footprint in their town, he argued, it would be the first step toward rallying public support to shut down the facility for good.
“If we had a system of direct democracy where people voted on whether L3Harris would be allowed to stay here, I don’t see any way they could possibly win that vote,” Wilson said.