Workday Magazine
In South Carolina, a May Day Picket of Israeli Weapons Company Supplying Munitions Used in Lebanon
LADSON, S.C. — Angela Washington stands on a busy road nestled in pine and live oak trees, shaking her fists as she shouts into a bullhorn.
“We don’t want you here,” she yells in the direction of an Elbit America factory that is making powerful artillery Israel is using in its attacks on Lebanon. “This is being used to kill women and children and orphans.”
Washington, an organizer with Tri-City Tenant Union, is one of about 75 protesters who gathered in Ladson, South Carolina to wage a May Day protest against Elbit America, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, the largest weapons company in Israel. A local coalition, Elbit Out of SC, has been waging weekly pickets against the company, but today is special: It’s International Workers’ Day, and protesters are connecting their campaign to the national call for “no work, no school, no shopping” put out by unions and community groups across the country. Here, protesters are demanding, “No Work, No School, No War.”
They don’t want a company in their own backyard, taking money out of local schools through tax breaks, to make weapons being used in attacks on Lebanon, where Israel has killed more than 2,500 people since March 2. “We are out here to honor the workers who gave us the 8-hour workday, who fought and died for that right,” says Alex Bismuth, an organizer with Elbit Out of SC. “We have no say in how the profits we are generating are being spent.”
“It often feels remote from our lives, but the facility behind us is shipping Howitzer cannons.