Demonstrators confront war machine

A group named the Port Militarization Resistance has put up a week of resistance here against Iraq war military shipments at the downtown port. Protesters have blocked Stryker combat vehicles, slowed them, demonstrated, kept up 24-hour vigilance, held many meetings and withstood police brutality and at least 15 arrests.

In 2006, Olympia activists fought against the shipment of military equipment for the third Stryker Brigade to Iraq. They took 37 arrests then and at least slowed the shipment.

Now that the Stryker Brigade is returning to Iraq, the confrontation resumes. A statement from the Port Militarization Resistance read, “We oppose Olympia’s complicity in a war whose disastrous effects have been felt worldwide and we actively resist the use of Olympia’s port to further that war.”

Demonstrations began on Nov. 5 when the ship returned from Iraq. The ship carried more than 100 Stryker vehicles to be repaired and refitted, plus other military cargo. On Nov. 7, demonstrators blocked the road in front of the port.

Cops pushed, beat and pepper-sprayed people to get the vehicles through. Protesters reported overwhelmingly positive gestures from troops, such as “thumbs up,” as they drove by in Strykers.

An encampment was set up on Nov. 8 after 200 resisters showed up at the port. The next day, a line of activists stopped a convoy and the trucks were forced to back up. The whole operation was stopped for 18 hours; the cops went home.

On Nov 10, two semi trailers left the port but ran into a line of demonstrators downtown, where three were arrested. Just before the freeway, another line of protestors was shot at by the cops with pepper balls; but the line wouldn’t move. They had locked their arms together with PVC pipe. It took the cops an hour to remove them.

Demonstrations at the port continue. The port resistance movement in Olympia is part of a wider port resistance movement in Washington State over the last 18 months. There have been demonstrations, usually with dozens of arrests, at Tacoma, Indian Island Naval Weapons Depot and Grays Harbor.

As of this writing, most of the vehicles have gone through the Olympia port. The third Stryker Brigade came back to Fort Lewis with 48 fewer troops, soldiers who died in the Iraq war for the aims of Big Oil. ν