Pittsburgh activists 'barricade the war machine'

“Shut down the war machine” is a good, popular, militant slogan—but it’s easier said than done. On March 2, however, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group successfully halted operations for the day at the National Robotics Engineering Center, described as “a largely Pentagon-funded venture of Carnegie Mellon University that has become a world leader in warfare robotics.”

Photo: Pittsburgh Organizing Group

The POG web site relayed the following account:

“Two actions were organized for the purpose of creating a barricade. The first was a non-publicized effort by four affinity groups to barricade the main entrances through the use of lockboxes (long pipes through which people’s hands are locked together), u-locks, and a tripod. These groups deployed at 5 a.m., before police were on the scene. This action alone blocked all vehicular access to NREC and severely disrupted the possibility of pedestrian traffic.

“The second piece of the action was a publicly announced 7:30 a.m. march from Friendship Park to NREC, which also intended to barricade the facility. As expected, a large number of police were deployed at various locations to ensure the march would not be able to successfully create a barricade.

“The point of the unannounced action was to occupy and hold the space we wanted before the police arrived. The march was intended to bring more people to an ongoing barricade and leave open the possibility of a second attempt if the first was quickly removed.

“Thirty-four people blockaded the main entrances to the facility in the largest act of civil disobedience/direct action in Pittsburgh since the war began. Having brought in members of Homeland Security one week before the action to train police on how to remove us, it still took the police over five hours to get 15 protesters out of the street, three hours after the police and paramedics actually began trying to cut people out.”

The protesters “unlocked and dismounted around noon after learning that we had successfully shut the facility down for the day, seven hours after we arrived.”

In a statement to reporters, a clearly defensive CMU insisted that the barricade did not completely succeed in shutting them down. Telecommuting allowed “nearly everyone” to do some work.

“But they missed the point of this action entirely,” according to a report on the POG web site. “What we said we’d do, and did in fact do, was barricade the NREC facility as a tangible act of resistance against the war.”

“It is our responsibility to start to put ourselves on the line to end this war and start to take our world back,” stated Tom Nomad, a Cleveland antiwar activist who was arrested.