You might survive a nuclear strike, but I won’t. I live on the Sharpie X that some foreign general scratched upon the globe. Maybe all of us not residing in Hiroshima or Nagasaki suffer from an imaginative deficit when it comes to matters of mushroom clouds, slow radiation deaths, and the lucky creatures instantly vaporized. You might not live down the road from weapons manufacturer, L3 Harris, but I do. Northampton, Massachusetts has been called the top “lesbian friendly” city in America, and is rather known as a countercultural hub, but I don’t want to idealize my town – we underfund our schools, harass our homeless and might generally be seen as an affluent, complacent town with little diversity. Still, Northampton’s citizens lean as far to the left as any people in our dystopian nation. In 2020 we voted in the Democratic primary by a two to one margin for Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden. We filled our downtown streets with thousands of angry people after the murder of George Floyd and thousands marched a month ago against Trump.

If we can’t offer substantial pushback to one of the most evil outposts of the military industrial complex, who else can? Northampton might be the perfect setting for a pitched battle in opposition to the cold hearted engine of America’s dying empire. We have a rather dramatic clash of inevitable foes – a major manufacturing hub of Gazan genocide, the site where guided systems of nuclear delivery receive loving refinement, and a local town government that conceivably might one day reflect the anti-war values of a dazed, trembling constituency. This is where the rubber meets the road.

L3 Harris occupies one of the highest points on a rolling terrain of glacial origin. It operates within a nondescript glass and metal rectanglular structure that might house a Tire Barn or a Planet Fitness. Atop the bland construction sits a large glass room that overlooks a practice target on Mt Tom, situated several miles to the southeast. Here, the technicians of extinction tinker with state-of-the art optical devices aimed at local geology – Mt Tom, and maybe Beijing or Moscow after that. It’s a dangerous world. L3 Harris has already helped to level Gaza.

Only a few decades ago, this area was the site of an enormous state hospital, with lavish and ornate Victorian brick structures that recently succumbed to the wrecking ball. The mental health tradition of Northampton still colors the neighborhood with nonprofit ServiceNet buildings and The Department of Mental Health staring across the street from the offices where L3 Harris employees design, build and test the optical devices that might someday contribute to the end of organized life on earth. Diagonally from the front of these offices one gazes upon a large, somewhat sterile sprawl of new housing development. A left hand turn out of the L3 Harris parking lot brings you to lush community gardens in a half of a minute. Nothing on Spring Street arouses alarm. I must have jogged past L3 Harris a thousand times on my daily runs without ever imagining that I trotted on the edge of an invisible precipice.

On May 1^st my wife and I, with my son’s dog, Pogo, go to a Northampton protest of several hundred people who March from Prince Street to the local town hall. Lately, whenever I take Pogo to a protest I bring his sign which reads, “Dogs Against DOGE – Bite Fascism.” This is clever enough to attract a “Springfield Republican” photographer and get our pictures in the local paper, but other folks carried more appropriately themed slogans, like “L3 Harris Murders Children in Gaza,” or, “L3 Harris, Out Of NoHo!” The latter sign made me curious – can we really get L3 Harris out of Northampton?

After the protest I call one of our most courageous city council members and ask her, is that a possibility, can the town force them to leave? Funny that you ask, she responds, a group of people are going to meet in my office to explore this. Want to join us?

That is how I learn that I live on a Sharpie X drawn by a hypothetical Russian general. One of my fellow group members emails us this:

“ L3 is a contributor to one of the three triad legs of the US nuclear forces. The sea based leg through its optics related work on the SSBN Ohio Class nuclear subs carrying the Trident D5 ballistic missile (SLBM.) It is this work that qualifies Northampton as a potential counterforce strike target in a nuclear war between the US and Russian nuclear forces.”

I also learn via the group that the City of Northampton has made a rather vague, ineffectual swat at the nuclear industry in the form of a 2019 executive policy order by then Mayor, David Narkewicz:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of chapter thirty B of the general laws and any other general or special law to the contrary, the City of Northampton may disqualify from an award of a contract any bidder or vendor who participates in the design, manufacture or maintenance of nuclear weapons. Such disqualification shall apply to any bidder that is a subsidiary entity controlled by a company that engages in the design, manufacture or maintenance of such weapons, and to any bidder that is a parent or holding entity of a subsidiary company that engages in the design, manufacture or maintenance of such weapons.”

It takes an agile reader a few seconds to understand that this executive order has no teeth. It merely says that the architects of nuclear doom, if they attempt to engage in, say, a side-gig of patching roads or repairing bridges, can be scratched from local contract bidding on the basis of their intention to destroy planet earth. I’d rather assume that L3 Harris could give a rat’s ass about local projects – as the sixth largest munitions manufacturer in the most armed nation on earth, they rake in billions of dollars arming some hundred different nations to the teeth. L3 Harris, of course, plays a major role profiting over the bloody destruction of Gaza, but they also sell arms to Qatar, which supports Hamas. Arming both sides of a conflict is the norm for armaments makers, who see nations as “customers.” Think of Nike giving massive contracts to both LeBron James and Kevin Durant. If either the Lakers or the Suns win, so does Nike. But L3 Harris doesn’t dabble in pull up threes and windmill dunks – their products deliver more important results, leveled cities, tons of rubble, smoking hospital ruins and bodies crushed underneath.

The policy order from former Mayor Narkewicz illustrates something of the confused ambiguity manifest by town officials regarding local munitions manufacturing. When L-3 Communications took over Kollmorgan Electro-Optical a decade and a half ago, the town authorities greeted the development with 13 years of tax breaks for one of the key players in the nuclear weapons industry. The bloody crimes of US military aggression, and US armaments trade has been fueled with the poison of small town complicity. Now, Northampton’s radical community has woken from a long slumber.

On May 14^th I attend, via zoom, a Northampton Ordinance Review Committee meeting that is set up to talk about mundane local things, but also to devote a few moments to the topic of city options vis a vis L3 Harris. The city lawyer, Alan Sewald, stated that he has researched and found no precedent for a local government successfully challenging the rights of an arms manufacturer to operate within city limits. He does not, however, eliminate the possibility of Northampton doing so, but his voice conveys little enthusiasm. He mentions that a city somewhere challenged such a manufacturer on the basis that a munitions factory had been found to have polluted local water sources and endangered the environment. This would not be a factor, he continues, with L3 Harris which poses no direct threat to the Northampton community.

I unmute myself and ask to respond. Only some six people are present and nobody opposes my speaking. I jump right into the idea that some imaginary Russian general wielding a Sharpie might see Northampton as a huge swollen infection upon the planet. I sheepishly admit that this might appear to be far-fetched, but we live in a moment of unlikely events tumbling forth with ever more startling momentum. I am paraphrasing myself somewhat poetically – in truth, I stammer something nervously, groping for each word. To my surprise, people nod approvingly, and the town lawyer offers no pushback.

Later, I meditate rather skeptically on the idea that L3/Northampton comprises the fulcrum of US nuclear threat. After all, we have Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Dynamics, Boeing, Oshkosh, Pratt and Whitney, Northrup Grumman and on and on. These corporations have hundreds of factories distributed across all fifty states. These are all major employers holding massive military contracts, and nonchalantly buried (almost invisibly so) within neighborhoods no more exceptional than the bucolic, rolling hills of Spring Street, Northampton. Maybe everyone in the US lives in the shadow of the munitions empire. It seems possible that I do not inhabit a particularly iconic X drawn by one of Putin’s generals, but does that make L3 Harris any less insidious?

These mega arms conglomerates are connected in highly complex ways. L3 Harris, for example, makes parts for missiles made by Northrup Grumman. All of the big players in the death industry cavort, conspire, merge and grow. And they advertise in the same Orwellian fashion as junk food makers, oil companies and car manufacturers. The advertising strategies that promote Coke, Pepsi and MacDonald’s markets serve Lockheed Martin and L3 Harris. We have been disarmed with a tsunami of advertising bullshit. Here is how L3 Harris would like you to imagine them:

“We are proud of our ability to deliver innovative solutions for our customers’ mission-critical challenges while helping to make the world a safer place. Our 46,000 talented and dedicated employees are committed to creative problem-solving and continuous improvement in everything we do.” – Chris Kubasik L3 Harris Chair and CEO

Here is commercial spin from Boeing:

“We deliver the decisive mission advantage for our customers through enabling global control, global reach and global strike. Our open systems architecture approach delivers flexibility for customers to rapidly upgrade and continuously insert capabilities to outpace the threat.

Boeing ushered in the jet age, launched the space age, revolutionized rotorcraft and defends freedom around the world: Our work matters for those who matter the most.”

No connoisseur of advertising spin can miss the critical valence of the word, “freedom.” The most Orwellian word in the English language has become a mantra in the Madison Avenue, mind embalming slogans of America’s death industry.

Lockheed Martin says it this way:

“Lockheed Martin has a long history of successfully providing its customers with missile and missile systems that are affordable, proven, and in production.

Our reputation is backed by a record of exceptional contractual performance and successful partnerships, in both the U.S. and international defense communities.

Lockheed Martin is supporting the warfighter by providing a wide variety of highly effective and reliable weapons systems to ensure that the right weapon is available for each situation that they may face.”

I have a slight difficulty wrapping my head around the concept of the “international defense community.” Is this a gated community with picnic tables and shuffleboard courts? And what is the “right weapon for each situation they may face?” Which “product” performs best when blowing up an orphanage? An elementary school? A hospital? I imagine neatly dressed salespersons excusing themselves to search the supply closet for a guided system in a cardboard box. Is there a money back guarantee? A sixty day return policy? A promise that Lockheed Martin will not be undersold by Chinese competitors?

The architects of mass extinction have mastered the universal language of capitalism so that a nuclear warhead, a sound system, an electric toothbrush, a used car and a coffee making appliance all dissolve into a murky sameness of customers, salespeople and a population united in the existential quest to get the best deal. In our society we compete as workers and consumers – a lonely battle of one against all with only corporate winners. As democratic socialist writer Grace Blakely stated in a recent interview, “resisting capitalism is about cutting through our sense that we are all alone.”

Seven Northampton residents just a few mornings ago have taken Blakely’s advice as we picket L3 Harris at 6:30 in the morning. I learn that one of my comrades – a veteran in his eighties – has recently been arrested during a protest at L3 Harris. In the hierarchy of resistance some people show singular courage.

We hope to make eye contact with L3 Harris workers as they arrive for their shifts. Someone hands me a sign in red paint stating: “L3 Harris kills in Gaza.” The octogenarian facing court charges waves a flag emblazoned with, “Veterans for Peace.” A man drives by in a pickup truck (not an L3 worker) and screams, “you are all fucking traitors.” Others honk at us in solidarity. Most of the workers pulling into the company parking lot avert their gaze. One flashes the peace sign, but that might be sarcastic. Several wave politely. We can’t know what goes through the minds of these workers. In the well-known case of Lucas Aerospace (a UK based munitions corporation that folded during the 1970’s), a group of armaments workers attempted to turn the company into a worker owned cooperative. These workers aspired to build renewable energy technology rather than weapons. One should never assume that armaments workers do not secretly abhor their niche.

Hannah Arendt observed that Nazi war criminals had little or no access to dissenting views. The seven of us carrying signs early in the morning – five older and elderly men, one middle aged and one younger woman – attempt to jiggle whatever moral vulnerability might twitch uncomfortably within these people. We are free to see them as monsters, victims or potential allies. Our demonstration is premised on embracing the last choice. We protest with the understanding that the divide between munitions workers and anti-war activists might have a bridge. The history of Lucas Aerospace offers encouragement.

There are 550 Northrup Grumman factories operating in the US. Lockheed Martin owns 350 facilities, and has 13,000 US based suppliers. The arms industry has millions of workers and annually earns hundreds of billions of dollars. In how many communities nationwide are local activists wrestling with outposts of the weapons industry? Are we unique in Northampton? Northampton may seem like a radical place compared to most towns, but our city government is well to the right of the population. We will need to elect a new mayor and new council members to mobilize any sort of city policy to ban weapons makers from our town. Local political movements are already preoccupied with finding new slates to properly fund schools.

I call the town clerk and ask her if it is possible to call for a referendum on L3 Harris’s continued presence. No, she tells me, but you could launch an “initiative petition” which only requires 250 signatures from voters including 25 from each ward. I will bring this information back to the group at our next meeting.

The man with the veterans for peace flag tells me that L3 has taken down their sign and no longer mows the grass adjacent to the spot where protestors gather on Wednesday mornings. With only a few old people hovering about with signs, we have evidence of nominal anxiety in the corporate ranks. What if 500 picketers gathered every Wednesday?

There may be no precedent for local activists chasing the death industry out of town. Deeds begin with thoughts and a number of people in Northampton have recently imagined that we can throw L3 Harris out of NoHo. Would this create a domino effect? Somewhere, local activists will gain control of a town government and evict the business of mass murder. If this precedent is a precondition for planetary survival, it has to happen soon – maybe in NoHo.

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