News Notes

Seeds of Hope
By John M. Miller

In a surprise verdict, four British women were acquitted in late July of plotting to damage a Hawk jet fighter bound for Indonesia. Although all four admitted involvement in last January’s Seed of Hope Ploughshares action, a Liverpool jury found them not guilty of causing $2.25 million in damage to the plane.

Lotta Kronlid, Andrea Needham and Jo Wilson cut through the fence around a British Aerospace aircraft plant in northern England Jan. 29. After videotaping themselves damaging the plane’s fuselage and high tech electronics with hammers, they draped banners over the wrecked jet and then called the police, singing peace songs while they waited. A fourth activist, Angie Zelter, announced her intention of continuing the action and was also arrested.

During the seven-day trial in July, the women—three of whom defended themselves—said they were disarming the Hawk, not vandalizing it, claiming the action was justified because the plane was going to be used against the civilians of East Timor. (The Hawk was one of 24 sold by British Aerospace to the Indonesian dictatorship; similar planes previously shipped to Indonesia have been seen bombing and flying over East Timor—and dropping bombs there.)

The jury of seven men and five women took just over five hours to reach their not-guilty verdict, which Wilson called a "victory for justice" and a "victory for the people of East Timor." Zelter added, "We think we have a very good case to prove that British Aerospace is aiding and abetting murder."

After the verdict, British Aerospace said that "it operates in accordance with export licences granted by the [British] government." The company then served injunctions against further trespasses on the four women, who publicly tore them up.

Contact: Seed of Hope Ploughshares, 55 Queen Margaret’s Grove, London N1 4PZ, England; e-mail: Ricarda@gn.apc.org; and East Timor Action Network, PO Box 1182, White Plains, NY 10602; (914)428-7299; etan-us@igc.org. Web site: http://www.intac.co m/PubService/human_rights/groups/antihawk/latest.html.

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In the early morning hours July 27, five days after the Seeds of Hope Ploughshares trial began in Liverpool (see story, page 14), four women here in the United States entered the naval submarine base in Groton, CT, and undertook direct nonviolent disarmament on equipment used to test machinery that moves torpedoes into place inside fast-attack submarines. "Beating swords into plowshares" with special emphasis on the victimization of children, Kathy Shields Boylan, Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, and Elizabeth Walters beat with hammers, and poured their own blood on, equipment stored on a dock near the submarines. The group, calling itself the Weep for Children Plowshares, will go on trial in September in Hartford on misdemeanor charges of damage and trespass.

A previous Plowshares group, the Jubilee Plowshares East—Michele Naar-Obed, Erin Sieber and Rick Sieber (NVA, Nov.-Dec. 1995)—will be sentenced Sept. 6 in Norfolk, VA, for their Aug. 7, 1995, action during which they hammered and poured their blood on the U.S.S. Greenville, a fast-attack submarine in production at the Newport News shipyard.

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U.S. labor and human rights activists targeted Nike, Inc., the world’s largest shoe manufacturer, with a two-pronged campaign this summer against Nike’s use of low-wage labor in countries such as Indonesia, China, and Vietnam. The Nike actions followed hard on the heels of the Kathy Lee Gifford sweatshop scandal that publicized the exploitative labor practices in developing countries—and well-paid endorsers here, like Nike’s Michael Jordan—of other U.S.-based apparel corporations.

In recent years Nike has shifted much of its shoe production from relatively high-wage countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, which experienced democratic openings and sharp increases in wages in the late 1980’s. Shoe workers in Indonesia, for example, where Nike, Reebok and Adidas subcontract much of their production, earn close to the minimum wage of $2.20 per day and are forced to work extensive overtime to meet basic subsistence needs.

Former Indonesian Nike worker Cicih Sukaesih, who was fired in 1992—along with 23 other women—for trying to organize her fellow employees, spoke to groups in five cities in July, highlighting Nike’s continuing exploitation of its Indonesian workforce and urging people to pressure Nike to reinstate fired workers and guarantee independent monitoring of its corporate code of conduct.

In August, Frontlash, the youth arm of the AFL-CIO, picketed at Niketowns in over half a dozen cities. More pickets and informational leafletting are planned for the fall. In September, Nike shareholders will vote on a resolution from the United Methodist Church that Nike report on its labor practices in Indonesia.

The campaign against Nike has involved labor and human rights groups, religious activists, and, increasingly, women and community organizers. Nike’s exploitation of women, its targeting of African-American youth and its cooperation with Indonesia’s military dictatorship in the suppression of human and labor rights exemplify the increasingly interconnected nature of the struggle against militarism with gender, labor and human rights issues. Nike is just one of many corporations taking advantage of the "hospitable" climate for foreign investment supported in large measure by U.S. military support for repressive regimes.

Contact Jeff Ballinger, Press for Change, PO Box 161, Alpine, NJ 07620; (201)768-7058; Frontlash, 815 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20006; 800-833-3250; e-mail yaflcio@aol.com.

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