Join members of the Cleveland Catholic Worker (and other groups who decry the human, social, economic, political, and environmental devastation wrought by US militarism) for a peaceful witness outside the Cleveland National Air Show this weekend. (Look for them 10am-5pm each day this weekend at the Marjorie Rosenbaum Plaza, along N. Marginal Rd, just east of the Burke Lakefront Airport terminal building.)
The Catholic Worker opposes painting up US military bombers and calling them family entertainment. War is not entertainment. Warplanes kill.
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The US military is coming to town once again this Labor Day weekend. At the Cleveland National Air Show, they put on a grand display to woo spectators and to entice yet another generation of young people to sacrifice themselves to the war machine. How do we as people committed to peace respond?
WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF US MILITARISM TODAY?
Large-scale migration, political instability, environmental degradation, gazillions of dollars diverted from meeting human needs…..
For the past 200 years, the US military has been a primary tool for implementing US imperialism across the globe, especially in this hemisphere. In recent years, tens of thousands of migrants have been fleeing Latin America and the Caribbean largely because of the militarism the US has built up in their countries, dating back to the Spanish-American War. They are increasingly climate refugees, at a loss for how to continue farming or fishing in light of climate shocks.
Eight decades after the US detonated the first A-bombs in Japan, the US military continues to wreak incredible destruction across the globe. The US military is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter—and it causes other long-term environmental devastation like burn pits, landmines, and pollution from other weapons and ammunition (and other military ordnance).
The militarization of the US economy, of our foreign policy, or our culture, of our young people--of our whole society--is costing us our future. The $800 billion war chest of the US Pentagon is one sign of the great cost we all incur.
We live in Cleveland, OH, one of the poorest large cities in the US with a legacy of racialized poverty—a city where 45% of our children live in poverty! How could even a small portion of the Pentagon’s bloated budget be redirected to address REAL security: housing, education, child care, health care, and many other anti-poverty programs that would also bolster the middle class?
WHY HOLD A PEACE WITNESS?
The Cleveland Catholic Worker (and other groups who decry the human, social, economic, political, and environmental devastation wrought by US militarism) invite other people-of-peace to join them for a peaceful witness outside the Cleveland National Air Show this weekend. (Look for them 10am-5pm each day this weekend at the Marjorie Rosenbaum Plaza, along N. Marginal Rd, just east of the Burke Lakefront Airport terminal building.)
The Catholic Worker (dedicated to the Works of Mercy rather than the Works of War) has been leading this annual peace witness in Cleveland for almost 40 years. Why? Because the Cleveland National Air Show essentially functions as a War Show.
During the 1980s, the Catholic Worker provided sanctuary to Salvadoran refugees on the Near West Side of Cleveland. They expressed alarm at the sounds of the Air Show fighter jets zooming overhead, describing how the fighter jets reminded them of the warplanes that flew over El Salvador in strafing runs. Joe Lehner, the Salvadorans, and other Catholic Workers began the witness the following year.
What spectators in Cleveland interpret as the sounds of entertainment are the sounds of war and fear for people in other countries. The sheer volume of the planes is actually intimidating and violent, despite what is billed as “family entertainment.”
While there are indeed several non-defense aircraft providing “entertainment” at the Air Show, the US military has a dominating presence. Moreover, military recruiting is a major focus at the event. As a former Thunderbird pilot stated: Thunderbird air shows (like the Blue Angels) are worth the cost and the risk because “they’re vital to recruitment and help citizens feel good about their military.” Showcasing the Blue Anges over the 3-day event costs $1.3 million.
MORE ABOUT THE CLEVELAND NATIONAL AIR SHOW 2024
The main event this year, the Blue Angels Demonstration team, which flies the F/A 18 Hornet, the US Navy's fighter jet. The Blue Angels are painted up to distract from their purpose as killing machines. Their spectacular flight maneuvers entertain and recruit and encourage allegiance to the US war culture, gun violence, and its machinery without highlighting the death, violence, and disasters these planes create.
The F/A 18 Hornet, the US Navy fighter jet, was originally created by McDonnell-Douglas in the 1970s. It is deployed throughout the world at 750 US military bases in 80 countries for US military operations and wars. The cost of the F/A Hornet is $30-70 million per plane. The US sold a record high $238 billion in weapons worldwide in 2023, a 16% increase from 2022, which was $207 billion, and a 49% increase from 2021!
Cleveland connection is the F-35: Howmet Aerospace is developing a new generation of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Part of that manufacturing is happening right here in Cleveland at the former Alcoa plant on Harvard Ave (now Arconic/Howmet), with its heavy press machinery. Built as part of the Cold War-era Heavy Press Program by the U.S. Air Force, the 50,000-ton press has been in operation since 1955. It was operated by Alcoa at Air Force Plant 47 (1600 Harvard Avenue), which eventually became Howmet Cleveland Operations. The press is hydraulically driven and can exert a maximum of 50,000 tons of pressure, equivalent to the pressure exerted by the weight of a steel ingot 612 feet high with a base of 26 feet by 12 feet. The press has been used to forge the world’s largest aerospace parts for aircraft such as the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Airbus A380
ART EXHIBIT: From the A-Bomb to Abolition
This exhibition (featuring 27 panels on loan from the Dayton International Peace Museum) offers photos and sketches by Japanese artists of the aftermath of the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in1945. They illustrate civilians in fear and despair – with short text or Haiku. There are photos of the Atomic Bomb explosions, and survivors, Hibakusha, some working for change. One poster, “Suppression of Freedom of Press and Expression” about the bomb elaborates: the censorship by the Allied Forces “was so strict that… almost any violation would almost certainly lead to the death penalty.” A Japanese character print, “Call” translates into “It is not too late yet – Muster up your real strength – It is still not too late – To wipe the tears of those who wish for peace”…. Sankichi Toge
The exhibition runs in Cleveland through mid-September. For times and locations, please contact ClevelandPeaceAction@gmail.com
From the Cleveland Catholic Worker:
We gather to reflect, to pray and to walk the perimeter of the Air Show entrance & plaza. We share reflections, dwell in silence… that we that we might be received/welcomed into this place in the Great Lake Erie basin, near the Cuyahoga River,
on the land of the Ancient Mound-builders, and their descendants: Erie, Ojibwa, Lenni Lenape, Wyandotte, Iroquois, others, parceled into real estate by Moses Cleaveland, his surveying party, dependent on the labors of many workers now requiring truth, reconciliation, reparation.
MORE ABOUT IMPACTS OF US MILITARISM
US Foreign Policy (which is highly militarized) kills!
-roughly 2/3 of current conflicts worldwide involve one or more adversaries armed by the US
-Ukraine benefits from $46 billion of US military aid, along with weapons from stockpiles and NATO—but there is no end in sight to the war as civilian deaths exceed 10,000
-Yemen has suffered more than 19,000 civilian deaths after Trump sent billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
-US military aid to Israel has maintained the militarized occupation of Palestinian territories for decades
With strong lobbies and political donations from the weapons industry (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics), the war machine rages on.
A new nuclear arms race
- global spending on nuclear weapons surpassed $90 billion in 2023, a 13 percent jump from the previous year and a new all-time high.
- more than half of the spending on nukes happens in one country: the United States, which spent 51.5 billion in 2023, or approximately $98,000 per minute, on its nuclear arsenal and infrastructure. This total is more than eight times
-In 2015, President Obama initiated a ten-year, trillion-dollar program to “upgrade” the country’s nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities.
-under the pretext of “modernizing” its nuclear triad, the United States is running a new arms race, stockpiling more nuclear weapons than at any time since the Cold War ended.
- The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight (aka Nuclear Armageddon), the closest it has ever been to that disaster
[source: Commonweal, July/Aug 2024]
At what cost?
We live in Cleveland, OH, one of the poorest large cities in the US with a legacy of racialized poverty—a city where 45% of our children live in poverty! How could even a small portion of the Pentagon’s bloated budget be redirected to address REAL security: housing, education, child care, health care, and many other anti-poverty programs that would also bolster the middle class?
How do we respond?
As the US military comes to town and puts on its big display and entices another generation of young people to sacrifice themselves to the war machine, how do we as people committed to peace respond?
Sources
On the Ground - Cleveland National Air Show
Military: Precision flying teams are worth the risk, cost
U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II - Cleveland National Air Show .
The Environmental Cost of War and Armed Conflict | Friends Committee On National Legislation
Why the Pentagon is the world’s biggest single greenhouse gas emitter
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet - Wikipedia
US arms exports hit record high in fiscal 2023
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/iconic-howmet-press-featured-discoverys-science-channel-/
https://www.howmet.com/f35-speed-stealth-agility/
Cleveland Catholic Worker Community Continues Decades-Long Protest of the National Air Show
