A Prayer for the Love of Humanity…Witness & Resistance, Good Friday@Lockheed Martin, King of Prussia,PA

Oh Death, Where Is Thy Sting? Oh Grave, Where Is Thy Victory? – 1 Corinthians, 15 – 55

A Prayer for the Love of Humanity…Witness & Resistance, Good Friday@Lockheed Martin, King of Prussia,PA, April 15, Noon

NO-WAR Prayer for the Love of Humanity…April 15, Noon, Good Friday @Lockheed Martin, the world’s #1 war profiteer, from killer drones to nuclear weapons and daily war preparations. Mall & Goddard Boulevards, King of Prussia (behind King of Prussia Mall).

Good Friday Stations of Justice, Peace, Nonviolence, and Love of Humanity.
All Participants must adhere to the discipline of Nonviolence [“of fist, tongue, and heart”, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

LUKE 23: 33 – 49

Stations of Justice, Nonviolence, Peace, and the Love of Humanity

Reader: 1^st Station: Pilate Condemns Jesus to Death.  Betrayed, denied, tortured, facing death, Jesus knew where he stood and what he faced. He faced the Cross, a means of execution, a symbol of imperial rule, of Rome’s might, an announcement of the empire’s will to maintain itself the only way it can: violence and war. We remember Jesus, born homeless, who died the tortured death of a political prisoner by the all-powerful ruling hand of empire of his time. What we see depends on where we stand. We stand, mourn, and see the cross of empire and war today, Lockheed Martin. We stand for peace.  All:  For the Love of Humanity! No-War. Stop Lockheed Martin.

Reader: 2^nd Station: Jesus Carries His Cross . In 1944, as the fires of World War II still raged, President of General Electric, Charles E. Wilson gave a speech calling for the establishment of “a permanent war economy” in post-war America. Jesus carried a cross of wood. At a cost of nearly one trillion dollars per year, we too carry a cross and remember our own history of empire that began with the lie of discovery and the whole scale slaughter of Indian peoples, the original Americans, and the enslavement of people, especially people of color, around the world.  All: For the Love of Humanity! No-War. End White Supremacy. Stop Lockheed Martin

Reader: 3^rd Station: Jesus falls the 1^st time.  Reader: We remember the American wars of manifest destiny fought for westward expansion, annexation, and the extending of southern borders.  In 1993, GE Aerospace, headquartered in King of Prussia was sold to Martin Marietta.  Martin Marietta doubled in size. In 1995 Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed becoming Lockheed Martin, at the very moment of its incorporation the world’s largest weapons producer and war profiteer, Lockheed Martin announced itself with the slogan “And This is Just Beginning!” atop row upon row of pictured weapons. All: NO-WAR, PEACE,  For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 4^th Station: Jesus meets his most afflicted mother.  We remember our history and legacy of racism, America’s original sin, unparalleled in human history for prolonged viciousness and cruelty.  From Walt Whitman’s “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”

Oh I see flashing this America is only you and me,

its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,

its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me.

The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth forget) was you and me.        Natural and artificial are you and me.
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me.
Past, present, future, are you and me.
I now know why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake.
I take you specially to be mine, you terrible, rude forms.

(Mother, bend down, bend close to me your face,

I know not what these plots and wars and deferments are for,

I know not fruition’s success, but I know that through war and crime

your work goes on, and must yet go on.)

All: Our work for peace goes on and on and on, For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 5^th Station: Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry the Cross.
We remember and mourn the Holocaust, six million Jews – many turned away in freighters at U.S. shores – delivered to death camps and by the hundreds gassed. Children, women, men. We whisper the word especially as the season of Passover begins: Holocaust. We carry the weight of militarism and empire – the weapons it builds, the wars it wages, the lives it destroys, the societies and economies it cripples. No less our own.  We all carry the weight of Lockheed Martin which receives more than $45 billion a year in weapons contracts.  We have to stop Lockheed Martin for Justice and for peace    All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 6^th Station: Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.  Beneath assaults on life itself, we try to comprehend the narrowing of the world’s moral geography. July 16, 1945, The first test of an atomic bomb, the bomb’s chief designer J. Robert Oppenheimer quotes the Hindu Gita: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds” followed three weeks later by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 175,000 killed in minutes, and the world would never be the same. Can we see the world through the eyes of the victims?   All: For the Love of Humanity! 

Reader: 7^th Station: Jesus falls the 2^nd time.  Oh, dear God, Save Us…The Cold War, CIA, NATO, the H-Bomb, Teller, Dr. Strangelove, Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), military-industrial complex, nuclear submarines, children duck-and-cover under their school desks, the Cuban Missile Crisis, dodging the bullet just minutes from nuclear war. How much longer? How much more?  We have to hold on with hope for peace. All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 8^th Station: Jesus consoles the women of Jerusalem.  Still, How much longer?  U.S. wars dot the earth, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia.  Vietnam, remember that generation’s war, a war between generations.  Vietnam, ‘destroying the village in order to save it’, strategic hamlets, search-and-destroy missions, napalm, electronic battlefields, Dr. King says at Riverside Church that the bombs that fall on Vietnam have their fallout on America’s inner cities.  We saw both on the evening news. Something happened.  Marches and demonstrations, civil disobedience, across the country young men said HELL NO WE WON’T GO, some went to Canada, some went to jail. People burned draft files with napalm, Dan Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, and the war began to end. All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 9^th Station: Jesus falls the 3^rd time.  Christmas, 1979, born of the anti-war resistance of the 60’s, the Brandywine Peace Community began anti-nuclear weapons protests at General Electric plants in Phila and King of Prussia, people were arrested and went to jail.  Sept. 9, 1980, the Plowshares 8 entered a G.E. plant in King of Prussia manufacturing Mark 12A nuclear warhead casings for Minuteman III missiles and did the first act nonviolent disarmament. Thank you Plowshares 8, Thank you: Dan Berrigan (deceased), Phil Berrigan (deceased), Dean Hammer, John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, Elmer Maas (deceased), Sr. Anne Montgomery (deceased), and Carl Kabat. The Plowshares 8, presente’.
All those with whom we stood here in front of GE, now Lockheed Martin: Peggy Hasbrouck, (all, presente’), Marge Van Cleef, (all, presente’), Bob Simpson, (all, presente’), Mary Jo McArthur, (all presente’), Annie Geers, (all presente’), Agnes and Charlier Bauerlein, (all presente’, and Bill Whistler, who showed us what was behind the “Top Secret” lies right here on this ground, GE now Lockheed Martin.  We are humbled in our Good Friday to stand with Russian anti-war activists protesting Putin’s barbaric war on Ukraine and facing the ongoing wrath of Putin’s war crimes.    All: Together we say No-War, For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 10^th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments.  9/11, if alive you know where we were when terror on that scale came to America. Some of us standing here chose to speak for ‘Justice not Revenge’. What we got was “endless war”, invasions, lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”, and something new, brought to us by Lockheed Martin, drone warfare.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, 40 children killed when a Lockheed Martin missile slams into their school bus, the U.S. backed Saudi war against Yemen has been very good for Lockheed Martin.  Could we hear from the mothers, please?  All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 11^th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross. ‘There are two problems for our species survival: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe. And the two are very much related.’ – Noam Chomsky.
Nuclear weapons are still very much with us.  The policy of nuclear weapons “modernization” is making damn sure of that. U.S. Nuclear “modernization” means more nuclear weapons, and newer types of weapons made to be used.  Nuclear weapons modernization is expected to cost our country over the next three decades more than $2 Trillion.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ ‘doomsday clock’ stands at just 100 seconds to ‘nuclear midnight’. We are reminded of that every time Putin speaks of unleashing hell on earth as he commits another war crime in Ukraine, and as Putin’s buddy, former president Donald Trump, remains silent in the face of war crimes.  We are here, again and again, saying: Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Support the United Nuclear Treaty for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons worldwide  The UN Treaty declares to nuclear weapons builder, Lockheed Martin, NUCLEAR WEAPONS  ARE ILLEGAL.  Russia and the United States, together holding  90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, have, along with the rest of the nuclear armed states, turned its back on all related treaty negotiations. The world is fighting back for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Today, we have a copy of the treaty for the U.S.’s chief nuclear weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin   All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 12^th Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross (bell tolling/period of silence)  Today we toll a bell for justice, nonviolence, love, and humanity.

We stand against the outrages, crimes, and the utterly lethal greed of Lockheed Martin. From the depths of our hearts we decry today’s messages of hate, greed, and violence. As we honored Dr. King on the anniversary of his assassination, just 11 days ago, we remembered his ‘evil triplets of American society: Racism, Greed, and Militarism’, how he considered “justice as love in public” and his message of “unarmed truth and unconditional love.”  We continue, as we must, our protest of Lockheed Martin, overwhelmingly the world’s #1 war profiteer and arms manufacturer, and U.S.’s #1 nuclear weapons contractor. All: Peace, Peace, Peace, NO-WAR, For the Love of humanity!

(ALL) The Bell of Peace tolls on this Good Friday a prayer for all the war dead and dying in Ukraine, for the children, the earth, humanity, and the future.

The bell sounds an appeal that America may one day be forgiven for its racist history of war-making, nuclear weaponry, the dangers of NATO expansion, and the endless celebration of greed and militarism around the world.

Today, the bell of peace tolls for all the victims of Vladimir Putin’s vicious invasion and war on Ukraine, the countless refugees, the unrelenting bombing, the insane threats to unleash the-hell-on earth of nuclear weapons.

The Bell of Peace, however, also intones an even louder steadfast commitment to peacemaking and love.

The tolling of the bell, on this Good Friday is, for us all, exemplified in Russians and Ukrainians resisting war, choosing radical hope in the nonviolent struggle for peace and future.

World Without End, Amen, as we join the Global Mobilization to Stop Lockheed Martin, April 21 – 28.

(Prepared by the Brandywine Peace Community)

Brandywine Peace Community

P.O. Box 29674, Philadelphia, PA, 19144
(215) 843-4827

www.brandywinepeace.com   e-mail: brandywine@juno.com

Oh Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
Oh Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?
– 1 Corinthians, 15 – 55

A NO-WAR Prayer for the Love of Humanity…Fri., April 15, Noon, Good Friday
@Lockheed Martin, the world’s #1 war profiteer, from killer drones to nuclear weapons and war preparations. Mall & Goddard Boulevards, King of Prussia (behind King of Prussia Mall).

Stations of Justice, Nonviolence, Peace, and Love of Humanity
NO-WAR/Stop the killing and BAN killer drones. Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Support the United Nations Treaty for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

Reader: 9^th Station: Jesus falls the 3^rd time.  Christmas, 1979, born of the anti-war resistance of the 60’s, the Brandywine Peace Community began anti-nuclear weapons protests at General Electric plants in Phila and King of Protest, people were arrested and went to jail.  Sept. 9, 1980, the Plowshares 8 entered a G.E. plant in King of Prussia manufacturing Mark 12A nuclear warhead casings for Minuteman III missiles and did the first act nonviolent disarmament. Thank you Plowshares 8, Thank you: Dan Berrigan (deceased), Phil Berrigan (deceased), Dean Hammer, John Schuchardt, Molly Rush, Elmer Maas (deceased), Sr. Anne Montgomery (deceased), and Carl Kabat. The Plowshares 8, presente’. All those with whom we stood on Good Friday here in front of GE, now Lockheed Martin: Peggy Hasbrouck, (all) presente’, Marge Van Cleef, (all) presente’, Bob Simpson, (all) presente’, Mary Jo McArthur, (all) presente’, Annie Geers, (all) presente’, Agnes and Charlier Bauerlein, (all) presente’, Bill and Scotty Stuart-Whistler, (all) presente’, others please.   All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 10^th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments.  9/11, if alive you know where we were when terror on that scale came to America. Some of us standing here chose to speak for ‘Justice not Revenge’. What we got was “endless war”, invasions, lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”, more war to this very day, and something new, drone warfare.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, 40 children killed when a Lockheed Martin missile slams into their school bus, the U.S. backed Saudi war against Yemen has been very good for Lockheed Martin.  Could we hear from the mothers, please?  All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 11^th Station: Jesus is nailed to the Cross. ‘There are two problems for our species survival: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe. And the two are very much related.’ – Noam Chomsky.
When the Cold War ended, worry about nuclear weapons greatly receded.  Nuclear weapons, however, are still very much with us, and the threat to humanity is greater than ever.  The policy of nuclear weapons “modernization” is making damn sure of that. U.S. Nuclear “modernization” means a more nuclear weapons, and newer types of weapons made to be used. The policy of nuclear weapons modernization is expected to cost our country over the coming three decades more than $2 Trillion.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ ‘doomsday clock’ stands at just 100 seconds from ‘nuclear midnight’. That is why the world is fighting back and we are giving our hearts and minds to saying: Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Support the United Nuclear Treaty for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons worldwide, adopted on July 7, 2017, by a vote of 122 States in favor.

The Treaty declares NUCLEAR WEAPONS ILLEGAL.  There are 195 nations in the world.  All the nuclear weapons armed nations walked out of the Treaty’s negotiations. The treaty  entered into force on January 22, 2021 and became legally binding on its ratifiers. the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has 59 states parties while a further 30 states have signed but not yet ratified. Nuclear-armed states in the world: the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.   The United States and Russia  possess roughly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, with over 5,500 weapons each. The world is fighting back against nuclear weapons. Today we have a copy of the treaty for the U.S.’s chief nuclear weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin        All: For the Love of Humanity!

Reader: 12^th Station: Jesus Dies on the Cross (bell tolling/period of silence)  Today we toll a bell for justice, nonviolence, love, and humanity.

We stand against the outrages, crimes, and the utterly lethal greed of Lockheed Martin. From the depths of our hearts we decry today’s messages of hate, greed, and violence. As we honored Dr. King on the  anniversary of his assassination, just 11 days ago, we remembered his ‘evil triplets of American society: Racism, Greed, and Militarism’, how he considered “justice as love in public” and his message of “unarmed truth and unconditional love.”  We continue, as we must, our protest of Lockheed Martin, overwhelmingly the world’s #1 war profiteer and arms manufacturer, and U.S.’s #1 nuclear weapons. All: For the Love of humanity!

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