A Unity of Fields Report
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels … upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
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25 September 2024 – Four Palestine Action activists — Paige Belanger, Sophie Ross, Bridget Shergalis, and Calla Walsh — were facing extreme felony charges for attacking the Elbit Systems facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire on 20 November 2023. Now, the Merrimack 4 are resolving their case and will serve 60 days in county jail as Amerikan justice for resisting genocide and disrupting production at the largest zionist weapons company.
The Palestine Action US protest in Merrimack — characterized by the state as a “siege and riot”— involved a simultaneous road blockade, roof occupation, and attack on the building’s façade causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages and, for the day, shutting down the facility where workers produce weapons that surveil, massacre, and torture Palestinians. Ross, Shergalis, and Walsh were arrested at gunpoint on Elbit’s rooftop, jailed under preventative detention, and released after three days on $5k to $20k bail. They were charged by the NH Attorney General with conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, conspiracy to commit burglary, criminal trespass, riot, sabotage*, and, later, conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence — charges totaling 37 years in prison.
Photos: Maen Hammad
The wave of counterinsurgency hit instantly: NH announced that the FBI was also investigating Palestine Action US; state figures and zionist media maligned the co-defendants as terrorists and “outside agitators” who firebombed a local Jewish small business; Twitter advanced theories that they were part of a sex cult or trained militia; the NH AGs threatened to add on hate crime charges, and the court banned Walsh from leaving the country. Within the movement, self-proclaimed leadership ignored the arrests or actively distanced their organizations from Palestine Action, isolating the militants as the “bad” protestors and urging tactical de-escalation.
On 24 January 2024, dozens of anti-imperialist organizations led by Samidoun, National SJP, Within Our Lifetime, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Palestine Solidarity Working Group demanded the charges to be dropped: “We commend the Merrimack Three, as well as the broader campaign to Shut Elbit Down, for directly challenging war profiteers in the face of immense repression. The state will not deter our commitment to forge a world liberated from the chains of Zionism, capitalism, and imperialism, a world devoid of entities like Elbit.”
Also on 24 January, Merrimack police officers staked out the Nashua courthouse to arrest Belanger as she entered to attend a hearing supporting the 3 co-defendants. They alleged she was part of the November action and gave her the same charges. Upon release, the state gave the four co-defendants no-contact orders to isolate them from each other and thwart their joint defense, until the defense lawyers won a motion for the no-contact orders to be dropped at the end of May.
After nearly a year of the state’s failed attempts to intimidate and break the Merrimack 4, the NH AGs are now dropping all the felony charges. The co-defendants are pleading guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Their sentence includes 60 days in jail, a 24-month suspended sentence for 3 years, and a stay-away order from every Elbit Systems facility, among other conditions. Ross and Walsh still face several charges for direct actions in Cambridge, Massachusetts where protestors successfully shut down the first Elbit office in the US. Information on how to support the Merrimack 4 and write to them in jail will be publicized when available. Losing comrades to jail, even for a short period, is painful for the movement — but the Merrimack 4’s defeat of felony charges and avoidance of decades in prison is a major win against repression.
The Palestine Action US “siege” on Elbit in Merrimack was just 44 days after the Al-Aqsa Flood began, when no other organized militancy for Palestine was happening in the US; it was before Gaza’s death toll passed 200,000martyrs, before Aaron Bushnell or Matt Nelson’s self-immolation, and before the Gaza solidarity encampments exploded and cohered a new layer of militants. The Merrimack 4’s charges were the heaviest criminal charges pressed against post-7 October anti-zionist protestors in the country, until Casey Goonan’s June arrest and federal charges for alleged arson. The US-backed zionist genocide of Palestine has only escalated since, but so have the unwavering Axis of Resistance forces, and so has grown the urgency for us to open up another anti-imperialist front, to join them in resisting and sacrificing. Since 7 October, the Palestine “solidarity” movement in the US has been characterized by predictable hemming and hawing about the merits of “non-violent” protest, and eschewing our responsibility to resist the genocide using material force. Property damage is not “violence,” but history shows both are viable and necessary tactics, as is building the underground. Palestine Action US was an early attempt at militancy within the imperial core aligned with the Palestinian resistance — the state responded to it as a serious threat, but the Merrimack 4’s case shows that trumped-up charges can still be defeated.
Conditions, levels of state repression, and our corresponding tactics and strategies diverge in the US from the UK, where Palestine Action was formed in 2020, successfully shut down multiple Elbit facilities through direct action, and sustained hundreds of arrests. The US has better “free speech” protections than the UK (where people are arrested for chanting “from the river to the sea”) but is far more hawkish when it comes to treating property as sacrosanct. In the US, organized property damage and militant anti-imperialist resistance quickly bring the threat of terrorism or RICO charges, making the strategy of intentional arrest for property damage here (but frankly, anywhere) unsustainable. The new UK Labour government is now escalating its repression of Palestine Action UK by threatening them with terrorist designation and detaining 16 Palestine Action political prisoners, including 10 on terrorism charges. The UK team’s set of clandestine tactics are better fit than intentional arrests for building protracted struggle and resiliency to state repression, particularly inside the US settler empire during this highly advanced stage of counterinsurgency.
Since the 20 November action and resulting state crackdown, Palestine Action US has analyzed its experience and articulated a line on what militant resistance would look like in the US, explained in their May 2024 zine, Flood the Gates: Escalate:
“Through our many trials and errors, we learned that tactics used in the UK, which has a very different legal system, could not simply be copy-pasted into the US context…
Let repression breed more resistance. We will not disavow any actions taken to escalate the struggle, including militant direct actions. Our notion of “safety” in the imperial core is built on centuries of corpses…
While actions sometimes result in arrests, and those engaged in serious action ought to prepare for that outcome, it should never be the *goal* to lose our organizers to the carceral system. The goal should always be to achieve whatever we set out to achieve, and then get home safe…We must create our own “popular cradle” of resistance…Clandestine actions need to express the general will of the movement and garner support from its aboveground organizers. As long as other groups do not interfere, peace police, or co-opt our militancy, we must build as broad possible unity, inspired by the Palestinian resistance’s concept of “Unity of Fields,” whereby, despite our differing ideologies, short-term objectives, and locations, we can all work towards one common goal…
It is insincere to glorify the Palestinian resistance if, at the same time, we do not raise our own resistance here.” (Palestine Action US, 1 May 2024)
*The Merrimack 4 were the first people ever charged in NH under this defense sabotage statute (649:2). It carried a minimum of 1 year in prison, but was the first charge to be dropped because the state had to admit it could be applied when a State of Emergency was declared:
“Whoever intentionally destroys, impairs, injures, interferes or tampers with real or personal property with reasonable grounds to believe that such act will hinder, delay or interfere with the preparation of the United States or of any of the states for defense or for war, or with the prosecution of war by the United States, or by any country with which the United States shall then maintain friendly relations, shall be guilty of a class A felony. Provided, if such person so acts with the intent to hinder, delay or interfere with the preparation of the United States or of any of the states for defense or for war, or with the prosecution of war by the United States or by any country with which the United States shall then maintain friendly relations, the minimum punishment shall be imprisonment for not less than one year.”
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