|
by Jennifer Randolph '00 Alliant Techsystems is the 23rd largest supplier to the Department of Defense and the largest military contractor in Minnesota. They have fulfilled past contracts for landmines and cluster bombs. They are also the largest suppler of depleted uranium to the DoD. Depleted uranium-tipped shells pierce tank armor and also release radioactive material that harms both soldiers in combat and civilians in the area afterwards. Many Gulf War veteran organizations point to DU as a major factor in vets' widespread medical problems; cancer rates in southern Iraq have also skyrocketed. Alliant produced and sold most of those shells. They also have sales offices all over the world, including in India, Pakistan, Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Obviously those arms sales empower those conflicts to escalate and kill more people in those turbulent regions of the world. A community of peace protesters including vets, draft resisters, Women Against Military Madness, sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, MIST [Midwest Institute for Social Transformation], students, and people who started in the civil rights movement have vigiled outside Alliant Tech weekly for three and a half years. Every Wednesday from 7-8 AM we stand outside their headquarters in Hopkins, holding signs that say "Who Profits and Who Dies?" and a headstone labeled "D.U." We do it as a responsibility, singing songs like "Who will speak, if we don't." We are there to remind the engineers, secretaries, and vice-presidents of Alliant what their work makes possible and to make sure everyone who drives by knows what is happening right near their suburban home. Several U.S. companies have converted to peace production without cutting jobs; others have decided under national and international pressure not to produce weapons that target civilians, especially landmines. That is what we want: for Alliant to stop enabling this killing. If each of us would commit to prioritizing ethics over money and refuse to work for companies like Alliant or even allow them in our community, that cut of military production would mean more conflicts arduously negotiated instead of "solved" by violence, fewer slow deaths by leukemia, fewer cluster bombs used against children. That is a world we can work for together.
|