Reporting: COP27 Hits the Bay: Coalitions Resist Militarism’s Role in Climate Change
DEFUND VIOLENCE, FUND OUR FUTURES
Story by Megan Robertson
Film Photography by Celeste Baird
Originally released in December 2022.
On an unusually sunny November morning, more than 100 students, teachers, and veterans gathered in San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza. Holding bullhorns, coffee, and vivid posters, these climate activists marched to Lockheed Martin’s military recruitment office. Their demands? Defund violence, fund our futures.
The protest was organized by Youth Vs Apocalypse (YVA), a San Francisco based youth climate justice coalition. Started by a group of teenage activists in Oakland in 2019, YVA works to demand climate justice, particularly for youth of color and working class youth.
The group garnered acclaim after a video went viral of them encouraging Senator Feinstein to support the Green New Deal. Since then, they have organized protests and actions, many of which draw in more than 30,000 people. Their activist work has been reported on in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and KQED.
This particular action was in collaboration with Northern California branches of two national advocacy organizations. CODEPINK is a female grassroots organization working to stop U.S. militarism, and Veterans for Peace is a group of veterans who are working to ultimately end all wars.
In addition to these two partner organizations, the event also included more than five school classes, and the organizations: Extinction Rebellion, Sunflower Alliance, 350.Org 1000 Grandmothers, CLIMATE JOBS, and EAST BAY DSA, with a theme of “COP27: Militarism Fuels Climate Crisis.”
The day included a march to a Lockheed Martin at a military recruitment center, the painting of protest murals, hearing from an intergenerational coalition of speakers, and watching skits and dances.
One of the YVA organizers, Aniya Butler, spoke about the inspiration for this action. Much of her experience comes from her work as a poet; she released a book of poetry entitled, “The World is Going to Change” in 2019. The Oakland native is also one of YVA’s lead circle team members.
Butler shared that militarism is inextricably linked with the climate justice work YVA does.“The climate crisis is one of the greatest threats to our futures,” she said. “Funding militarism, funding violence, is also a way of defunding our futures.”
The United States’ military is one of the largest contributors to climate change. Since the begining of the “War on Terror” in 2001, the U.S. Military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gasses, a study from Brown University found. The military is responsible for more emissions than 130 other countries, including Norway and Switzerland. The United States Military additionally consumes more energy than any other institution in the world, the same report finds.
YVA was one of more than a dozen national actions partnered with CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace, in response to the COP27 UN Climate Change Conference. The United Nation’s annual climate action conference saw representatives from 197 nations gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for 12 days of discussion on how to implement global climate goals. In these discussions, many activist groups found something missing from their agenda - regulations on militaries.
For the past 25 years of the UN’s Climate Conference, militarism has been exempt from greenhouse gas emission restrictions. This occurred because of demands of the U.S. government at the UN’s 1997 Kyoto negotiations.
According to recently unclassified state documents, on October 26, 1997, the State Department told the international attendees that “the U.S. would like to explore the possibility of including a ‘national security exemption’ relating to military activities that are directly in support of peacekeeping.”
In a document from December 3, 1997, American Ambassador Mark Hambley revealed his concerns about the U.S. military being exempt. He wrote that the two Pentagon representatives who presented at COP have “carefully orchestrated” the greenhouse gas exemptions. The issue is “very problematic,” he writes, and he argues that this is a “potentially volatile issue.”
To Hambley’s dismay, the exemptions were passed, which in a December 19, 1997 state report, the Pentagon saw as a “major victory.”
The United Nations’ website reveals that the protocol expired at the end of 2020. However, in acting with tradition, for another year at COP27, the U.S. military was exempt from discussions related to greenhouse gas emissions. Organizations like CODEPINK, however, are working to change this.
CODEPINK crafted a COP27 petition asking for a stop to “excluding military emissions from climate agreements.” The petition was widely circulated at the November 10th action, and as of the writing of this story has nearly 4,000 signatures.
“We ask COP27 to set strict greenhouse gas emissions limits that make no exception for militarism,” the petition reads. “COP27 has the power to engender a peaceful and sustainable future on this planet - but only if these measures are enacted.”
Our current reality, CODEPINK argues, looks neither peaceful nor sustainable.
The environment is in a much worse position with the Russia-Ukraine war, they argue. On August 24th, President Joe Biden announced the sending of $2.98 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, the majority of which will be in the form of arms and munitions.
One of the corporations paid to manufacture said arms is Lockheed Martin. This American aerospace, arms, and defense company has a base in San Francisco. The group of protestors that took to the streets in San Francisco’s financial district ended up in front of Lockheed Martin’s headquarters.
They demanded, “We need climate regulations to apply to the military. Defund war and imperialism, fund our communities and our futures.”
Planning this event was an international collaboration, Butler said. “Leading up to the action there were representatives from YVA that would attend meetings with a group from all over the world to create demands for COP27.”
When deciding the program for the event, “We specifically wanted to talk about something that would be discussed at COP 27,” Butler said. “One of those things being the military. So, we decided to focus on the connection of militarism and the climate crisis.
After this focus was established, YVA extended an invitation to CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace. “We reached out to different groups who specifically work in that area of climate justice, because we want to bring that perspective in,” Butler said. “It was really an intergenerational collaboration with this action.”
Paul Cox, the main contact at Veterans for Peace’s San Francisco chapter, served in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. He spoke about his organization’s advocacy against Lockheed Martin.
“We are opposed to the Military Industries,” he said. “[The United States] has sent billions of dollars to Ukraine, except that money hasn't gone to Ukraine. It's gone to Lockheed Martin. These are big contractors that supply the weapons that we've loaned to Ukraine, and then we'll expect them to pay us back in the next 30 years.”
Lockheed Martin frames itself as a climate oriented corporation. They have a “Go Green” initiative which has resulted in some successes. They state that since its inception in 2007 they have “reduced carbon emissions by 53%, energy consumption by 19%, and waste-to-landfill by 49%.”
However, the corporation has seen numerous environmental scandals in the past. Reports from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reveal that in two instances, in the 1980s to 1990s in Salina, New York and in 2014 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Lockheed Martin has been the main contributor to toxic waste on their sites.
This is only mentioning their environmental harm at ‘home,’ there is no easy way to gauge the environmental degradation that has happened worldwide as the result of their weapons.
Despite these instances of negative climate contribution, the corporation remains considering how they can survive and capitalize off of worst-case climate situations. In their forward-looking climate risk and opportunities disclosure, they note that, even in an ideal scenario, “Lockheed Martin will face increasing physical climate risks now through 2050 as a result of the locked-in effects from past global greenhouse gas emissions.”
These are the very emissions that were produced by the United States’ removal of the military from the United Nations’ negotiations, the very emissions which fund the corporation.
For Veterans for Peace, this data reaffirms their convictions, Cox said. “We really think it's important that we point out that military industries are the problem.”
As the group marched from Embarcadero Plaza to Lockheed Martin’s offices in the Financial District, they expressed desire for a world without war.
Once at the military recruitment office, CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace took over. Along with Cox, Cynthia Papermaster, one of Code Pink’s San Francisco leads, led this portion of the action.
“Lockheed Martin was picked as a stop on the march, and they told us that Veterans for Peace and Code Pink could speak at the stop,” she said. “We were really thrilled about that.”
CODEPINK developed another petition with a list of demands for Lockheed Martin. The three organizations presented them with risk.
“We were willing to get arrested,” Papermaster said. “We wanted to deliver a petition that has about 4,000 signatures on it, asking Lockheed Martin to transition to a peacetime industry.”
Papermaster explained her desire to have the company have Lockheed Martin’s 114,000 employees, “their brilliant engineers, their science knowledge, and their size, and make peacetime things that would help us with the climate crisis.”
As they presented the demands, the security guard informed Papermaster and Cox that the building was on lockdown. “Lockheed’s on lockdown,” Papermaster yelled through the bullhorn at the event.
In addition to the speeches and demands, art was an integral part of this advocacy moment. “We really wanted to do positive things,” Butler said. “So, we wanted to focus on art and creative expression for advocacy.”
This desire, Butler said, led them to David Solnit. A Bay Area creative, Solnit is a visual artist with passions in climate justice, global justice, and anti-war arts. He created protest designs screen printed on patches for attendees to wear. They showed a bomb and an extending hand, and displayed one of Tupac Shakur’s quotes, “They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor.” This motif again highlighted the theme of the entire event, Butler said.
Solnit’s larger artistic creation, however, was in front of Lockheed Martin. He spearheaded the creation of a mural, along with artistic aid from YVA’s Gemma Searle. A handprint was in the center, but the palm was replaced with a globe. Surrounding this hand read: “Defund Violence, Fund our Futures.”
As artists were painting this mural, organizers passed chalk around to all the attendees. They were asked to write what they hoped to see their tax dollars used for, as opposed to military spending. The crowd, predominantly under the age of 25, wrote about the creation of community spaces in their vision of a world without war.
One of the protest attendees, Mical Wolde, is a recent college graduate who works with Latine youth in the Mission. She said she was inspired by this action.
“It was great,” she said. “I liked seeing what other people wrote. It’s just inspiring to see what other people wrote. They’re so loving and creative. I came out today to support climate justice. I'm really passionate about activism for climate change.”
A future that Wolde wrote about in chalk is one where everyone is empowered. “I hope people feel they have power. I hope people realize that we care, and that it matters as citizens to take action ourselves.”
For Butler, watching attendees write down these ideas was quite hopeful. “Militarism and the climate crisis is not really talked about among younger generations, younger people,” she said. “For a lot of our young people, this is their first time hearing how military and climate change are connected. So, it was really cool and interesting to see how youth were writing down what climate justice meant to them in a way, and how it's not only related to the military, but how it's sort of more personal to their own lives as individuals.
“It was also, honestly, sort of heartbreaking to see how these things aren't already offered in today's life,” Butler said. “But at the same time, it was hopeful to see how youth already know what they want to see funded, what they need, and they are advocating for it.”
One attendee from College of Marin, Hope Listen Carriro, said she “wanted to participate and be a part of this movement, because it's really important. It's something that we should all care about, as this is our planet. We only have one, there's no backup.”
For Cox from Veterans for Peace, being one of the older people at this demonstration was particularly inspiring.
“It is so heartening to see these kids, these young people,” he said. “Sometimes I say, you know I'm in my 70s, I say, our children aren't activists, but our grandchildren are. These kids are wonderful that they are conscious of this stuff. They know that people my age are leaving them, a horrible situation, and they're not going to have it.”
The more than 100 activists that marched on Embarcadero Plaza affirmed what CODEPINK stated in their COP27 Petition: “It will be impossible to meet any crucial benchmarks for climate change solutions without drastically cutting military carbon output in the immediate future.”
The action ended on a hopeful note, with a skit, predominantly performed by members of CODEPINK and Veterans for Peace. It showed a reality where Lockheed Martin switched into peacetime industries and was supported by the U.S. government. Papermaster was proud of her playing the role of then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, noting that she even dressed the part.
When Butler thinks about the kind of future she wants to see, as it is related to the climate and social justice in general, it is based on the kind of hope and imagination with which Papermaster performed her skit. “We have this thought of what normal looks like, and that needs to just be completely redone. We need to rethink and create a world that truly allows every living thing to live - every creature, everything breathing and living on this Earth, every being on this Earth in general,” she said.
“One of the biggest struggles right now within the movement is we're not recognizing the connection of our struggles. We're seeing them as different. There's always a spin of who's struggling more than this person, but all of our struggles are rooted in the same systems of white supremacy of colonialism, patriarchy, racism. We have to recognize that connection of our struggles as a sense of unity between ourselves, and really using that unity and uplifting it and working together to fight collectively against that system, to work towards a world where we can just be allowed to thrive and have an adequate livelihood.”
