Local opposition keeps warships away from Lakefair

author : Aaron Hartwell topic : Lakefair | Port Militarization Resistance | Port of Olympia

by Aaron Hartwell

Three naval vessels that had agreed to attend Olympia's yearly Capitol Lakefair on July 20 and 21 have since declined to attend due to the inability of Lakefair planners to meet their security requirements. The ships that had originally accepted Lakefair's invitation to attend included the USS Ingraham which is armed with one Mk 75 76mm/62 caliber rapid firing gun, along with mk 32 asw torpedo tubes (two triple mounts), and one Phalanx ciws (an automated anti-missile system comprised of a 20mm M61 Vulcan Gatling-type rotary cannon linked to a radar system). The other two ships were the Canadian vessels the HMCS Whitehorse and HMCS Saskatoon. The ships' commanders had planned to open the vessels to public tours.

News of the impending visits sparked intense opposition by many local citizens who did not want Lakefair or Olympia to be used as forums for the glorification of war and weaponry, or for military recruitment.

This year's rejection of Navy vessels can be considered a sequel to 2004 when similar opposition repelled a visit by the USS Olympia, a nuclear submarine. This year the cancelled visits followed a coordinated letter writing campaign directed at stakeholders in the event including local governments, the local newspaper, and the ships' commanders, in tandem with many citizens arguing against the visits before the Port of Olympia and the Olympia City Council.

At a city council meeting held on July 10, only eleven days before the planned visits, Lakefair President Terry Chmielewski requested six to ten police officers from the city to provide the security required by the Navy. The council declined to provide the requested security on the grounds that the police resources weren't available on such short notice nor did the city's budget allow for it.

Councilmember Laura Ware also argued against the ships coming if it meant the Coast Guard would have their machine guns trained on the Lakefair goers at the Port of Olympia Plaza as it has done during past military shipments out of the port. Councilmember TJ Johnson noted that according to the Pentagon's own website, the displays of military hardware at local festivals are an attempt to bolster recruitment.

Several weeks prior to the July 10 City Council meeting, local groups had begun planning for demonstrations in the event the warships did arrive. Members of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace (OMJP) and Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OlyPMR) had begun publicly communicating the likelihood of a large regional response to the ships' Lakefair visit. It appears that as the reality of these planned demonstrations materialized, the Navy and Lakefair were forced to re-evaluate their security plans and ultimately scrap the visits due to a realization that the costs of securing such an event immensely outweighed the benefits.

As a result of this recent win by the justice and peace community in Olympia, the US military won't have nearly the opportunity it had hoped for to recruit local youth using the seductive allure of Navy warships and the destructive prowess they embody. Instead, this community has taken another small step toward a society that de-emphasizes destructive military solutions for conflict that result in such horrendous crimes as the current Iraq War and the so-called "War on Terror."

Citizens of this country and the world must continue to restrict and restrain the sphere of societal influence of the military and the inherent solution of domination via death and destruction it promises. We must reprioritize away from servitude to a bloated and parasitical military-industrial complex toward dialogue, real democracy and allocating resources based on the needs of humanity. Future generations and the human species depend on it.

Aaron Hartwell is a longtime Thurston County Resident and a member of OMJP. He is known to introduce the topic of Sou'westers into conversation occasionally despite admitting to never having actually worn one.