In Tucson, pro-Palestine protesters call for an end to the ‘war economy’
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Like cities around the U.S. and the world, Tucson has seen protests and civil actions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. military support for Israel.
But that call is more personal here.
Raytheon, now formally called RTX, has facilities in Tucson where weapons are made.
In a public address about military funding requests in October, President Joe Biden called out Arizona as a weapons manufacturing site.
“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores, our own stockpiles with new equipment,” Biden said. “Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more.”
The patriot missile is an air defense system used by the U.S. and several of its allies, including Israel. Components for that weapon and others are made by Raytheon in Tucson.
RTX is the second-largest defense contractor in the U.S. and Tucson’s largest private employer.
The company has a more than $2.6 billion annual economic impact statewide, according to a 2019 study by the ASU’s Seidman Research Institute.
The center’s director Dennis Hoffman says today, it’s likely even more.
“It’s going to be well into the 3 to 4 billion range, in terms of annual economic impact, particularly in the Tucson metro area,” he said.
Demonstrations over the last several weeks have honed in on just that.
Early last month, about 80 people laid down with signs and white sheets over their bodies for over an hour in front of an entrance to a Raytheon plant on Tucson’s southside. The sound of airplanes could be heard overhead as a few dozen cars blocked from getting inside honked and made U-turns.
The latest airstrikes in Gaza were triggered by an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which took more than 200 hostages and killed at least 12 hundred people in Israel on Oct. 7, according to Israeli authorities.
Health officials in Gaza say more than 17,000 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes there since then.
Raytheon declined to comment on the protests at its facilities in Tucson or its economic impact in Arizona. But in an October earnings call, the company’s CEO Greg Hayes said the company stood to benefit from the increased Department of Defense budget stemming from the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
"So again, I think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you're going to see a benefit of this restocking. On top of what we think is going to be an increase in DOD top line," he said.
"Like, you ask us how we feel today ... It’s not news to us,” said Muna Hijazi, a community organizer with the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, or APSA. “We’ve been aware of this for a long time — about what a war economy Arizona is building, and how many residents of Arizona would staunchly disagree with that.”
Hijazi’s group was one of several groups that has joined protests at Raytheon and other Tucson institutions since October. She says her group has been trying to raise awareness about the shared issues between Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza, and the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We're dealing with exactly some of the same actors, the same security company that has built the apartheid wall in Palestine and Israel is building the security towers on the U.S.-Mexico border,” Hijazi said, referring to the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
Over the last several years, the company’s U.S.-based subsidiary Elbit Systems of America has installed a network of surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, including in the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Demonstrations have drawn attention to those connections over the last month — including in front of the Tucson-based Universal Avionics, an aviation manufacturer owned by Elbit Systems. Elbit did not respond to requests for comment about that protest.
At another protest at the University of Arizona Tech Park later in November, more than 20 people were arrested after protesters blocked multiple entrances to the Raytheon facility housed there, along with other roadways inside the park. Protesters would not give their full names, but said they wanted to disrupt the flow of business at the park and to draw attention to Tucson’s role in conflict in Gaza.
The message hits close to home for Tucson resident Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, another community activist with APSA. He’s been in town for 40 years but he was born in the West Bank in a village called Imwas.
“I lived the story of Palestine. I was born in 1947, and that's the year, you know, a year later, Israel was created,” he said.
Imwas was was captured and parts of it were destroyed by Israeli forces in 1967. But Abdulazziz says that story wasn’t told for years, until an Israeli journalist wrote about it later.
“That’s the cruelty of this,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “We need them to approve our story, otherwise it’s not valid. And that is the very inhumane cruelty of the situation that has been going on, on and on, including now.”
Abdulaziz says Raytheon’s place in Tucson has long been an issue groups have focused on. But as Hoffman, the economist at ASU, points out, the arms industry is a Tucson mainstay.
“The volume of these impacts are so large, that it’s basically inconceivable to envision what the Tucson economy would look like,” he said.
Hoffman says that’s not just because of Raytheon today, but also because of its predecessor Hughes Aircraft, which produced weapons here until being bought by Raytheon in the 1990s.
“I understand that some people have angst over the products that these folks produce, but candidly across the entire state, the Department of Defense investments have really been very key,” he said
Hoffman estimates Raytheon supplies between 30,000 and 50,000 Arizona jobs all told — including almost 13,000 direct employees in Tucson.
Adulaziz says he understands the economic importance. But he wants to see that talent directed to other projects, like healthcare and the environment.
“These are companies that have great technical capabilities, and they can easily change course, to produce products that help humanity, rather than destroying it,” he said.
Buy, he says, he knows that won’t happen overnight.
