Defense giant endures protest
Peaceful arrests at Lockheed's gates

A colorful crowd of hundreds of protesters commuted into Sunnyvale early Tuesday, seeking to shut down the vast campus of Lockheed Martin Space Systems but failing, according to company officials, to halt the giant defense contractor's work.

Nevertheless, organizers of the morning demonstration, during which dozens of protesters were arrested for blocking entrances to the sprawling campus, said they had succeeded in their goals of protesting military action in Iraq and calling attention to the presence, products and political power of the nation's largest defense contractor.

"Every time a bomb is dropped, a gun fired, a person killed, Lockheed Martin -- this facility -- profits," said Valarie Kaur Bara, 22, a student with the Stanford University Cluster of Direct Action to Stop the War, which helped organize the protest as part of South Bay Mobilization to Stop the War.

"I cannot stand silent as a few miles from my university, Lockheed Martin produces weapons of mass destruction," she said.

Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale unit, with more than 6,100 workers, is probably best known for building nuclear-tipped missiles that can be fired from submarines. Last year, the company received more than $2.2 billion from the Defense Department.

The company's work proceeded unhampered Tuesday morning, company officials said, despite protesters who linked wrists inside PVC pipe to block several of the entrances to the Sunnyvale campus.

The company issued a statement Tuesday morning supporting the protesters' First Amendment rights to demonstrate.

"We feel just as strongly about the rights of our employees, respect for our property, and the value of the work we do on behalf of our nation," the statement read. "Today's actions will in no way shift our focus from meeting our commitments to the men and women who voluntarily place themselves in harm's way to defend the United States."

Protesters began arriving in Sunnyvale from as near as Palo Alto and as far as Sacramento Tuesday at about 6 a.m.

By noon, when the last protesters headed for the trains and parking lots, 49 people had been arrested for failing to disperse, blocking traffic and in one case for allegedly touching a police horse.

One man's hand was injured -- superficially, according to police -- as firefighters cut him out of the PVC pipe linking him to another protester blocking an entrance, and another protester fainted but declined medical treatment, police said. No police injuries were reported, and police said the crowd was peaceful and cooperative.

Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Capt. Greg Kevin estimated there were about 300 protesters and about 200 officers from across the South Bay. Organizers estimated the crowd size at about 600 over the course of the day.

"As a police department, we'd much rather allocate our resources to the community," Kevin said. "But we recognize that people have a right to protest, and we support people who peacefully protest."