Religious literature tells us that there is a time for war, a time for peace, a time to sow, a time to reap, a time for all things.
On Thursday morning it was time for several Bay Area peace groups to rally outside Travis Air Force Base gates to assail the U.S. government’s “complicity in genocide” as the ferocious Israeli siege of Gaza continues.
The morning was also was a time for Fairfield police officers and Solano County Sheriff’s deputies to arrest more than a dozen of the estimated 150 protesters who, some time after they assembled at 6 a.m., blocked the north and south gates to the sprawling base just south of Vacaville.
Jennifer Brantley, a spokeswoman for the Fairfield Police Department, confirmed in an email that the protest was prompted by the base sending “supplies” to the state of Israel and that protesters blocked off several gates with barricades.
Fourteen people were arrested and booked into Solano County Jail on suspicion of refusing to disperse during the protest, which lasted about three hours. Of the 14, 10 were arrested by Fairfield officers and four by deputies.
Before the arrests, however, Brantley said Fairfield officers and unidentified “representatives” from the base met with protest organizers to make sure they could “exercise of their constitutional rights, while also ensuring the men and women serving our nation could get onto the base,” as the morning commute got underway.
“Unfortunately, almost immediately after that meeting, some of the protesters moved into the street and blocked” the north and south gates, she said, adding that they were asked to leave the roadway “multiple times” and told they could continue their protest on the roadway shoulder but refused.
“Each person was then asked individually to leave the roadway and still they refused,” leading to the arrests, said Brantley.
No force was used and there were no reported injuries during the nonviolent protests, and by 9:30 a.m. the roadways where cleared and access to the base “returned to normal,” she added.
Brantley also said police officers from Vacaville and Suisun City also assisted during the protests.
A Travis public affairs official confirmed that one protester, after crossing onto base property, was briefly detained at the scene by base security officers “and promptly turned over to Fairfield Police Department for further processing.”
Base Security Forces are “primarily responsible for the safety and security of the installation and our base population,” the official, who did not identify herself, said in an email to The Reporter. “We are unable to discuss specific security measures or timelines to protect operational security.”
Brantley said Fairfield officials became aware last week of the Thursday morning planned protest with its stated goal “to shut down all gates into and out of the base.”
In a telephone interview Thursday, rallygoer Cynthia Papermaster, 77, of Berkeley, said of East Bay CODEPINK, which collaborated with several other rally sponsors to organize the event, “We advocate for things,” not necessarily protest.
Other groups included the Nevada County Peace & Justice Center, Occupy Beale AFB, ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, United Front Committee for a Labor Party, Extinction Rebellion Peace, and Youth4Palestine.
The rally also was endorsed by Veterans For Peace, National and Veterans For Peace, San Francisco Chapter, Papermaster added and described herself as a “legal observer” to the rally.
“We don’t protest,” said Papermaster, a former law librarian, said of CODEPINK, a feminist grassroots organization working to end U.S. warfare, imperialism, support peace and human right initiatives, among other things. “We advocated, in this case, for the discontinuance of shipping armaments and materiel” from Travis to the state of Israel.
By Thursday afternoon, The Reporter received a copy of an arrested protester’s agreement to appear in Solano County Superior Court to answer for a violation of Penal Code section 409, “remaining present after a warning to disperse.”
Fairfield native Susan Jane Witka, 73, of San Francisco, booked with bail set at $5,000, was ordered to return for arraignment at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 23 in Fairfield.
In a press statement, CODEPINK spokeswoman Melissa Garriga, said the rally’s purpose aimed “to draw attention to the base’s active involvement in shipping military supplies directly to Israel, contributing to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the smaller of the two Palestinian territories bordered by Egypt on the southwest, Israel on the east and north, and on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
She noted that Travis, one of the largest transport Air Force bases in the U.S., “has become a focal point of concern due to its role in aiding and abetting Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza.”
“The base is alleged to be complicit in the loss of over 20,000 Palestinian lives, including more than 8,000 children,” she asserted in the prepared statement. “Gaza’s infrastructure has been devastated, with 1/2 to 1/3 of homes destroyed, leaving civilians, hospitals, ambulances, hospital workers, and journalists as repeated targets.”
The majority of Palestinians in Gaza, many injured and needing medical care, have been displaced from their homes, “grappling with severe shortages of food, water, fuel, and shelter due to Israel’s harsh siege,” said Garriga.
Papermaster said her role at the rally was “to observe what the police were doing and documenting their movements,” using a cellphone video recorder.
She said CODEPINK’s position regarding the Israel-Hamas war, which began with Hamas attacking Israeli kibbutzim and a music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,000, including Americans, is three-fold: 1) An immediate and permanent ceasefire, so that (Israeli) hostages have safe passage; 2) Stopping the funding of weapons and armaments to commit a genocide; and 3) Ending the occupation of Palestine.
Papermaster, who is Jewish, noted opinion polls indicating that 70 percent of Americans do not want the U.S. to continue aid to Israel, saying, “Our government is thumbing its nose at public opinion.”
She said plans are to hold additional rallies in the coming weeks and months at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco, at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco, and at Sen. Alex Padilla’s Bay Area offices.
“I’m not a Hamas supporter,” said Papermaster, “but the Palestinians deserve to live in peace and thrive.”
“What CODEPINK wants is a world without war,” she added. “We want a peace economy, not a war economy. We’re tired of supporting merchants of death. They make so much money off these wars. We wonder how much influence they have on our foreign policy.”
Thursday’s rally followed dozens of similar recent rallies in earlier weeks across the globe and the U.S., including massive protests, in Washington, D.C, Los Angeles, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, Indonesia, Iraq and South Korea.