In 2017, a friend posted in Next Door a message saying, “Is anyone worried about the excessive air and noise pollution of the Blue Angels?” She was looking for some compatriots to join her in questioning the Blue Angels as a beneficial tradition that should be continued.

She now has something akin to PTSD from the response to her question, which reached, not quite the level of death threats, but was decidedly negative. How dare she question our traditions? How dare she question such a show of skill and might. After hearing her story, it’s been on my mind ever since.

The exact series of events for the planning of the Blue Angels Airshow protest is different for each of us that came together. For me, it started by attending a Resist US Led War- Seattle rally at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. This is where I learned that sixty percent of Boeing’s business is military sales to the US government. I received a flyer — The Climate Crisis and US Militarism from Veteran’s For Peace (VFP) and added it to my pile of interesting information. When Extinction Rebellion Seattle had a spring Allies in Activism rally, we invited Will from VFP Chapter 92 to speak.

Some time later, I went to an activism training weekend and took the art track where I was able to make screen prints, stencils and a linoleum cutting. Although the weekend was focused on forest defense, I persuaded my group to create a poster in protest of Military Airshows — getting me one step closer to making a protest against the Blue Angels military airshow a reality.

Meanwhile, my friend Beth is an active member of a group called Earth Care not Warfare. She’s been a peace activist for many years. She was itching to get a petition going or somehow sway the Seafair Board into ending the airshow. She put me in touch with a group, part of 350 Seattle, focused on calling out the impact that the US Military has on the climate.

I made it to a meeting on zoom. There were three of us there. Mary, a leader in the group, Jacob, who lives in the neighborhood where the show is based, and me. I found Mary to be delightfully knowledgeable and determined yet also soothingly calm. She’d been fighting militarism for years and was all in. She had connections to Veterans For Peace from her anti-war activism.

Later I found myself on Zoom again, this time with Beth, Mary and a crowd from Veterans For Peace discussing the idea of staging a protest. Gary Butterfield from Veterans for Peace San Diego was stressing to the group that their group’s engagement with the public at protests became much stronger when they started highlighting the climate impacts of the military and forming coalitions with climate groups.

At first the folks from VFP Seattle were reticent to plan a protest. We had only a month to plan. We could wait till next year.

For me, reading earlier in the day —

that we were having the hottest days in 120,000 or so years,

or was it the flooding in Vermont, or Italy,

or the prolonged drought in Spain,

that made me think to myself, ‘What are they waiting for?!’

I tried to remain calm while stating that we’d definitely need to start now. Mary was in agreement. We were going to do this.

So we spent the month of July working together — representatives of Extinction Rebellion Seattle, 350 Seattle’s anti-militarism and climate group, the Seattle Anti-War Coalition and Veterans For Peace.

We planned to protest the airshow at Seafair on August 5 and 6 from 10–12. I had never been to this part of town during Seafair. I had watched the Blue Angels from various viewpoints over the years. I knew there were hydroplane races, but I didn’t know there was an entire weekend of military recruiting that folks paid to get into on the weekend of Seafair.

Our little coalition developed a flyer and poster to share in the neighborhood and across Seattle:

I spent one morning walking the neighborhood with my friend Rebecca putting flyers on porches and engaging with whoever was on the street. She spent the week dropping off flyers on her morning walks. I was unhappy, but not surprised, to find that Rebecca and other climate activist friends who live in this neighborhood make plans every year to leave town during the Seafair weekend. Another friend who was leaving town shared that his grand daughter was crying from the noise of a plane that had passed overhead during practice. With activists out of town, I simply had to have faith that folks would show up.

Days before the protest, Elizabeth, another activist friend forwarded me an email with a petition link. We All Want to Feel Safe: No More Blue Angels Over Seattle. When I first opened the link there were under 200 signatures. Now there are over 2,300. The local community is making its voice heard. We are, of course, the flea fighting against Boeing, but us fleas fighting against injustice “can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable.” I have the whole Marion Wright Edelman quote on the wall in my living room and it definitely comes to mind in this situation.

Elizabeth also forwarded an op-ed piece that had just been published.

Op-Ed: It’s Time for Seattle to Cancel the Blue Angels

by Barbara Clabots and Rachel Heaton. Apparently there were other’s feeling the same way as us. I forwarded the email with the links to anyone I thought would be interested. And continued with the protest planning. I made a pile of signs on cardboard that included such phrases as ‘Demilitarize Seafair,’ ‘Decarbonize Seafair,’ and ‘We Need New Fossil Free Traditions.’

Then, the weekend arrived. On the Friday of the Seafair weekend, it is free to enter. As part of our scouting of the location, we went through the gates to see what Boeing’s Seafair was all about. There was an area to the left filled with healthy treats for sale like you’d find at any fair — French fries, burgers and other delightfully greasy foods. On the other side was the large army contingent equipped with a tank, camouflage ropes and of course, swag for the kids. Army, Airforce, Navy, Marines, no branch of the military was left out.

Nestled in all this was a lonely Food Lifeline table. No swag. No spinner or games. Just some brochures on how after pandemic funding had ended the food bank was having a hard time keeping up with the increasing demand. I told the young woman that her’s was the only booth I cared about and took couple of flyers to share.

Through our scouting, we decided to set up outside the Fair entrance on the grass of the park. Our different groups of climate activists and veterans had come together and we were ready to face the militarization and corporatization of Seafair and the public that doesn’t know, and seems not to want to know, that we’re in a crisis and this type of show is part of the problem.

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This post was previously published on ILLUMINATION.

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