In its 60th year, the Cleveland National Air Show is a well-known and largely beloved Labor Day tradition. But for nearly 40 years, a group of Clevelanders has protested the event. Their message? “War is not entertainment; these planes kill.”
The Air Show is expected to draw more than 100,000 to Burke Lakefront Airport from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2, with additional spectators watching from parks, beaches, buildings and boats on Lake Erie. The main attractions include the Navy Blue Angels, Air Force A-10C Thunderbolt II and Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II.
This year, members of the Cleveland Catholic Worker community will hold a peaceful witness outside each day of the Air Show, just as they have for decades.
It began in the mid-1980s, when refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and other parts of Central America, who were provided sanctuary at the Catholic Worker’s former Casa San Jose at West 44th Street and Lorain Avenue, experienced trauma responses to the sounds of fighter jets overhead. The Catholic Worker community realized the refugees had been on the receiving end of bombs dropped by these same planes and, in solidarity, launched a conscientious opposition to the Air Show.
“What we hear as entertainment in Cleveland are the sounds of war and fear in other countries,” says Mike Fiala, a member of the Catholic Worker community who started attending the witness in 1989. “These are fighter jets painted up to look like they’re entertainment, doing these incredible aeronautic maneuvers, when actually they are planes we use and sell to other countries that wreak havoc on the planet.”
Each year, the Air Show witness consists of a vigil, followed by daily gatherings of about five to 25 people on the Marjorie Rosenbaum Aviation Plaza — which activists call “Warplanes Plaza” — holding banners, praying and engaging with curious passersby.
The local Catholic Worker community, which includes a house of hospitality and drop-in storefront in Ohio City, is connected to the larger social justice movement started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933.
“As a Catholic, my commitment to the social teachings of the Church around war and violence do not permit me to support the use of weaponry as entertainment,” says Megan Wilson-Reitz, a lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at John Carroll University, who has attended the Air Show witness for the past 25 years.
“These machines are designed for wholesale slaughter of other human beings, and my religious and moral values do not permit me to look at that and celebrate it,” Wilson-Reitz says.
During the witness, Catholic Worker members and friends usually pass out packets of seeds, dubbed “Seeds of Peace,” and flyers informing people of the military’s costs to taxpayers, as well as the human and environmental toll of warfare.
In some years, demonstrators have made more of a spectacle by utilizing large puppets, carrying a coffin as part of a symbolic funeral procession or performing peaceful civil disobedience. The most notable example of this was in 2006 when five protesters were arrested after staging a “die-in” in front of an A-10 “Warthog” Thunderbolt inside the Air Show.
Although the Air Show includes some non-military aircrafts, advocates point out that fighter jets are the main attractions, with military recruitment and maneuvers, including mock bombing raids — as major components of the event. The Air Show did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
“The A-10 Warthog was one of the largest planes used in the Iraq War and dumped depleted uranium on the people of Iraq,” says Chris Knestrick, who was arrested along with Wilson-Reitz as part of the 2006 demonstration. “A-10 Warthogs are one of the highlights of the whole Air Show, and people aren’t connecting the dots.”
In addition to victims and refugees of various geopolitical conflicts, U.S. service members and veterans may also have traumatic responses to the Air Show. Knestrick’s father was a Vietnam veteran who had PTSD and hated the Air Show because of it.
“If we were living in Gaza right now, what would those sounds and those planes symbolize for us?” Knestrick asks. “They would symbolize the death of our children, the elimination of our education system and military occupation and destruction. Cleveland has a strong Palestinian community, so when we think about the Air Show coming to Cleveland this summer, when Gaza and Palestine are being completely demolished by planes, it represents something very different for people in our communities.”
Veterans walking into the Air Show, Wilson-Reitz says, have been among the most receptive to the witness’ message, with some saying, “You’re right, I experienced this, and it was awful.”
Fiala pointed out that animals and young children are also often terrified by the Air Show, and said he’s heard from people across the country interested in opposing their local air shows.
“For most of us, there’s an initial stage of: What do you mean? It’s just planes,” Fiala says. “But the violence that we perpetuate with those weapons and selling them is beyond imagination. When you talk to people who have suffered under the experience of the military or the planes that we have built, you have this sense that all you want to do is grieve and lament and beg our country to do otherwise.”
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