Raytheon Peacemakers
Early in the morning of April 17, 2012, as workers arrived at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona, members of the Raytheon Peacemakers gathered for a peace vigil outside the missile factory. Also Tax Day in the United States, some of their signs read, “Tax Dollars for Health Care, Not Missiles”, “No Profit From War” and “Will the World’s Children Survive Your Work?”.
Raytheon Missile Systems is the most profitable division of the war profiteer. With its headquarters and largest factory in Tucson, Raytheon Missile Systems employs about 12,000 people in southern Arizona.
For more than a decade, Raytheon has hailed Tucson as the Missile Technology Capital of the World – a center for lethal innovation and cutting-edge killing for profit. From Standard Missiles to Star Wars “kill vehicles”, Mavericks and AMRAAMs, microwave crowd control beams and pilotless drones, cluster bombs and cruise missiles – it’s all made here, some even sold to friends and foes of friends alike.
The Raytheon Peacemakers hold a peace vigil there each month to demonstrate against war and those who profit from it. The activists believe that survival demands better ideas, not better weapons.