Photos of the Blackwater Protest at Moyock, NC

A hardy coalition of peace and justice activists took on Blackwater USA Saturday, Oct 20, 2007 at their world headquarters, outraged by a long history of bloody incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan and culminating in the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad on Sept 16. I posted a news item a few days ago on Mosquito Blog which you can check out later for more information.

Meanwhile, independent photographer Joe Filipowski sent me a CD full of photos of the Blackwater Protest in Moyock last Saturday, with the request that I get them out to the public, so I have been doing that. I took some 80 plus of his best photos and loaded them on my Kodak Gallery space for everyone's perusal, but I thought I would show you a few of them here at Mosquito Blog to twik your interest. You can follow them up via the link to the rest of the photos at the bottom of this post.

To briefly summarize, there were protesters outside of the Blackwater entrance along both sides of the roadway and bleeding onto a nearby city street. There was a guerilla theater partial reenactment of the Nisour Square massacre, and there were seven arrests of activists who quietly chose to practice civil disobedience. The police were pretty cool about this and the whole event went off very successfully.

There was local and Virginia coverage of the protest, with some independent media types joining in, or protesters simply being their own media journalists and photographers. The message got out that there is very vocal resistance on both coasts now to Blackwater's martial ambitions and violence.





























You can see the rest of Joe's photos by clicking here . You don't have to sign in, just go to "view slideshow".

It is hoped that this protest will serve as an inspiration to others who are challenging the government/corporate war machine that is devastating humanity and the planet.