This week protestors have targeted “Land Forces 2024” a massive expo featuring the latest ways of waging war. Margie Pestorius, a Queenslander Christian, tells The Other Cheek why she joined the protestors. Pestorius is a long-time peace protestor – one of a group arrested for trespass at Pine Gap in 2017.
1) You have trekked all the way from Cairns to Melbourne to protest something called the Land Forces 2024 Expo. Why is that so important?
This is a mobilisation, a civil resistance event designed to ’change the weather’. That is to change the way a lot of people understand something. Like a Pentecostal moment where suddenly the death of revelation is greatly strengthened. A mobilisation allows a burst of action, a burst of love. The government structure is dependent on revelation and truth-telling. In this case we want to tell the story of capture by the multinational weapons companies which like the Romans are wreaking extraordinary harm across the planet I’ve come to participate.
2) Which are some of the companies at the expo and what do they make?
Boeing makes attack helicopters.
Thales, Rheinmetall and Hanwha make fortified steel vehicles- tanks and mobile forts BAE makes components for weapons systems.
Ferra Marrand Electromold make parts for the F-35 bombers. Rheinmetall and Nokia make 155mm bombs used to obliterate the people and housing of Gaza.
3) What conflicts would the companies weapons be used in?
None of it is for defence. Australia has no geopolitical enemies. This is uncontested. We need a few airplanes to defend Australia against… Well aliens if they did appear. It’s all for militarising our export economy to send weapons to kill civilians and poor people in other lands. To kill people who are expendable and in the way according to elites.
4) The ABC reports that police have been attacked, and police have used stun grenades on protestors. has it been a violent situation?
Harm is the concept we deal in. Violence as a word has become meaningless. Let’s look at harm. Some police had fart spray put on them which their copropaganda unit called acid.
Over 100 of our people were treated by medics – pepper sprayed to the face. 5 people went to hospital with injuries. 20 people were harmed by rubber bullets: One person hit in the head, in the face. 20 people were hit by truncheons and had nasty truncheon wounds. Several groups were rammed by shielded people who rammed them, pushed them over, then sprayed them and whacked them.
One completely still 78 year old was slammed by the shields from behind and fell in his face.
We should remember Christians in the Coliseum. The police has some fart spray on them. Which their PR unit of 99 PR employees called ‘acid’. My 8 year old thought fart spray was pretty funny when he first found out about it.
5) How does your Christian faith lead you to protest?
I’m called by God to draw forth revelation and truth-telling. That’s all. God’s Spirit is with us. And time after time we see the love of God send forth the spirit releasing love and understanding about the reality of our times. It’s standing with the poor and those most affected…in our minds if they are not actually with us. ..standing with the poor and facing the reality of elite cruelty that the Spirit of God is unleashed and transfiguration is enabled.
I stand with the bravest, most lovely and caring young people, and their creative elders. We put our bodies in new places just as Jesus put his body where it was necessary for revelation and truth. Jesus also faced the cruelty of elites. I just try and take a place by his side. I thought that’s what we are called to do.