The Crossroads of the Pro-Palestine Movement: A Conversation with Calla Walsh

Calla Walsh, one of the Merrimack 4, reflects on the court's attempts to severely punish their actions against Elbit Systems and where the pro-Palestine movement goes from here.

Palestine Action US protesters scaling the roof at the facility in Merrimack.

On November 20, 2023, members of Palestine Action US attacked a facility belonging to Elbit Systems, a major Israeli arms manufacturer, located in the small town of Merrimack, New Hampshire. Their actions temporarily shut down the building, and to make an example out of those arrested, courts in New Hampshire attempted to charge those involved with crimes that would have sent them to up to 37 years in prison. Their legal team was successfully able to negotiate their sentence down to 60 days, and Calla Walsh, one of those arrested, will begin serving her sentence this week.

I spoke with Walsh about the action they took at Merrimack, what she believes the purpose of the significant charges against them were, what she thinks will happen to organizing for Palestine under the new Trump administration, and where she believes the movement will go from here as the war against Gaza continues.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Séamus: Calla, you're about to go to jail in the next couple of days for the actions that you undertook at Elbit Systems. How are you feeling as that moment gets closer and closer?

Calla: Every day closer to jail feels like a day closer that I will be out and free. So of course, I'm not looking forward to it, but I think in our case the process was the punishment. There was almost a year of waiting in isolation [by having] no-contact orders with my co-defendants, thinking we were going to prison for 37 years. It's not good for anyone to go to jail, but I think we're seeing the results of our case as a win, considering the original charges we were facing.

Ultimately when I'm in there, I think I'm going to be keeping everything in perspective, understanding there's [millions] of Palestinians in concentration camp conditions, tens of thousands of Palestinians in prisons getting tortured and raped. What we're doing and what we did is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what Palestinians are sacrificing and what they are contributing to the resistance.

Repression is a sign that our movement is growing powerful and it's unfortunate that we'll be in jail but it's also important to show people can go through this experience and come out even stronger and the movement can build support structures around the political prisoners movement.

S: You had mentioned the original sentence that they were potentially going to issue was 37 years. How did that get taken down to 60 days?

C: We were facing five felonies originally that totaled a max of 37 years in prison. This is a common counterinsurgency tactic used by the state against protesters, to over-charge and hit them with a ton of insane felonies that are very unlikely to stick in the end but have the effect of scaring people, intimidating them into taking pleas too early or even cooperating with the state, and thankfully that didn’t happen. We stayed strong, we didn’t let it crush our spirit and our lawyers kept negotiating and I think ultimately the state realized these charges couldn’t stick. 

[In particular] there was a sabotage statute that we were charged under that no one had ever been charged with in the state of New Hampshire before and it was a statute written in the 70s specific to hindering the US or its allies’ defense capacities. It was the heaviest charge we were facing and the state realized they couldn’t even charge us with that because it was only applicable during a state of emergency, which hadn’t been declared.

I think also the longer the genocide has escalated, the more Palestinians that have been massacred with Elbit weapons, and the more resistance that there has been in the US, the student encampment movement, more direct actions, I think the state realized how untenable these charges were and how they also don’t want to make martyrs out of essentially young girls who did minor vandalism at a factory that makes machines that kill children.

S: You’re describing what you did as “minor vandalism”, can you describe in detail what happened at Elbit Systems and also why it was a target for Palestine Action US, Elbit Systems in general?

C: So it wasn’t just the one charge I mentioned, the original charges were sabotage, riot, burglary, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, and then when they dropped the sabotage charge, they added a “conspiracy to falsify physical evidence” charge. This was all related to the action at the Elbit factory in Merrimack, New Hampshire, which is about an hour north of Boston, on November 20th [2023]. There was a ton of discourse after this action publicly basically accusing us of firebombing a small Jewish local business and it’s never really been explained clearly what [actually] happened.

What happened was three of us scaled the roof and occupied the roof of the Elbit building, where there were no security cameras but we’re alleged to have caused substantial property damage to the roof of the building and defaced the Elbit sign. At the same time, a group of people blockaded the entrance to the Elbit, standing in employees’ way, preventing them from entering their work. Another crew of people came by foot to the front façade of the building and defaced it, smashed windows, and spray painted slogans. So initially the first people who were arrested were the three of us on the roof and then a fourth co-defendant [Paige Belanger], alleged to have been part of the ground siege, for lack of a better term, was arrested two months later.

Elbit is the largest Israeli weapons company. They make the vast majority of the weapons and the vehicles and the surveillance systems that are being used in Gaza right now to commit genocide. They really use Gaza as their test lab. They use Palestinians there as guinea pigs and then export these weapons to many other murderous, imperialist regimes, including the US where [many] surveillance towers innovated in Gaza are being used to murder migrants at the [US-Mexico] border.

Elbit was a really key target because of this international campaign [that] started in the UK in 2020, where they’ve already well before October 7th had successfully shut down many Elbit facilities. Initially the first Palestine Action US action was at the Elbit in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was not a factory where they’re producing weapons, it was called an “Innovation Center”, so it was mostly people doing computer work. We started there and then we looked north and the Cambridge facility has [now] been permanently shut down, the first and only Elbit to be permanently shut down in the US. I’m still facing felony charges there and I won’t appear in court for those until January.

But it is notable that Cambridge, Massachusetts, a liberal haven, is still sticking felonies on us and dragging this case out for well over a year, when New Hampshire, a more Republican state, already drops all the felonies to misdemeanors for what was a far more escalated action than anything that happened in Cambridge.

S: The common refrain that I’ve heard from those who were supporting Kamala Harris is that however difficult thing may be now, protesting for Palestine under Donald Trump will be much more difficult, the punishments will be much more severe, and his election is going to be a significant blow to the abilities of the movement to organize. Even if you obviously never came close to supporting Kamala, what do you make of that assertion that things will be much worse under him than under the Democrats?