Image by SJ Objio.
There are military manufacturers hiding in Brooklyn on city property. It’s time to evict them.
On Wendesday, June 18th, I was one of four activists arrested at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for protesting two military manufacturers, Easy Aerial and Crye Precision, which produce gear and technology for the Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Israeli Occupation Forces (officially known as the Israeli Defense Forces). These companies profit from and are complicit in state violence in both the United States and Israel.
Funny enough, they have disguised themselves within the progressive self-branded “mission-driven industrial park” that provides economic vitality for the local community. Among over 500 tenants are dozens of art studios, home goods companies, and media producers. Their leases are managed by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC), a non-profit serving as real estate developer and property manager of the Yard. The actual land is owned by New York City, which purchased it after the shipbuilding facility for the U.S. Navy closed in 1966.
The military manufacturers have hidden themselves among their art and technology neighbors; Easy Aerial, a drone-maker, is categorized as a “Fine Art/Photography” business; and Crye Precision, which produces tactical gear, is categorized as “Fashion.” We took action last Wednesday to show the rest of the Navy Yard who their neighbors really are.
View this post on Instagram
Our direct action clearly pissed some people off – and not just Crye Precision employee Matt Heyner, who tackled an activist sitting on the floor at the direction of Jonathan Antone, General Legal Counsel for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After this was filmed and posted online, Antone deleted all social media.
After we were arrested, we were taken all the way to the 75th Precinct in East New York and held in a cell littered with urine puddles and chicken bones for 10.5 hours. Our friends spent three hours looking for us and only confirmed our location by spotting us through a window, while the precinct denied we were there. I asked for a phone call to my mother seven times and was never given one. These conditions (and worse if you’re not white protestors) are the norm for the 75th Precinct, which has the highest reports of police misconduct in the city.
We at Planet Over Profit planned this direct action to help escalate the campaign work of Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard, a group of neighbors, tenants, and organizers who have spent the last 10 months trying to evict the two military manufacturers. They have held weekly pickets outside Building 77 (a public food hall), attended board meetings, flyered public events, and organized extensive tenant and worker outreach.
Many tenants had no idea they were among military manufacturers until the Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard campaign began. “It’s a well-kept secret,” an owner of a woodworking business in the Navy Yard told me. “It was really shocking to me because I have always felt like the Navy Yard is, you know, a place of creation and of, you know, creative efforts and people building things. And this is basically the opposite.”
Easy Aerial, headquartered on the 6th floor of Building 77, is an Israeli-American drone manufacturer founded in 2014. Its clients include the Department of Defense, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Israeli Occupation Forces. The company’s drones are used to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border and the Gaza Strip; it is thus directly complicit in the violence committed against migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
In December 2024, co-founder Ivan Stamatovski told Truthout their drones were an “immediate need” for Israel after October 2023, when Israel launched a full-fledged assault on Gaza in response to a Hamas-led attack on Israel that took 251 hostages and killed around 1,200 people. Since Israel’s retaliation began, the IOF has killed at least 61,709 people, including 17,492 children.
Easy Aerial also held discussions with Mayor Eric Adams in 2022 about the NYPD purchasing its drones to “fight crime” with more drone surveillance. While I could not find concrete proof of drone purchases, the NYCLU has documented a dramatic increase in police drone usage since 2022. The NYPD frequently uses these drones to surveil Pro-Palestinian protests, building on a pattern of tactics and training shared by the IOF and NYPD.
Crye Precision, which leases Building 128 in the Navy Yard, claims to outfit “nearly every service member in the U.S. Armed Forces.” The company signed 238 contracts with the U.S. government between 2008 and 2021. In September 2024, a whistleblower confirmed that Crye produces camouflage for the IOF.
These are companies that supply and hence profit from Israel’s war crimes – crimes the U.S. has often endorsed and provided the weapons for.
“When you know something unjust is happening in your own neighborhood, you have to speak up,” a parent who lives nearby told me. She has spoken at two board meetings this year. “I’ve spoken to the BNYDC as a parent, a neighbor and a nurse who is deeply concerned about the health and safety of all our kids. The board members know what is going on and have a choice of whether or not to be complicit in the harms of the NYPD and the deaths of innocent people in Palestine or to stand up for our community.”
Easy Aerial and Crye Precision are neck-deep in state violence, abuse, and genocide. Their drones surveil migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, and clothe the DHS officers who confront them. Their drones monitor the genocide in Gaza and camouflage the IOF soldiers committing war crimes.
If the Brooklyn Navy Yard actually wants to be the “mission-driven industrial park” it claims to be, then military manufacturers have no place there.
Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard will continue to fight for the eviction of Easy Aerial and Crye Precision. To learn more about how to get involved and support the campaign’s work, you can follow them on Instagram and Linktree.
The post Demilitarizing the Brooklyn Navy Yard appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.