The overlooked case of the Boeing Five

Nancy Epling grew up with an awareness of the power nonviolent direct action can wield. Even as a child, Epling said she had a deep interest in learning about the tactics taken to advance the Civil Rights movement, including sit-ins and Freedom Rides, during which white and Black activists remained seated together on buses as a means of challenging segregation in the American South. 

These understandings deepened after Epling attended a December 2014 “die in” at the Fairfield Commons Mall in Beavercreek, Ohio – a protest organized by the Ohio Student Association as a means to call attention to the death of John Crawford III, a 22-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by police in a Beavercreek Walmart while holding a BB gun for sale in the store.

“My friends were like, ‘Come to this protest.’ … And I ended up in the line of people between police and the crowd, and my friend and I ended up getting ripped apart and arrested,” said Epling, who was charged with trespassing. “Getting arrested, I had no idea what was going to happen, but fortunately the Ohio Student Association really had things planned out super well, and we had a lot of support. Going through that experience, I learned a lot. And I even ended up going to one of [the Ohio Student Association] summits about different tactics that folks can use in the struggle for social justice.”

Epling applied the lessons absorbed a decade ago in a direct action she and others staged in early March at the Boeing plant in Heath, Ohio, during which the group blocked a trio of access roads in an attempt to halt activity at the facility and to draw greater attention to the genocide unfolding in Palestine and the role the United States and weapons manufacturers such as Boeing have in abetting the violence. (The facility in Heath houses the Boeing Guidance Repair Center, which manufactures missile guidance systems and unmanned aircraft.)

The action undertaken by the activists constituted part of growing nationwide protests aimed at Boeing, with the company coming under increased public scrutiny related to its weapons manufacturing divisions and ties to Israel.

The Heath protesters arrived near the Boeing plant in the early morning hours of Monday, March 10, and set to deploying blockades on each of the facility’s three access roads. The group cut off a pair of overpasses by erecting a suspended cantilever system, with weighted blockades suspending individual protesters from ropes below bridges on Aerospace Drive and James Parkway. A third road was blocked by two other activists who locked themselves to a parked car, the roof of which firefighters later had to cut off. 

While Epling declined to say when protesters began planning the action, she said her interest in Palestinian justice has roots that extend back more than a decade, when as a college freshman she befriended a Palestinian who served as a point of entry into the cause. More recently, the issue surged to the fore as the scope and scale of the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 continued to grow, resulting in the deaths of more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to figures released this week by the Gaza Health Ministry.

“And with that, I think a lot of people in Ohio were like, ‘We have to do something,’ and we started reaching out to our communities and talking to local officials and state officials and sending letters and signing petitions and making calls,” Epling said. “And eventually it begins to feel like at what point is anyone going to listen who can actually change something? We’re protesting in the streets, and collectively it’s pushing us toward the right things, but people are still being murdered every day over there. So, it’s like, what’s the next step? Nonviolent direct action.”

Epling described her state of mind in the midst of the Heath protest as “meditative,” saying that a sense of calm overcame her, even in the hours when emergency personnel worked to detach her from the barricade. 

“It was very chill, very calm, at least in my mind and my body. It was just a matter of shifting my perspective and realizing that me sitting in the cold is nothing compared with what people [in Gaza] are experiencing daily.” said Epling, who recalled the mostly bemused responses offered by the firefighters and EMTs who arrived on site. “They’d never seen anything like this in 38 years, they were saying.”

In the end, five protesters in Heath were arrested and charged with a variety of offenses that included impeding the passage of an emergency responder, failure to comply with a police order, and disorderly conduct. After the group, which has become known as the “Boeing Five,” declined a plea deal, Epling said, prosecutors in Heath added charges of inciting a panic and obstruction of official business. 

“We’re kind of in this limbo now waiting to see what’s going to happen,” said Epling, whose initial trial date was delayed until mid-September and appeared in danger of being pushed back yet again when we spoke early in the month. “They’re definitely set on us getting some kind of jail time, but we’re not sure how much. First it was six months. Then it was 30 days, possibly 15 in jail and 15 on house arrest. So, we’ll see.”

According to Art, a member of the legal defense team providing support to the five protesters, Boeing initially demanded financial restitution, as well, claiming the blockades cost the company $300,000 in lost profits.

“Facing that direct repression … is really intimidating, and you really feel the weight of the state falling on you,” said Art, who added that their work for the legal defense team has consisted of everything from helping to organize fundraisers to soliciting attorneys who can provide defense. “These things can be scary, so we check in on our people, we make sure they’re okay, and we let them know they’re not alone and that we’re not going to disappear. … And then it’s also continuing to be vocal, standing up, and refusing to let them beat us into submission.”

Epling, for her part, said she has taken the lingering uncertainty in stride, describing her current legal woes as “this little cloud in the background” of her day-to-day life. “I’m honestly not super worried or nervous,” she said. “I just want to get it over with.”

Beyond the legal pressures being exerted on the Boeing Five by prosecutors, police, and corporate entities, Epling and Art said the case highlights the limited view many have of modern protests, which are increasingly limited to state-sanctioned methods and/or confined to pre-approved zones.

“I do think it absolutely opens up what protest can look like, especially in cities like Columbus, where protest is often what I would call a parade. It’s not disruptive, and it’s often within the bounds of the state, and sometimes even within the bounds of the police themselves,” Art said. “But this type of direct action has really hit Boeing, Heath, Columbus and Ohio with the knowledge that, ‘Oh, this can happen here, too.’ And it showed me that protest doesn’t have to be just a parade. And that when you do these things, and you engage in these actions, people will be there to support you.”

“It’s the people who are in their cars, the people who are just going about their days, those are the ones you need to shake awake,” Epling said. “Some people, they don’t want to see it. They don’t want to deal with it. And for those people, often the only way to make them pay attention is to kind of stop them in the hamster wheel of their day.”