On April 9, a collection of peace activists affiliated with the People’s Arms Embargo returned to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, one hour north of San Francisco to stage a protest to try to block entry into the base.
Armed with Palestinian flags and banners, the group displayed the names and ages of some of the children that have been killed since Israel began its genocide in Gaza.
They formed a human blockade at two entrance gates: the Main Gate and nearby “Hospital Gate,” preventing the base from conducting its normal operations.
Twelve people were arrested by the Fairfield police department and later given citations to appear in court on May 20. Their charges were blocking a roadway and failing to disperse.
The April 9 Travis Air Force Base protest was the third non-violent blockade action at Travis organized by People’s Arms Embargo since November 2024 when a protest action was timed for “World Children’s Day.”
At that time, more than 12,000 children—and 700 infants—had been confirmed killed by Israel in the war in Gaza.
A recent report by UNICEF places the current number of Gazan kids killed currently at approximately 15,000, with another 34,000 kids injured over the last 18 months and a million displaced.
Considered the “crown jewel” of the Air Mobility Command, a major Air Force unit responsible for the rapid global mobility of U.S. armed forces, Travis Air Force Base was targeted by the People’s Arms Embargo because the base’s fleet delivers weapons to Israel.
The fleet includes the Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy, Boeing C-17 Globemaster III and Boeing KC-46 Pegasus aircraft, which are used to airlift military equipment and high-grade weaponry around the world.
Besides Israel, copious amounts of weaponry and equipment have been shipped from Travis Air Force Base to Ukraine, whose military has used it to slaughter civilians in eastern Ukraine and Russia.
In October-December 2023, Travis Air Force Base planes were seen on the ground in Israel delivering weapons, and servicemen working on the base boasted on Facebook of sending weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Additionally, Travis Air Force Base planes have been used to transport Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees to prisons across the U.S. and possibly to a notorious torture facility in El Salvador.
In an exclusive interview, People’s Arms Embargo co-coordinator Wynd Kaufmyn told me that the protests at Travis Air Force Base were “necessary because of the scale and destruction in Gaza and the fact that the Israeli government, with U.S. support, is out of control. The crimes are being livestreamed and people cannot say they do not know what is going on. We feel we have to try to do something. Children, medical workers and teachers are being killed and a culture in Gaza is being destroyed. Since the weapons are coming from Travis Air Force Base—located near where many of us live—this is a natural place to focus our activism on.”
A retired engineering professor at City College of San Francisco with a history of political activism dating to the 1980s, Kaufmyn wrote a letter to Travis Air Force Base Commander Jay A. Johnson stating that there was concrete proof that Travis Air Force Base had delivered weapons to Israel and that these deliveries were in violation of U.S. and international law because Israel was engaged in genocide.
The letter in turn asked Colonel Johnson, a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq and Legion of Merit winner, to make an official statement stating that Travis Air Force Base was no longer part of the arms supply chain to Israel.
Colonel Johnson so far has not responded to the letter, which was also signed by People’s Arms Embargo co-coordinators Toby Blomé and David Hartsough.
Hartsough is a legendary peace activist who tragically passed away in March after a four-year battle with cancer.
Kaufmyn and Blomé said that the April 9 action at Travis Air Force base was dedicated to Hartsough.
They quoted his words from the November 2024 protest—his last—when he said: “We are putting our bodies between the bombs and the children of Gaza” and trying to “prevent the workers on the base from loading the weapons onto the plane.”
Many of these kids whose names were featured on the activists’ signs at the protest were under three years old.
This means that they have had their entire lives “stolen from them,” Blomé said. “These kids were never able to enjoy life and fulfil their destiny—whether becoming artists, or doctors or nurses, or writers. They could never live life the way they wanted. Our responsibility as Americans is to do everything in our power to stop this genocide.”
In our interview, Blomé said that she was encouraged by the support the protesters received from people at a nearby fitness center who waved at them and even by an irate man stuck in traffic who said that he was on the same side as the protesters—though worried about being late to somewhere he had to go.
Further, a group of local high school students—one of whose father works at Travis Air Force Base—expressed support for the protests even though a political group they set up was banned at their school.
Blomé said that she was told by a source who works on the Travis Air Force base that morale among employees there is very low.
Mentioning David Zeiger’s 2005 film, Sir No Sir: The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War, Blomé said that this is a good sign as low military morale and the unwillingness of soldiers to continue to fight led to the end of the Vietnam War.
Blomé was one of 12 people arrested at the protest, though she said that she was never put in a jail cell, but rather was left for about 30 minutes to sit outside in the sun and then released at about 9:00 a.m. (the protest began at 7:00 a.m. in the morning).
In the past, she and others have been held for many hours and released only late at night.
Local media coverage of the protests was almost entirely positive. Blomé and Kaufmyn said that one article in the normally conservative Times-Herald in Vallejo, California, took good quotes from protesters, for example, and placed on the front page the photo of a protester’s sign that accused Colonel Johnson of war crimes.[1]
From April 20 to April 26, Blomé—a founder of Ban Killer Drones—participated in protests outside the U.S. Air Force base in Holloman, New Mexico, the largest drone training base in the United States.
The protesters there focused on the fact that the U.S is flying drones over Gaza that select targets for the Israeli Air Force.
On May 31, the People’s Arms Embargo is planning to host a community event at a time of heavy traffic outside the Travis Air Force Base where they will perform a peace dance and engage in other outreach activities.
The hope is that they can facilitate dialogue with members of the community and that people can learn more about who the group is and what they aim to achieve.
Kaufmyn said that, previously, the People’s Arms Embargo has gone into churches and attempted other efforts at community outreach.
The aim was to promote greater public awareness and edcucation about U.S. foreign policy and its horrific human costs—in Gaza and elsewhere around the world.
- Videos and photos from the April 9 demonstration can be found here.
Wynd Kaufmyn was quoted in the piece stating that she has attended multiple protests at Travis, and read to those gathered from a letter the group prepared to be handed out to cars. “Under the Nuremberg principle none of us can hide behind the excuse of following orders,” the letter read in part. Kaufmyn was further quoted saying she finds the devastation in Gaza horrifying, and she considers the American people complicit. “The scale and the timeline of the destruction is just nothing like what we have seen in our lifetime,” she said, “and we have a whole population that is being decimated: children, medical workers, journalists.” ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
