In the Fall of 2025, three 23-year-old Irish activists in a Ford Transit van rammed the perimeter barrier at Shannon Airport, on Ireland’s rural west coast. Using a fire extinguisher converted into a homemade paint sprayer, they coated a US Navy 737 in green paint. Their direct action was to protest and expose how civilian airports move weapons to Israel. Later named the “Boeing 3”, they were stopped at gunpoint and charged with various crimes. One of them, Kaspar Cantwell Strattra, later told police, “the use of Shannon Airport by the US military breaks Irish neutrality. The US is a belligerent power complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.”

About one year ago, organizers with similar concerns started a campaign started inside New York City DSA. It’s called “Break the Chain.” The chain runs through Long Island/NYC-area logistics companies and a handful of local manufacturers who move bombs, ammunition, missile parts, guidance electronics, detonators, bomb-release mechanisms, fuzes, and tear gas toward Israel through JFK airport. In a show of unity, many DSA candidates who won their primaries in June spoke out in favor of Break the Chain in a recent video.

“We have been flyering workers every Sunday for the better part of the year,” said Bassel Al-Khalili from NYC Break the Chain. “We have also been working closely with dozens of JFK workers to expand our reach. We want to do a better job of meeting workers in the terminals and warehouses that keep this city and the world moving!”

Fifteen organizations have endorsed Break the Chain including three UAW union locals, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), NYC Educators for Palestine and CUNY Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

One year ago, Break the Chain didn’t have wide support inside DSA. This July, it won chapter-wide “priority campaign” status when 90% of the NYC chapter voted to support it. Priority status means that Break the Chain gets a representative on the chapter’s Socialists in Office Committee, which coordinates the chapter’s work with all of its electeds.

“New York City DSA has taken on more and more public-facing advocacy on Palestine,” said Ethan Eblaghie, the new campaign chair, after the landslide vote. 

A Little-Known Arms Pipeline

Exposing the truth on this little-known arms pipeline started back in October 2023. An independent Irish outlet, The Ditch, began tracking how Challenge Airlines routes munitions flights from JFK, through Irish airspace, to Israel. Ireland is supposed to have the same kind of neutrality as Switzerland. It is not supposed to take sides in an armed conflict. But the U.S. war machine demanded a pitstop, a refueling station.

As the story broke, people took action. A precursor to Break the Chain was a pro-Palestine action on Van Wyck Expressway right outside JFK airport in December 2023. Using cars and their bodies, activists blockaded the route. Twenty six people were arrested.

Later, The Intercept, in May, 2025, broke the story that 14 tons of nitrocellulose was being shipped through JFK. Nitrocellulose is an inherently unstable explosive material. It was moving through active runways alongside commercial jet fuel, ground crews, and passenger traffic, with none of the containment protocols needed for handling explosives at that scale.

In October 2025, an explosion at an armaments factory AES in Tennessee showed how badly things can go, in the mishandling of military-grade explosives. All 16 workers were killed instantly. The entire building was reduced to white dust.

In China, in 2015, dried Nitrocellulose set off a chain reaction of explosions in the port of Tianjin. The majority of the 173 deaths were firefighters.

JFK hosts 62 million passengers per year. Break the Chain is exposing a clear risk to public safety. Should a highly trafficked airport be subject to the risk of highly explosive materials? All this to support a genocidal war that most New Yorkers reject?

NYC hasn’t matched the Irish pro-Palestine movement in its constant cadence of creative civil disobedience. But some in this movement are planning something stronger. Our city leaders are pushing the movement forward by writing new laws, not just breaking them.

Legislative Allies

NYC Break the Chain has vocal supporters willing to propose serious changes. For example, State Senator Jabari Brisport, is building a coalition to support the “Not In Our Skies” law. (The choice of name clearly refers back to then-Assemblymember Mamdani’s proposed legislation, “Not on Our Dime” which attempted to target the non-profit status of any New York charity engaging in support for illegal West Bank settlements.)

As Ethan Elbhagie explains, the proposed law “would target the subsidies of airlines that are complicit in war crimes. They’re hoping it’ll be sort of like a regulatory lever that puts pressure on not only the airlines themselves, but the Port Authority, which controls airlines’ access to the airport and use of the land, to halt arms shipments going out of the airport.”

Air carriers that have transported munitions from JFK to Israel are Challenge Airlines, FedEx and Embracer Aviation International.

Back in Ireland, Shannon Airport has been the target of civil disobedience ever since a Catholic Worker action in 2003. To protest the Iraq War, the “Pitstop Ploughshares” activists first broke the barrier and damaged planes.

In an ironic twist of fate, all activists were acquitted, when they tried to argue the “Necessity Defense.”

The Irish Criminal Damage Act of 1991 says a person has a “lawful excuse” for damaging property, if the person believed, at the time of the act, that whoever was entitled to consent to the damage had consented, or would have consented had they known the true ethical stakes.

The Pitstop Ploughshares activists went free, thanks to their belief that their damage to planes prevented a greater harm. They heard a call to act. They put action for peace ahead of anything else.

Today, Break the Chain asks you this question: Are you going to just sit back and watch, as our airports move the tools of genocide?

Sander Hicks is a member of the Break the Chain campaign. 

Take Action: Break the Chain invites you to our interfaith anti-war event, building peace by organizing! Faith communities are working with the democratic socialist left. Oct. 25, Sunday, 1-4 PM, at the 15th Street Quaker Meetinghouse, at 15 Rutherford Place in Manhattan. Esther Farmer from Jewish Voice for Peace, Joins DSA Anti-War, UU and Quaker voices, plus many others.