What Happened After a Dissenting Engineer Left Boeing
One young Boeing employee found himself in a St. Louis student encampment protesting the war on Gaza. One year later, he’s left the “moral gymnastics” of the defense industry behind.
Hi there!
My name is Sophie Hurwitz, and I’m a reporter digging into the defense industry in St. Louis, Missouri. In my hometown, Boeing is king: it employs about 16,000 people (or 34,000, if you count subcontractors and indirect jobs), spends big lobbying money every election cycle, funds and recruits extensively out of local universities.
It also manufactures F-15s, guided-bomb kits, and other weapons. When Israel’s war on Gaza broke out a year and a half ago, Boeing’s role in St. Louis was thrown into sharp focus — and that war upended the lives of some of its newest employees.
I’d like you to meet Andrew*: a young engineer who joined Boeing straight out of Wash U, and then found himself leaving that company less than a year later. Andrew reached out to me over email a few months ago, and told me he had a story to tell. Through his eyes, I learned what it’s like to leave the defense industry in a company town, and trade a white-collar salary for scraping by on dog-walking and furniture-assembly gig work.
I learned about what it’s like to work a desk job as F-15s fly overhead, and about how his encounters with police, with St. Louis activists, and with other young engineers across the world contributed to his decision to leave. I talked to engineering professors at comparable schools about why so many engineering students go into defense — even if they’re ambivalent about where the weapons are actually going — and spoke with St. Louis local Palestinian activists about why the city’s economy is so dependent on militarism.
“A young graduate is going to go where the jobs are, and that, unfortunately, is at places like Boeing,” said activist Sandra Tamari. “The jobs in this country are built by the demand, and the demand is in militarism. That’s where the federal government budgets are going, where there’s investment, where there’s growth.”
Defense is, indeed, where the jobs are — but for people like Andrew, a stable job isn’t worth the “moral gymnastics.” I hope you’ll take a minute to read his story.
Read More: “How One Dissenter Left Boeing”
Comments? Story ideas about Boeing or Missouri? Send them to me at shurwitz@inkstickmedia.com or message me on Signal, @shurwitz.18
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