While VIPs gather inside Bath Iron Works, war protesters gather outside.
BATH – As the Navy christened its newest ship Saturday, about 40 people marched, banged drums and carried signs, protesting what they called, “America’s newest weapon of mass destruction.”

Protesters outside Bath Iron Works included small children, retirees and at least one Maine school teacher. She sold cookies and brownies and displayed a sign which read, “Bake Love, Not War.”

“I don’t condone terrorism and I believe we need to defend ourselves,” said Lisa Savage, who teaches at a school in the small town of Oakland. “But invading Iraq didn’t make us any safer. We’re fighting this war to give Halliburton access to Iraq’s oil.”

Savage stood on one end of a column of protesters who gathered outside the shipyard’s south gate, where an estimated 2,000 people would enter for the 1 p.m. ceremony.

“This is where our tax money goes,” she said, pointing across the street to the gate. Police officers and guards greeted everyone who entered and searched the bags people carried.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the shipyard has heightened its security, said Bath police. Prior to the attacks, the yard was guarded by about 30 unarmed security workers. Those numbers have ballooned to 50, and each now carries a sidearm.

Inside the shipyard, one of the country’s two builders of Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the industrial setting was decorated with red, white and blue bunting, particularly around the new ship, the Nitze.

While the general public passed the protesters, the 200 or so invited VIPs never did. They came through a different gate several hundred yards away and parked inside the secured area. As they neared the podium where the ceremony would take place, they were greeted by still more security. A formation of six state trooper cruisers lined the backstage area. Among the speakers were Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Rep. Michael Michaud and Navy Secretary Gordon England.

At the end of the ceremony a Navy chaplain, Lt. Bernard Welch, would read an invocation before sponsor Elizabeth Scott Porter would christen the ship with champagne.

Outside, protester Suzanne Hedrick of Nobleboro carried her sign, an enlarged editorial cartoon of the grim reaper descending from the sky above Iraq. In the background is the U.S. plane he jumped from.

“We’re making the world a more dangerous place,” said the 73 year-old Jay native. She said she is bothered by the number of children who enter the yard and come out chomping on hot dogs, as though they just left a birthday party.

“It’s a celebration of death,” she said. She is also a lifelong Catholic who is insulted by the Navy’s use of the word, “christening.”

For the military, it’s the official naming of the ship. The designation “U.S.S.” comes later, at the ship’s commissioning.

But in the church, a christening marks someone as a new Christian.

“It’s a real obscenity,” said Hedrick, who is a member of Pax Christi Maine, one of several groups represented. Others came from Maine Veterans for Peace, the Justice Group and the Connecticut Peace Coalition.

Greek native Iaonna Gutas drove to Bath from New Haven, Conn., to help carry a sign outside the shipyard. It read, “Reject the Endless War.”

“It’s more urgent than ever,” said Gutas, who has lived in the U.S. since 1966. “We’re killing so many Iraqis. And they didn’t attack us.”
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