South Carolinians Wage May Day Protest of the Israeli Weapons Factory in Their Back Yard

A local coalition, Elbit Out of SC, has been waging weekly pickets against the company, but today is special: It’s International Workers’ Day, and protesters are connecting their campaign to the national call for ​“no work, no school, no shopping” put out by unions and community groups across the country.

Here, protesters are demanding, ​“No Work, No School, No War.” 

They don’t want a company in their own backyard, taking money out of local schools through tax breaks, to make weapons being used in attacks on Lebanon, where Israel has killed more than 2,500 people since March 2.

“We are out here to honor the workers who gave us the 8-hour workday, who fought and died for that right,” says Alex Bismuth, an organizer with Elbit Out of SC. ​“We have no say in how the profits we are generating are being spent.”

“It often feels remote from our lives, but the facility behind us is shipping Howitzer cannons. Alone we do not stand a chance,” Bismuth adds, addressing the crowd through a bullhorn. ​“We have to do everything in our power to help the people of Palestine.

Protesters hoist signs that read, ​“War Crimes,” and ​“Fund Schools, Not War.” Some cars honk in support, including one that appears to belong to a worker exiting the plant, though many worker vehicles exit without acknowledging the crowd. The group is energetic, chanting and giving speeches, distributing water and snacks, and waving and pointing signs at cars passing by. They had the goal of shutting down the plant like they did last May Day, but so far the plant appears to be running. But the coalition vows to shut down the company by next May Day, and ultimately drive them from the state.

Leonard Riley is a dockworker who loads and unloads ships, and he is both a member of International Longshoremen’s Association 1422, a storied local, and a member of the union’s board. He has gotten to know the protesters through their weekly flyering of his union hall, where he says they have ​“opened his mind.”

“I am concerned about worker unity,” he tells me. ​“We are navigating an era when there is so much separating of workers. We have to find a common thread.”

“I don’t agree with people being hurt by bombs. I don’t agree with war.”

Harvey Bennett, a Vietnam veteran and a member of Veterans for Peace, tells me that has been flyering the union hall, ​“inspired by what dockworkers have done in Spain, Morocco, and Italy.”

Elbit America is publicly advertising that its South Carolina factory is making the SIGMA 155mm Howitzer, a powerful artillery vehicle being used in attacks on Lebanon. In mid-April, numerous press outlets announced Israel’s use of the weapon in Lebanon, citing the Israeli military, which circulated videos and photographs showing one of the large Howitzers. An April 24 Facebook post from Elbit America cites the South Carolina facility as the source of the weapon.

Nick Cleveland-Stout, a research associate in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described this type of Howitzer as ​“an automated artillery system that can target up to 40 kilometers away and fire eight rounds a minute, more than double its predecessor, the M109. Its 155mm shells can kill and injure anyone within 300 meters of the blast, so the likelihood of collateral damage is very high in populated areas.”

Israel has killed more than 170 children in Lebanon in the past two months. On Tuesday, three rescue workers were also killed by Israel in a ​“double tap” strike in the town of Majdal Zoun while they were attempting to treat people wounded by a previous bombing. Two days later, Israel killed 17 people, including two children, in strikes on Southern Lebanon.

Noam Perry, strategic research coordinator for the Action Center for Corporate Accountability at the American Friends Service Committee, cautioned that Israeli military’s claims should not be taken as fact without verification, but said it does appear that Israel used the Howitzer in mid-April ​“as part of Israel’s war of aggression on Lebanon.”

“Given Israel’s conduct and patterns of use of its artillery,” Perry says, ​“it is highly likely that this new made-in-the-U.S. system would be implicated in war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law.”

Elbit Systems of America benefits from tax breaks available for corporations in South Carolina. One is a FILOT (Fee in Lieu of Taxes) agreement that gives certain companies a discount in property taxes. The second is an SSRC (Special Source Revenue Credit) agreement, which is a further subsidy that can be given to FILOT recipients, ostensibly so they can invest in new infrastructure.

These mechanisms subsidize Elbit America an estimated $475,062 a year, according to Anthony Elmo of the non-partisan watchdog group Good Jobs First. These types of subsidies come at a huge cost to Charleston County, and schools are the biggest losers, because they’re the largest recipients of the taxes Elbit America would have otherwise been paying.

The easiest way to calculate the losses to the Charleston County School District, the second largest in the state, is to look at the portion they would have received if Elbit America had paid full taxes: an estimated $237,000 a year, according to Elmo. 

These losses compound over time. Elbit America’s FILOT was approved by Charleston County in an ordinance adopted in 2022, which grants the company a 20-year agreement, as well as six years of the additional SSRCs. Over the 20-year life of the company’s FILOT, Elbit America’s tax breaks are poised to cost schools an estimated $4.74 million, a total the company otherwise would have been on the hook for paying, according to Elmo’s calculations.

Charleston County’s schools are feeling the impact. In 2024, the school district lost $16,121,000 in revenue due to FILOT and SSRC agreements, according to a tax break tracker from Good Jobs First.

“The counties are the ones who are cutting the deals, and then the school districts absorb much of the losses due to the formula that’s set up to fund the schools,” Elmo explains.

This is how Alfred Peeler, an organizer with Freedom Road Socialist Organization, put it at the Ladson protest: ​“They are stealing money from working people here to build weapons to kill working people overseas.”

This is a district in need of more resources. A survey released in March by the Charleston Teacher Alliance, a group composed of Charleston County School District teachers, determined that ​“about 40% of educators are teaching classes larger than what they consider conducive to effective instruction.” According to an annual report card of the 2023 to 2024 school year, 24% of schools in the Charleston County School District were listed as ​“below average” or ​“unsatisfactory”—far worse than the national average.

Corporate tax breaks don’t just impact Charleston County schools. From 2017 to 2023, school districts throughout the state reported losing nearly $3.2 billion to corporate tax breaks, according to a report by Anya Gizis for Good Jobs First. 

A 2022 report from WalletHub, meanwhile, found that South Carolina has the sixth worst school system in the United States, and an analysis found that from 2022 to 2023, 1 in 5 South Carolina students were chronically absent from class. Studies show that funding increases significantly improve student outcomes. A multi-state state study published in April from The Learning Policy Institute found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending for low-income students over a dozen years increased graduation rates by 7%, and a 20% increase over this same period increased ​“educational attainment” by a year.

One of the justifications for these tax breaks is that they will create jobs. ​“In addition to providing crucial support for the U.S. military, the Center of Excellence will bring good-paying manufacturing jobs to the 6^th Congressional District and inject millions of dollars into our local economy,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said when the facility first opened. Elbit America’s FILOT agreement states the company ​“is anticipated to employ approximately 302 full-time employees” over the five years following completion of the manufacturing facility.

But local activists say it is unclear how many jobs are being created, and there is little transparency about who is working or what is happening in the facility. ​“We are giving public money to them, but we’re not privy to any of the job creation numbers,” says Brett Morrison, a volunteer with Elbit Out of South Carolina, a coalition of local organizations and unaffiliated activists.

Elbit America and Charleston County Council Chair Joe Boykin did not respond to a request for comment. However, in a statement to ABC News 4 in March, the company only cited the creation of ​“more than 100 jobs.”

When I tried to approach the plant on foot as a journalist, a North Charleston police officer aggressively told me I was not allowed to be or take photos on the property.

William Hartung, senior research fellow for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says weapons companies ​“get hundreds of millions or billions of our federal taxes, then they cut into our state and local taxes, and they don’t deliver the jobs promised. And of course, if those federal dollars were spent on anything else, there’d be more jobs.”

Studies show that public funds spent on the military industry create fewer jobs than the same amounts spent in other sectors, like education and healthcare. This is, in part, because weapons industry jobs are so capital intensive: tremendous amounts of resources go to fuel, vehicles, and weapons systems, and comparatively less to labor.

In addition to its big contracts from Israel, Elbit America also competes for U.S. military and DHS contracts. According to a company press release, the South Carolina facility was built to manufacture items for the U.S. military, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Israeli military.

Tax breaks are not limited to weapons manufacturers and include companies like Low Tide Brewery and Firefly Distillery. A December 2025 report by Morrison of Elbit Out of South Carolina finds that Charleston County is, including the lost schools revenue to Elbit America, missing out on an estimated $33 million every year to corporate tax breaks.

But there is an added concern to corporate tax breaks for weapons companies, Hartung says. ​“They’re making products that might be used in genocide.”

The Elbit Out of SC campaign is one part of this larger opposition. The coalition is ​“a grassroots effort made up of hundreds of working people in the low country of South Carolina,” explains Tittle. It got its start in the spring of 2024, after local organizers learned that Elbit America had just opened a factory in Ladson. Activists had been advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, and then turned to this campaign as a more concrete intervention.

Targeting Elbit America ​“is the most direct way that we can have a material impact on the Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” says Autumn Waddell, a volunteer with Free Palestine Charleston.

The coalition started off doing a series of workshops aimed at educating the public about what this company produces. ​“And we started canvassing around the Elbit factory in Ladson, South Carolina, where we met everyday people who had no idea that this factory was right around the corner from them,” Tittle says. ​“From there, we launched a community picket of the factory, which has been going on now for probably close to a year and a half.” Every week, community members gather in front of the Elbit America factory and in some cases, ​“we’ve actually shut down production for the day,” Tittle says.

Alongside those actions at the factory, Tittle says the coalition was ​“also coming to every county council meeting twice a month and filling up the entire public comment section with community demands to end the tax breaks.” About six months ago, activists began flyering weekly at the ILA 1422 hiring hall.

“Everyone who’s learned about Elbit Systems understands that this is not just a threat to international peace and human rights, obviously in Palestine, but also now in Iran and Lebanon. This is also making our lives here in Charleston worse by fueling war abroad and by defunding our public schools,” Tittle says.

“May Day, obviously, has a very long history of working class action celebration,” he said, ​“and so we’re trying to build a larger movement of working class people who stand against war and for working-class power.”

This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.