By Lawrence Maushard
A year ago, local news media reported widely that former Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman had a plan to attract more six-figure managers to Peoria. I said then, and I repeat now, that we do not need to listen to Doug Oberhelman about anything related to positive growth and development in Peoria, Illinois.
This is the guy who prepared the headquarters exodus of Caterpillar, Inc from Peoria. How many high paid executives left Peoria exactly because of capitalist hyenas & tax avoidance thieves like this guy?! And he had the gall to recommend anything about the Greater Peoria economy and living standards?! This guy fought tooth & nail to drive down wages paid to Peoria union workers, our families, our friends, and our neighbors.
And, Caterpillar fought US tax laws under his “leadership” by offshoring CAT profits, and hired terrible people like former-Trump Attorney General William Barr to cover CAT’s determined efforts to continue hiding taxable profits. Oberhelman oversaw the faux plans to revitalize downtown Peoria knowing full well CAT was leaving town like a thief in the night. And if he didn’t know about the exodus, then what kind of CEO was he?!
All this & he oversaw Caterpillar while it knowingly made profits from sales of bulldozers and heavy equipment to apartheid Israel to be used as illegal weapons of war, and turned the D9 & D10 into infamous, worldwide symbols of war crime used in the home demolitions of innocent Palestinians, as part of racist, ethnic cleansing campaigns and gross human rights abuses and violations.
No less than Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on July 3, 2018, just shortly after Oberhelman’s tenure at CAT, “In this inhumane environment of suffering and oppression, the Church finds itself invested in corporations long known to be providing products and services to those responsible for the occupation. This year the Episcopal Church sponsored shareholder resolutions to hold two of those corporations accountable: Caterpillar and Motorola Solutions.” That’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu calling out and disinvesting from your apartheid-profits company, Doug.
Peoria does not need to blindly accept people like Oberhelman or any other CAT executive who helps destroy and damage countless lives of working people here and abroad. Peorians are much more intelligent and humane than capitalist raiders and destroyers of communities, like the current and past leadership at Caterpillar, Inc. In an interview, I took a deep dive into Caterpillar in Mint Press shortly after returning from occupied Palestine in 2018.
Shortly after returning from occupied Palestine, I helped organize a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions on CAT rally outside the firm’s one-time headquarters in downtown Peoria. It was a small but serious gathering, which featured the parents of Rachel Corrie, Cindy and Craig as our main speakers. They had not been in Peoria since April 23, 2004 “International Day of Action Against Caterpillar,” less than a year following the Israeli military murder of Corrie by running over and crushing her with a weaponized Cat D9R as she attempted to peacefully prevent illegal Palestinian home demolitions in Rafah, Gaza.
Craig pointedly told me the 2004 peaceful anti-Caterpillar demonstration in Peoria included police with long guns perched on downtown buildings. According to media reports, on that day “the Corries presented at CAT headquarters in Peoria, IL only to be turned away by 17 riot police.” Our 2018 rally wasn’t nearly as dramatic. However, we did achieve local television news coverage, and reminded the city and Cat that nothing had been resolved.
I created our BDSCAT marching banner for the 2018 protest, which has also participated in 2021 demonstrations in Peoria, and since October of last year, in Bloomington, Normal, and Champaign protests. The University of Illinois protest was especially focused on Caterpillar and its presence on campus. We marched to the Cat office there and denounced one of the world’s largest mining and heavy equipment manufacturers on earth.
A renewed focus has occurred on Caterpillar’s complicity with Israeli war crimes and genocide since last October. Caterpillar bulldozers have emerged as horrific machines of invasion, destroyers of entire streets and refugee camps, while burying alive Palestinians who had taken shelter in hospital tent grounds and were unable to flee. Buried alive and crushed beneath weaponized Cat D9 bulldozers. Just like Rachel Corrie decades before. Only this time it’s worse. So much worse.
All the while Caterpillar is making record profits, some of which are based on the sale of bulldozers and other heavy equipment to the apartheid Israeli military. Remember that the next time you’re wearing Caterpillar hats, boots, gloves, pullovers and other warm and comfortable gear sporting the famous yellow logo.
