NORTHAMPTON — Five activists with the group Demilitarize Western Mass were arrested Wednesday after occupying the lobby of the L3Harris building on Prince Street.

The activists — Patricia Gallagher, Nick Mottern, Paki Wieland, Priscilla Lynch and Ben Stegbauer — entered the lobby of the defense contractor at around 8 a.m., and said they were there to deliver a warrant for a citizen’s arrest of L3Harris CEO Chris Kubasik, according to Deborah Yaffe, another activist who did not join them in occupying the lobby but was with a group of protesters demonstrating outside the building.

“Hopefully they will be arraigned and they will be defending themselves,” Yaffe said of those arrested in an interview later that morning. “They want it to go to trial, so that we can bring the issue of L3Harris, a weapons manufacturer in Northampton, which is arming nuclear missiles and surveillance equipment, so we can bring this issue to the public.”

L3Harris is a publicly traded aerospace and defense contractor company headquartered in Florida, with several offices across the country, including in Northampton. Demilitarize Western Mass has held numerous protests at the Northampton office since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in 2023, taking aim at the company’s providing of equipment to the Israeli military, with previous protests including blockading one of the office entrances with a boat and blocking a gate with a cement truck.

The group said in a statement released Wednesday that they occupied the lobby to bring more attention to how L3Harris aids operations in Israel, accusing them of being complicit in “the genocide of the Palestinian people.” They also mentioned the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, as well as Israel’s recent resuming of launching airstrikes in Gaza.

“While Palestinians in Gaza face bombardment and student activists like Mahmoud Khalil are disappeared for their ‘threat to American interests,’ it is the Palestinian resistance, cause and movements for imperial disarmament that are the pathways to global justice and peace,” the group states. “All weapons manufacturers, and the capitalists that rely on war to reshape the world, need to be confronted head-on for the violence they have brought to the world and face accountability.”

The group also called for L3Harris plants to immediately stop providing weapons and equipment to the Israeli Defense Force, as well as the city of Northampton to refuse to allow L3Harris to conduct business in the city.

The activists pleaded not guilty at a Wednesday arraignment in Northampton District Court on charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace.

A media spokesperson for L3Harris did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.