20 arrested in protest at Army school for Latin Americans

COLUMBUS, GA. -- At least 20 people, including two Minnesotans, were arrested Sunday while protesting at a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans. Those arrested were among a record 16,000 people who demonstrated outside the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, calling for the school to be shut down.

<snip>

"We gather to revive the memory of those who have died at the hands of this combat school," said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest. "How do you teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun? If they are so concerned about teaching democracy, then why not close this school and send these students to some of our fine universities?"

Bourgeois is head of SOA Watch, which monitors the institution formerly known as the School of the Americas. The group has staged annual protests since 1990.

SOA Watch and other critics allege the school's graduates have committed murder, rape and torture, including the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5098047.html

And let's make it clear the policy to train other countries' soldiers to murder its citizens is immoral. It's the year 2004. When does education and civility take over the world?

I'd like the repukes or the fascist christians to tell me what the 'end game' is? When does the murdering stop? When do the unschooled get school? When do the billions of people looking for a job get a job? Or is your plan just let the Earth degrade to death and chaos til the day a God comes?

I'll let the Google-hunters find out which of our presidential candidates praised the School - and which tried to get it shut down.

Don't even have to deal with Presidential candidates. Let's talk about the President that saved SOA from extinction. You know, the one that had a Big Paw in keeping SOA open, after a name change and a discrete makeover.

Tsk, tsk, tsk!

There are DUers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay deep in denial over the SOA (or WHISC or whatever the fuck it's called now).

I don't know if I can take the withering fire from people too blinded by their love for a Big God (am I dyslexic?) to see the SOA for what it is.

It hasn't produced THAT many murderers!

Once I heard he was still defending the school (and the graduation speech he made there), I knew I could never support or vote for him.

I hoped I was wrong, but it was his own words.

we could not expect him to call them assassins and torturers. On the other hand, did he have to be that enthusiastic when he extolled a highly sanitized and revisionist version of the school's history?

in control of the far-right...

And for that matter, we should shut down Congress too.

you lost me somewhere

I don't recall saying it should be shut down because it's a rightwing institution.

It should be shut down because it teaches how to torture and kill with efficiency, and has produced many "graduates" who go back to their rightwing-controlled South American countries and use their newfound skills on dissidents to silence them permanently.

Really, I'm not sure how you got what you got out of my post. :shrug:

Check your slippery-slope blinders and maybe a few qualifiers about right-wingers directly linked to training assassins and fascists terrorists.

Wait, wasn't there a clerk for a right wing supreme court justice?
And didn't that clerk later advocate torture...ah, nevermind.

Training dismissed.

"Organizers said concern about the war in Iraq and President Bush's reelection boosted attendance at this year's protest. Martin Sheen, who plays the president in NBC's "West Wing" TV series, addressed the group Sunday."

a few years ago. When I was walking back to my car, I looked over and there was Martin Sheen.

He is quite an activist! :thumbsup:

Not that you saw Sheen, but that you protested.

this year, but I just wasn't up to it. :-(

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/10235409.htm

Posted on Sun, Nov. 21, 2004
:toast:

Sarandon shows up at protest

Many protesters hope actress will draw attention

BY ANGELIQUE SOENARIE

Staff Writer


This year Susan Sarandon did not show her support in a letter. Instead, she stood just a few feet from the Fort Benning Road gates Saturday to show her support in the SOA Watch protest.

Standing beside her was Sister Helen Prejean as they attracted a mixed crowd of reporters and protesters.

"I am happy to be here," said Sarandon, an Academy Award winning actress. "I am very moved by the commitment of the people."

Prejean, a long-time supporter and opponent of the death penalty, began her prison ministry in 1981 in New Orleans. She is the author of the book, "Dead Man Walking," which became the basis of a movie and an opera. Sarandon starred as Sister Helen in the movie based on the book.

Prejean, who attended last year, has continued to show support of the Rev. Roy Bourgeois and efforts to close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning. She feels that violence is not the answer to solve the war on crime.

..more..

They had posters all over my school and they had organized a group of people to go, but I didnt have the cash...Now i really wish i went!

I wish more DUers understood the evil that is the SOA like you apparently do.

We just had to take a bus down there...and since I live in PA that equals lotsa money...not to mention a hotel room. I'll be there next year

http://www.soaw.org/new/newswire_detail.php?id=598
-----

November 21, 2004

1:15 pm - More than 16,000 people are marching here at the gates of Fort Benning in a beautiful and massive funeral procession led by Martin Sheen, Father Roy Bourgeois, Neris Gonzalez, torture survivors and others. This gathering, our largest and most diverse ever, stretches the length of Fort Benning Road, with thousands holding crosses, stars of David and other symbols of hope and resistance. As musicians sing out the names of victims of the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC), the crowd responds, “Presente!”

Along the procession route, people have begun to transform the fences surrounding the protest site into expressions of hope and remembrance, placing their symbols in and around the new chain-link barriers erected by the city of Columbus and military personnel.

As the front of the procession reached the main gate of the Fort, many mourners dressed in black shrouds and carrying coffins lied on the ground in a die-in commemorating those who lost their lives to graduates of the SOA/WHINSEC. A large Puppet of Mourning accompanied the marchers as they made their way to the gate while the Musicians’ Collective read the name of a 7-year-old victim of US foreign military training.

Many people have begun to negotiate the barbed wire fence to enter the military base in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. The “Welcome to Fort Benning Sign” has been transformed by a banner reading “Close the SOA” and decorated with crosses, stars of David and other symbols.

Among those arrested today was Elizabeth Nadeau, 27, a student and member of the Steelworkers Union. Elizabeth was part of a group of people who scaled two barbed-wire fences to cross onto Fort Benning calling for the closure of the SOA. Elizabeth was drawn to participate in this act of conscience, risking up to six months in prison, to be in solidarity with her brothers and sisters in Colombia. Today she remembers Isidrio Gil, a Colombian labor leader killed in 1996, and that one of every four union organizers killed in the world is Colombian.

Watch for more updates soon!

In hope and resistance,
The SOA Watch Media Team

Are there 16,000 people on DU who care about the SOA?

one thing that is heartbreaking to me is that year after year people protest at the SOA, many have been arrested and often spend six months to a year in federal prison (including elderly nuns)
and the media just ignores it.

...that are totally out of line and getting harsher. From what I understand the authorities are cracking down harder every year on those who basically just show up and sit in front of the gates and fences in silent protest.

I thought there was some bill in Congress that would cut the funding to SOA. I'm guessing it died. Big surprise.

I have a friend who goes down every year.

a good friend was imprisoned for 6 months and wrote a book about it:
"Jailed for Justice: A Woman's Guide to Federal Prison Camp"
www.celticwordcraft.com

Ironically, Martha Stewart got her lots of media attention.
----------------------------

http://www.mountainx.com/features/2004/1110hanrahan.php

Nov 10, 2004 / vol 11 iss 15

Message in a bottle
How a media darling's downfall propelled a little-known activist into the spotlight

by Lisa Watters

"I could live for probably two years on what they spent just to coax some words out of my mouth."

– Asheville activist Clare Hanrahan

Local activist and writer Clare Hanrahan was out mowing her lawn in late September when ABC called, asking her to be a guest on Good Morning America the next day. "I think I had an hour or two before the limousine showed up in the front yard and took me to the airport," notes Hanrahan. "From there on, things in my life just started speeding up."

The call from ABC was just the first of what turned out to be a full-blown media barrage. Lifestyle magnate Martha Stewart was about to begin a five-month prison term at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, W. Va., and the news media needed an "expert" to interview.

Two years before, Hanrahan had served six months at Alderson for trespassing on the grounds of Fort Benning, Ga., home of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), which provides "education and training for civilian, military and law-enforcement students from nations throughout the Western Hemisphere" according to its Web site. Her sentencing came after she'd repeatedly "crossed the line" as part of organized, peaceful protests calling for the closure of the school because of "the human-rights abuses traced to SOA graduates," which, maintains Hanrahan, "are well-documented and ongoing and have resulted in the torture and death of hundreds of thousands ... in Latin America."

On her release, Hanrahan wrote a book, Jailed for Justice: A Woman's Guide to Federal Prison Camp (Celtic Wordcraft, 2002), as well as an essay on the history of Alderson. She has just published her second book, Conscience and Consequence: A Prison Memoir (Celtic Wordcraft, 2004) (see "Living Through the Shadowland" elsewhere in this issue).
...more...

I've got some calls to make.

Many people are unaware of this place because if it's not on CNN or FOX is just doesn't exist.

I'm thankful for those who fight against it. They are true heroes.

And I have studied it when I can find articles about it. After 54 years, the U.S. Army School of the Americas was closed on 15 Dec 2000, by National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2001, Section 2186. It will be re-opened in the name of Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)

WARNING: link is to a secure military website :WARNING

https://www.perscomonline.army.mil/tagd/tioh/Schools/School%20of%20Americas.htm

This is the new 'School of the Americas'.
http://www.benning.army.mil/whinsec/

Changing the name so that it sounds "nicer." Just who do they think they are conning?

remember these days "war is peace".

they are the TRUE patriots who actually follow the teachings of Christ for peace instead of using the Bible to promote bigotry and hatred.

in a time honored tradition, these people are practicing true "Christian values".

I meant the 20 protesters who were arrested. "Hats off to these brave people...."