Ft. Benning, Ga.
Thousands condemn
U.S. terrorist school
70 arrested in protest at 'School of Assassins'
By Dianne Mathiowetz
Ft. Benning, Ga.
Threats of arrest. Rhetoric about terrorism and a national
emergency. Claims that the notorious School of the Americas has
a new name and a new mission.
A new 1,000-foot-long fence at Fort Benning topped with
barbed wire.
Denial of march permits by Columbus, Ga., city officials.
Attempts to get an injunction against SOAWatch organizers.
Police efforts to declare 150 feet in front of the base
entrance a "protest-free" zone.
None of this deterred over 10,000 people from participating
in annual protests against the "School for Assassins" here on
Nov. 17-18.
The fence became a "wall of remembrance." Literally every
inch was covered with crosses bearing the names of those killed
by SOA-trained soldiers and pictures of people "disappeared" at
the hands of SOA graduates.
On Nov. 18 a group clad in black shrouds and white death
masks carrying coffins led the way to the fenced-off entrance
to the fort. With soldiers in camouflage standing guard just
inside the base, dozens of uniformed Columbus police outside
the gates, and plainclothes cops videotaping the scene,
protesters symbolically laid the dead of El Salvador,
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and
elsewhere at the feet of those responsible.
For more than two hours, lines of demonstrators placed
crosses, flowers, signs and banners all around the bloodied and
still bodies of the "massacred" at the fence. At the same time,
the names and ages of the dead and disappeared were read from
the stage.
Thousands responded, "Presente," to each name, lifting their
hands to the blue sky.
With drums beating, a large contingent of
papier-mâché puppets dramatized the struggle of
the peoples of Central and Latin America against U.S.-sponsored
dictators and international corporations. Chanting, "Close the
SOA now," protesters filled the area along the fence. Some
climbed atop the "Welcome to Fort Benning" sign. Others perched
on brick columns guarding the entrance.
Affinity groups built a "village" out of cardboard. Some
staged die-ins and sit-downs in front of the gates.
Anti-war messages were written on the pavement. A cemetery
with crosses and headstones was constructed around the Fort
Benning sign.
Meanwhile, some 70 people managed to gain access to the
base. They were arrested. Outside the gates, protesters could
see them being dragged across the field to waiting police
buses.
SOAWatch exposed training of assassins
The activities of the School of the Americas were exposed
through the efforts of the Rev. Roy Bourgeois and the
organization he formed, SOAWatch. After the massacre of six
priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the University
of San Salvador in 1989 by SOA-trained soldiers, Bourgeois
called for a demonstration at Fort Benning in November 1990.
About 12 people marched along Fort Benning Road that day to
deliver an indictment of U.S. policy toward Latin America.
SOAWatch then began documenting the more than 40-year
history of SOA-trained officers: massacring villagers,
assassinating union and religious leaders, torturing political
prisoners, "disappearing" of student activists and heads of
civic organizations, and raping, looting and burning to
intimidate civilians. The ranks of the annual demonstration at
Ft. Benning grew.
In recent years, those willing to risk arrest and possible
imprisonment by taking their political protest onto base
property swelled into the thousands. The core of
religious-based, older activists was joined by young people,
who transformed the annual event into a mass action.
Over the past decade more than 60 people have served time in
federal prisons for opposing the School of the Americas.
This year's crowd was mostly young. High-school and
college-age students came from as far away as California,
Vermont and Maine. Hundreds came from Oberlin College in Ohio.
Many drove 18 to 24 hours from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona
and Texas.
Dozens of Catholic religious orders were represented, as
were other Christian, Buddhist, and Indigenous groups.
Relatives of the dead and "disappeared," like Adriana
Potillo-Bartow of Guatemala, came to share their first-hand
experience of the terror inflicted by SOA graduates.
Banners oppose war
in Afghanistan
Signs and banners also showed opposition to the current war
on Afghanistan and the attempt to curtail civil liberties and
scapegoat Arabs and Muslims in the United States. People talked
about the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's claim to be
fighting worldwide terrorism when the United States maintains
this "terrorist training camp." They called for its immediate
closure.
Not intimidated by the pro-war hype and increased political
repression, many felt the current war made it more important
than ever to be at this year's protest.
On Nov. 16 the protesters had won a victory when U.S.
Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth ruled against the city's attempt
to ban protest at the military gates. Lawyers for the city of
Columbus had claimed that because the U.S. is at war, political
protest at a military base poses a threat of potential
terrorism to the community.
Faircloth, who six months ago had sentenced 26 SOAWatch
protesters to federal prison, held that First Amendment rights
to political dissent could not be abridged, even during a war.
He ruled that the years of protest at the gate had established
it as a site of public forum.
The massive turnout was also a victory over misinformation.
Years of pressure on Congress to cut the funding for the SOA
had forced legislators to declare it officially closed in
December 2000. However, in its place they established the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort
Benning.
Paramilitary groups in Colombia responsible for the vast
majority of civilian deaths in that country's long popular
uprising against the oligarchy are linked to officers trained
under the WHISC program at Fort Benning. "New name, same
shame," demonstrators chanted.
Reprinted from the Nov. 29, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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