Supporters surround Rev. Luis Barrios as he ‘walks’ to jail

At least 60 supporters crowded around Rev. Luis Barrios as he entered the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York March 9 to begin serving a two-month sentence for “trespassing” at the notorious School of the Americas last fall. At his sentencing hearing Jan. 26, Rev. Barrios recalled Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero’s assassination in 1980. Romero was killed by SOA graduates in the Salvadoran military, with U.S. government support, after a sermon demanding that the generals stop massacring the Salvadoran people.

Rev. Luis Barrios WW photo: Deirdre Griswold

Barrios also appealed to U.S. soldiers to stop the repression that the SOA teaches. He denounced the SOA, founded in 1946 and renamed in 2001 as the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” calling the school a symbol of U.S. despotism over the countries of Latin America.

Also sentenced with Rev. Barrios for “trespassing” onto the school grounds in Georgia were Theresa Cusimano of Denver; Kristin Holm of Chicago; Sister Diane Pinchot of Cleveland; Al Simmons of Richmond, Va.; and Louis Wolf of Washington, D.C.

Supporters included Brenda Stokely,  Million Worker March movement; Rev. Lucius Walker, Pastors For Peace; Rebel Díaz, Las Peñitas in the Bronx; youth from Iglesia San Romero de las Américas (founded by Rev. Barrios); and representatives of the Dominican, Cuban and Puerto Rican progressive movements.

Send support mail to P. Luis Barrios #93613-020, MCC-New York, Metropolitan Correctional Center, 150 Park Row, New York, NY 10007

For more information about the movement to close the School of the Americas, visit www.soaw.org.