upload media | post an article | link to the otherpress | Comment on this article | View comments | Email this Feature News :: Peace : Protest Activity Presente! 16,000 Protesters Gather to Close the School of Americas Current rating: 0 Over 16,000 people from across the Americas — including actors Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon — gathered this weekend outside the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia in the most diverse demonstration yet of opposition to the School of the Americas/ WHINSEC!
Stories by SOA Watch, Atlanta IMC and Tennessee Indymedia . . .
The gathering culminated today with a solemn funeral procession to the gates of Fort Benning led by actor Martin Sheen. 20 people were arrested in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, many negotiating a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence to enter the base. They took this action despite knowing they likely face 3-6 months in federal prison. Since protests against the SOA/WHINSEC began fourteen years ago, 170 people have served prison sentences of up to 2 years for civil disobedience.
“Prison will not deter us,” said Elizabeth Nadeau, who was among those arrested today. “We will be here until we close the school and change the foreign policy that it represents.” Nadeau, 27, is a student and member of the Steelworkers Union in Minneapolis, MN.
Sunday, 9 pm: 250 people and many puppets are gathered outside of the Muscogee County Jail in a lively support vigil for those arrested during the weekend's activities. The SOA Watch Legal Collective has accounted for all arrests and expects each person arrested on the base to appear before a federal magistrate on Monday morning before being released on bond.
Tennessee Indymedia Reporting on the SOA:
Interviews from the Street - FLOC, Solidarity, NLG & RCP at the SOA (11/22/04) Audio File
An estimated 15,000 people attended today's vigil and twenty two were arrested at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia. In addition to peace activists, many organizations were represented at today's gathering including the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Atlanta Solidarity, the Revolutionary Communist Party and the National Lawyers Guild. The following is excerpts from on the street interviews with represenatives of these organizations at today's SOA gathering.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34527/index.php
Human Rights Activists Speak to 15,000 at SOA (11/22/04) Audio File
Fr. John Dear and other human rights activists speak to 15,000 people gathered at the largest gathering of peace activists to close the school of the americas.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34525/index.php
Celeste Zappala of Military Families Speak Out at the SOA (11/22/04) Audio File
Celeste Zappala who lost her son to the war in Iraq speaks before 15,000 people at the SOA on Sunday November 22 about the war in Iraq, militarism, and the terrible grief of a mother losing a loved one to warfare.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34524/index.php
Martin Sheen and Fr Roy Bourgeois Hold Morning Press Conference in Front of SOA Gates (11/22/04) Audio File
Martin Sheen and Father Roy Bourgeois gathered in front of the gates of the School of the Americas to hold a press conference before today's vigil. "You know what I do to make living, but this (social justice work) is what I do to stay alive . . ." Sheen said during his press conference.
Martin Sheen is an actor who plays the president on the popular television series "West Wing." He has been active in various social justice causes for years and has been arrested at the SOA on several occassions.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34519/index.php
Stories of Resistance and Hope from the Gates of Columbus Georgia (11/21/04) Audio Files
Kathy Kelly, Bishop Gabino Zavala and John Nelson Pallmeyer give stories of hope and inspiration and resistance to two thousand people gathered at the gates of Ft Benning on the day before the vigil to shut down the school of the americas.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34511/index.php
Torture Victims Carlos Mauricio and Neris Gonzales speak out against the SOA (11/21/04) Audio File
Carlos Mauricio was a professor at the University of El Salvador when he was detained in June 1983 and tortured for nearly two weeks at the National Police Headquarters. After coming to the United States, he obtained two Master's degrees, in Molecular Genetics and Adult Education, from San Francisco State University, and a teaching credential. He teaches biology at Balboa High School in San Francisco. He spoke out against the SOA at the Saturday vigil before thousands of people.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/newswire/display/34510/index.php
500 Puppets Gather to Close the School of the Americas
Approximately 500 Puppets of various shapes and sizes gathered at the gates of Fort Benning Georgia today in an attempt to close the School of the Americas. The mood among the puppets was both somber and festive. The puppets processed about the stage and infront of the gates creating festive theater and telling the stories of the disappeared and disempowered as well as offering a radical new vision for the future. At the end of the day several puppets were detained by the polices but imc reports say the puppets are in good spirits.
http://www.tnimc.org/newswire/display/3676/index.php See also:
http://www.atlanta.indymedia.org
http://www.soaw.org
This work is in the public domain. Terrible (-1) No comment Good (+1) Very good (+2) Excellent (+3) Comments Re: Presente! 16,000 Protesters Gather to Close the School of Americas Wow, what a convergence of people of good will! The numbers just keep growing every year as more people come to understand the links between the various elements of our repressive foreign policy. While the name may have changed, the mission of the SOA remains the same: to provide the training that will enable our proxies abroad to keep the rabble under the thumbs of Western business interests. The SOA/WHINSEC is an incubator for terrorism, and every American needs to know how his/her tax dollars are being invested. The Army will tell you that they can't be responsible for a few bad apples. However, you can be assured that Congress would not continue to allocate funding to any program that wasn't regularly assessed and that managed to demonstrate its efficacy. The SOA is functioning EXACTLY as it was designed to, and the tortures and murders executed by its graduates are merely a part of our wider policy of controlling democratic elements in Third World countries--what has been called "the threat of a good example" that might encourage other anti-capitalist grassroots movements.
I would encourage each of you to contact your elected representatives in Washington and demand that the search for terrorists begin at home. We have a great deal of house cleaning to do before we go looking for terrorists outside our own borders.
Thanks, Chris, for the coverage. We got home last night and searched the mainstream media in vain for any mention of this phenomenal event. It seems that a couple of basketball players swapping licks with a few fans is more newsworthy than 15K people coming from all over the country to resist this cruel and inhumane tool of empire building. Thanks to IndyMedia for getting the truth out! Readers, pass this link on to everybody you know--REAL journalism still lives! Hope NOT to see you all there next year--close the SOA NOW! Terrible (-1) No comment Good (+1) Very good (+2) Excellent (+3) Re: Presente! 16,000 Protesters Gather to Close the School of Americas I particpated this past weekend, as I did last year, in this protest hoping to bring an end to our governments teaching of terroism.
If you value life , democracy, freedom, and believe that workers should have the right to form trade unions I encourage you to get involved by any way that you are able.
Participating at the protest is important, however, learning about how our government is not being truthful on what is taught at the SOA.
Spend sometime and investgate the facts and by doing so, you will than have the ability to speak with friends, family, co-workers, and elected officials intelligently, so they may hopefully become inolved in the movement to close this terrorist training that is funded with the american people tax dollars. Terrible (-1) No comment Good (+1) Very good (+2) Excellent (+3)
According to the ''Associated Press'', around 16,000 protesters demonstrated outside a Fort Benning, Georgia, military school this weekend, demanding it be closed in connection with accused human rights violations. Indymedia reports 20 people were arrested in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. 

Among the crowd were celebrity-actors Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon; Sarandon narrated the 1997 documentary ''School of Assassins'' about the school's history. Indymedia web site quotes Elizabeth Nadeau, a 27-year-old student, as saying "Prison will not deter us. We will be here until we close the school and change the foreign policy that it represents."

In 1946 the military Latin American Training Center  U.S. Ground Forces was established in Panama; in 1949 it became the U.S. Army Caribbean Training Center and during 1963 the training center expanded and  became the U.S. Army School of the Americas (USARSA or SOA). The SOA mission was to counter the influence of Communism in the region, and to assist Latin-American nations in fighting armed Communist movements. In 1984 the school was moved to Fort Benning, near Columbus. At the end of 2000, the SOA was closed as its reason of existence as an anti-Communist school was rendered unnecessary. In 2001, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation was opened in the same location. WHINSEC offers training to Latin American military and civilian forces in combat, counter-narcotics, and counter-insurgency techniques, with training completed mainly in the Spanish language.

Activists claim that both SOA (in the past, during 80's) and WHINSEC (at present day) trained militias in tactics of violence that are/were used against political dissidents in their native countries. They accuse SOA graduates of been responsible of death squads, drug deals, murders, rape and torture. They say the school is responsible by these acts and that many techniques of torture its graduated students have used in their countries had been learned at the military American school. A list of allegeds SOA graduated students's crimes can be seen at the Virtual Truth Commission, an anti-SOA webpage.

Pro-SOA say the school was important in the maintenance of the security in the Latin America and United States during Cold War. A list of death victims by communist groups between 1935-1972 only in Brazil can be seen at the Ternuma (Terrorism never), a Brazilian alleged anti-terrorism webpage. Also, the US Department of Defense maintains a list of significant terrorist incidents between 1961-2003, among them are several crimes committed by communist groups.  The UK version of IndyMedia distributes a copy in English of the Manual of the Urban Guerrilla which details techniques of urban terrorism for communism, written by Carlos Marighella, a communism  fighter. The Cuban dictator Fidel Castro advocated armed revolutionary struggle in Latin America. The USSR or Soviet Union gave trainning, military and economic help through Cuba to various communists groups in American continent. 

The protest at Fort Benning which involved a mock funeral procession is an annual event organized by the School of Americas Watch (SOAW) to commemorate the first assassination attributed to school's graduates, the November 16 1989, killing of six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter, at the University of Central America (UCA). Of the 27 soldiers cited for that killing by a 1993 UN Truth Commission, 19 were SOA graduates. SOAW lists 11 former Latin American dictators as graduates of the School. USA deny they supported dictators and they protest against Fidel Castro, the long-time dictator of Cuba, who has received support, military and economic help from USSR for a long time.

SOA officials say thousands of soldiers have been trained and about 300 of them have been accused of human rights violations. "The connections that critics make between the school and the crimes allegedly committed by its graduates are tenuous at best", says Joe Leuer - who worked at SOA.

Pro-military activists planned a concurrent gathering called "God Bless Fort Benning Celebration," to honor the soldiers and history of the military base where WHINSEC is located. "If they have 10,000, then we have 10,001," organizer Miriam Tidwell told Associated Press. Unverified reports of this counter-demonstration put attendance figures between 10,000 and 15,000.

WHINSEC operates with an annual budget of approximately $8 million, the school curriculum now includes a mandated 8 hours of training in human rights which includes "human rights, rule of law, due process, civilian control of the military, and the role of the military in a democratic society."