Despite
a rising tide of protest by many faith communities, peace groups
and some veterans groups, the US Armys School of the Americas
(SOA) at Ft. Benning, GA continues to teach counterinsurgency
tactics to Latin American military officers. SOA graduates have
been shown to be involved in a majority of egregious human rights
violations in Central American and some South American countries
over the last two decades. For example, over two-thirds of the
Salvadoran officers cited in a United Nations Truth Commission
report, and over half of the officers cited in a human rights
report on Colombia are alumni of the SOA. In 1997, the Wisconsin
Annual Conference adopted a resolution calling for the closing
of the SOA.
In Nov. 1998, WUMFSA members Bette
Barnes and Dorothy Gosting were among some 7,000 people who gathered
for the largest yet witness at Ft. Benning. These vigils, sponsored
by the School of the Americas
Watch, are held annually to mark the anniversary of
the assassination by SOA graduates of six Jesuit faculty members
of Central American University in San Salvador, along with their
housekeeper and her teenage daughter. Of these 7,000 demonstrators,
2,319 risked arrest by marching onto the base in a solemn funeral
procession. Seventy of these were crossing for the second time
and expected to be sentenced to six months in federal prison as
have second-time crossers in previous years. But, apparently overwhelmed
by the number of participants, officials bussed all of us line
crossers (some 50 busloads) off the base and released us in a
city park without even recording our names.
As
part of a year of resistance, planned by SOA Watch, a rally and
vigil will be held in Washington, DC, May 1-4, 1999. Included
will be a rally in Lafayette Park outside the White House, vigils
at the Pentagon and on the steps of the Capitol, and meetings
with members of Congress. A benefit concert on the evening of
May 1 will feature Pete Seeger, Odetta, Jon Fromer, and Grupo
Morazon, a conjunto of massacre survivors from El
Salvador. The dates for the annual witness at Ft. Benning are
Nov. 19-21, 1999.
Again, in the 106th Congress an
effort will be made to pass legislation to close the SOA. A bill
to this effect has been introduced by Rep. Joe Moakley of Mass.,
and Sen. Richard Durbin of Ill. is expected to introduce a companion
bill in the Senate. Please urge Senators Feingold and Kohl and
your congressional representatives to cosponsor these bills. Sen.
Feingold has been very supportive in the past, as have most of
Wisconsins House members.
The New Jersey state legislature
has passed a resolution in support of closing the SOA; a similar
resolution is being proposed in Wisconsin. For more information,
contact Judith Williams in Waukesha at 414/524-8278. Judith is
one of the people who served a six-month prison term during 1998
for crossing the line a second time in Nov., 1997.
For more information about the May
and Nov. events, and the status of legislation to close the SOA,
contact SOA Watch, PO Box 4566,
Washington, DC 20017; phone 202/234-3440; web site www.soaw.org.
Dorothy Gosting has a video, An Insider Speaks Out, based on an
interview with former SOA instructor Maj. Joseph Blair, who is
very active in the effort to close the school. You may borrow
the video by calling Dorothy at 608/833-8089.
Click HERE for an account of Jack Day "crossing the line" at SOA.