¡Presente! Bluffton Participates In Largest S.O.A. Protest
Jake Short
Published in the Witmarsum 30 November 2007
Seven people from Bluffton traveled to Fort Benning-Columbus, Georgia the weekend of November 16-18 to exercise their right to assemble and participate in the eighteenth School of Americas protest.
Leaving at 5:00 a.m. on Friday, November 16, five students, a staff member, and his wife traveled for twelve hours to Georgia. The students included active P.E.A.C.E. Club members Melanie Fox, Crystal Graber, Jake Short, Missy King, and Heather Meade. Mark Weidner, senior advisor for church relations, and his wife Kay Fransen Weidner were escorting the group.
The School of Americas (S.O.A.) was a military training facility for Latin American people from its inception in 1946 in Panama (the school moved to Fort Benning in 1984) until 2001, when the facility was closed. It reopened a few months later under the name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The name change came after the Pentagon and Congress acknowledged the coercive interrogation techniques being taught and alumni committing human rights violations. Revisions to the school's curriculum and structure were also instituted at that time.
The protest is an annual event held in November and groups from Bluffton, led by P.E.A.C.E. Club, have gone down for numerous years. The first protest was held in 1990 with 20 people; Father Roy Bourgeois organized the first event and has planned and participated in every one since. The 2007 protest had nearly 25,000 people in attendance, the largest to date, and 11 of those protestors crossed over into the military base, violating federal law and facing up to six months in prison after a trial set for January 28, 2008.
Saturday, November 17 was the traditional upbeat day of the event. Different groups ranging from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) to anarchists were at the gates of Fort Benning, selling bumper stickers, buttons and pins, and T-shirts. Late in the afternoon there was a show performed by the Puppetistas, a group of professionals that use volunteers to help put together a performance of large puppets that demonstrate the brutality of the military against the citizens of Latin American countries. In the evening, a new film about the S.O.A. protest starring Father Bourgeois, Martin Sheen, and Susan Sarandon was shown at the convention center in downtown Columbus.
Sunday, November 18 was the official procession which the 25,000 protestors attended. Leading the procession at the gates of Fort Benning was: Father Bourgeois; U.S. 2008 presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney; president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Sister Mary Waskowiak; and Rabbi Michael Lerner. Many in the crowds carried white crosses, brandishing names of those killed by S.O.A. graduates in Latin America. Most of these crosses ended up lodged in the fencing of the front gates of Fort Benning as people passed by.
P.E.A.C.E. Club was able to obtain lodging in LaGrange, Georgia with Anton Flores, a friend of a past club member. Flores has also been active in the S.O.A. protest and promoting equal rights for Latin American immigrants.
The protest, while unsuccessful in closing the school thus far, has influenced leaders in Latin America. Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Bolivia have stopped sending persons to the facility. On June 21, 2007, a bill in Congress was defeated by only six votes. This bill would have cut funding to the S.O.A.
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No to Torture, Yes to Justice
Jake Short
Published in the Witmarsum 30 March 2007
Despite a late start due to extraordinary circumstances and the recent events concerning Bluffton, twelve students and one professor headed out to Washington D.C. on Friday, March 16 to protest the war in Iraq on the eve of its fourth anniversary.
Organized by Christian Peace Witness, the march against the war was an ecumenical gathering, but was to be dominated by the historic peace churches, including the Quakers, Church of the Brethren, and the Mennonites. With this in mind, many denominations sent out different colored armbands to their members planning on attending so they could identify each other at the protest; Mennonites had neon green armbands.
Originally planning on leaving at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, PEACE Club ended up leaving at 7:45 a.m. because of troubles with the van. After braving crazy traffic and crazy weather in eastern Pennsylvania and Maryland, the group arrived in the capital around 6:30 p.m. In Hyattsville (a suburb north of D.C.), PEACE Club stopped at the place they were to stay at Friday night: the Church of the Brethren: University Park.
Leaving the church, PEACE Club then headed to the nearby metro station to ride the subway to downtown Washington D.C., and then walked the few blocks from the metro to the National Cathedral. A service beginning at 7:00 p.m. in the Cathedral took place before the actual march against the war. There were many different speakers, including keynote speaker Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine. Due to leaving late, weather conditions on the way out, and rush hour traffic coming into D.C., PEACE Club reached the Cathedral at the end of the service. Many were disappointed, especially because they missed Wallis, but were glad to have made it to the actual march on time.
Leaving the National Cathedral at 9:00 p.m., the protestors, numbering between 3,000 and 4,000, marched down Massachusetts Ave. and then to the back entrance of the White House. Along the way some in PEACE Club met up with people they knew or made connections elsewhere, especially through the “Mennonite Game.” Once at the White House, organizers had the protestors gather two-by-two in a live that was to stretch completely around the White House complex. After this, the march was officially over, but over 200 of those in attendance decided to remain on the sidewalks in front of the White House to further protest, eventually being arrested for civil disobedience.
Even though it was really cold and it was snowing for the first part of the march, everyone agreed it was still a great experience. Junior Crystal Graber said, “The march in D.C. gave us a wonderful way to connect with Christians around the country. We spoke with people from Atlanta and elsewhere who expressed sorrow at our tragedy here in Bluffton. True to most things in life, the people we met made it totally worth it.”
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No Más, No More: One Experience on the Road of Peace
Jake Short
Published in the Witmarsum 1 December 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I was giving a transformative speech in Public Speaking on how to be a person of peace. I thought I had a well thought-out speech, and so did most of the class. Afterwards, the class was allowed time to answer questions; usually this lasts a few minutes at the most, but for my speech, the professor let that time go on for almost fifteen minutes because he liked all the questions, but I felt I didn’t have any decent answers. I am no biblical scholar, nor are any answers about peace easy. I felt I had let the class down on answering their questions.
The next morning I left bright and early for the SOA (School of Americas) protest in Columbus/Fort Benning, Georgia. I was excited for the protest because I am a person all for peace in the world. But the problem of not properly answering the questions the day before still nagged at me. Yet now that the protest is over, I think I finally have a good answer to all the questions: you must try out and experience peace in progress to truly understand what it’s all about.
First of all, I must explain the SOA. The SOA is a military training facility that trains mainly Latin Americans in weapons skills and guerrilla warfare tactics. Once the training is complete, these new soldiers return home and work either for their governments or try to overthrow the current one. Either way, thousands of people have been killed since the SOA was founded in 1946. In 1990, a local priest began a protest at the gates of the SOA with only thirteen people. The protest this year had over 22,000 in attendance.
While in Georgia, I met people at the protest from all across the spectrum of peace. From devout Catholic nuns to Mennonite students to punk rockers with mohawks and plenty of piercings to hardcore hippies, everyone from all walks of life were there to unite against the injustice and killings and close down the SOA. To see nuns in their black and white uniforms and people wearing shirts supporting their friends that do drugs in the same crowd is pretty amazing (reminds me of Sister Act); not to mention everyone else. And to be in the midst of it all, to hear the speakers shout out their fury against the SOA, to see the colorful Puppetistas and solemn white cross bearing the names of thousands of victims, and to hear 22,000 people singing “Siyahamba” is an incredible feeling one must experience to truly comprehend the beauty and awe of the weekend.
One of my favorite songs that was sung Sunday morning was “No Más,” where everyone was able to join in the chorus and sing that the world cries out against all war and simply wants everyone to live in harmony. It gave me shivers to hear such wonderful singing from all in attendance. Then to see the funeral procession is virtually indescribable. Everyone walks up and down the street in front of the SOA, with most holding crosses, and victims’ names are read. It is a very solemn and sad time that is truly humbling. Now I am not one to get overly emotional, but tears were in my eyes that day many times, especially when you see all of the crosses that were being held by the people embedded into the gates of the SOA, blocking the view inside.
I can go on and on about my experiences alone, but after that weekend, I can truly say I have experienced peace in a special way, and my only answer to the questions from my speech is to go out and experience peace, for that is the only way to fully understand what being a person of peace is all about.
