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February
6, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 3Oakland,
CA
Local Catholics get jail time for protest at Ft. Benning
Two local
parishioners – one seeking to “live in the truth” and
another citing the example of Father Bill O’Donnell – have
been sentenced to three months in federal prison for trespassing at the
former School of the Americas in Georgia last fall.
Cheryl Sommers, 68, of St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Berkeley, and David
Sylvester, 54, of Our Lady of Lourdes in Oakland, were among 32 defendants
tried and sentenced last week in Columbus, Ga. They had “crossed
the line” during an annual protest at Ft. Benning, Ga., where the
school is located. Both were also fined $500.
Franciscan Father Louis Vitale, 73, former pastor of St. Boniface Parish
in San Francisco, was sentenced to five and a half months. This includes
time he has already served in Muscogee County Jail since trespassing onto
federal property at the annual protest last Nov. 20.
Two other protestors from Northern California were also sentenced during
the trial held Jan. 30 and 31 – Sarah Harper, 36, of Emeryville,
and Dorothy Parker, 76, of Chico. Harper is a former U.S. Navy medic,
a landscape gardener and political organizer for California Peace Action.
Parker, a great-grandmother, is a retired mental health clinician and
active with Habitat for Humanity and the United Church of Christ.
Father Vitale had already served three months for trespassing during the
November 2002 protest with his friend, the late Father O’Donnell
of St. Joseph the Worker Parish. Father O’Donnell served six months
in 2003, and it was his witness that moved Sommers to take part, she said
in a statement on a website for the School of the Americas Watch, the
group which organizes the yearly demonstrations.
“When I heard that Fr. Louis was going over again this year, I knew
this was the time for me to cross over for Fr. Bill,” Sommers stated.
Sylvester, who described his experience at Ft. Benning in a Jan. 23 Voice
column, joined the Catholic Church last year. In his SOAW statement he
said he aimed to follow the maxim of former Czech president Vaclav Havel
to “live in the truth.”
Sylvester said the school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation, is “one of the most horrific examples
of how this society lives out a lie.”
The school trains military personnel from Latin America, and its graduates
have been linked to some of the worst human rights abuses in that region,
including the murder of six Jesuits in El Salvador in November 1989.
Each year thousands gather at the gates of Ft. Benning to protest the
school’s record of abuses and call for its closure. The demonstration
takes place near the anniversary of the murder of the six Jesuits.
In a press release, School of the Americas Watch noted that the peaceful
protestors were sentenced to prison one week “after a military jury
in Colorado decided not to jail an Army interrogator even after they found
him guilty of negligent homicide in the torture and killing of an Iraqi
detainee.”
David Sylvester is creating a forum for dialogue about his experience
at http://bydavidsylvester.blogspot.com.
Information about SOAW is available at www.soaw.org.
