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CURRENT ISSUE: December 11, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 22Oakland,
CA
East Bay students join annual march at Ft. Benning
COLUMBUS,
GA -- It is impossible to lift a white cross in memory of a two-day-old
murdered child without shedding tears – and then to keep on lifting
the cross, continuing to bear the sadness, whilst murmuring “Presente.”
As name after name of victims were sung out, in a five-note minor key
call and response litany, accompanied by the beat of a drum, tears gave
away to numbness. There were many moist eyes among the crowd of marchers
bearing crosses the morning of Nov. 19, as they walked towards the gates
of Ft. Benning military base.
These individuals were participating in an annual funeral ceremony honoring
the “hundreds and thousands of unarmed, materially impoverished
people from Latin America brutally gunned down by their own government’s
soldiers trained at the Army’s School of the Americas housed at
this fort,” said Alan Edmonson, a teacher at Holy Names High School
in Oakland. Edmonson and his wife, Loretta, members of Christ the King
Parish in Pleasant Hill, brought five of his students to the weekend.
The procession was the closing event of the Nov. 17-19 weekend of teach-ins
and rallies on social justice issues including militarism, violence, and
economic disparities between first and third world countries.
The weekend events are sponsored by School of the Americas Watch, an organization
founded by Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990 to push for the closing
of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly
known as the School of the Americas. Located at Ft. Benning, the SOA/WHINSEC
trains soldiers from Latin America.
The November date was chosen for the annual event because it is closest
to the anniversary of the assassination of 14-year-old Celina Ramos, her
mother, and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989. Nineteen of the
26 Salvadoran army officers found by a U.N. Truth Commission to be responsible
for the slayings were trained at the SOA.
Many more of the school’s graduates have been charged with human
rights violations and participating in the killings, disappearance and
torturing of untold thousands of civilians, a fact which “takes
your breath away,” noted Joe O’Neill, one of five students
from Holy Names University in Oakland who attended the weekend.
Students from Holy Names High School in Oakland carry crosses bearing
the names of victims of human rights abuses in Central America during
the annual demonstration against the former School of the Americas at
Ft. Benning, Georgia.
LORETTA EDMONSON PHOTO
Several students at Saint Mary’s College in
Moraga brought signs and carried crosses during the annual demonstration
calling for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute, formerly
the School of the Americas.
LISA VERA PHOTO
O’Neill
and an additional 50 people from the Oakland Diocese, plus another 100
from the San Francisco/San Jose areas, were among the 22,000 marchers
who on Sunday morning walked the main road leading to the gates of the
military base, leaving white crosses in the chain link fence enclosing
the installation. Some mourners left flowers as well.
One person scribbled “Romero,” with a black crayon on a piece
of brown cardboard, in memory of Oscar Romero, the famous San Salvadoran
archbishop and human rights advocate assassinated as he celebrated Mass.
The sign rested atop a glistening green thorny bush, against the background
white crosses and flowers in the fence.
It was Joe O’Neill’s third trip past the cross-filled fence
in as many years. “For me, the chance to bear witness to the growing
movement to shut the school down is a necessary step in the much larger
process of holding our government responsible for its involvement in this
heinous process,” he said.
Since the first weekend event 16 years ago, the SOAW gathering has grown
yearly in numbers of participants. SOAW officials say attendance this
year was the largest demonstration in front of a U.S. military base since
the Vietnam War.
On Saturday night, two students from Richmond High School helped their
teacher, Byrne Sherwood, Jr., introduce a new 30-minute documentary, “Crossing
the Line,” produced by some of his students three years ago.
The video, a journey into political awareness, was a collaborative project
between young people from USF and Richmond High, all of whom had previously
attended SOA vigils in Columbus, Georgia. Sherwood, a retired Army Lt.
Col. who advocates closing the SOA, had assigned the video as a class
project..
Today Sherwood shows the documentary to his classes as a wake-up call
questioning how U.S. tax dollars are sometimes misused to support ill-conceived
military endeavors. Said Lizette Avile, a senior: “When I first
saw it as a sophomore, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, my government is
doing this?’ Learning the truth opened my mind to activism.”
Avile’s senior classmate, Luis Romo, came to Georgia this year because
of the documentary. “I didn’t know anything at all before
this,” he said, and, like his fellow students, was horrified by
footage of Central American carnage included in the film.
Araceli Vazquez, a Richmond High junior, said she was impressed to see
so many people in one place sharing the same resolve. “It was incredible
to see all of the crosses rising and falling simultaneous, as people cried
‘Presente.’ The sight of the crosses covering the fence made
me realize that unity can overcome any obstacle.”
In 2002, Byrne Sherwood carried more than a white cross. A retired military
officer who once trained at Ft. Benning and is now a member of St. Monica
Parish in Moraga, Sherwood hung his uniform on the chain link fence “as
a symbolic renunciation of my life as a professional soldier and U.S.
foreign policy which is bolstered by our military forces and schools like
the SOA.”
The Sunday procession concluded on an upbeat note – a newly incorporated
“Return to Life” ritual, which began with a parade of large
puppets. A group of black-clad white-faced marchers who had earlier taken
part in a “die-in” near the Ft. Benning gates resurrected
themselves and began dancing. “The time had arrived for the spirits
of the dead and the living to be transformed with hope,” reflected
Loretta Edmonson.
The ritual took its inspiration from the recent U.S. elections in which
34 legislators opposed to closing the SOA lost their seats in the House
of Representatives, “drastically heightening our chances to close
the SOA/WHINSEC,” said an SOAW website. In June of this year, the
McGovern-Lewis amendment to cut funding for the school was narrowly defeated
by a 15-vote margin.
Another optimistic development: the governments of Venezuela, Argentina
and Uruguay no longer send their military to Ft. Benning.
While both national and international efforts continue to grow around
closing SOA/WHINSEC, those beliefs are by no means unanimous.
Jennifer Courtright, a 2006 graduate of Holy Names University, said her
group was harassed by young soldiers who had checked into the same hotel.
“They were under the impression that we were there to protest the
military, which of course was not the case at all,” noted Courtright.
“They decided the best way to show us how wrong we were to ‘protest
the troops’ was by harassing us in the hallway and by prank calling
our hotel rooms at 3 a.m. The experience was very frustrating for me because
I respect our troops. I go to the SOA to protest how our military resources
are used.”
Charles Sarno, an assistant professor of sociology at Holy Names, said
he was struck by the youth of the recruits. “They were the same
age as many of the students I led on the trip, and often, I suspect, possess
the same idealism, but unfortunately they were oriented towards the means
and ends of violence.”
