In March, 1980, Bishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was murdered as he celebrated Mass by gunmen trained at the US Army School of the Americas. Named Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, he spoke out against the Salvadoran government, the military, and US aid to the military. In the months that followed his murder, four priests, four North American churchwomen, and hundreds of other civilians were killed. Romero’s death galvanized reform of El Salvador in the midst of a dangerous civil war.  RIGHT SOAW art commemorates Bishop Romero.

 

 

17th Rally by SOA Watch

to Close the

School of the Americas

Story and pictures below

 

We were there, among the 20,000 women and men, young and old, Central American, Asian, African, Gringo, Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Skeptic, you name it – in Columbus, Georgia, at the gate to Fort Benning: Mourning the dead in Latin America; Rallying to end America’s addiction to violence and restore America’s values –

Veterans for Peace, Chapter 135, Northwest Florida 

 

The U S School of the Americas, since 1946, has trained 60,000 soldiers and mercenaries to do their work in Central and South America. They have been responsible for most of the atrocities and human rights abuses in the region. The SOA Watch was organized in 1990 to stop it.

 

Look at the work and history of the SOA, and more pictures, at www.soaw.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT  Early Sunday morning, November 19,  two hundred Veterans for Peace, representing  140 chapters and thousands of members, march along Victory Boulevard to the Ft. Benning gate to open the memorial for Latin American victims of US terror.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RIGHT  VFP was honored by the company of Buddhist monks who walked from Atlanta and the folk of Living the Dream, who walked from Selma to Montgomery and joined the monks.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT  Monks pray and chant at the speakers platform.

Next came Mayan prayer and ceremony.  Prayer and song, including good old-fashioned Gospel music,  continued from 8am until the beginning of the funeral procession at 11.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RIGHT Sisters of Christian Charity listening to the

Commissioning of the funeral procession by the leaders

 

In response, the assembly promised: To be nonviolent in spirit and action; to continue the work; by presence, work and action, to honor those who have suffered in Latin America and from global terrorism, and those who continue to put themselves at risk for justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BELOW The procession was organized into a huge  U-shaped movement. Here, people who had been moving away from the Ft. Benning gate turn at the bend of the U to move toward the gate. The flag at the gate can just be seen a quarter-mile in the distance.

 

 

 

 

 

RIGHT Mother of a disappeared

person and companions

in procession

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT 20,000 people respond to names and ages chanted from the platform by raising crosses and chanting “Presente” – which means “remember, keep in mind.” [photo from www.soaw.org, 12/3/06]

 

Names of victims were chanted at the rate of about five per minute for 2-1/2 hours. The oldest was 75, the youngest three months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT Young faces display their feelings as students approach the fenced-off Ft. Benning gate.

The young man’s t-shirt shows Creighton University, a well-known Jesuit college in Omaha.

 

 

Students are followed by national and chapter flags of VFP, Chapter 135, Northwest Florida. The yellow streamer on the chapter flag marks participation in the 2005 rally with motto “Paz con Justicia.” Other streamers name home counties – Escambia, Santa Rosa. Okaloosa and Walton, and Pensacola. Blue streamers bear the names of Heroes of Nonviolence, see Heroes of Nonviolence

 


BELOW, LEFT  Chain-link fence covered with crosses and mementos. As one can see from the flags, it was not only Central and

South American victims that were kept in mind. The Ft. Benning gate was barred by three fences topped by barbed wire.

 

BELOW, RIGHT Church and school banners on the fence.

 


Sixteen people scaled the fence on Sunday, November 19, carrying the protest into the Fort Benning Military Reservation, publicly defying federal law and making a bold call for justice and accountability. Ages ranged from 17 to 71. One, Margaret Bryant-Ganer declined bail and elected to stay in jail until trial.  All were convicted and given sentences that depended largely on whether they had done it before.

 

 

 

 

 

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another,

then, I say, break the law.” - Henry David Thoreau

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT Students from Creighton University, Omaha, a Jesuit college, say goodbye as they board the bus for the twenty-hour trip home. About twenty buses were parked outside the rally area on Benning Road, most of them from colleges and universities across the US and Canada.

 

Mr. Scott Fountain of Columbus, GA, commented in a letter to the Ledger-Enquirer that we ought to "make these people enlist and earn the right to protest.” (He must have slept through the VFP march opening Sunday's ceremony)

 

Give thanks for the busloads of students from Spokane, from Omaha, from about twenty other cities, who protest the SOA and violence from prayer and conscience, not from the pressure of the draft.

 

 

 

 

Photos except as otherwise credited by William M. Sloan, VFP NW Florida,

vfpnwflorida@earthlink.net

 

 

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