Sunday Morning SOA Watch

Sunday morning is appropriately more sober and reverential. An estimated 20,00 – 25,000 individuals carry small white crosses in a procession that spreads from the gate into Ft. Benning back to the public access road and forward again, five persons wide to accommodate hundreds of banners representing various groups here in large numbers.

As I enter from the public road, the police are confiscating crosses which don't strictly meet the 18" maximum for the vertical strut. These are later collected and displayed at the head of the road, just as thousands and thousands are inserted in the chain link fence at the gate to the Fort.

Each cross bears the name of a victim of violence in Latin America, derivative or directly related to training presented at the School of Americas (or 35 other U.S. bases where Latin American military leaders are trained). As the procession circulates in front of the main program platform, the names of the dead are intoned and the entire procession responds "Presente". Particularly powerful is the recitation, "unknown child, Choco" repeated perhaps a hundred times to represent a massacre of more than 130 persons.

Dennis Kucinich is addressing the gathering as we arrive, the only member of Congress present and the first Presidential candidate to ever attend the SOA watch. His speech on Saturday evening is front page lead story in the Columbus Ledger this morning. His table is constantly crowded and hundreds are wearing Kucinich buttons. He leads the march along with Fr. Roy Bourgeois, SOA Vigil founder, Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun/New Spiritual Progressives and other committed Religious and Progressive leaders including Cynthia McKinney, also a candidate for President and Sister Mary Waskowiak.They are followed by a large company representing Nuns killed in Latin America, in full black habit and white face, carrying coffins. They will lie down at the gates to the Fort on the final round past the gate.

It now becomes clear that the triplicate gate and long corridor of chain-link fence is to make it more difficult to gain entry for those planning to cross a no trespass line and be arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The challenge is surmounted by moving outside the containment area to other points of entrée to the Fort. One of the first to gain an arrest escort is the Puppetista's large helicopter puppet with its seven porters.

The procession concludes with the Puppetistra again moving festively through the crowd to the main platform, celebrating with chanting and music a ritual of life and regeneration. Now we begin our individual journey's back into a world, largely ignorant of the School of Americas or complacent about its role perpetuating a culture of violence through much of Latin America and our complicity in that work.

Having traveled, over the past week, from the heart of FOR's work in La Union, Colombia, meeting our brothers and sisters in the peace communities of San Jose De Apartadó, to the heart of darkness in Georgia where no small part of the threats to their lives and safety are birthed, I am inspired and required to learn more, speak out, and seek your support for this work.

[Pictures will be posted and linked to this blog in the next few days. Visit the SOA Watch web site for additional background and details: http://www.soaw.org/ .]