presente

The day before traveling to the School of the Americas protest in Ft. Benning, Georgia, I was at the copy shop to pick up the materials that I would take with me for Fellowship of Reconciliation's workshops and tabling efforts over the weekend. The guy behind the counter asked me what my name was. I answered, "Liza." And then he asked, "what does it mean?" After a pause, I said that it comes from the name Elizabeth, and that it was a historical name, and that... my explanation tailed off. He said, "ahhhh... no one knows the meaning of their name these days."

A few days later, after the workshops and tabling, after talking to people from many different parts of the country, after handing out hundreds of pieces of paper to those interested in FOR's work and campaigns, we spent the morning of Sunday, November 18th, hearing names. Name after name after name. Two hours of names. These were the names of those who had been killed in Latin America at the hands of SOA graduates. Thousands of names, spoken, sung and chanted. After every single name, we responded with the simple word in Spanish "presente."