SOAWatch 2009
I spent the last three days in Columbus, GA at the SOAWatch at Fort Benning to Close the School of Americas that trains Latin American soldiers to kill their own people, who are struggling for freedom and human rights. The fact that such a school can exist in the USA that has caused so much suffering, torture and death in Latin America is hard to accept. However, I found it harder to accept that some of the very same schools, especially Jesuit high schools and universities, which fight to close the School of America at Fort Benning, host similar programs to train persons in reflexive killing and other tactics and values that contradict their religious faith and human values.
At this event I distributed my article on The Militarization of Catholic Jesuit Universities but felt sometimes persons just took it out of courtesy and would not read it seriously and act on it. However, there were some that took it seriously and some for whom going to the gates of Fort Benning was just more than a protest and show.
I took many pictures during the march on Fort Benning, but the faces of these three women as the names of the dead were being sung followed by the crowd chanting ‘Presente’ shows the deep sorrow that some felt at these horrendous crimes that were committed in our name.
Many thoughts of my friend Gordon Zahn and the Blessed Franz Jägerstätter who dared to break the silence of Hitler’s wars crossed my mind. There are many more pictures and words to share but for now I need to believe that from all this death and sorrow life will triumph, and more will wake up to the fact that what they are protesting, the teaching of war and violence, is happening in their own schools and universities.
We do not want to wake up someday to find the School of Americas at Fort Benning closed but many new SOA’s around the country. We need to close the SOA wherever we may find it, at Fort Benning or on own campuses.
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