Women weep for the
dead at SOA

Word comes tonight via the SOA Watch that two friends of mine, a ninety year old Jesuit and a Catholic woman priest, were arrested at the 20th anniversary of the effort to close the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning in Georgia, a military training center for soldiers in Latin America. Evidence abounds of violence of atrocious human rights abuses that have been committed against the people of Latin America by those trained at SOA. Details of the arrest today remain scarce as usually Sunday is the day that a few cross over onto the base in an act of nonviolence.

I have been present at a number of the SOA events and find the event moving and motivating to close all such military bases that train young men and women “to kill or be killed.” I did not go this year for a number of reasons but one is that I find the stories of victims of torture, human rights violations overwhelming. I do not want to become numb to these stories of horror but at the same time being aware of the constant news of violence, war and killing takes its toll.

Maybe I will hear more tomorrow about my friends, or maybe I will need to wait till Monday when people from Milwaukee return. The government and military have either ignored the SOA march or come down hard on those who protest its presence. I guess this year they are coming down hard.

The people in solidarity with people of Latin America, despite efforts to ignore or suppress them, have consistently kept marching to close the School of the Americas.

Here in Milwaukee we work to close the school of the Army, Navy/Marines and Air Force at our Catholic University. Rather than train soldiers from Latin America, Marquette trains young men and woman from the USA in the same way of violence, death and destruction. Be it the School of Americas at Fort Benning or the School of Army at Marquette we need to close the SOA.

Janice and Roy Bourgeois at SOA

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