Lisa Sullivan, who serves as SOA Watch’s Latin America Coordinator, sends the latest information on SOA Watch delegations to Latin America during 2009.

As the "SOA 6" prepare to report to prison next week, we have been inundated by messages of support and solidarity from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. The SOA Watch movement has brought deeper connections between people of North, Central and South America. Together, we dream that "Another World is Possible": a world of peace, justice, sovereignty and dignity.

I am writing you today to personally invite you to experience some of these hopeful experiments in this other world. Hope is rising from the South. Profound social change is sweeping the continent via the ballot box instead of the bullets of past decades. New constitutions, new leaders, and new economic models are all bringing new life to Latin America and new hope to the world.

Please join me, and other human rights activists, in experiencing first hand this hope from the south. SOA Watch will be sponsoring 4 delegations to Latin America in 2009 together with the Marin Task Force on the Americas as well as a Colombia delegation with Witness for Peace. SOA Watch will also be offering a retreat in Venezuela this summer.

The delegation to Paraguay (May 31 - June 10) will focus on the hope arising from the recent election of Fernando Lugo, a former bishop who brought the six-decade rule of General Alfredo Stroessner´s Colorado party to an end.

I will be leading the delegation to Venezuela (June 17-26) and will share some of the vitality that I have found in my adopted homeland of 25 years. We´ll look at what´s working and what isn´t in the Bolivarian revolution, and enjoy the vibrant Afro-Venezuelan drumming and dancing of the San Juan feast.

Come rest, reflect and renew our commitment to peace and justice in the lovely Andes Mountains of Venezuela. Rev. Mike Clark and I will lead SOA Watch´s first Latin America retreat: Hope Rising from the South, from July 13-23 in Venezuela. In addition to reflecting, we will also gain inspiration from some of the many experiments unfolding in Venezuela's Lara state.

Bolivia is capturing the world´s imagination with the leadership of the continent´s first indigenous president. The Bolivia delegation from August 14-24 will focus on the hope and challenges of a new constitution that is offering new models of governance. Beyond politics, Bolivia´s exotic landscapes, music, colors, and flavors will inspire.

Join SOA Watch Communications Coordinator Pablo Ruiz in his native Chile from October 8-18, 2009. After suffering torture and imprisonment under the Pinochet dictatorship, Pablo went on to lead the struggle against the SOA in Chile. The delegation will focus on efforts to bring justice to Chile after the brutal Pinochet regime as well as the struggles of the Mapuche people to maintain their culture and traditions.

Colombia now has over four million internally displaced persons, ranking first in the world. The SOA Watch - Witness for Peace Colombia delegation from November 28-December 6, 2009 will visit the Uraba region of Colombia and make the connection between companies like U.S. based Chiquita Brands and the SOA training. Help to expose U.S. companies and demand compensation for the families of victims.

Please feel free to write me at LSullivan@soaw.org for details. Hope is rising from the South! Come and see for yourself!

Abrazos,

Lisa
SOA Watch Latin America Coordinator

May-June Paraguay Delegation: www.SOAW.org/docs/ParaguayDel2009.pdf

June Venezuela Delegation: www.soaw.org/docs/VenezuelaJune2009..pdf

July Retreat in Venezuela: www.soaw.org/docs/RetreatVenezuelaJuly2009.pdf

August Bolivia Delegation: www.soaw.org/docs/BoliviaDelAug2009flyer.pdf

On January 26, six human rights advocates appeared in a federal courthouse in Georgia. The "SOA 6," ranging in age from 21 to 68, were found "guilty" of carrying the protest against the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) onto the Fort Benning military base. The six were among the thousands who gathered on November 22 and 23, 2008 outside the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to demand a change in U.S. policy towards Latin America and the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC.

The "SOA 6" spoke out clearly and powerful in court, making a compelling case for the closure of the school and creation of a culture of justice and peace, where there is no place for the SOA mindset that promotes military "solutions" to social and economic problems. The six spent the weekend preparing for their trials with a team of lawyers, legal workers and volunteers, and today they stood up for all of us working for a more just world.

The "SOA 6" included:

STORIES FROM THE SOA VIGIL 2008

David and Irene McPhail

This year was the fourth time we had participated in the SOA Vigil in Columbus Ga. at Ft. Benning. The trip was full of serendipity and inspiration for both of us. It began when Judy Liteky of the San Francisco SOA Watch invited us to stay in one of the rooms she had reserved. We flew together to Atlanta and Judy drove us and two students from the University of San Francisco to Columbus. In Columbus she drove to the gates of Fort Benning. There we found a group hard at work greasing the flagpole! When I told my grandkids about this, they wanted to know why? “I guess they didn’t want us to climb it,” I said. The thought of their grandparents trying to climb a greased flagpole was greeted by howls of laughter. When we arrived at the hotel it was too late for dinner, but Charlie Liteky, who had arrived earlier, joined us at a local diner.

SOA VIGIL – HOW IT ALL BEGAN AND OTHER SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS

Judy and I had an opportunity to make a more personal connection on the drive. We were both surprised to discover that we had shared a mentor in Robert MacAfee Brown. Previously I had heard Charlie speak, and had read about his actions, but now thanks to our diner’s commitment to “slow food” – as in ‘takes forever to come’ – we too had some sharing time. I told an old story of being with a group of seminarians in Atlanta, Georgia in Oct. 1960, and the fear I had known then at a “pray-in” outside the Atlanta County jail, where Martin Luther King was imprisoned, and how this now informed my praying the Lord’s Prayer – “but deliver us from the evil one” as a plea for deliverance not from an abstract evil but from a very personal threat.

Later I thought my experience must have been small stuff for Charlie, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor as a chaplain in 1968 in Vietnam, for rescuing 20 wounded soldiers, one by one, while under heavy enemy fire. Clearly for Charlie an even more fearful struggle came much later when he awakened to his being, and I quote, “a clerical hawk, the worst kind of political hawk, because we have brought moral sanction to given military endeavors. At that time I believed in the just war position as it was taught by the Catholic Church. I considered any war against communism just. I knew little to nothing about Vietnam and its centuries-long struggle to free itself from foreign domination: first by the Chinese, then the French, the Japanese, and the French again, before the U.S. arrived. To the Vietnamese we were just one more in a long line of colonial powers. By the time I realized what I had done by supporting and participating in the Vietnam war (in which millions of civilians died), it was too late to be anything but sorry. I’ll carry the burden of that sorrow for the rest of my life.” Charlie’s wake-up call came years later when, no longer a priest but still a Vietnam Vet, he and 10 others went to El Salvador in the middle of a civil war, on a “fact-finding trip regarding atrocities reportedly committed by the Salvadoran Army. Women seated in a semicircle – white-shawled and black-dressed, young and old – were holding photographs of mutilated male bodies, given to them by the military as visual aids to help them identify their mysteriously missing sons and husbands.” I guess it should not come as a great surprise that Charlie and his brother, along with Father Roy Bourgeois, were the three original protesters who “crossed the line.” In 1990 they went into the School of the Americas, spreading blood on hallways and steps, and then lay down to express their opposition to a school whose graduates and teachers had been implicated in so many documented acts of torture, imprisonment, disappearances, death and brutal suppression in Latin America.

“SECURITY” AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

At Judy’s urging the next morning, one of the coldest ever in Columbus, we drove out to the gates of Fort Benning again. I saw for the first time what the entrance looks like when its gates, now three deep, are not closed. We also heard from Charlie about the earliest vigils. One apartment was pointed out to be the one Father Roy has lived in for 18 years. Later, as I went back to our car to warm up, I noticed a man in a nearby house watching our group while talking on his cell phone and then later taking a picture with his telephoto lens. I learned this place now housed “security.” In May of 2006 declassified FBI files revealed years of surveillance of our peaceful demonstration by the FBI’s counter terrorism division. These reports admitted the peaceful nature of the vigil and our commitment to non-violence. Notwithstanding, by 2008 a temporary chain link fence surrounded the site and ran in front of the big Fort Benning sign that has now been covered. Security takes a lot of work and must supply good overtime pay for the local police.

Of course there is one way that SOA Watch has been engaged in illegal activities right from the beginning. Since 1990 286 persons have been convicted of trespassing on the grounds of the SOA. Collectively they have served a total of almost 100 years in federal prison. I have always seen the value of non-violent civil disobedience as a powerful way to stand up for a just cause. We learned this from King and the civil rights movement. In this case we were generating publicity, as each individual who “crossed the line” became the center of support from friends, family and religious communities. By their willingness to go to prison they demonstrated the depth of their commitment to close the school and stand in solidarity with those who have suffered at the hands of its graduates. They leave prison with a new “authority” to speak for the cause. Their arrest, their trial, their imprisonment, their release all become “teachable moments” for telling the story of the SOA. Of course we are seeking to overthrow the policies of our government! By doing so nonviolently, and taking the consequences of our actions, we gain a moral power that makes it difficult for the Powers that Be to claim they are only upholding law and order, but instead are “pimps for the Pentagon” as Father Bill O’Donnell said of his judge.

In the last couple of years the prison witness has come to serve a new purpose. Beginning in 2006 the Latin American initiative led by Father Roy and Lisa Sullivan, who has lived for 31 years in Latin America, and now works for SOA Watch from an office in Venezuela, began visiting the countries of Latin America to request that they no longer send their military to the SOA for training. They visited many grass roots groups as well as heads of state and defense ministers. Because of the changing political climate they did not have to explain the history and actions of the SOA. Many leaders in governments today in Latin America were victims of torture and imprisonment. They know what the SOA stands for. However, Roy and Lisa have found that when they report that American citizens have gone to prison to protest the SOA, this news comes as a surprise, and gives their efforts the moral authority to be heard. To date five countries have pledged to no longer send troops to the school for training. Others may do so soon.

Perhaps this is the reason that more and more Latinos are coming to the vigil. Some are survivors or relatives of those who were tortured, imprisoned and killed in Latin America. I especially noted their presence in many of the workshops we attended. Irene participated in one that dealt with the involvement of the American Psychological Association in torture. It included several survivors of torture. The increasing presence of people from Latin America over the years has added a note of urgency and authenticity to all our words. The names we chant on Sunday are connected to real people. This was brought home to us at the Funeral Procession on Sunday. We stopped to talk with Rabbi Deborah Kohn Lerner, wife of Rabbi Michael Lerner, who had spoken at a plenary session on Saturday. Knowing that Rabbi Kohn is from Argentina I explained that the Magen David that Irene was carrying had the names of four Jewish young people who “disappeared” in the late ’70s in Argentina. She looked at the names and pointed to one, saying “I knew him and his family.”

POVERTY AND UTOPIAN THOUGHTS

The most famous “Latino” at this vigil was the Rev. Jon Sobrino, SJ, the only member of the faculty of the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador, who was not murdered on Nov. 16, 1989. Born in Spain he has lived in El Salvador for 52 years and now runs the Bishop Oscar Romero Peace Center built on the spot where his colleagues, their cook and her daughter were killed by 23 members of the El Salvadoran military, 19 of whom had trained at the SOA. At the time of the murders he was on a speaking tour in Thailand. At the vigil, Pax Christi awarded him their annual book award for his latest book, No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays (Orbis Books). The ballroom at the Howard Johnson Hotel was packed when he spoke. Though not a dynamic speaker, his message and the authority of his person meant the whole room was hanging on every word. Here is some of what he had to say: “When Ellacuria (one of those killed) ‘took hold of the reality’ of the Third World, he grasped it in an important way as a ‘crucified people’… Ellacuria said that the crucified people are one of the main features of our time, not merely something factual that we may consider, but something central that must be considered, without which we do not have a full grasp of reality.” At other times Sobrino said, “I feel joy being here with you all. We have to say No to the SOA, but that is not my last word. We also have to say Yes to the love great people – the six Jesuit martyrs, their co-workers Julia Elba and Celina, the four churchwomen, Archbishop Romero and all the martyrs…. They were always on the side of the oppressed, even when it was dangerous…. Behind the hatred on this planet, there is great love, which makes people work for justice. So the last word is not no but Yes…. Hunger can be eliminated, but we don’t want to do it. Every few seconds a child dies. We should say instead, every few seconds a child is assassinated.” He’s been saying it all his life, teaching that the poor can redeem our humanity – if only we defend them, walk with them, share our lives with them, become one with them. When the weekend was over he told John Dear, another Jesuit, that he had no idea there were so many North Americans siding with the crucified people of Central and South America. “This is such a good thing!” he said in joy and wonder. “I’m so glad I came.” We were glad too that he could help show us what it means to be human.

I have to say as a Presbyterian that it has been a source of real joy for me to know so many Catholics dedicated to Tikun Olam, as Jews might say, or to the mission of Justice and Peace, as Protestant Christians might call it. Though the breadth of the movement continues to grow there is no doubt that the heart of it lies with the progressive Catholics. It is they who have made sure that thousands of young people attend the vigil every year. They do this with little support from the “official church” hierarchy. The Vatican has threatened Father Roy Bourgeois with excommunication for the heresy of advocating women priests. The last day for him to recant was the day before the vigil began. I was also pleased to see a good contingent of Presbyterians at the vigil. I had gone this year with the blessing of St. John’s in Berkeley. I broke bread with 75 others at a breakfast sponsored by the Presbyterian Peace fellowship and later marched with their banner at the Sunday vigil. We too can regain our humanity when we work in solidarity with the poor. We have our work cut out for us. To question the school is to question the worldwide reach of the Pentagon as the power behind the flag wherever we plant it. Is there a groundswell of demand in Latin America for this school, for us to train the military of Latin America? Has anyone ever thought to ask the American people, north or south, if half of all aid from the U.S. should be guns and training of the Military?

AUDACITY OF HOPE

The number of people present for the first time heartened me, especially the young people. It was also clear that the recent election had raised our hopes – not that Obama could carry this fight, but that if we can keep up our pressure on Congress, especially the Senate, there would not be an automatic NO from our top executive, assuming the real top is not the Pentagon. When 35 representatives who voted for the SOA in the last congress were defeated, never has our opportunity been so bright. We begin this year with a petition (see attached) for Obama that is also an attempt to address the nation to expose this dark side of our nation’s past so that it might be changed.

I must mention the breakout sessions that were broader and stronger than ever. Reports from Labor leaders from Colombia were gut-wrenching and stories from many other countries in Latin America told of a very different reality than what we read in our most prestigious newspapers. We as a country have an important decision to make as to which reality we will address – the one that reflects people’s lives in Latin America or the one we need to believe in to justify “business as usual.” While the well-planned workshops at the convention center engaged the head, the rally on Saturday was full of song, powerful testimonials and speeches that engaged the heart. And in between there could be moments of serendipity such as when we were without wheels and had to hitch a ride with a total stranger to go from the center to Fort Benning. Imagine our surprise when the driver turned out to be Lesley Gill, a professor of anthropology whose book on the School of the Americas gives a unique look at the soldiers who have participated in the program. These insights she gained through first hand interviews in four different countries. I had read her book and one on Bolivia and heard her speak in SF several years ago. Another serendipitous moment came during the procession, when we were engulfed in huge hugs by Judy and Bob Dunsmore, formerly of Bolivia, and now living in Atlanta. We wish we could have spent more time with them and others. I suspect we were not the only ones making new friends and meeting old ones.

CROSSING THE LINE AND STAYING THE COURSE

I have not been one of those who have crossed the line to be arrested and sentenced to 3 to 6 months in federal prison. I have questioned why I haven’t done that, and why then I continue to come to these vigils. I have not crossed the line because I lack the courage to do so. I continue to come because there are folks who do cross the line and by so doing make my efforts to close the school more urgent and legitimate. They empower me and I see my work as a “thank” offering to them. The vigils have also brought me into contact with a band of brothers and sisters, both young and old, who make me proud to be among them and hopeful for our future together.

David McPhail
Dec. 2008

Yes We Can Close the School of Assassins!

[11-25-08]

This brief report on the SOA vigil is assembled from more complete reports on the SOA Watch website.

We know that the United States government won't shut down the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) on its own. It will take people power and grassroots organizing to create a climate and culture that will make the existence of institutions like the SOA/WHINSEC impossible.

This weekend, as thousands are gathered at the gates of Fort Benning, we are changing the climate and we are creating a culture of justice, peace and understanding. We have the power to hold the Obama administration to its promises of a new direction in U.S.-Latin America relations and we are calling for the closing of the SOA/WHINSEC as a first step in the right direction.

On Saturday, 12,000 activists lined Fort Benning Rd. to share information and resources from solidarity, anti-imperialism and pro-peace groups around the Americas.

The day opened with a welcome from Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of the SOA Watch movement, and was filled with the voices of musicians and activists on the front lines of the struggle for justice.

Puppetistas gathered at the rear of the road and came to life in a dancing battle to bring down the massive puppet of U.S. imperialism.

Saturday ended with workshops, teach-ins and an amazing SOA Watch concert at the Columbus Convention Center. As in previous years, a group of activists danced in a drum circle in front of the Convention Center and afterward took to the streets of Columbus. This year, the police responded much more harshly. Police officers arrested one participant and dispersed the group while a helicopter was hovering above, shining a spotlight on the scene.

People Power in Action!
The Sunday Vigil

Early Sunday morning, six human rights activists crossed through the I-85 Highway entrance onto the military base in an attempt to process towards the SOA/WHINSEC building. The group was stopped by military police after half a mile and was arrested. The six are facing up to six month in federal prison for carrying the protest onto the base. They will appear in federal court in January 2009 and will use the courtroom to speak truth to power and to put the School of the Americas itself on trial.

They are:

Sr. Diane Pinchot, OSU, 63, from Cleveland, Ohio
Father Luis Barrios, 56, from North Bergen, New Jersey
Louis Wolf, 68, from Washington, DC
Theresa Cusimano, 40 Denver, Colorado
Al Simmons, 64, from Richmond, Virginia
Kristen Holm, from Chicago, Illinois

They were bailed out of jail by the SOA Watch legal team on Sunday afternoon. Their federal trial in Columbus, Georgia will begin on January 26, 2009.

Later in the morning a solemn funeral procession, commemorating those who suffered and were martyred by the graduates of the School of the Americas, made its way towards the gates of Fort Benning. The names of the martyrs are being sung out from the stage to bring their spirits and witness before us as and 20,000 voices respond: "¡Presente!" You are here with us, you are not forgotten, and we continue the struggle in your name. ¡Presente! literally means "here" or "present" in Spanish. There is a long tradition in Latin American movements for justice of invoking the memory of those who have lost their lives in the struggle.

GA actions ratified (or not) by  the presbyteries   

A number of the most important actions of the 219^th General Assembly have now been acted upon by the presbyteries, confirming most of them as amendments to the PC(USA) Book of Order.

We provided resources to help inform the reflection and debate, along with updates on the voting.

Our three areas of primary interest have been:

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PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

Voices of Sophia blog

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John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

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