Road trips can take you places you wish never existed. Two weeks ago, a record 22 Grinnellians drove to Georgia for a taste of the worst U.S. foreign policy has to offer. Located at the Fort Benning army base in Columbus is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Once called School of the Americas (SOA), the 25,000 protesters who held a vigil at its gates on Nov. 18 still refer to the complex as SOA and instead know it as “School of the Assassins.”
Since 1946, the SOA has forged 64,000 soldiers into instruments of our foreign policy—teaching them how to target civilians in order to maintain the status quo in Latin America. To protect the interests of multinational corporations and the ruling classes, SOA graduates have committed atrocities: rape, torture, assassination, massacre. They learned these strategies at the SOA, to victimize union organizers, religious workers and other activists.
We Grinnellians know about the SOA thanks largely to Assistant Librarian Chris Gaunt’s non-violent civil disobedience. She “crossed the line,” trespassing onto the Fort Benning grounds, twice. She has done jail time in expression of her opposition to the SOA.
Much of my respect for the SOA Watch movement comes from the civil disobedience of its members. Many locate the origins of this tradition in the non-violent liberation theology practiced by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. After his 1980 assassination, the UN established that two of the three Salvadorian officers responsible were SOA-trained. Catholic activists and clergy threw themselves into closing the SOA.
For many years, the SOA’s activism was limited—picture aging Catholic clergy hunger striking outside the gates of the SOA. But the face of the movement is changing. Not only is the religious left on board. The kids are, too.
“Our spirits are getting younger,” Martina La Force of SOA Watch said Nov. 17 about the elderly activists, “but our crowds are getting younger too.” Casting a quick eye at the crowd, I was quick to agree.
Although a few silver dread-locked heads stood out in the crowd, we made up a mostly youthful and motley crew—the kind Grinnell would love to put in a diversity brochure. I saw Sikhs in pro-marijuana t-shirts; husky guys wearing Cleveland football jerseys; edgy anarchists whose patches proclaimed, “The only good fascist is a dead fascist.”
But is this an entirely good thing?
The crowds certainly are diverse. But maybe, as the anarchist’s definitely non-non-violent patch showed me, the protest has lost its focus on non-violent resistance to the SOA. Milling through the decidedly diverse crowd, I asked myself, “Is the protest tackling too many issues?”
During my weekend at the gates of Fort Benning, I learned that it’s absolutely essential to oppose CAFTA, the Iraq War, torture, violence in general, Coke, Burger King and, of course, George Dubya. My head started spinning—even as a good liberal, I had a hard time keeping the issues straight. Issue creep is setting in.
The SOA Watch protest doesn’t just represent opposition to the School of Assassins. At the gates of Fort Benning, activists busied themselves pounding the pavement for the American Civil Liberties Union, Veterans for Peace and the AFLCIO—the Kucinich campaign even got into the act. I admit it: I’m frustrated with the lack of focus.
I think my frustration comes from impatience. So many activists have worked so long to close the SOA, but American tax dollars still fund a school that trains Latin American soldiers to commit human rights violations. We fund conflict elsewhere, while there is still injustice within our borders.
So for me, it’s tempting to blame the protest. I lash out impatiently: if only we could focus our efforts, maybe we could make the final push to convince Congress to shut down the SOA. We could ditch the protest, forget about renting the stage and enormous speakers, cancel our reservations at the conference center and Howard Johnson. More energy and money targeting Congress might mean that, the next time a bill to close the SOA comes up for a vote, it will pass. And that is, after all, the point of making the roadtrip to Fort Benning.
But after reflecting on our weekend at the gates, I am finding it easier to embrace this messy, all-inclusive protest. For dedicated activists, it is clear that the protest is not just a political statement. It is communion with other, equally committed spirits. I heard over and over from dedicated activists that attending the protest gives them the energy to keep fighting for another year. And at this year’s protest, the community released the ashes of a long-time attendee to the Georgia wind, in accordance to his wishes.
A trip to Georgia brought Grinnellians face to face with a shameful example of American foreign policy. But in a crowd of 25,000, with military helicopters circling overhead and partially drowning out our singing, I found purpose in the mere act of gathering to bear witness.
