Hundred Obies to Protest SOA

This weekend, over 100 Oberlin students will travel halfway across the country to protest the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The U.S. military training center in Fort Benning, GA. is otherwise known as the School of the Americas. Opened in 1946, the SOA has been accused of training Latin American soldiers and military personnel to be human rights abusers.

Despite Congress' decision to close the SOA in May and open it up again under a new name, leaders from the School of the Americas Watch, the group responsible for organizing the annual protest, said in a press release, "Congress may have been fooled, but the people are not. The SOA has a new name, but the same shame. We will be at Ft. Benning by the thousands again this November, and we will be in the halls of the new Congress in January. We will keep coming back until we shut down the 'School of Assassins' - whatever they call it."

Clearly, many Oberlin students feel the same sense of dedication. The students traveling to Georgia Friday afternoon have been preparing for the demonstration for months through non-violence training and monthly pot-luck dinners at the Peace Community Church in Oberlin. Senior Laurel Paget-Seekins and junior Jackie Downing, who head the Oberlin chapter of SOA Watch, have also helped train in non-violence tactics some of the 1000 Ohio residents who will be attending the demonstration.

The protest will mark the 11th anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989. A U.N. Truth Commission found that 19 out of the 26 army officers responsible for these killings had been trained at the School of the Americas. This is also the 11th vigil organized by SOA Watch commemorating the deaths of the Jesuit priests and the two women in El Salvador. Last year 12,000 people attended the vigil, this year 15,000 are expected.

The vigil will take place over the course of two days. There will be a rally on Saturday, Nov. 18 and protesters plan to cross the gates and enter the base on Sunday, Nov. 19. It is illegal to protest on any U.S. military base, and 65 people, three of whom were Oberlin students, were arrested for protesting on SOA property at last year's vigil. Ten Oberlin students in total have been arrested over the past year during various protests of the SOA, and several others plan to risk arrest by entering the military base this weekend.

The Oberlin students arrested over the past year will most likely not be crossing the gates on Sunday due to the ban and bar notices they received upon condition of their release, which stipulate that if they enter SOA grounds again within the next five years they could face prison terms of three to twelve months on criminal trespass charges.

Sophomore David Jessop, arrested last May at a different protest in Fort Benning, expressed his reluctance to disobey his ban and bar notice this weekend, but didn't rule out the possibility of protesting on SOA grounds at a later date. "We all feel called to cross the line, but many of us have strategically decided that as students it's better to wait. However, this doesn't imply that we won't violate our ban and bar notices in the future," he said.

The students who do not plan to cross the gates will hold a simultaneous "die-in" directly outside the gates, in which they lie down in solidarity with the people killed by SOA graduates.

One of the main goals of the Oberlin students attending the vigil is to generate publicity for their cause. Many have sent press releases to their home newspapers and Jackie Downing has done several interviews for Ohio radio stations. At the protest itself, the Oberlin students will be wearing bright green T-shirts to attract media attention, and Oberlin SOA Watch leaders have been conducting practice sessions over the past few months on how to deal with the media.

Of course the ultimate goal of the protesters is the immediate abolition of the SOA. "The School of the Americas, symbolic of U.S. foreign policy, stands to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. It needs to be closed," Jessop said.