CLOSE the SOA

i hope everyone's holiday was sweet and happy, and travels were safe.
i've been on the road an unprecedented amount the past two weeks. i went to st. louis, and louisville, with jacob to his family for thanksgiving, which was great.
the weekend prior i rode on a bus to georgia and back with Veterans for Peace to protest at Ft. Benning, where the US Army spends your tax dollars to run a school for foreign military. the imperialist notions that everyone should be like us should be reason enough to shut the place down, but the methods of torture, intimidation, and murder taught there have led to it's nickname of the School of the Assassins. you've heard of this place and its works, even if you haven't known it. 900 dead in el mozote; 6 Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter executed at the University of Central America; 4 churchwomen raped and butchered (more, admitadly propaganda-ized, information here)

here are photos of my trip... it was moving, and envigorating, even in the face of the horror you're trying to extinguish.

we left at 9:30am on friday, from the veterans' hospital in minneapolis. it was a 26 hour bus ride each way.


sunset in illinois (above) and sunrise in alabama:





saturday is an all day rally at the gates of Ft. Benning, and sunday morning there is a solemn procession, with the known names of victims read, while protesters carry crosses bearing names.




an organization i am honored to have been affiliated with...

the main gate, a focal point of the protest in years past, was covered by the Army during the day on Friday in order to thwart the protester's attempts to re-assign value to its symbols (you'll see in a moment how that worked out for them):




these buddhist monks walked 150 miles from atlanta

emily saliers of the indigo girls

from our bus, the mother and sister of mary swenson, a founding activist in the movement to close the SOA, who died this year.... and below, people from our minneapolis bus wait for the funeral procession to begin


i don't know these people, but their cranes were so vibrant and intense


hear the music? "this little light of mine, i'm gonna let it shine..." these women are nuns and sisters from our bus, and we got good and warm in the early morning mist on sunday

signs from both days....



(local response, although generally supportive and welcoming, has also generated a counter-protest in recent years, called "God Bless Ft. Benning Day" --this was the rearranged sign we passed on sunday morning)







sunday morning's funeral march....this is what 19,000 activists looks like.


the procession is lead by pallbearers and a puppet


followed by a reading of the names of victims. the crowd raises their crosses and responds: "Presente!"


the procession leads to the gates, where the pallbearers have become victims


even shrowded in Army-issue brown plastic, the gate becomes a monument to loss and hope:


as an act of civil disobedience, some protesters who have prepared for civil action, and had to travel a ways from the main gate, crawl under the fence. military police waited for them, cuffed and removed them from the area... one of the most moving stories i heard was of a blind man who crossed the line and how gentle the mps were with him