Twenty-one students from Guilford traveled to Ft. Benning, GA, to participate in the annual protest on Sunday, November 19, to close the School of Americas located on the army base. Eight Guilford students joined the procession onto the army base, while five were apprehended and processed.

Founded in 1946 in Panama, the School of Americas provides instruction in Spanish on American military tactics. According to their homepage, www.benning.army.mil/usarsa, the school moved to Ft. Benning in 1984, after the U.S. treaty in 1977 to release control of the canal. School courses include civil-military operations, border observation, resource management, peace operations, democracy, medical assistance, counter-drug actions, de-mining and human rights training.

Sixty-one thousand soldiers have graduated from the school, from 23 countries. Proponents of the school assert that the security of the U.S. depends upon its maintenance, that the U.S. is able to spend a greater portion of its military budget outside of the Western Hemisphere because of the cooperation promoted by the School of Americas. Troops from the Unites States were not directly involved in support for the Nicaraguan rebels or for the El Salvadoran government.

In the 1990s, there was not a single invasion by the U.S. military. In addition, the school grants the U.S. military friendly contacts in important locales of Latin America. Advocates for the school remind that Latin American governments send their soldiers willingly, that the United States doesn’t order them to do so.

School of Americas Watch, the organization responsible for arranging the movement for shutting down the school, counted over 10,000 attending the protest this year, according to their website www.soaw.org. Some 3,600 people joined in the funeral procession to “cross the line” (the line that designates the point at which military property begins), nearly 2,100 of whom were apprehended by military police and processed throughout the day.

First-year student Jeremy Eaton, one of the five Guilford students apprehended and processed on November 19, attended a protest there for the first time.

“One of the most powerful parts of the protest for me was the idea that it has grown by such large leaps and bounds, just over the past four years,” Eaton said. “They took in 2,100 people for processing. Over 3,000 people lent their bodies to civil disobedience, and were willing to cross over the line to show their conscious opposition to the things going on in South America. The fact that that many people were willing to lend their presence, and lend a voice, and then go through the processing (is remarkable).”

SOA Watch held rallies outside the gates of Ft. Benning on Saturday, November 18. That evening, protesters attended nonviolence training sessions at a local theater. Participants in the protest committed to a nonviolent discipline prepared by SOA Watch organizers. The discipline encouraged respect toward all, even the police officers and military personnel, and forbade any action that could be perceived as threatening, such as using insulting language or carrying weapons.

The Memorial Service on Sunday began with music at 8:30 in the morning, with a welcome from Jeff Winder, the co-director of the vigil action. Participants then recited the nonviolent discipline. Founder of SOA Watch Fr. Roy Bourgeois gave opening words, followed by actor Martin Sheen, who has advocated closing the School of Americas for several years. Sheen, who plays the U.S. President on the popular television show “The West Wing”, thrilled the crowd by saying, “as acting President of the United States, I declare that the School of the Americas must be closed immediately.” He was among those arrested.

The procession across the line began at 10:40 a.m. Participants held white crosses with the names, ages, and nationalities of victims of SOA graduates. Musicians on the stage located in front of the gates sang the name of every person represented on the crosses. Members of the protest responded “presente” after the calling of each name. Participants of the funeral procession tried to maintain the solemn atmosphere of the action, walking 10 people abreast into the base.

After the funeral procession completely crossed the line, another 32 activists crossed and staged a pretend massacre by Colombian paramilitaries. A second, higher-risk procession began next, composed of 200 costumed participants carrying giant puppets and drums. Several activists planted corn in the soil of Ft. Benning, representing hope and life. Members of the civil society group Las Abejas prayed and fasted, planting corn at a military camp in Chiapas, Mexico, as the vigil action took place in Georgia.

Many of the 2,100 protestors apprehended spent more than eight hours on buses and in heated military tents waiting to be processed. Most kept in good spirits throughout the evening; those kept through dinnertime were given ready-to-eat meals from the military police. Latrines were always available, as well as a water buffalo, a small reservoir of drinking water on wheels.

“Solidarity built up between the people willing to be processed, over the few hours of sitting inside a tent in the rain or on a bus.” Jeremy Eaton was impressed by the togetherness that emerged between “all the strangers from all over the country that came together with a common ideal.” She also noted, “the way that no one lost their spirits,” and attributes it in part to “all the singing and chanting.” In some tents, the military personnel watching over the protestors joined in group songs, such as “Lean on Me.”

The U.S. Congress has been taking notice of the opposition, as Representative Joe Moakley, from Boston, has been one of the key advocates for the closure of the school. In May of this year, Moakley proposed an amendment to close the school — 204 Congressmen supported the measure, while just ten voted against it.