Close the school

Submitted by Ann Marie Castleman

This year was my third trip to Fort Benning, Georgia and again I found the non-violent protest to close the School of the Americas (SOA)—renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001—to be a time of renewal among fellow advocates in the on-going struggle for social justice and peace.  The protest consists of numerous activities, including teach-ins on various topics, a rally complete with powerful speakers and spirited music as well as a solemn vigil and funeral procession to commemorate the lives of those killed at the hands of graduates of the SOA.  To me the protest has come to mean more than just trying to close a US military base that trains soldiers from Latin American countries in torture techniques and then refuses to accept responsibility when it is discovered that their graduates have committed atrocious human rights violations. 

To me, the protest is a visual reminder of the bigger picture: that our nation’s foreign policies and political decisions affect the whole world and that those policies, in my opinion, are currently flawed because they neither uphold nor promote the dignity of human beings in our global society.  So when we justice and peace seekers gathered that weekend, I feel we did so not simply to demand that our country’s administration act morally, but also to support one another in the work we each do to create a better world where all life is respected and held sacred.