the Bay Area 3
News Articles
|
For our Fair Use of Copyrighted material Notice, please click on the ©.
the Bay Area 3
News Articles
1) And Those Who Tresspass Salter, S.F. Chronicle, June 30, 20022) Bay Area priests rally before trespass trial Wallace, Chronicle, July 3, 2002
3) SOA trial begins with pleas Houston, Ledger-Enquirer, July 9, 2002
4) 13 Protesters Found Guilty Houston, Ledger-Enquirer, July 11, 2002
5) Judge Offers Penalty Options Houston, Ledger-Enquirer, July 12, 2002
And those who trespass
San Francisco Chronicle, June 30, 2002, Page D-4
Given that the guests of honor face federal prison terms for civil disobedience, there was a fair bit of joking last week at a going-away party for Bay Area Roman Catholic priests Louis Vitale and Bill O'Donnell.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/*/archive/2002/06/30/*.DTL"My speech before the judge will be short," said Vitale, a Franciscan friar.
Pointing at his longtime friend, O'Donnell, Vitale feigned fear and repeated the Apostle Peter's denial of Jesus: "I do not know the man!"
About 150 friends and supporters at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley laughed and shook their heads in amusement and affection. By just about any standard, both Vitale, 70, and O'Donnell, 72, are considered near- saints in their activist communities.
Vitale has garnered respect and devotion as pastor of St. Boniface Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin District and through decades of peaceful protest against everything from nuclear weapons labs to the purported drug eradication program, Plan Colombia. Earlier this year he received a Paul VI Teacher of Peace Award from the international pacifist organization, Pax Christi.
An Oakland diocesan priest, O'Donnell has become something of a legend during 30 years of similar peace-and-justice activism at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley and through a drug-and-alcohol rehab center, Options Recovery, that he co-founded with Dr. Davida Coady. He logged his first arrest for civil disobedience alongside Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. The count now stands at 224, many with his pal of 20 years, actor Martin Sheen.
If previous cases are any indication, Vitale's and O'Donnell's social works won't impress U.S. District Judge G. Mallon Faircloth next month in Columbus, Ga.
On July 8, both priests will join 35 other defendants in Faircloth's court to be tried for "crossing the line" during a mass demonstration at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation -- better known by its former name, the School of the Americas -- at Fort Benning, Ga.
Despite its dramatic sound, crossing the line means peacefully trespassing onto the Army base. Each November, hundreds of protesters -- who contend that the school trains foreign soldiers in such black arts as assassination and making biological and chemical weapons -- trespass and get themselves arrested.
The following summer, dozens go before Faircloth; most receive maximum six- month sentences.
Among the many people Faircloth sentenced last July to six-month stays in federal prison was an 88-year-old Franciscan nun, Dorothy Hennessey. Three years ago, he slapped consecutive six-month sentences on Charlie Liteky, a Vietnam War hero who won the U.S. Medal of Honor for dragging 27 G.I.'s to safety during a firefight in 1967.
Liteky, a former Catholic priest who lives in San Francisco with his human rights activist wife, Judy, was among the well-wishers at last week's bon voyage party. After he listened to O'Donnell read a speech he plans to give in Faircloth's courtroom, he told the throng: "Say goodbye to Bill now because you're not going to see him for a long time if he reads that statement."
Along with calling the court "a pimp for the Pentagon," O'Donnell will ask Faircloth to sentence him to study at the Fort Benning school so he can "tell the world: indeed the new institute has amended its ways and teaches only nonviolence and democracy to its students."
For all the joshing, Vitale and O'Donnell both know that what's ahead is serious business. Besides his usual pastoral duties, Vitale is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar renovation and earthquake retrofitting of St. Boniface. O'Donnell's Options Recovery center, which primarily serves the East Bay poor, is perpetually in need of funding.
But both men also believe priests can be called to live their faith in ways beyond their pastoral duties.
"I really, actually, did not intend to get arrested at Fort Benning," said Vitale. "But there's something just deep down inside of me that says this is the right thing to do. I'm really glad to have the opportunity to make this witness."
Bay Area priests rally before trespass trial
Pelosi asked to help shut Ft. Benning schoolBill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 3, 2002
Page A18; source: www.sfgate.com/*/archive/2002/07/03/*.DTL
San Francisco -- Only days before their trial for trespassing on a post where the U.S. Army allegedly trains torturers and assassins, two Bay Area clergymen urged Rep. Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday to help shut the school down.
The facility in question is the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), a special training center at the U.S. Army's Fort Benning, Ga., that annually trains up to 900 soldiers and police officers from other nations in a variety of topics, including civil disorder management, collecting and analyzing military intelligence and anti-drug operations.
The Revs. Louis Vitale of St. Boniface Church in San Francisco and Bill O'Donnell of St. Joseph the Workman Church in Berkeley were among 43 protesters who were arrested at Fort Benning during a mass protest last year.
They and 35 other demonstrators are scheduled to begin trial in federal court in Georgia on Monday on trespassing charges that could result in six- month prison sentences and fines of up to $5,000 each.
Tuesday morning, the two clergymen gave Pelosi's aides a petition asking her to support House Resolution 1810, a bill that would close the school by eliminating its statutory authority to operate.
"There have been massive atrocities," O'Donnell told members of Pelosi's staff during the session at the Philip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco. "We (the demonstrators facing trial in Georgia) are being punished for trying to tell the American people that their dollars are being used to support our own terrorist training school right here at Fort Benning."
Pelosi was not at the meeting, but Dan Bernal, her deputy district director, accepted the petition on her behalf and read a statement from the congresswoman, a San Francisco Democrat, pledging to continue fighting to close the school.
"We must not condone any of the atrocities that have been performed by people who are graduates of the School of the Americas," Pelosi's statement said. "I will continue to work with all of you to close this institution."
The training center has been criticized in recent years and has been identified as the training facility for military and police personnel who were involved in a host of atrocities, including the murder of Colombian Archbishop Isaias Duarte earlier this year and the slaying of six Jesuit priests in 1989.
The school's officials deny that they train foreign military and security personnel to commit acts of terror and say they have instituted human rights training as a regular part of their curriculum.
But critics say the changes in the school's courses have been superficial and are more intended to win over public opinion than to actually change the behavior of graduates.
"We've had people (from Latin America) come here for refuge and live in our churches," Vitale told members of Pelosi's staff during Monday's meeting. "We've seen the results of the kind of torture that is taught at the School of the Americas. . . . The name has changed, but not the game."
Judge Offers Penalty Options
Protesters may spend six months in Fort Benning school or prisonBy Jim Houston, Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer
July 12, 2002Source: www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/
As seven SOA Watch protesters mulled the judge's offer of a six-month stint at the very school they seek to close, another of the demonstrators was sentenced Thursday to the maximum prison term for trespass onto the Fort Benning Military Reservation.
U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth, who has convicted 35 protesters during three days of trials and pleas in U.S. District Court in Columbus, told the defendants and their supporters to leave the courtroom early Thursday evening. With only attorneys, court personnel and a reporter watching, he then issued the first sentence for a protester convicted of crossing onto
Fort Benning during the Nov. 18 demonstration against the former School of the Americas and its successor, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.Maxwell E. Sadler of Waterville, Maine, said nothing as he stood before Faircloth. A first-time offender, he had pleaded guilty on Monday, with attorney John Martin of Columbus explaining that Sadler had trespassed after SOA Watch supporters assured him first-time crossers would not be prosecuted.
Before sentencing, Faircloth told Sadler he had ruled against the city's attempt to stop the protesters from gathering at the gates of Fort Benning, because they had a constitutional right to free speech activities in that location, where they had gathered peaceably for 11 consecutive years.
But this year was very different, he said, because the terrorist acts of Sept. 11 were still so recent many people felt it was not a good time to hold the demonstration at the gates of the nation's infantry center.
Despite Sadler's admission of guilt, the six-month jail sentence and $2,000 fine Faircloth imposed was short of the maximum punishment by only $3,000. He did agree to allow Sadler to voluntarily surrender to the prison to which the U.S. Bureau of Prisons will assign him.
A murmur ran through the defendants and their supporters as they returned to the courtroom and learned of Sadler's sentence. Seven of the 35 who have been convicted are to decide before sentencing at 1 p.m. today whether to accept Faircloth's offer of six months on probation at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Although 10 originally signed for consideration of such an alternative, three withdrew their names. Those remaining are Nancy Gowen of Richmond, Va.; Richard Ring of Atlanta; Janice Sevre-Duszynska of Lexington, Ky.; Jonna Cohen and Michael Sobol of Denver; the Rev. Louis Vitale of San Francisco; and the Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Faircloth warned that the alternative sentence would be no picnic. Anyone who accepts would have travel restricted to Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties, would have to attend all classes scheduled at the institute during the six months and would risk being imprisoned for six months for violation of probation, even if only one day remained on the sentence, he said.
But the judge refused to say whether the seven would be sentenced to prison if they refused the offer of attending the institute.
The suggestion of having a protester serve his sentence at the institute, to later be able to tell all exactly what goes on at the Fort Benning-based school for Latin American soldiers and officials, originated with the Rev. William O'Donnell. The Berkeley, Calif., parish priest's name is no longer on the list.Faircloth also said he will be taking a look at the institute, and he's willing to take along former SOA instructor Joe Blair of Columbus, a retired U.S. Army major who has been a vocal critic of the school and a demonstrator against the institute's continued existence. "When I go, I want to take Maj. Blair with me, if he will go," the judge told the crowded courtroom.
"I will," Blair answered from his seat among the spectators.
"Good. I want to see what he sees," Faircloth said.
Blair testified Thursday during the trial of Peter A. Gelderloos of Harrisonburg, Va., that torture was taught at the School of the Americas when he was an instructor (1986-89), in direct violation of an executive order issued by President Jimmy Carter. Instructors taught interrogation techniques from an outlawed "Project X" manual and from the "Project Phoenix" program used in South Vietnam, he said.
"Capt. (Victor) Tice taught it was U.S. military policy that it would be appropriate in a military setting to use physical abuse, false imprisonment, infiltration of unions and infiltrations of organizations in their country," Blair said.
When he inspected the manuals, curricula and programs at the institute in March -- after his year-old request for the opportunity was finally approved -- he found those violations no longer occur, Blair said.
"What I clearly saw is that the school no longer teaches torture," he said.
In addition, the week-long course on human rights now taught at the school is "a vast improvement" over the four-hour human rights lesson that was folded into an 11-month command course he taught, Blair said.
"That's a major change," he told Faircloth.
But many of the other courses have had no substantive changes, and the fact remains that most Latin American nations who send their soldiers to the institute use their military to control civilian populations -- not for defense against external groups or threats, Blair said.
Gelderloos was one of four defendants who demanded trials, represented themselves and were convicted on Thursday. The others included Abigail M. Miller, also of Harrisonburg, Summer Lisa Nelson of Missoula, Mont., and Palmer D. Legare of Springfield, Mass.
The trial of John E. Heid of Luck, Wis., also representing himself, will resume when court reconvenes at noon today in the third-floor courtroom of the federal building at 12th Street and Second Avenue.
News Atricles continue on: BA3-na2.htm
For our Fair Use of Copyrighted material Notice, please click on the ©.
