SOAW-W News for April

SOAW-W News for April-June, 2002

1) April News
2) SOAW Prisoner of Conscience speaks in Bay Area April 7-10
3) June News

School of the Americas Watch West ~ SOAWW ~ 03/28/02
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1) April 4 (Thurs.), 7:00 PM, "War in Colombia," UC Berkeley
2) April 4 (Thurs.), 7:00 PM, Meeting, SOA Watch, San Francisco
3) Now through April 26, San Francisco Civic Center Plaza Fast and Vigil and Ft. Benning Fast and Vigil
4) April 20 (Saturday), San Francisco March against War, Racism, Poverty, 11 AM, Gather in Dolores Park, Noon March to Civic Center, 1 PM Rally in Civic Center
5)   April 19-22, Washington, DC, SOA Watch Lobby Days and Colombia Mobilization
6)   Article, "Our Terrorist Training Camp," Sacramento News and Review, 03/21/02
7)   Article, "SOA Watch members begin fast," Ledger-Enquirer, 03/25/02

1) "War in Colombia" - How is the United States involved in Colombia's 38-year civil war and why is our involvement escalating?
What:    A panel discussion, open to the public at no charge, will explore these questions and describe the impacts of US policy on civil society in Colombia.
When:     April 4, 2002, Thursday at 7 PM.
Where:   UC Berkeley Campus, Valley Life Science Building, Room 2060.
Who:    The panel includes Ligia Ines Alzate, General Secretary of the Confederation of Unions in Colombia, Sandra Alvarez, Coordinator for the Colombia Project for Global Exchange and Ted Sexauer, Vietnam Veteran, SOA Watch activist, recently returned from Colombia as a participant in a Witness For Peace delegation.
Contact: Joseph Harrison, (510) 601-7441 or harrisonjoseph@hotmail.com
Sponsored by SOA Watch West (East Bay)

2) April 4 (Thurs.), 7:00 PM, Meeting, SOA Watch, San Francisco
Location: Xavier Residence Hall at the corner of Golden Gate and Parker.
Enter the doorway marked "Xavier Residence Hall" on the east side of the building. Go through the patio on the right to the Dining Room.
Contact: Dolores Priem, doloresmp@aol.com or John Savard, savard@usfca.edu

3A) Now through April 26, San Francisco Civic Center Plaza Fast and Vigil began with a commemoration of Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero. If you can join George Johnson, call him at 650.207.6073.
Vigil takes place at the Simon Bolivar statue, Fulton at Hyde.
3B) Now through April 26, Ft. Benning Fast and Vigil was begun by Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Charlie Liteky and 2 WWII veterans.
Contact: Charlie Liteky at 706.221.2334.
Article, "SOA Watch members begin fast," from Columbus, GA below.

4)   April 20 (Saturday), San Francisco March against War, Racism, Poverty.
SOA Watch West activists plan to gather before noon in Dolores Park.
Look for the SOA Watch banner and table!

5) April 19-22, Washington, DC, SOA Watch Lobby Days and Colombia Mobilization. If you can gather signatures to present to your local Representative or to the Senators or if you can help lobby in DC, contact Theresa at 415.681.2838 or tmcameranesi@earthlink.net

6) Our terrorist training camp
By Megan Wong
Sacramento News and Review
March 21, 2002
Father Roy Bourgeois' long struggle to close the School of the Americas takes on a new dimension after 9-11
Roy Bourgeois sounded the alarm on terrorism decades before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. For years, he has traveled around the United States speaking out against the violence and fear inflicted on Latin American civilians by militant extremists supported and trained by foreign governments.
Never in his wildest dreams, however, did Bourgeois imagine Americans would rally against international terrorism the way they have since September 11. Unfortunately--according to the man affectionately known as "Father Roy" to his supporters--they are flocking to the wrong cause. Apparently, the American-flag stickers and "United We Stand" banners that seem to darken all flat surfaces lately are distracting us. Distracting us from what? From the real war, according to Bourgeois, the war against war, the war against the "men with guns" who terrorize peaceful people. Judging from the standing-room only crowd of over 160 people at a recent talk that Bourgeois gave in Sacramento, there are some people who see things his way. On a cool Wednesday night--not an American flag in sight--Father Roy detailed his ongoing struggle against terrorism.
Most in attendance were already sympathetic to his crusade. The remainder were those who could easily be convinced--even of concepts that, from a mainstream perspective, might be considered subversive, even treasonous.
Father Roy's adulthood reads like a spy novel: Vietnam vet turned priest, novice missionary kicked out of Bolivia for defense of the poor, human rights defender who suffered the loss of friends including two American nuns living in El Salvador who were raped and murdered by government soldiers--only to discover later that his own country is implicated in the atrocities.
So began Roy Bourgeois' decades-long battle against the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), a crusade that has taken him to cities across the United States, and in and out of federal prison for his "subversive" beliefs. Operating on a U.S. Army base in Fort Benning, Georgia, the School of the Americas still trains soldiers from select Latin American countries in
counter-insurgency techniques, combat tactics, and strategies of psychological warfare that teach attendees how to suppress those who rebel against their respective governments.
The school boasts courses such as "Psychological Operations," "Military Intelligence," "Combat Arms Officer," and "Battle Staff Operations." These days, many of its attendees come from Colombia, where the U.S. has become increasingly mired in that country's civil war.
The School of the Americas (officially renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, echoing other cosmetic changes designed to deflect mounting public dissatisfaction with the school's activities) has no dearth of notorious alumni to its credit. Manuel Noriega (Panama), Leopold Galtieri (Argentina), and Hugo Banzer Suarez (Bolivia) are just a few. Other graduates include the men responsible for the El Mozote massacre of 900
civilians in El Salvador, the torture and murder of a UN worker in Chile and the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, also in El Salvador. But these gruesome facts have been around for years.
The difference is that now, Father Roy and his supporters are fighting not only the right-wing death squads of Latin America, they are negotiating a new brand of American patriotism as well.
In light of the flag-waving, ultra-patriotic rhetoric that dominates television, radio and print media these days, Bourgeois' speaking tours have taken on a new significance after the September 11 tragedies. As U.S. planes continue to bomb Afghanistan and hawkish presidential advisers push the United States to "close in" on Saddam Hussein, this white-haired priest's crusade enjoys a renewed relevance in our country--whether or not we acknowledge it, or agree with his view that SOA promotes terrorism.
While President George Bush warns a fearful American public that "the terrorists' directive commands them to kill ... and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children," Father Roy and other members of the School of the Americas Watch stalwartly point out that in 2000, former dictators and SOA graduates Efrain Rios Montt and Fernando Lucas Garcia were charged with the genocide and forced exile of thousands of Guatemalan women, children and men.
Likewise, anti-SOA activists remind us that while the federal government attempts to rout out everyone from Osama bin Laden to Chechen independence fighters and even foreign exchange students enrolled at North American universities, U.S. taxpayers continue to fund and operate the School of the Americas.
About two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, over 10,000 people traveled to Georgia to protest the SOA. Ironically, a military official phoned the organizers prior to the annually scheduled protest, asking them not to come this year, "out of respect to the victims of the attacks."
Father Roy and others, including a small contingent of Sacramentans who were at the protest and attended his Sacramento talk, gently but firmly explained that, in fact, their cause was more timely than ever. They proceeded as planned and 117 were arrested for committing non-violent actions of protest. It must be somewhat strange, then, for Bourgeois, a man who has committed much of his adult life to stopping governmental abuse of power--including being incarcerated numerous times for his acts of civil disobedience in protesting the SOA--to hear a message he has been promoting for decades wind up in a speech to the very leaders he has been trying for years to convince. In his "Special Address to Congress and the American People" following the September 11 attacks, President Bush made several statements that seem to take on another dimension when viewed through Bourgeois' eyes and examined in relation to the School of the Americas.
Although the president's remarks undoubtedly refer to al Qaeda, while Father Roy's crusade has been against the U.S. government-sponsored School of the Americas, the similarities are interesting: "Its goal is remaking the world--and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere. ... This group and its leader ... are linked to many other organizations in different countries. ... They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps ... where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction."
Likewise, it is strange to hear the president explain a concept that Father Roy and others have been struggling to convince the U.S. government of for decades: "By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder."
While the Bush administration looks for its next target in its war on terrorism, Father Roy continues to lobby government officials to stop funding, training and housing Latin American soldiers who consistently commit acts of violence and murder against civilians when they return to their home countries.
Although frustrated, Father Roy says he has not given up hope. Considering the length of his struggle and the unyielding obstinacy of the U.S. government in continuing to operate the School of the Americas even in the face of intense international pressure, Father Roy remains remarkably positive. In Sacramento, after delivering countless similar talks to audiences across the nation, he noted, "People are very compassionate, I find. Often the compassion is dormant, though. Sometimes it is there but we need the knowledge, the information for it to surface."
While he admits that his job was somewhat more challenging in the direct aftermath of September 11, he is far from doom and gloom. Although it was difficult for him to speak out immediately after the tragedies in New York and Washington, he did so anyway, and since then observes that "now many more [people] are coming to our talks throughout the country than before 9-11, questioning the U.S. role in the world."
So, this spry Catholic priest with the lilting Southern drawl continues his crusade. The SOA Watch maintains its Web page and continues its protests. And both try not to get spun out of the public eye altogether, as the president's war on terrorism tumbles on.
In one last, ironic parallel, President Bush unintentionally articulated Father Roy's struggle well in his words to Congress on September 13, 2001: "They stand against us because we stand in their way. We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety; we have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human
life to serve their radical visions--by abandoning every value except the will to power--they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."
Bourgeois' hope is that when the American-flag stickers cease to block our national vision, we will begin to see SOA as the "terrorist training camp" that he's known it to be for many years.

7) SOA Watch members begin fast
Protesters say U.S. government needs to change its Latin American policies
By Meg Pirnie
Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer
March 25, 2002
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/
Protesters gathered outside the main gate at Fort Benning Sunday to honor Latin American bishops slain by graduates of the former U.S. Army School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The day marked the 22nd anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.
Members of SOA Watch, the organization dedicated to closing the institute, began a 32-day morning-to-evening fast in remembrance of the slain bishop and in protest against the continued existence of the school at Fort Benning. The fast will end on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was killed after writing a human rights report on the Guatemalan civil war.
Latin American "people are struggling for survival," said the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch. "The people do not need more bombs, commandos... . They need bread, health care, teachers and housing. Can that be taught at Fort Benning? I don't think so."
In front of the main gate at Fort Benning, white crosses stood in the grass in front of a wooden table holding a bust of Romero.
"We look at the fence with the barbed wire and the sign that says 'no trespassing.' That's not where you teach democracy," said Bourgeois. "The bottom line is that they are still teaching counter-revolutionary warfare," said Charlie Liteky, who drove from San Francisco to protest. "We just don't think that it's a good thing to do to people who have every right to protest against an economic system that oppresses them."
Liteky, an Army veteran and Medal of Honor winner who has spent time in prison for actions surrounding protests at Fort Benning, hopes that Americans will look outside the United States to see how our policies affect the world.
"We just can't sit back and enjoy our beautiful way of life when our foreign policies are wreaking havoc on the poor around the world," Liteky said. Lil Corrigan drove from Marietta with her husband Bill to support the protest. Bill Corrigan spent two months in prison for civil disobedience during a past protest. Lil Corrigan said that she will probably have her day in jail as well, but she doesn't know when.
Sunday she was sitting in the shade clutching a book about Latin America. Lil Corrigan said she believes the United States government, through organizations like the institute, works to protect corporate interests and the rights of the wealthy rather than helping the poor. "In Latin America, the poor never have a chance to rise," she said. The United States should work toward democracy and freedom for developing nations rather than establishing control by stabilizing dishonest regimes that do not act in the people's best interest, she said.

Subject: SOAW Prisoner of Conscience speaks in Bay Area
Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 2002 09:55:57 -0800
       Ken Kennon has recently published a book about his experiences as a Prisoner
of Conscience for "crossing the line" at Ft. Benning. GA. You are invited to hear and meet Ken:
April 7 (Sun.) 9:30 am, First Christian Church, San Jose (Preaching, Adult Forum);
April 9 (Tues.), 12 noon, Real Deal Student/Faculty Lunch, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley;
April 10 (Wed.), 12 noon, Campus Event, Napa Valley Community College, Napa
--------------
       Ken lives in Tucson, AZ. His book is entitled, "Prisoner of Conscience: A Memoir."
       This memoir of a journey of conscience, that led to a prison cell for a grandfather in his sixties, tells one story of a growing number of prisoners of conscience in America.
       The author reflects on why he ended up incarcerated for protesting the SOA, tells what he experienced in a federal prison camp, and contemplates where conscience can take us.
       From his prison journal and other writings, the prisoner speaks in a mix of pain and humor, ugliness and beauty, that provides insight into people of conscience, points out national policies that lead to gross human rights abuse, and lays open the brutal nature of the American justice system.
----------
       While in the Bay Area, Ken may be reached
c/o Rev. Lee Williamson in Hayward.
Email address is Pastorlee@world.att.net
Home phone: 510-887-6532   Work phone: 510-782-5383

School of the Americas Watch West ~ SOAWW ~ June 6, 2002

Check out our National web site's new design!

Details below on
1) July 2 press conference and vigil in San Francisco with SOA Bay Area 3
2) June 19 SOAW meeting in Oakland
3) July 11 SOAW meeting in San Francisco
4) June 25 presentation on Colombia in Larkspur
5) June 16 San Francisco Chronicle interview with Fr. Bill O'Donnell
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
1) 11:00 AM on July 2 (Tuesday)
Press Conference and Vigil with SOA BA3
Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave.
Between Polk and Larkin, San Francisco
BART: Civic Center Station
Plans are being made for those going to trial to meet with Rep. Nancy Pelosi or her staff.
The SOA Bay Area 3 are Fr. Bill O'Donnell of Berkeley, Leone Reinbold of Oakland, Fr. Louie Vitale of San Francisco. Their trials begin July 8 in Columbus, GA. They face sentences of 6 months in prison and a $5,000 fine for trespass.
2) East Bay SOAWW meeting
7:00 PM on June 19 (Wednesday)
Café at 36th and Macarthur, Laurel District, Oakland
For details, contact: Rachel Montgomery, catsdogs@mindspring.com or
510.205.3956
[NOTE: There's an interesting program at the Commonwealth Club Wednesday (June 19th). Those attending the Oakland, if interested could make both if they left right after the program. See: Commonwealth Club Program on India.]
3) San Francisco SOAWW meeting
7:00 PM on July 11 (Thursday) - a Trial Solidarity meeting
Unitarian Universalist Church, Franklin at Geary
Contact: Dolores Priem, doloresmp@aol.com
4) From Colombia: An Evening with Wilson Borja
7:30 PM on June 25 (Tuesday)
Redwoods Presbyterian Church, 110 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur
Take Paradise Dr./Tamalpais off 101, right up hill, right on Corte Madera
Wilson Borja is a union leader who was recently elected to the Colombian Congress. He survived a paramilitary attack on his life a
year and a half ago.
*Sponsored by Marin Interfaith Task Force on Central America Contact: Dale Sorensen, 415-924-3227
5) "The High Priest of Protests: The Rev. Bill O'Donnell of Berkeley has taken a crusade for human rights into the streets - and maybe into jail" by Sam McManis
San Francisco Chronicle, 6/16/02, Page A21
URL: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/
Berkeley -- He is a Catholic priest facing the possibility of jail time. No, not because of that. Perish the thought. The Rev. Bill O'Donnell has been arrested about 300 times over four decades, but it's always because his feet remain planted on the moral high ground, and his conscience and his God won't let him turn away.
Marching with Cesar Chavez for the rights of migrant farmworkers? Father Bill was there.
Scaling the barbed-wire fence at the Indonesian Consulate in San Francisco to protest repression in East Timor? Father Bill was there.
Traveling to El Salvador to fight for freedom, to Cuba to lift the embargo? Catching a ride with his buddy, actor Martin Sheen, out to Mercury, Nev., to circle the site of underground nuke testing and hold prayer vigils? Father Bill was there, always.
O'Donnell, 72, has been booked at many a police station across the land, but has almost always made it back to St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley for dinner or at least the Sunday service. Oh, he did a week in the jail in Santa Rita once in the '80s after a vociferous protest at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but mostly authorities recognize his civil disobedience for what it is -- "confronting our government," he says, "when it morally misbehaves."
On July 8, however, O'Donnell will go on trial in Columbus, Ga., charged along with 42 others with trespassing on federal property at Fort Benning, home of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Many, however, know it by its former name, School of the Americas, and the Fort Benning 43 were protesting what they claim is a school that trains dictators and terrorists in Central and South American countries.
If convicted, O'Donnell and others (including the Rev. Louis Vitale of St. Boniface in San Francisco) could face up to a year in prison. Some might ask, isn't such a sentence a tad stiff for merely crossing a line during a nonviolent protest? Perhaps, but that didn't stop U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth from imposing six-month to one-year sentences on 26 Fort Benning protesters last year, including 88-year-old Franciscan nun Dorothy Hennessey.
Staring at an extended jail term, O'Donnell could be excused if he were anxious about the coming trial. But when I visited him last week, he was the same old Father Bill -- jovially defiant.
"Well," he said, a smile spreading across his face, "I've never had a sabbatical."
Once his laughter fades, O'Donnell admits that prison would be tough on his psyche. "Down deep," he said, "I hate it. I hate authoritarians to the hilt."
That's putting it mildly. O'Donnell, who grew up on a farm just outside of Livermore, has always been a crusader for the downtrodden and the peace movement. Activist priests, such as O'Donnell, live by the credo: "If we're not precious, there is no God. Our beauty is God's glory. It becomes blasphemy when people are ignored."
O'Donnell has dedicated his life to challenging "the establishment," whether it's the church or the government. He was kicked out of three parishes before finding an ideological home at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley,
where he has worked with the homeless and the drug-addicted since 1973.
"When I went out of the church structure and worked in the labor, peace and civil rights movements, I finally heard a voice that responded to my need to be a priest," O'Donnell said. "I struggle with my faith all the time, but I find it with the people. I don't find it with the bishops or the pope. I count on that strength."
That strength has seen O'Donnell through some tough times in his demonstration days. For instance, he had his left arm broken by a CHP officer at a Livermore lab protest 20 years ago.
"But we've educated the cops there," O'Donnell said. "Now, it's become boring. It's like old home week when we show up to protest."
It was anything but boring down in Georgia on Nov. 18, when several hundred protesters converged on the School of the Americas. The Army constructed temporary fences with barbed wire to prevent trespassing, but O'Donnell, Vitale and 41 other protesters found a way in. They were cuffed and put on their knees, like penitents. Later, the base chaplain was summoned to talk to the three scofflaw priests among the 43 detained.
"His name was O'Malley, and that got me mad because it was the same race, you know," O'Donnell said. "I told him, 'You're a traitor to the Gospel, a disgrace to the priesthood. You're only in it for the huge salary and the retirement you'll get. You're disgusting.'
"He was there to convince us there is nothing going on at the School of the Americas. For him to pimp for the Pentagon is so ugly."
The U.S. Army-operated school has trained more than 60,000 soldiers in courses such as military intelligence, sniper training and psychological and commando operations. Ten former dictators, including Manuel Noriega of Panama and Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala, trained there. The 1989 killings in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests were linked to School of the Americas graduates.
For the past four years, O'Donnell has been among the protesting throng. Most likely, he'll be in prison, not outside Fort Benning, at this year's protest on Nov. 17. But even if he's behind bars, Father Bill will be there -- in spirit.
"The protests will go on," he said. "Maybe, possibly, we can raise enough awareness to close that damned school."
Sam McManis can be reached at (925) 974-8346 or at smcmanis@sfchronicle.com.

[For archived news from previous months,
click on: January - March, 2002.]