Table of Contents Back Issues Homepage December 1, 2000       Street theater gets the point across in SOA protests by Barbara J. Walker Graham Independent Media Center/Atlanta                         [Thousands were called to express their outrage at the deadly impacts of U.S. counterinsurgency training on Latin American communities. On Monday, February 20, over 10,000 people from all over the Americas gathered at the gates of Ft. Benning to demand the closure of the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). Over 3,600 persons risked arrest by crossing onto the base in a massive act of civil disobedience. An estimated 2,000 protesters were arrested and processed. Hundreds of protesters, including clergy, students, veterans, grandparents and others are still being held on the base. We are proud to present this eyewitness report of the previous day's protest against this terrorist organization. &endash; Editor] About 45 minutes after the mournful funeral procession walked slowly into Ft. Benning on Sunday, February 19, a 2nd wave of direct action protestors broke through police lines. Surprising the police cordon, one group, 40 strong, holding crosses, walked briskly up a secondary roadway prohibited to the funeral procession by city and military police. MP radios crackled "Just let them walk on to the buses, let them get to the buses." Another group, made of up about 5 "SOA paramilitary forces" equipped with cardboard machine guns herded some 20 cowed and frightened "Latino peasants" into a circle, just inside the gates of Ft. Benning. The "SOA grads" fired their cardboard machine guns shouting "ratatatatata" into the crowd of peasants. Screaming with agony the peasants fell "dead" into a tangled heap of bodies, streaked with red paint. As the cold pelting rain fell on the bodies the paint bled more and more, pooling beside the victims creating a macabre and brutal scene. Columbus City police, under-manned because of the funeral procession still going on, began pulling the "bodies" from the heap of "dead and dying peasants." The "peasants" remained inert and limp, providing no assistance to the officers in their task of tagging, handcuffing and dragging them into a line of bodies off to the side of the "massacre." Police at first urged them to get up, then ordered them to get up. When their directives were ignored, the "dead peasants" were hauled up by their elbows, their wrists tightly handcuffed with plastic strips color coded with a secondary level of resistance. They were dragged to the bodyline and laid face down on the pavement. Simultaneously, a group of 6 "Nuns" each carrying swaddled baby dolls and garden spades speed-walked past the melee for about 100 yards. There they dropped to the rain sodden grass and began wailing in grief for the dead "babies" they held in their arms. One of them carried 3 grave headstones covered with the names of scores of babies killed by the SOA in Latin America over the years. As they wept and screamed out their grief, they began digging graves for the babies. The cold rain chapped their hands as they dug into the packed earth. Their tools seemed so inadequate for the task -- but then the bodies were so small. The "Nuns burying babies" were left in relative peace while the police and MPs dealt with the "massacred peasants". However their peace was short-lived with plainclothes police arriving to handcuff them into submission. The annual "die-in" is the highlight of the mournful funeral procession that marks the anniversary of the November 1989 El Salvador slayings of six Jesuit priests by SOA graduates, according to SOA Watch. U.S. Army officials deny these charges. Leading the procession was Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Roman Catholic priest and a prominent speaker and leader of the SOA Watch group. Stopping short of the white line demarcation that restricted their access to Ft. Benning, Father Bourgeois directed black-swathed protestors to lower their coffins to the ground. Then they liberally squirted each other with red paint, and lay down in varying postures of death &endash; some draping themselves over the coffins as if embracing a beloved, others, as if shot and splayed out in surprise. As if on cue, Columbus police moved out in teams, one officer to tag the "die-in", one to take a Polaroid photo of their face. Those that remained inert and limp were picked up, or, if they were larger than the arresting officer was, loaded onto gurneys and then conveyed to the buses. There the officers ordered the "die-ins" to stand up. One old-hand policeman reassured a less experienced officer "Don't worry, they'll stand up when the gurney tilts up." The marchers in the funeral procession remained silent as they watched the police carry away the "die-ins." As the number of arrested began to rise, a murmuring was heard from within the buses, and a head popped out of a window. A calm but determined woman's face looked out at me. Peace! her red-stained fingers flashed. Most of those arrested received ban and bar letters instructing them that they are not allowed on the premises of Ft. Benning for five years. Harsher penalties will be meted out to those protestors with prior offenses at Ft. Benning, including fines of up to $5,000 and 6 months in jail.