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From the picket line
utside the gates of Fort
Benning in Columbus,
Georgia on Nov.18, 25,000
people gathered to protest the
School of the Americas. But you
wouldn't have gotten that from any
major newspaper.
The facility, recently renamed
the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation, trains
Latin American soldiers for com-
bat in their countries - although
many maintain that the graduates
partake not in military-style cam-
paigns, but wanton violence upon
civilian populations.
For 18 years, peaceful protests
have occurred at the Fort to call for
an end to the US' role in perpetuat-
ing and providing means for coups
and the constant oppression of a
population that such overhauls are
predicated upon. A group of Uni-
versity students including myself
made the 13-hour, Waffle House-
laden trip to join voices with the
School of the Americas Watch.
STORIES OF TORTURE
"They tortured me because I
am a writer. And because I was an
activist. I worked for labor rights,"
Maria Guandardo spoke fluidly in
her native tongue, preferring now
to communicate in Spanish since
English is marred by the nights
she spent in a Colombian prison,
brutalized by blows and slurs. Her
wordspounded into me even before
they were translated.
I am a writer. I am an activist. I
work for labor rights. If I was born
and raised in a house next door to
Maria's, I might be dead for the
words I furiously type and send off
to anyone who will read them, for
the words I shout into bullhorns on
sidewalks.
While I know that the United
States is not wholly exempt from
arresting dissenters without
affording them due process, there
doesn't need to be a word for it
here as there is in South America.
There, paramilitary forces are
notorious for "disappearing" men,
women and children, sometimes
in broad daylight, sometimes even
in front of their families or right
out of their homes. As if it is some
magic act that no one cares to gar-
ner a crowd for, thousands of peo-
ple are pushed through the trap
doors of putrefied legal systems
where whoever holds the biggest
stick gets to pick the next victim.
The majority of University stu-
dents who participated in SOA
Watch are members of activist
groups, and it became apparent to
us during the weekend that those
persecuted by SOA graduates often
took part in the same type of activ-
ist work that we engage in not only
on campus - but then and there at
Fort Benning.
While the ominous whirl of heli-
copters never left our earshot and
soldiers in fatigues patrolled the
premises, we never once had the
sense that we might die for what
we were doing, although haunted
by the ghosts of those who had.
MOURNING THE
DISAPPEARED
The main event of the week-
end is always a funeral procession
to commemorate the uncount-
able thousands massacred by the
60,000 soldiers trained at the SOA
over the last sixty years. Led by
people in black clothing and white
masks carrying white coffins, a
funeral procession inched up to the
gates of the school. Breathing new
spirit into the names of those long
dead and perhaps even longer for-
gotten, we marched towards the
gate in a steady mass as voices on
high incanted names and ages in
the intonations of Catholic clergy,
followe
who rai
low, slo
presenc
It too
but see
crosses
ingly i
chain-li
d by the crowd of mourners nique is to wholly undermine the
sed their crosses and spoke humanity of those tortured. It is
w "presente" to mark some no matter that most of these tactics
e for the deceased. are deemed illegal under interna-
k hours to reach the gates, tional accords the United State has
ing the multitude of white signed because for the federal gov-
stuck desperately, plead- ernment and the paramilitary it
nto the impossibly high trains they are all "standard oper-
nked and barbed-wire ating procedure," even if they are
performed on innocent civilians
without a shred of information to
offer
Joining the
two-decade
protest against
the School of
the Americas
fence I understood why. Mulling
over the immensity of crosses and
flowers made me feel like I was
looking at the gates of Buckingham
Palace after Princess Diana's death
or Ground Zero just after 9/11,
except that this tragedy is one that
continued on even as we mourned
it.
The School of the Americas is
a place where the sort of draco-
nian torture that we have consid-
ered morally reprehensible for
centuries and "cruel and unusual
punishment" since this coun-
try was founded is written into
textbooks and advanced with
modern techniques and technolo-
gies. According to the CIA's own
"KUBARK: Counterintelligence
Manual," these methods of so-
called enhanced interrogation "are
designed to induce regression ... the
result of external pressures of suf-
ficient intensity is the loss of those
defenses most recently acquired by
civilized man." In short, the tech-
It is ironic even that it is called
both a Fort and a School as if there
is no internal conflict between the
purpose of either.
Regardless of what it is called,
if its walls could speak- for them-
selves, they would scream.
CROSSING THE LINE
While.thousands come to dem-
onstrate, only a few protestors
engage in actual civil disobedi-
ence, such as "crossing the line."
Optimistic about President-elect
Barack Obama's promises to shut
down the SOA, only eleven people
jumped the fence into Fort Ben-
ning this year, but 226 have since
the Watch began. Wanting to
learn more about those who give
up months of their lives and up to
$1,000 for the cause, I dropped into
the workshop for those thinking of
"crossing" and found a friend.
Whenaskedonewordtodescribe
our feelings as "crossers" or "sup-
porters" a young man next to me
simply uttered a single profane
syllable: fuck. He said he wanted
to cross. He had no one to support
him so I said I would. I promised to
write him letters in jail, pay for his
bail, and when he said his school's
bus would not wait eight hours
for him as he was held at County,
I offered our van, promising we
would hold out and swing through
Indiana on our way back to drop
him off. We talked it all over with
a snide lawyer who said he made
over $150,000 a year and refused
to let us pay for our pizza.
But David did not cross. Through
the constant crowds, I saw him the
next day sitting on the curb and
cannot deny that I was disheart-
ened that he hadn't gone through
with it although I had urged him
not to- his small, private, paro-
chial college promised him that
an arrest would merit expulsion,
he would have to pay rent despite
being in prison, and his hard-head-
ed father would probably not speak
to him for some time after. But
despite all of this, something in me
will always believe in self-sacrifice
for the battles worth fighting -
especially this one, where life is the
price that is paid for protest for the
damage enacted by this facility.
TAKING TO THE STREETS
After the weekend was almost
over, after the funeral of so many
people none of us would ever know,
after donning bloodied shirts and
dresses to represent them, lying
in the streets after the machete
became a weapon of mass destruc-
tion and took out whole villages,
after I cried my eyes out like I
always do at such displays, a parade
of colorful puppets and confetti
overcame it all. Chanting and beat-
ing on drums, swinging the sweat-
ers and scarves it had suddenly
became too sunny for, we took to
the streets, dancing through them,
claiming them for ourselves, for
everyone. We reminded ourselves
that we were still alive, and that
we would fight so long as we had
to, gaining energy from the kind of
public movements everyone thinks
are now extinct.
-Beenish Ahmed is a senior in the
Residential College and the College
of Literature, Science and the Arts
HIS APPLE.
HER APPLE.
? APPLE.
WHY SINGULAR PRONOUNS
AREN'T AS SIMPLE AS A RULE
IN THE GRAMMAR BOOK
PAGE 4C
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