Here are some pictures and a few comments from my trip to the School of the Americas (SOA) protest, Nov. 16-18th, 2007.  The SOA is located at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is right outside the very beautiful city of Columbus.

 

 

Jon and I by the river on Saturday morning.  This was the day before the protest.

 

 

David and I at the gate of Fort Benning, on Saturday.  The military put up this chain link fence in front of the actual gate in order to keep protesters out.  We are wearing "peace dove" patches that this hippie woman gave us; she sews them and hands them out to people at events such as this one.  Also, you can see we have our "Close the SOA" bandanas.  David is an international student from Germany; he had some interesting reflections on the protest afterwards.

 

 

On the day of the protest, some protestors put on "bloodied" clothes and laid in the street.  The represented the 900 campesinos (farm worker families) that were slaughtered at el Mozote, en El Salvador.  They lined the whole side of the march.

 

 

A street artist holding up his creation.  An interesting image; the title is simply 'Baghdad'.

 

 

 

There were 25,000 people at the protest.  Each person was given the name of one victim of SOA-trained militia, and had the option to carry a small white cross with that victim's name on it.  Throughout the march to the gate of Fort Benning, the names of the victims were read one-by-one and after each name the cross would be held up and "¡Presente!" would be called out.  It started at 10 a.m. and went until about 3 p.m with the names being read constantly.

 

 

 

We marched down the street that leads to Fort Benning, where the SOA is located.  As we reached the chain-link fence that had been erected, we placed our crosses in the fence.  There were flowers, pictures, letters to the deceased, candles, incense-- it was very powerful.

 

 

This is what the fence looked like when I got there.  Each cross represents a different person.  Some of the crosses were simply labeled "unidentified person, this city, this country".  The person on my cross was Nicolasa Rufino Marquez from El Salvador, who was 17 months old when she was killed.

 

 

Gloria, Jon, myself, and David.