What’s in an acronym? New Haven high school student Rachel Kobasa, who’s 16, traveled to Georgia to protest outside the School of the Americas. She sent this photo and a write-up about her social-justice mission there.
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This year, I traveled down to Fort Benning, right outside Columbus, Ga., with three others from New Haven, Mark and Keeley Colville of the New Haven Catholic Worker and Molly Wheeler, to participate in my second SOA protest.
The acronym for the School of the Americas, located in Fort Benning, Ga., is SOA. SOA also stands for School of the Assassins, which would more aptly describe the U.S. military operated “school” that brings soldiers from Latin American countries, teaches them methods and techniques for torturing and killing, and then sends them back to
their own countries. There they proceed to utilize the skills they have been taught at the SOA to wage war against their own people.
The massacre of the entire town of El Mozote, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, along with other countless atrocities being committed every day, are attributed to graduates of the SOA. The SOA should then also have an acronym SOT, School of Terrorism.
The United States has a proclaimed war against terror, yet we train soldiers to become terrorists on our own soil. The school was closed and reopened under the name “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.” But we can still read through the fancy name, and so every year during the third weekend of November, thousands of people descend on Fort Benning Drive where the south gate to the school is located and display their lack of ignorance to the truth of the school.
After a 16-hour drive, Fort Benning is not the most welcoming sight to see. It’s a military town, with a radical divide between rich and poor. You are constantly aware that soldiers in the same town you are in are being trained to kill innocent people.
The image of Fort Benning changed on the Saturday we were there, when 18,000 people descended on the street where the gate to the south entrance of the school is located. Literature was being passed out, speakers spoke, and there was drumming, dancing, and praying at the gates. I participated in the puppetista performance, the theme this year focusing on the Day of the Dead.
People came from as far away as California and Vermont, and there were people of all races, ages, and
abilities. It was impressive to see such large numbers of my generation participating in the protest, right next to the Raging Grannies.
On Sunday, 22,000 people participated in the huge procession that is considered the major action of the weekend. Hundreds of names of people killed in Latin America were sung. The crowd answered by raising white crosses in the air and singing “Presente.” Cheers of support erupted every time someone committed civil disobedience by
climbing over or under the fence onto the property of the school.
As the line of people neared the gate, everyone placed crosses and other momentos onto the gates to the SOA, transforming them from gates of terror to gates of remembrance for a brief time, which was a beautiful sight.
At the end, there was a huge throbbing circle of people who jumped, danced, drummed, and shouted for the world to hear, “Close the SOA!”