Jailed For Justice Tour: Day 14, Columbus

It was an eventful day in Columbus Georgia for the Jailed For Justice Tour! Stop #15 of the Jailed for Justice Tour would not have been complete without speaking out against an injustice happening right in Columbus. We decided to draft and hand deliver a letter to the Mayor of Columbus, Teresa Tomlinson, urging her to uphold the First Amendment in Columbus by making sure that the School of the Americas Watch be permitted to hold their annual vigil.

Held in front of the gates of Fort Benning, organized by the Schools of the America Watch,  this peaceful rally and vigil has been held at the gates of Fort Benning for 24 straight years; 2014's vigil is set to be the 25th. The movement has never been denied a permit. One irony is that if the military should stand for anything in this country it should be protecting our constitution, not exporting war, counter insurgency, and nation building, which is what the School of the Americas(or WHINSEC as they now call it) does behind the gates of Fort Benning.

Click here to read more about the SOAW movement history

After delivering the letter we decided to head to the tour stop and I believe we were greeted by most of the media outlets in the Columbus area, and more importantly a really huge crowd! One thing that this tour has made clear it that folks are ready for a Moral movement in Georgia and judging by the excitement in the air last night Columbus is ready to lead the way!

There were several hundred chairs set up and by the time we got started there seemed to be at least fifty people standing, we simply ran out of room. The issues on the minds of folks in the community who gathered with us weren't unlike other concerns we have heard from around the state. People are living with an unfair criminal justice system that sees young black males as targets and revenue sources once placed in prison. Communities are seeing ever decreasing social services budget that are hitting there communities hard. We also heard from Columbus, and from around the state that people were unhappy with the governors' refusal to expand medicaid, and that we needed to work on gun violence in our communities.

We look forward to seeing our brothers and sisters from Columbus in Atlanta on August 23rd when we hold our Moral March on the Capital!

Georgians Converge on Fort Benning

To our count well over 60 Georgians visited our table at the School of the Americas Watch in Columbus Georgia, they were joined by thousands more from around the country. American Friends Service Committee worked with Georgia WAND and the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition to staff a table at the gates of Fort Benning. We gave out hundreds of our "One Minute for Peace" handouts and had lots of great conversations about our work. I was very grateful for youth at Quaker Volunteer Services who helped staff the table.

In the afternoon we had a really well attended Georgia Activist meet-up, it's the 10th one AFSC has organized. It was wonderful to have space for Georgians doing work around a variety of issues(from nuclear disarmament, to housing, corporate accountability, and more) from different parts of the state together in the same room with the intention of building bridges between issues and making connections with folks around the state. It is in making these important connections that we create the potential to be more than the sum of our parts; to change the political landscape of Georgia!

There's still more to come for the years SOAW, and there's still time to come! Click here for details!

The Road to Columbus!

This weekend Thousands will gather at the gates, with speakers, music, street theater, workshops and networking with people from across the Americas. We come together at the gates of Fort Benning for the School of the Americas Watch(SOAW) - where the killers are trained - to demand an end to US militarization and to impunity. The Vigil weekend is an opportunity to connect your communities with those across the hemisphere who are resisting Empire. In addition to the main funeral procession on Sunday, November 24, there will be rallies, concerts, and over 70 workshops.

To Learn about the movement, it's purpose and history click here.


Every year American Friends Service Committee works with the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition to organize housing and transportation to SOAW. We also staff a table and organize a Georgia Activist meet-up. This year 13 of us left Friday afternoon, and met even more folks once we arrived in Columbus. We'll be here all weekend, it's certainly not too late to join us!

Click here for details on the Georgia Acttivist meet-up details!

Undercover Cops Exposed By Rebel Diaz at SOAW 2012

In one of the most dramatic moments at this year's School of the Americas Watch rally/vigil in Columbus Georgia, political hip hop group Rebel Diaz called out a group of eight undercover law enforcement officers at the Columbus Convention Center Saturday night while workshops, info shares, and other SOAW related activities where going down.

Members of the group recognized several of the officers from pictures taken over the last few years.

The officers where checking out the Killer Coke campaign table when Rebel Diaz tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked what organization they were with. The group had no response. The Rebel Diaz crew then called out the group as being undercover cops, and snooping on human rights activists. At first they stood there looking confused as a large crowd began to surround them. It was clear that the officers had attempted, poorly attempted, to blend in with the crowd. One of them was even wearing a pro-marijuana shirt.

Finally the officer who appeared to be in charge admitted that they were in fact undercover cops who where assigned to run surveillance on the movement. Clearly the officers had been collecting information about all the various groups giving workshops and tabling at this years action.

Things got heated for a moment and nobody knew for sure what was going to happen next. The officers stood together, projecting a fairly cavalier attitude. What happened next was just pure joy.

From around the corner, almost out of nowhere this beautiful group of young mariachi performers surrounded the cops and stared playing and dancing ensued, they were joined moments later by a puppet who danced around the cops. The tough cavalier attitude of the officers quickly transformed into confusion at first, and then what appeared to be shame. One officer actually seemed to be on the verge of tears.

What started out as a potentially scary situation was transformed into a beautiful moment. SOAW dominated the situation, while officers where forced out of the shadows. The officers where then corralled into the Killer Coke campaign's workshop where they were treated to a film screening about Coca Cola's human rights violations in Columbia, after which they left the convention center.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

SOAW Movement Gains Momentum

Despite the number of people traveling to Columbus Georgia decreasing each year the SOAW movement has had a number of exciting developments the year.

In September the Nicaraguan government decided to pull out of the school for good after meeting with SOAW organizers. Nicaragua joins Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Bolivia in it's decision to terminate it's relationship with SOA/WHINSEC. This represents a major victory for the SOAW movement and a payoff for the movements new focus over the past ten years to put more energy into developing relationships with Latin America and less energy into developing the mass mobilization in Columbus Georgia.

SOAW also just had a sit down with the Obama administration. As of now there are 69 members of congress urging Obama to close the school. Here's a link to an excellent report back on that meeting.

The rally and vigil at the gates was still very powerful this year, with over 2,000 people coming from around the country. This years vigil was a great opportunity to build networks between organizers across a wide variety of issues in person, which is a rare opportunity. The November vigil is maybe the only space I know that brings progressive/ radical people of faith, college organizes, organized labor, pro-immigrant groups, antiwar orgs, anti-racism movements together on this scale. This year brought a new layer of folks organizing around housing as well.


Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition hosted it's annual Georgia Activist meet-up, which brought folks together from Columbus, Augusta, Valdosta, Atlanta, and Marietta. The yearly gathering produced that same kind of cross pollination opportunities that the overall gathering provides on a national level.

This year's rally/vigil also attacked several undercover law enforcement personal, which I've decided to write about in another post.

American Friends Service Committee facilitated a housing justice workshop Friday night, which was attended by over 100 people.

Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee 

AFSC Occupys Fort Benning

This past November AFSC organized a workshop on how to demilitarize our communities at the yearly rally and vigil to close the School of The Americas. We also had an information booth at the gates of fort benning all weekend.

AFSC was also excited to participate in a statewide effort to bring Occupy movements in the state of Georgia togther. Occupation movements from Atlanta, Augusta, Athens,Gwinnett, and Columbus came together to share ideas, progress, and possibilities. Ideas on colaberative work possibilities included coordinating home Occupations to save families from foreclosure and evictions and black Friday events.

Tim Franzen

American Friends Service Committee

American Friends Service Committee to Occupy Fort Benning

SHUT DOWN THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAS
American Friends Service Committee to Occupy Fort Benning

On November 18-20, 2011 the American Friends Service Committee will join thousands of social justice activists and organizations from across the Americas in occupying the main gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to call for an end to U.S. militarization and for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of Americas.

The three-day convergence will include a massive rally, where thousands will occupy the main gates of the Fort Benning military base in order to transform it from a place that trains assassins to a place of initiation into political awareness. On Sunday, November 20, the chain-linked barbed wire fence will be transformed with images of the martyrs, crosses, stars and flowers into a memorial for the victims of SOA violence and U.S. intervention. Human rights activists will carry their protest onto the grounds of the military base, risking arrest and up to six months in federal prison. The mobilization will include speakers from the NAACP, the Sisters of Mercy, the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance (GUYA), torture survivors and human rights activists from Latin America as well as plenaries, workshops, concerts, strategy sessions and more.

“The SOA provides the military muscle to protect the greed of the 1% at the expense of the 99% throughout the Americas.” said Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch. “The surge of social justice activism in the U.S. is fueling the call for the closure of this notorious institution.”

The SOA/WHINSEC is a U.S. taxpayer-funded military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place. SOA violence continues in Mexico, where 1/3 of the original members of the Zetas drug cartel were trained at the SOA, and where the U.S. is promoting military solutions to the drug problem. SOA violence continues in Colombia, which has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to train at the SOA, and where SOA graduates are involved with extrajudicial killings and other serious human rights violations. SOA violence continues in Honduras, where SOA graduates overthrew the democratically elected government in 2009. SOA violence continues in Guatemala, where SOA graduate Otto Pérez Molina just won the presidential elections, and throughout the Americas. In October 2011, Time Magazine published the article “Is It Time to Shutter the Americas' 'Coup Academy'?:” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097124,00.html#ixzz1b9Rvmcbu

In August 2011, 69 Members of the House of Representatives delivered a letter to President Obama, calling on the President to shut down the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of Americas (SOA) by executive order. The 69 Representatives include Representative John Lewis from Georgia, Representative Ron Paul from Texas and Representative James McGovern from Massachusetts. To read the letter, visit http://soaw.org/docs/ObamaLetter.pdf

On November 4, Representative McGovern introduced H.R. 3368, the Latin America Military Training Review Act, in the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the suspension of the SOA/ WHINSEC and an investigation into the connection between U.S. military training and human rights abuses in Latin America.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works for the closing the School of the Americas and a change in U.S. foreign policy - www.SOAW.org

AFSC At The Gates Of Fort Benning

Our Atlanta office has worked with the Georgia Peace and Justice coalition for the last few years to provide as much space for Georgia youth to come down to the gates of Fort Benning for the yearly mobilization to close the School of the Americas, which is organizing by the School of the Americas Watch.

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Americas.

This year with the help of a $500. contribution from the Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition(GPJC) we we able to provide lodging and some transportation for 18 youth. Many of the young folks that came down also helped AFSC and GPJC staff literature tables at the gates Fort Benning. They also attended, along with about 30 other Georgians, our yearly Georgia activist meet-up which is a sort of an informal gathering which provides space for folks organizing in Georgia to get to know each other, connect issues, and explore opportunities to collaborate and share resources.

One thing I personally noticed was that despite the number of total number of folks at SOAW this year being lower then years past, there seems to be more folks from Georgia not only showing up but playing active roles in various aspects of the demonstration. From building intricate giant puppets, to performing on stage, to facilitating workshops Georgians seemed more present this year.

To learn more about the SOAW visit:
www.soaw.org

To visit GPJC Atlanta chapter go to:
www.goergiapeace.org


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee