Recapping the SOA Protest

The following is a reflection by Michael Pederson, one of this year's South House Volunteers.

Saturday morning, the 20^th of November greeted me unexpectedly, somewhere between Indiana and Georgia I had miraculously fallen asleep on the bus full of SOA protesters from DePaul, headed to Fort Benning, Georgia.  SOA stands for “School of the Americas”, and although the institution is now officially labeled as another name, its purpose remains; to train Latin American soldiers. As I stretched and painfully moved my overly stiff neck around, I was captivated by the beautiful landscape surrounding me; forests and hills and land! A stark contrast from the cement-laden city of Chicago, I was once again filled with the butterflies of adventure, I was headed to Georgia, to the fabled SOA protest I had heard about for so many years.  I had never been able to attend in college so when Amate offered to set us up to follow with DePaul for a small fee, I was in.  Friday night our trio of Amate House Volunteers, Colin , Lindsay, and I found ourselves entering the DePaul student commons, feeling older and more experienced than these undergraduate creatures we so recently were.

As we rolled into Columbus, Georgia, where we were to spend the night, I slipped on my headphones and put on one of my favorite songs, “The Adventure” (Check it out, it’s great!) and could feel I was about to be part of something way bigger than me. After checking into the hotel, we drove off to Fort Benning to add to the crowd gathering outside the gates of the SOA. As we walked down the coned-off road, which would hold the main events of the protest for the next 24 hours, I felt very intimidated and anxious.  Flanking us on each side were multitudes of police, most of them very large and stone-faced.  Looking around amongst the people trickling down the wide road, I was surprised of the polarity between the police and the protesters. Not one person that I saw on the way to the protest even displayed a trace of violence or a threatening look. By the end of the trip I would estimate the total police count to be over a hundred, not to mention the soldiers; I don’t even want to think about how many thousands of dollars was spent on their unneeded security.

As we got closer, I noticed little white boxes with little black windows were boomed up fifty feet, with the obvious purpose of keeping an ever watching eye on the protestors. Never have I felt in such an Orwellian situation before.  There was a helicopter circling and swooping, effectively rendering our conversations mute for seconds at a time.

Approaching the actual fence, topped with razor wire, I could somehow feel the presence of the school hundreds of yards away.  SOA graduates have been implicated multiple, multiple times in horrific slaughters as well as interrogations and tortures.  I couldn’t help but wonder if they were in class at that moment, being trained by our very own US Military in interrogation and military tactics. After we walked away from the fence I sat down and started listening to the speakers on the stage.

For me, Saturday at Fort Benning consisted of three parts. First was the actual rally outside the gates of Fort Benning where tables lined the East side of the street, selling things, offering handouts on various issues, and advocating for non-profit/religious organizations. A large stage was the focal point on the street and on Saturday it found itself constantly inhabited by speakers, musicians and performers. It was a motley assortment of people from all types of backgrounds.  The music was beautiful and the speakers engaging. Hearing primary accounts of the murders and tortures at the hands of SOA graduates made the issue real, more real than the comparatively deflated Wikipidea article I had perused a few weeks prior.  I heard of the story of a village where some nine-hundred people were brutally murdered at the hands of SOA graduates’ leadership.  There was an awesome slam poet from Chicago, advocating for human justice. A Vietnam veteran who had become ashamed of his involvement in the idiotic war and his disillusionment with American foreign policy; he was determined to stop more unnecessary suffering.  A Haitian man spoke out against military dictatorship that is suppressing his people. Though all the speakers had a very serious tone about the things that needed to change, they, in the same breath, infused hope, mercy, and forgiveness in their message.  It was beautiful to hear people speak so passionately about human rights and know that they dedicated a majority of their lives to the cause.

This was my first real experience at a protest.  Protests need their songs and chants to unite the group, to turn thousands of individuals into one collective mass who in that moment, when singing or chanting, lose their own power and gain the power of thousands together. “Si Se Puede” would be shouted out by the leaders and we would echo their words, growing in strength with every response, “SI SE PUEDE!!!”.  I learned a couple of things during my involvement in the chants.  First, and embarrassingly, I found it hard to join in strongly unless I had people around me who were also joining in courageously.  I felt weak and self conscious when there were not a lot of people around me.  I recognized the importance of a supporting group and more importantly the supreme importance of confident leaders who are not afraid to let their voices be heard.  Their trick was that they were not speaking up for themselves, but rather for others and many of them for God.

There is a distinct gap between thinking idealistically and actually going out and standing up, through actions, to things that are wrong. It takes courage, courage that can’t be gained by watching documentaries or discussing issues in the comfort of our homes. Courage can really only be gained through action and experience and this trip really brought this to light for me.  It made me appreciate all movements that have occurred close at home in America as well as internationally, both present and past.  You truly know you’re at a protest when the hippie looking guy next to you raises his arms and has clearly decided to forego burdensome deodorant, making you slowly scoot away to a safe distance.  I loved being among these loving and enigmatic people.  The kids around my age were intriguing; I wondered what their normal lives were like back home.  Whether they were weekend protesters or full-time...I probably should have just asked them.

Of course there are always two sides to a story; paintings in gray rather than the either/or of black and white.  I struggled intellectually during this trip trying to sort out how bad the SOA is and what good has come out of it.  SOA will say it is 100 percent necessary and protesters 100 percent unnecessary.   There are so many smokescreens and misinformation, nothing today is transparent anymore.  The only logical way to change the world is to start with yourself.  I've heard a little man named Gandhi thought this too, and I will have to agree with him.  There is always going to be the argument that maybe the SOA has done more good than harm, that there will always be exceptions in life, always be some bad apples, after all we are human.  But when atrocities occur, linked to the SOA in some way, in the alarming numbers we are seeing, something needs to be done.  20,000 plus people each year take this to heart and make the trek down to Fort Benning.  I hope more will come next year.  In the end, perhaps the protest will not end up shutting down the school.  For me though, it rekindled my belief in the courage of people to act when injustice occurs.

In “The Holy Longing,” Ronald Rolheiser discusses the important balance between different modes of thought and temperaments.  We cannot be completely pious, religious, faithful, without working to better the world through action.  That when we are all action without faith, the truth becomes lost in our subjective and often selfish ways, creating systems doomed to fail.  Only through our faith, action, and community can we enact change that is lasting.

The protest centered around the funeral procession on Sunday.  Each of us was instructed to represent someone who had left this world too early, most of their departures linked to SOA-trained soldiers. Hundreds of names were sung by musicians on stage, and to signify that those dead were with us we responded with the chant, “Presente!” As we held up the cross, signifying the tragic loss of life but also the hope of a better future, we sang this powerful phrase.  We are present for those who have died and they are present with us.  As I held the cross of young Marcos Claros, age 7, I couldn’t help but wonder how and when he died; if he and I would have gotten along, what he would have done with his life.  Questions that could never be answered were floating among the procession that morning.  It was a very powerful service.

Soon after the procession, we took off on the bus back to Chicago and we all had sufficient time to process what happened and what we could take away from the experience. Shared experiences are always a great way to improves friendships and I know this happened with both Colin and Lindsay as well as with some new friends from DePaul that I met on the way there.  I am blessed to have been able to take part in this trip, yet another great formational experience at Amate!