Arts Agenda - More SOA protesters sent to the slammer

A federal judge in Columbus, Ga., last week found 26 protesters guilty of criminal trespass in an action last year targeting the former U.S. Army School of the Americas (now re-named the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation). One protester was given three years’ probation; the other 25 were sentenced to federal prison for terms ranging from one month to three years, with 20 receiving six-month sentences.

The arrests occurred during last November’s annual protest, when 3,400 marchers crossed onto Ft. Benning, Ga., site of the school.

As the demonstrators were being sentenced, 11 more were being arrested at Benning’s gates, including the wife of one of those sentenced.

For the past 10 years, a group of activists has been demanding that the SOA be closed, pointing to the involvement of U.S.-trained soldiers and officers from throughout Latin America in the deaths of thousands of civilians, and the torture of thousands more. Earlier this year, in an effort to blunt the criticism and bolster its claims to have refocused the school’s mission on democracy-building and international cooperation, the school changed its name.

Even so, members of SOA Watch, which organized the activists arrested and sentenced last week, continue to call for its closure.

Over the past 10 years, 50 SOA Watch members have served 30 years collectively in federal prisons for the demonstrations, according to the group’s founder, Father Roy Bourgeois, a Jesuit priest.

Among those sentenced last Wednesday were two sisters, both Franciscan nuns, ages 88 and 68; a former nun, 68; a 67-year-old priest and a 77-year-old retiree.??