¡No Más! No More! We Must Stop The Dirty Wars!

Appalled by the information, 13 demonstrators held a vigil at the SOA gates on the 10th anniversary of the murder of the 4 churchwomen and called themselves the SOA Watch. A few years later, 3,000 came and the campaign to abolish the SOA has since drawn thousands, many of them more than once. 

SOAW has a national office in Washington, DC to carry out fasts, non-violent direct action, media and legislative work. Its seven paid staff members operate nonhier- archally, each a coordinator of specific work. There is a council (instead of a board of directors) made up of regional representatives who collect feedback from SOAW groups in their region. Fifteen working groups composed of hard-working activists from all over the U.S. make events happen and build the movement. All that is possible only because of volunteers.  

 "Crossing The Line" 

N ot long ago, in order to call public attention to the SOA, it was possible for thousands of participants to walk "across the line" at SOA's entrance and be arrested. But since 9/11, protesters have had to climb over two separate fences, each topped with barbed wire. This was the challenge again last November 21 as hundreds of demonstrators watched, each holding a wooden cross bearing a Latin American victim's name. 

On the base, 15 people were arrested for crossing, including 2 minors (who may therefore not be prosecuted); 14 were released on bond and 1, who is blind, had his charges dismissed. Three others were arrested in Columbus.  

The hour of "crossing the line" was a memorable moment in a powerful weekend. From 9:00 AM to midnight on Saturday there were trainings, speakers, music, gatherings of different affinity groups, films, discussions at different buildings in Columbus. The same kind of rich program unfolded all day Sunday with an array of huge "puppetistas" leading the way. Throughout, the level of organization and punctuality was amazing. 

One high point was the appearance of Carlos Mauricio, who had been tortured in El Salvador and won a lawsuit in a Florida court against the generals who had ordered it and had been living in the U.S. for years. His victory was based on the same U.S. doctrine of "command responsibility" that can be invoked against those who ordered the U.S. torture in Iraq. Carlos's current campaign emphasizes halting the impunity often granted to those like his torturers. 

For the SOAW action, Carlos obtained a Veterans for Peace bus and drove a group of demonstrators from San Francisco across the U.S., stopping in ten cities. One rider, Aaron Schuman, reported the warm and educational welcome they received that included meeting with Sanctuary movement activists along the border at El Paso/Juarez; seeing "Alto a la impunidad!" (Stop the Impunity) graffiti on the dry riverbank there; meeting with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Austin, Texas; and visiting organizing projects in New Orleans warehouses. 

The SOAW has a huge network. Those 16,000 students, activists, veterans, union workers, and others, of all ages, from all parts of this country, represent a vast array of church groups and many other local organizations. To ask someone "Where are you from," which I often did, the answer would be Minnesota, Illinois, or Iowa as often as California or New York. 

Climate of Community 

S urely they did not all agree politically beyond the need to speak out against the SOA and stand in solidarity with the peoples of Latin America. Differences about the meaning of "non-violent," have generated energetic debate. Some participants express a wish that the goals were more explicitly anti-capitalist. Such complaints and suggestions reflect growing pains as in all healthy movements. But there was an unmistakable climate of community.

As one participant, Chris Crass, coordinator of the Catalyst Project, a center for political education and movement building, commented, "The overall sense of community and the shared meaning of struggle was deeply powerful. It felt like an education on U.S. imperialism in Latin America joined to a spiritual base of struggle for human liberation." 

One huge absence has long diminished that sense of community: participants of color. It has been a serious absence in many anti-war, global justice organizing projects. Two years ago SOAW began concrete steps to address the problem by establishing an Anti-Oppression Working Group (an article on this group will appear next month). The group has worked to bring anti-racist, anti-sexist, and other anti-oppression politics into the SOAW so as to undermine such oppression internally while building a movement able to challenge the forces that sustain a school of assassins in all its oppressiveness. Much of this year's anti-SOAW agenda was devoted to Working Group activities.  

To be self-critical about internal, organizational weaknesses does not happen as often as it should in our movements. Along with its strengths in advancing a huge protest movement, SOAW organizers often manifest a striking modesty that might even be called humility. There are reasons for that and the best-known one is Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the SOAW. 

As a Maryknoll priest in Bolivia, Father Bourgeois was expelled by the military dictatorship for his work among the poor. When two Maryknoll Sisters he knew were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers, he traveled there and again saw the suffering inflicted by a government the U.S. supported. He began openly protesting those policies. 

Roy was first arrested for an anti-SOA action in 1983 when he went onto SOA grounds with two friends, all wearing high-level military officers' uniforms and briskly saluted. They located the barracks holding 525 Salvadoran soldiers. After nightfall, Roy climbed a 40-foot tree next to the barracks, holding a boom-box that contained a tape of Archbishop Oscar Romero's speech the day before he was assassinated. The speech had addressed the Salvadoran military and anticipated Romero's murder. That was what came blasting out of the boom-box at the men in the barracks. 

Roy Bourgeois's four years in prison for various anti-SOA actions began that night and continued as he worked to build the SOAW. The more it grew organizationally, the less Roy Bourgeois felt he needed to run the show. In a rare example of rejecting what can be called "founder syndrome," he has stepped so far into the background that at the 2004 protest his assignment was reportedly to guarantee the supply of toilet paper in the porta-potty by the stage. And yes, there was always enough. 

With such a tradition of humanity and humility, SOAW inspires us all. Latinos and Latinas in particular should think about SOAW's work, which serves our Raza above all. If its present whiteness seems a barrier, don't stop there. Its commitment to change is political, spiritual, and very real. It can help save the future of our America and its people. History tells us that nothing has ever been stronger than: los pueblos unidos, jamás vencidos¡¡Adelante siempre!