Posted on 11/21/2004 5:46:50 PM PST by AmericanMade1776
Columbus, Georgia-AP) Nov. 21, 2004 - Susan Sarandon is there, so is Martin Sheen. But this isn't some Hollywood get together. The actors are among those gathering outside Fort Benning, Georgia, to protest a military school there.
The school serves as a military training center for Latin American soldiers. Protesters claim graduates of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation were involved in human rights abuses in the 1980's.
The protesters claim the school also enforces a US foreign policy that they say exploits the people and resources of Latin America.
Protests outside Fort Benning are held annually on the weekend before Thanksgiving
(Excerpt) Read more at wistv.com ...
Sun Nov 21, 5:11 PM ET
To: National Desk
Contact: Christy Pardew of the School of the Americas Watch, 706-507-4860 or 202-234-3440, media@soaw.org
COLUMBUS, Ga., Nov. 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Over 16,000 people from across the Americas -- including actors Martin Sheen and Susan Sarandon -- gathered this weekend outside the gates of Ft. Benning, Ga., in the most diverse demonstration yet of opposition to the School of the Americas (SOA), a combat-training school for Latin American soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into refuge by graduates of the SOA, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC.
The gathering culminated today with a solemn "funeral" procession to the gates of Fort Benning led by actor Martin Sheen. As of 4 PM, at least 20 people had been arrested in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, many negotiating a 10-foot-high barbed-wire fence to enter the base. They took this action despite knowing they likely face 3-6 months in federal prison. Since protests against the SOA/WHINSEC began fourteen years ago, 170 people have served prison sentences of up to 2 years for civil disobedience.
"Prison will not deter us," said Elizabeth Nadeau, who was among those arrested today. "We will be here until we close the school and change the foreign policy that it represents." Nadeau, 27, is a student and member of the Steelworkers Union in Minneapolis, Minn.
SOA/ WHINSEC graduates return to their countries to utilize their training domestically and are consistently cited for atrocities against their own people. New research introduced by SOA Watch earlier this year confirms that the school has continued to support known human rights abusers. Despite having been investigated by the United Nations (news - web sites) for ordering the shooting of 16 indigenous peasants in El Salvador (news - web sites), a massacre recorded in the U.S. State Department's Human Rights Record Country Reports, Col. Francisco del Cid Diaz returned to WHINSEC in 2003.
"Like many of its graduates, this school continues to operate with impunity," said Carlos Mauricio, torture survivor, plaintiff in a successful lawsuit against two Salvadoran Generals living in the United States and a featured speaker this weekend. "Shutting down the SOA once and for all would send a strong human rights message to Latin America and the world."
Thousands of college students, labor unions, faith-based communities, torture survivors, immigrant organizations and numerous human rights groups gathered together to make this weekend's demonstration the largest and most diverse yet for SOA Watch, which has held a vigil at the gates of Fort Benning every November since 1990.
http://www.usnewswire.com/
who cares about hollow has been actors
Yeah. who cares. Yada yada yada....
Great, this sets a wonderful legal precedence. I can trespass on Martin Sheen's lawn and protest his movies since he has tortured me with his overinflated melodramatic ego.
George Wendt, who played norm in the TV series, "Cheers," carried a cross during the group's traditional funeral procession to honor alleged victims of SOA graduates. Because of the huge number of protesters this year, the procession lasted more than two hours, about an hour longer than usual. Some carried signs that said, "Drop Bush, not bombs," and "Shut down the SOA." http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=49661
There you go, sounds like fair play.
Yes it is :P
These two and their friends are so obnoxious, it may be better for the conservative cause if they keep on doing what they are doing.
They don't play well at all.
bttt
Somehow, I missed the part where Sheen and Sarandon protested against the terrorists in Fallujah after we discovered the slaughter houses and torture chambers.
Even after such nonsense as this, Sheen and Sarandon will still proclaim " We support the troops". Baloney.
These idiots should ring bin Laden, offer their services, and get it over with.
Two actors (and I use this term loosely) who's careers have long since left them in the dust are trying anything that they can to stay in the spotlight.....it is a sad pitiful thing to watch.
About 15-thousand locals and soldiers also gathered Saturday for a free festival called God Bless Fort Benning, purposely timed to coincide with mass protests by School of Americas Watch, which protests a training center for Latin American soldiers at Fort Benning. http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=2594607&nav=5kZQTNzq
They do not mention, that Lee Greenwood was there, and other Dignataries, and War Heros.
Shooters, with one 30 round magazine, lock and load - then watch your targets...
Merely PR cosmetic surgery
Fourty-four Dubuque (IA) area leftists took the bus to Ft. Benning for this year's Commiepalooza. My wish is that they'd all enjoy the temperature of Georgia in November and decide to stay, but I suppose the Columbus area has its own crosses to bear.
I think they already take their orders from Osama, and he calls them!
Susan who protesting what?
I fear you maybe correct.
Meanwhile at the Columbus Civic Center, in a crowd estimated by organizers at 15,000 and including about 7,000 soldiers, God Bless Fort Benning organizer Miriam Tidwell said, "We are taking our identity back. We want Columbus, Ga., to be known as a place that loves and supports its soldiers."
From modest beginnings three years ago, the God Bless Fort Benning festival has grown into a regional attraction. This year the Harlem Globetrotters played. The festival is paid for with donations from local businesses. "We feel like we're in the middle of this huge protest, so we wanted to have a safe haven for all our soldiers so they don't have to hear the rhetoric," said Jan Pease, another organizer.
The rhetoric was passionate at the School of the Americas Watch protest, which organizers said had attracted
10,000 by late Saturday afternoon. They said the crowd would grow by this morning's vigil for the dead and protest march during which arrests are often made.
One speaker was Laura Slattery, a West Point graduate and a nonviolence trainer who was arrested at Fort Benning in 2002. Gesturing toward the fort and the new fence, she said, "I look out there, and I want to say I'm not the enemy, and you're not the enemy. Apathy is the enemy; hate is the enemy; indifference is the enemy
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2549654,00.html
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.