Wednesday, October 8, 2008

School of the Assassins

I'm excited about next month. So lets fast forward to the upcoming entertainment that November holds. The week before thanksgiving is the School of the America's Vigil. I touched on this in my last post but would like to go a bit more in depth on the experience (but lets keep this on the down low in front of Grandma Keller, she's not too thrilled with the idea of her grandson hanging around with peaceloving hippies lol). Last year I was asked by a teacher of mine if I was interested in attending this "protest" to aid in the efforts to help shut the school down and bring attention to the cause. Now for the previous two years I sat in this man's class and explained what a great experience it was and apart from the whole "jumping over the barbed wire fence" thing, it was totally legal. Now I needed service credit and anyone who knows me would agree I'm probably not going to turn down the chance to spend 20+ hours on a bus with cute college girls. But I never imagined how much I would learn on this bus ride.
The School of the America's is an institution created for the soul purpose of training millitants. Here is an excerpt from the vigil's website:
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 Assassins.

So last year I learned all of this and i decided to head down there. I went with 7 other of my St. Ed's piers along with our campus ministry director Mr. Chrosniak. The closest friends I went with were Alex Dilallo, John Price, Kyle Hord, and his sister Liz. This would be the basis of the future adventures. The first thing I learned was how long a 12 hour bus ride really is! So for a good deal of the bus ride we talked, especially about the church and its past (I couldn't believe my ears at times). We also watched movies, listened to music, and slept. Probably the most humorous instances on the bus involved either Alex's sleeping habits, Willow(who is a 6th year student at cuyahoga community college) or Symmetry(the extremely pregnant hippie who doesn't talk much but is obsessed with ear buds).
Things were pretty normal for the first couple minutes but before the bus started rolling we had the pot smoking socialist college professor telling us that if we were tempted to jump the fence, to first take a deep breath and know that you are commiting a felony, and if you feel like going over then go for it, because he sure as hell would be. Then we had the nun's who were convicted felons (quite possibly for the instance previously described), and then Willo decides to pray. So she starts out with "Father God.." (ok sounding pretty normal) "...Mother God, we thank you for the trees, and all of the animals on this planet, we ask forgiveness for eating your creations and that you will still accept us into the kingdom of heaven. Thank you for the soles of our feet for without them we could not walk, thank you for this bus and let us pray that we will not all die in a terrible crash....Amen." Well thats a GREAT way to lift up our spirits? So our group then decided that Willow was an abstract. A few other funny things happened that are of less importance, we got reprimanded for watching Blazing saddles, A man in Tennessee tried to sell us all armadillos, and John found out that coca cola is apparently an evil company and that he should feel ashamed when he buys Coke products and Nike shoes.

We finally pulled into Columbus Georgia. Talk about southern hospitality! We got a nice toothless grin from the man behind the desk at the motel, pillows marked with sharpies, and a small snake in the bath tub. Ok it was a RUBBER snake but that doesn't stop your heart from skipping a beat! So at about 10 pm after dinner, Alex, Kyle, Liz, Mr. C and I decided that we needed some pie, and maybe some coffee. So we head down to the waffle house. On our way there we pass a nice little pawn shop advertising the sale of AK-47's. We walk about a half mile and our little journey comes to a climax as we walk into the waffle house. We walk in and sit down and we are waited on by a woman who looked like she had just eaten a pixie. I mean there was more glitter on this woman than in an arts and crafts store. So we get our coffee and cake and Kyle points out that his cake looks sparkly. Upon further examination we see that there is glitter IN the cake and coffee. So this turned into a little contest, "who has the most glitter in their food." Thankfully I lost (or maybe I won) with a total of 0 pieces of glitter. So the 5 of us head back to our motel and sleep off a very long bus ride and a strange greeting to the deep south.

The next day we got up at about 7 o' clock to eat breakfeast and go to the gates of Ft. Benning itself. We have a nice 10 minute walk to what looks like a carnival. I was extremely surprised to see how many people were there. Most of the first day was walking around buying buttons (which I still proudly wear on my backpack) and being the hippie I know I am at heart. I bought 20 or so buttons, a ghandi T-shirt, a legalize marijuana T, and the guys at the marijunana booth were nice enough to give me about 40 posters to take home and pass around the school and community. My group also ate vegan bread, which is probably the best thing i've ever tasted (i need to find out the name again and the recipe to make it), listened to a guy talk about how you shouldn't need a drivers license to drive your car and met a few famous people like the Indigo girls and Congressman Kucinich.

We spent most of the day there and also learned another very important tbing about Alex. He is easily impressionable and almost jumped the fence (Michelle I would have been spending a few days at your house until we bailed alex out of jail). Later that night we had a nice big dinner and headed to mass. Unfortunately we were wrong, first off, it wasn't a mass, it was a prayer service, and secondly, it was going to end up being about three and a half hours long. Now sitting on chairs and we could have endured it a little easier, but no, we sat on a cement floor.....for 3 and a half hours. That crappy hotel bed would never have felt so good in any other circumstance.

Now these events were fun but the true reason we were there was going to be realized tomorrow. Each year thousands of people uniformly walk in a big eliptical pattern and chant "presente" as the leaders read out the names of the people who have died because of the atrocities commited by the students of the SoA. There were over 3,000 names and I cannot say I have ever been part of a more spiritual experience and that will probably be the most prominent image in my mind for years to come. In a world where there is so much violence and hatred, there are events like these that remind us all that there is still goodness in humanity and that there is still hope for us as a race. Many people, including other teachers, told me that this was a waste of time and that this could not change a government's mind. Tell that to the thousands that were present and the countless people of Latin America that were there with all of us in spirit.

So this year I decided to do a few things differently. i'm going to bring my camera and lots of film along, and i'm going to document everything I see to the smallest detail and create a small documentary so that even the people who couldn't attend could perhaps get a glimpse of this amazing sight.

3 comments:

into the mystic... said...

so proud of you - if you dont stand for something, you stand for nothing, michael. i am proud of your awareness of social justice issues and even more of your attempts to make others aware - you open my eyes to new stuff all the time :) - i love our talks and learning about the way you look at the world - now go back and fix your grammatical errors in this post!! you have the ACT IN TWELVE DAYS!!! oh my gosh....

xoxox - mom

Diane said...

I just read this again. I love how you express yourself...it was like I was on the bus and in Georgia with you. Keep this up! love you!
Be careful in November...and take lots of pics!

Diane said...

Beth....
you have to be grammatically correct in a blog???? I am in BIG trouble. :)