So last November, Coleman joined 15 other protesters from around the country in trespassing on the U.S. Army base, hoping to draw attention to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The institute is the successor to the better-known School of the Americas, which trained leaders later linked to human rights abuses in El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries.
For his misdemeanor, Coleman served nearly two months in Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.
His activism didn’t end there. Shortly after being released in June, Coleman flew to Washington on his 70th birthday to lobby for an appropriations amendment that would have partially cut funding to the Ft. Benning facility. The measure was defeated in the House of Representatives by a slim margin, but Coleman remains optimistic.
With luck, he said, “a year from now, we’ll be going back to celebrate.”
Friday, the church will hold a potluck dinner and program at which Coleman and others will discuss their experiences with the vigils held each November at Ft. Benning.
And when protesters return to Georgia on Nov. 16-18, Coleman and other members of University Church will be there, though the pastor does not plan to trespass again. As in past years, only a few among thousands attending are likely to risk arrest and imprisonment.
The protests have been organized since 1990 by a group called SOA Watch, founded by Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran turned Catholic priest and an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. Many of the group’s supporters have religious backgrounds.
Left. Overs.
The last gasp of the hippie generation.
Wrong. Because of pressure imposed, in part, by the Contras, the Sandinista government finally relented and allowed democratic elections, and were promptly voted out of office. To the extent the “revolution” was “quashed,” it was done through a democratic vote. And what happened to that villager Coleman talked with? He probably got to vote.
Roy Bourgeois helped my wife make the first steps into orthodoxy/conservatism from the ecumenical campus ministry where we met and married. He tried to fake his own “disappearance/abduction” in El Salvador, and never did have a real explanation beyond an apology for “having a bit of a breakdown.” Then he went right back to being utterly hostile to anything having to do with America and making arrogant assesments of anyone who disagreed with him — which looked a bit different in the wake of his attempt to “create” an incident. For all the folks who wept and prayed and called embassies and congressfolk during the weeks he was “missing,” he had not a word of apology.
My Dearly Beloved suddenly started looking at all kinds of peace activitists with a different set of questions, and the answers took her off, along with me, in a whole new direction.
So i owe Roy that, anyhow.
Let buy this guy a ticket to protest Hugo Chavez latest antics and see critique his experience with the penal system.
This chappie is just another of the “I Hate America” crowd. As such, he doesn’t have much of any sense or worth to say to anyone, other than his own coterie of fellow travellers.
A number of the left wing Representatives and Senators still in Congress gave active support to the Sandinistas during the height of the Cold War.
They were anti-American then and they are, consistently, still anti-American today.
If they don’t love our country, what do they actually ‘owe their allegiance to?’
It would be interesting to have access of the East German STASI files , now in the possession of our government, on foreign agent-provocateurs serving in the USA. But, those files have been held out-of-sight by our government for a number of years.
At the end of WWII, STASI was formed by the occupying Soviet forces from the remnants of the NAZI intelligence organization. And from the end of WWII until the fall of the East German government, STASI was effectively a siamese-twin with the Soviet KGB.
I wonder why? I wonder who would be implicated by those files?
I think it actually funny that the liberal spin on the School of the Americas was that the US Army was running a school for South and Central American dictators by providing them the training to oppress their countries. The reason that its funny is that the US Army has absolutely zero competency at coups, juntas or dictatorships. Never in the recorded history of our nation has the US Army ever once come close to this situation. So, how can they train someone else? I guess we should also protest Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley where many of these people attended university.
Wow, a left-wing cleric willing to protest US policy. What’s next, a Catholic Pope? A bear who relieves himself in forested areas?
It’s sort of pathetic really …. this poor chappie is simply returning to the only scene of his life that gave him a (self-perceived) modicum of importance. He is hoping I suppose, to re-experience all that meaningful and relevant adrenalin from his faded youth.
Two ironies:
1. The School of the Americas actually trained/trains Latin officers in democratic principles and has nothing to do with dictatorships.
2. The abuses of the 1960’s, 70′ and early 80’s are largely gone from Central America. The death squads are a thing of the past.
In the early 1970’s I spent 3 1/2 years at the same post in Panama where the School of the Americas was then located. I was the physician who took care of many of the students and their families so I have some direct information of who they were and the kinds of lessons we were teaching. My clearest recollection is during the Nixon impeachment and resignation episode. Several of the Latin officers asked us “when is the US Army going to rise up and defend Nixon from Congress?” We answered that the questioners clearly did not have any understanding of the role of a military in a free society nor the concept of civilian control. We said that the best lesson we could teach would be for them to watch carefully while no US soldier so much as raised a hand to interfere in the legal and Constitutional processes that were going on. “Come on,” they said, “in our countries the Army would never let their commander in chief be deposed by a bunch of pettifogging lawyers!” “Well,” we answered, “in the kind of nation that you should aspire to create and serve, legitimate power comes from the law and the consent of the people, not from the barrel of a gun. Watch and see how the Yanquis do it.” I submit that the subsequent history of much of Latin America and the infrequency of military coups is testimony to the lesson we taught. It is sad that so many on the Left in the US refuse to learn from either that episode or from all that has happened in Latin America since. Democracy and the rule of law has spread throughout much of Latin America and the School of the Americas is one reason that is true.
Reply to Jim K (#12).
You are correct Jim. At one time I was involved in arranging for the training of Third World military officers at military vo-tech schools in the USA. A primary part of their training almost always included instruction in the appropriate role of the ‘military’ in a democratic society.
This training included, in addition to class room instruction, visits to observe city councils in operation and visits to watch the legal proceedings in court rooms.
The officers from countries that had been/were Soviet or Chinese communist “client states” were the most striking. Many of these officers had been trained in the Soviet Union or Red China and had no knowledge of what a democracy was or how the economics of free enterprise made the Western Democracies free and democratic and wealthy.
I know of those who have a right to speak even in error. There are those also who have a right to not listen if they disagree
14: I am more than a little mystified by the comment. If memory serves, freedom of speech includes the right to speak truth or error. That said, what one says is either true or it is false in and of its own nature, regardless of who the speaker is or how virtuous he may or may not be. And, I would aver, one has every right not to listen, either because one disagrees with the statement or disapproves of the speaker. Whether such a choice is a wise one is another question entirely.
Perhaps “listening” could work both ways?
Liberals might actually be able to “hear” from people with actual experience in the military and with SOA that say that training in the proper role of the military is subordinate to a democratically elected government was a part of the curriculum at SOA.
The bumper stickers in my area of N. VA state that “dissent is patriotic” but one must not forget that the right to “dissent” is furnished at the expense of those who are better people to begin with than those who merely “dissent”.
I am not overly impressed with anyone that “dissents” from the the relative comfort of the their cushy 9-5 job, and claims to be patriotic. Example: Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY, and I are politically polar opposites. Charlie was an Infantryman in the 24th Infantry Division in the Pusan Perimeter in the Korean War. He has credibility in his “dissent” that the vast majority of liberals can ever attain.
So, if your opinion is wrong or misinformed it is not made more valid because it was “sincere”. Its just BS.