Stop the War Makers. Hands Around the Lab. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Never Again!
Aug 10, 1:30pm - 3pm, Robert Payne Park, 5800 Patterson Pass Road (at Vasco), Livermore

March for Immigrant Rights
Sep 20, 11am Assemble at Yerba Buena Gardens (Mission St. between 3rd & 4th), San Francisco; 12pm - March up Market St.; 1:30pm - Program & Festival at Civic Center.

Rally and March to Defeat Proposition 54
Sep 25, 12:00noon - Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley

Reportback from Palestine
Sep 27, 6:30pm - Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby Street, Berkeley

End the Occupation! Bring the Troops Home Now!
Sep 28, Noon - Dolores Park, San Francisco - 12pm. Gather at Dolores Park, march to: 2pm - Rally at Civic Center

Forum: Defend Environmntal Justice, Defeat Prop. 54!
Sep 30, 7:00 PM - Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way, Berkeley.

In Celebration of the Free Speech Movement: The Berkeley ACLU Presents Larry Fly
Oct 6, 7:00 PM - Pauley Ballroom West, Berkeley campus

Stop the FTAA and School of the Americas
November 19-23, Miami and Colombus, GA.

Buy Nothing Day
November 28, Everywhere.

Setting: Dining room table, four chairs, four people, one tape recorder. Four individuals had all traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia on November 15-18 to attend a weekend festival and funeral procession put on by the School of the Americas Watch in order to close down WHINSEC (Whestern Hemispheric Institution of Security and Cooperation, formally known as the School of Americas, or SOA). This military school is notorious for training Latin American soldiers such as Manuel Noriega and many more in torture tactics and other human rights violating activities. SOA Watch has been holding yearly protests at Fort Benning, home of the school, for 12 years. This was the first year any of these people had attended.

NE: What are the main things we took away from this weekend?

CT: Another big thing that I gained from it was the community that's been built around this issue. I thought it was just amazing. The diverse range of ages, and how there's religious organizations and then there's college students from all across the nation and seeing everyone gather there every year annualy. The sense of community that's been built around everyone's attitude and behavior at the event gave a good reflection of what type of possible society or community we could all live in where everyone's respectful of each other.

NE: What struck me, I think, was how many voices there were and how many different things they were saying and the multiplicity of perspectives. You had the religious perspective, you had the testimony of people from Latin America, from Guatamala or El Salvador who saw these things take place. They were up there on the microphone telling us what they saw. You had the incredible wealth of artists and musicians from the puppitistas to the hip-hop artists to the band from Bolivia. And then you had the union perspective, the labor people were there. I mean, that's tradition. There was a real sense of connectedness with a larger movement that has been going on for a very long time. The amount of separate groups and communitities were able to come together and cooperate was really inspiring.

CS: I was really touched, and still am, by the dedication of those who crossed the line and got arrested. The amount of difficulties that they've had since then but not complained. They've all been saying times are tough, but this is great. They've all been strong. They talk about their jail experices as chances for solidarity and for continuing the creation of the community we were talking about earlier of loving so much. The fact that this community doesn't just go away when we all go home. Even in myself, I've noticed, after returning home, now I talk to everyone in the streets. I was shocked about how everyone did that in Georgia. Now I'll be walking down the street and just break into conversation. It's beautiful, the fact that each one of us, taking away something from that movement and that weekend, can disperse it to millions. We each disperse it to each other and it just grows and grows like that.

CT: Another interesting thing that I was taken aback by is that it wasn't just a political movement, but it was a spiritual movement, too. The emotions that you experience, not only form the funeral procession, but also from all the musicians that were there, expressing themselves and their creativity. It made it more than just about closing down this one school, but it's about human life. I internatilized everything that happened, instead of just absorbing it in a mental way. It reflects somehow on how you interact with people when you come back.

CS: It makes me think of how, so often, when talking with fellow activists or in classes, we always talk about the need to get to the root of the problem, look at the larger context. So many movements strike such a superficial level of well, there's a war in Iraq? Then we got to stop the war. And it doesn't look at the culture the economic structures or the political structures that are supporting that war and that need that war. I feel that the SOA Watch movement does do that. It's looking for not just the closing of the school, but a complete social and cultural transformation in building this kind of community and building this new world.

NE: There's a lot of building that it still needs to be done. Ccurrently it's mobolized certain sectors of society very well, but at the same time, there's a huge world out there that needs to know. The interst of this movement needs to be clearly alligned with the interests of movements that are closely related. Like in the land rights movements in Latin America, like in Chiapas and in Brazil. The current workers' movements in Latin America which are gaining ground, as well. This is a huge opportunity that we have to link together and to redefine what the western hemispehere is all about, redefine the balance of power on this side of the world. It can penetrate and needs to penetrate into the mainstream. I don't mean that it needs to sell out in order to be successful. I mean it needs to link up with the policy discussions that politicians and people have, that become the central items on the agenda to the point where politicians are saying "I'm for closing the School of Americas, therefore, vote for me." This a huge task. It can't be done in a day and it involves a lot of work. This movement's 13 years in the making, and after 13 more years, when we've mobolized people here, after these forces that are skewing the balance of power start to be felt in more places, as that balance shifts, then people will start to understand the common interests they have with Latin America and the commonalities that exist before here and there. That will lead to a real popular movmeent to get rid of these types of institutions.

AZ: When you go to an anti-WTO protest, it feels very disjointed. But this movement is very unifying because it's a single issue, but it's that single issue as a symbol of a lot of problems. It's something very tangible that can appeal to lots of people. And I think that's where the potential lies in terms of appealing to a broad base of people. It puts something that seems very daunting and complicated in terms that everyone can understand. It's something very concrete and it's something that people are going to accept as wrong. No one's going to say that torture's good. There's not much room for questioning and that's its strength. But it can also be its weakness because when you start tying this into economic issues, it starts getting a little more hazy with people because they're not sure necessarily about where they stand on them.

AZ: There's huge structures and we make choices within these structures. If you close down the school or change US foreign policy, bad things are still going to happen. It needs to be presented not just as a panacea, too.

CS: It's like we said earlier, the movement's not just about closing the school. Not that it's articulated by the movement, and perhaps it should, but this gets into the question of complicating the message, but I really see it as a cultural and social movement of breaking down all these various borders. Breaking down ageism, secular versus religious communities, state borders in the Americas and alloing for more personal transactions between these people is incredible. The effects of that are not talked about nearly as much. I'm sure this aspect of the movement is not brought up on the Senate floor.

NE: You mean just in terms of getting people together from different parts of the country?

CS: Sure, and there were people there from all over Latin America, as well. But also this is about networking within our own country. And building that is so much more important than is talked about or stressed. I wonder if that's a conscious effort by the organizers of the movement to promote this social interactions. I suppose so, this being a nonviolent movement. Nonviolence in itself is a very culturally transforming thing.

NE: It's not just about pointing the finger at America. It's saying what kind of world do we want to have and what is wrong with today's world. And whatever that is, let's take a look at that and call attention to it and use our power to put an end to it as much as we can. And that should be the goal of our lives. That's where I gain respect for the whole religious, Christian movement that follows in the steps of Jesus because it really takes a look at who Jesus was and says let's be like him, rather than holding him up as some sort of a trophy.

CS: So do we want to critique the movement?

AZ: It's so white.

NE: It's lefty middle America.

AZ: It's people who can afford to go. It's like what one woman said. She said you guys flew all the way out here just for a protest?

CT: It's defintely a reflection of how people of color have difficulty in gathering together and voicing their opinions because they come from communitites where they are poor. They don't have the money and they don't have the education to be politically active. I definitely saw that. And I think part of it's cultural, too, coming from an Asian-American perspective. But it was nice to see a lot of different Latin Americans speak of their experiences.

NE: The movement needs to be more localized. This also feeds into the middle-class white dominance of the movement right now. There needs to be ways in which people with less income can get involved. There's many ways in which that can happen, and I think the movement needs to make an effort to reach out to those people and start a citizen's group. Not to start more SOAW offices, but to go around to various groups in various communities. Going to latino, african-american groups and letting them know what's going on and get them to write letters or do an event. But we need to get the word out so it's generally known, so it's the word on the street like Mumia has become. It has some of that recognition, but it could be a lot more.

AZ: I think it's important also, as we go around to other groups, to incorporate the issues that they want us to talk about, too. If it's just a one-way street, it could be even more alienating. This movement is not just this school and everything else is hunky-dory. It's about looking at the entire culture that's producing this and the motivations behind the people who are coming out of that culture.

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