\n

Fr. Louie Vitale, Pace e Bene co-founder and current Advocacy Coordinator, engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience at the annual witness at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia this past mid-November. He joined thousands of others calling for the closure of the School of the Americas. He is awaiting trial. You can write to him at: Muscogee County Jail, 700 10th St Columbus GA 31901.

Also attending the annual event at Fort Benning were Pace e Bene staff-members Laura Slattery, Ken Preston-Pile, interns A.J. Johnston and Patty Caramagno-Robertson, and volunteer Lindsay Martin. The group helped prepare people to take action by leading two nonviolence trainings.

The following is an excerpt of Patty Caramagno-Robertson's account of her experience at Fort Benning:

Hi all! I wanted to take a moment to tell you of my adventure attending SOA Watch. I traveled there last Thursday and Friday and helped teach two trainings on nonviolent living. The first was 9AM-5PM and the 2nd was 6:30PM to 9:30PM.

There were 19,000 people coming from all over the country and Canada to attend this vigil and protest of the school that teaches Latin American soldiers how to torture. Please note we have manuals from the school that show this explicitly and we also had torture victims who told their stories. These moved us to tears.

Many college students were there and many church groups, union groups and activist groups. The atmosphere was not angry or contentious, but really thoughtful, hopeful and kind--unusual for a protest movement in my experience.

At one of the training we had a lot of college students. They participated in one of the role playing exercises called CARA which builds on Gandhian principles of all are one and everyone has a piece of the truth.

CARA stands for centering, articulating, receiving and agreements. We played out a scene of a conflict between pro Fort Benning groups and the SOA Watch groups. The role-playing demonstrated the technique of reducing distance and anger so well.

The next day this same group of students went to leaflet information about a conscientious objector at the God Bless Fort Benning Conference that was going on simultaneously. They were met by police who refused to let them leaflet. Instead of getting angry and calling epithets or going away cowed and defeated, they engaged the police in dialogue using the techniques we taught. One of our trainers was with them and witnessed the whole thing. They were able to do a lot of listening to the police and also share their ideas. They watched the police soften in their posture and tone and though they did not get to leaflet, they did see how powerful the technique is and were so excited they just started telling everyone, especially tier church sponsors who came over and thanked us all personally. It was really great to see that, as we cannot build one world with anger and contention, but with bridging. How to reject an errant message but not the sender is the trick, as well as to listen for the truth they hold.

We also attend talks and also table. I met so many committed and loving people, bright people who are not so into material things and not insistent that the US have "its way of life" a way of life that has too long exploited others while most of our nation is oblivious to the great cost of life and ecology.

On Sunday was a solemn vigil, a 90-minute funeral procession. We listened to a drumbeat for every name that was chanted, these are the name of the victims of the SOA trained soldiers. Many were children or whole families. We chanted presente in return. As we did we held up crosses that had the names of victims. There were stilt puppets depicting some of the murdered nuns and priests and also costumed role players who depicted the killings and brutality. It was a moving and very artistic event, very sacred. As we marched through a line of police and military there was real respect and reverence as well as a sense of commitment to change this terrible practice. So many of us wept at what we have helped support with our tax dollars. 40 of the protestors crossed the line to Ft Benning to become prisoners of conscience.

This was a very important event for me, and all of us. I urge you all to contact your congressman and senators and protest this school. There is a bill in congress sponsored by representative McGovern from Massachusetts to close the school. It has more support than ever. With Vice-President Dick Cheney trying to get torture as an acceptable method of interrogation we can see the evil that is at hand in our country. Only when we say no, this is not what we stand for, say it strongly and continuously will be get something else.

And no is only the first part. What we really must do, each of us, is ask how we want this world built, upon what principles and how we will help that happen. We are the change that we want to see in the world. Thank you all for reading. Please go to SOA Watch for more information: soaw.org.

If any of you feel moved to donate to Pace e Bene, the group I intern with and which teaches nonviolent living skills, please do so. Check us out!

Love,

Patty