SOA Activists Blog Column

Beth Tellman carrying a white cross inscribed with that name of a Latin American martyr at the SOA funeral procession outside Fort Benning, Ga., last year. Beth Tellman is a sophomore at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif., and will represent the school at the Ignatian Teach-in on Friday night, Nov. 17. She attended her firs SOA protest as a junior in high school and has been back every year since. Beth is in an individual studies program studying sustainable globalization. She says of herself: "I love social justice and activism. I am the social justice intern for campus ministry. This past year we have focused on Darfur genocide awareness. For a week, we slept in a tent and fasted, eating only 1,000 calories a day. We also raised $2,500 to donate to the Darfur cause." Beth says to watch for the Santa Clara group in Georgia. "Our motto is 'Educate yourself. Take action. Stop genocide.' You will see our bracelets, buttons and pins, and shirts because we will be selling them throughout the weekend."

Here are a few thoughts I had after Sunday morning’s vigil.

The past few days have been filled with so many tears and so much laughter: From Sr. Helen Prejean’s inspiring speech on human life and the death penalty, to touring the WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas) facilities to hear the other side of the story, it has been a weekend of contrasts.

By PATRICK O'NEILL
Columbus, Ga.

On Saturday, Valerie Fillenwarth of Indianapolis proudly sported a white T-shirt decorated with the hand prints of her 17 grandchildren, who call her Mop.

As she walked along Ft. Benning Drive, Fillenwarth, who was planning to get arrested with other grandmothers for "crossing the line" Sunday onto Ft. Benning, handed out copies of the statement that included comments for her grandchildren.

By PATRICK O'NEILL
Columbus, Ga.

Thousands of Jesuit high school and college students gathered Friday and Saturday at the Columbus Convention Center for the 9th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, an event that draws students, faculty and alumni from throughout the nation on the anniversary of the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador.

Some of the soldiers implicated in those murders were graduates of the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

The Ignatian Family Teach-In has become a significant component of the annual fall effort to close the school that trains Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency. The school's graduates have been implicated in numerous human rights violations and murders in their native countries.

By PATRICK O'NEILL
Columbus, Ga.

Andrew Peters is assistant director of Xavier's Peace and Justice Program at Dorothy Day House on campus. Peters, 30, a Xavier alum, said linking pro-life and peace and justice issues is appropriate for a Catholic college.

"We operate in the consistent ethic of life, and our hope is to educate and bring awareness to the consistency," he said. "In a span of four years an Xavier student who's really involved with our program will end up here at some point and end up at the March for Life. It's very common, and that's not really indicative of all Jesuit schools' pro-life/justice groups.

I'm not an events planner or a movement organizer, but I think it is safe to say that anything that got started with 10 people doing a fast and protest 15 years ago and has grown to a weekend of teaching and protest expected this year to attract 20,000 participants has got to be doing something right.

For many of the years that people have gathered here, I've watched from a distance and assigned reporters to cover it, most recently, Patrick O'Neill, who writes regularly for NCR. He'll be doing the bulk of the coverage for the paper again this year.

But I've also decided to take a closer look and arrived in Columbus late last night, so my personal observations of the School of the Americas phenomenon are only a few hours old. But it is easy to be immediately struck by not only the numbers, which seem to grow by the hour, but also by the range of ages and interests involved.

Margaret Hansbrough is a senior at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., where she is studying political science and economics. Besides working to close the School of the Americas, she is involved with global trade issues and their impact on developing nations.

After a long day of traveling, I am relieved to finally be in Columbus, Ga., for the School of the Americas protest. This is my fourth year here and I am in a very different place mentally and spiritually then I was when I first came 4 years ago.

I honestly couldn't muster as much excitement for this pilgrimage as I have in years past. Fatigue from my usual school and activism routine has taken its toll as of late and I wasn't able to put myself in a pilgrimage mind-set until yesterday afternoon.

Beth Tellman carrying a white cross inscribed with that name of a Latin American martyr at the SOA funeral procession outside Fort Benning, Ga., last year. Beth Tellman is a sophomore at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif., and will represent the school at the Ignatian Teach-in on Friday night, Nov. 17. She attended her firs SOA protest as a junior in high school and has been back every year since. Beth is in an individual studies program studying sustainable globalization. She says of herself: "I love social justice and activism. I am the social justice intern for campus ministry. This past year we have focused on Darfur genocide awareness. For a week, we slept in a tent and fasted, eating only 1,000 calories a day. We also raised $2,500 to donate to the Darfur cause." Beth says to watch for the Santa Clara group in Georgia. "Our motto is 'Educate yourself. Take action. Stop genocide.' You will see our bracelets, buttons and pins, and shirts because we will be selling them throughout the weekend."

The Ignatian Teach-In had incredible energy, as always. The student speakers, as well as the policy hacks and those veterens doing the ground work for peace gave different dimensions of social justice.

One dimension that really stuck with me was the idea of being peacemakers, not simply peacelovers. The calls to concrete action were echoed through personal experiences with the violent conflict in Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sarah Berger is a first year graduate student at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, with an emphasis in International Policy and Development. She just returned from Osorno, Chile where she completed a Fulbright Scholarship, looking closely at microfinance development in the Indigenous community of Pucatrihue. Berger has been involved with the SOA protests since 1996 when she was 14 years old. Listen to Sarah Berger discuss her activism, Ten years an activist, in an NCR Podcast with Tom Fox

Much of the prep work here has been reflection upon what it means to be a Catholic university and our obligation to fight for human rights. Many of the students are beginning to read the works of Fr. Ellacuria to understand what his vision was for a university in light of the conflict of El Salvador during the 1980s.

Listening to many of the freshmen has been rich because they are beginning to see their education as something much greater than a lecture in a classroom.

Last night, the Georgetown students took off for Ft. Benning where the Ignatian Family Teach-In awaits their pressence, along with the 3,000 other students, parishoners, and Jesuits that are expected to join us.

Margaret Hansbrough is a senior at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo., where she is studying political science and economics. Besides working to close the School of the Americas, she is involved with global trade issues and their impact on developing nations.

The first time I learned about the School of the Americas I was in the 6th grade and my mom pointed out an article in the National Catholic Reporter about the protest. I also learned that a friend of ours, Peg, who Peg had gone to Haiti a few years before and has since traveled to El Salvador, was going down to Georgia for the event. It must have been her experiences at least in part, the relationships she built with people in Latin America that compelled her to say 'No' to the SOA and participate in the protest, back when it was still a relatively small gathering. Her example opened me up to the movement to close the SOA and to the ethic of non-violence at a young age and it is something I am always grateful to her for.