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Activist Letters An Open Letter to SOA Watch From my action experience and perspective as a strong supporter of the School of the Americas Watch movement since its beginnings [see story, p. 18], I recommend to the whole movement that it is time to broaden the strategic and tactical focus of our gatherings and actions. I believe that our efforts for total abolition of the SOA have reached a point of protracted stalemate. Clever reforms to the structure, curriculum and public relations image of the renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation make it very unlikely that a Republican majority Congress will abolish the School or decrease its appropriations. The WHISC appropriations cost of about $20 million a year is only one thirty-thousandth of a $600 billion U.S. military imperial budget for 2005. With thousands of activists coming to Columbus, GA, yearly, it seems to me that a disproportionate amount of peace movement organizing energy and money is tied up in focusing on abolition of this one military program, which even if abolished could be covertly moved and spread around to other bases. I have been a friend and supporter to School of Americas abolitionists since the protests began in 1983. I myself was first arrested and detained at Fort Benning on January 17,1991, the first day of the “Gulf War.” In 2001, I served six months in prison for “trespass” at Fort Benning. In 2002 and 2003, I was arrested in Colombus. I am currently on two years probation. I don’t want to lose the coherent organized movement and the exceptional outreach to young people created by the unique organizing skills and success of the SOA Watch movement. With that clear, I do urge that we broaden our anti-imperial focus. To do this the annual SOA Watch assemblies could be distributed by rotation among three or four major sites around the United States that are representative of the military/industrial/imperial agenda of U.S. policy. One site, representing the policy of neo-colonial domination over Latin America, remains the WHISC site at Fort Benning. The second most logical focus is the U.S. Strategic Command headquarters near Omaha, NB; it is the operational command center for all land-, sea-, air- and space-based U.S. nuclear weapons systems. Fr. Frank Cordaro and the Des Moines Catholic Workers have organized annual civil disobedience protests there for many years. A third site could be the Y12 Plant at Oak Ridge, TN; the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance has campaigned there since 1988, seeking to end nuclear weapons production and development. Alternative sites might be the Nevada Test Site, where Nevada Desert Experience has organized against nuclear weapons testing for 20 years, or the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in California, where nuclear weapons research continues, or Vandenberg Air Force Base, the site for so-called “missile defense” launches. I believe that assembling annually at one of three or four most pernicious sites on a rotating basis could coordinate and unify efforts around the country against the worldwide abuses of military industrial imperialism. The efforts of the groups named above, currently organized to protest at these sites, could be coordinated with other groups including, for instance, the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Many of us try to support as many of these as we can. As the largest and most effectively organized, SOA Watch can take the initiative in bringing these efforts together for mutual support toward the goal of cutting all military imperial spending. It has been too easy for too many members of Congress to stroke us by sponsoring or voting for abolition or reduction of SOA/WHISC appropriations, while doing very little else about the immense problem of global military spending and imperial domination. —Karl Meyer Nashville, TN |
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