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Activists
on Trial By Bill Branyon
“We live in a country where democratic values are in peril,” agreed Hunt’s co-defendant Clare Hanrahan, “where major media fail … to inform, where government deceit is commonplace and the corporate-military alliance threatens all life.” Judge Mallon G. Faircloth listened attentively. At the end of the trial, he sentenced Hunt, Hanrahan and 18 other protesters to six months in jail.
Hunt and Hanrahan, both from North Carolina, and 24 others from all over the country were on trial May 22 for trespassing at Ft. Benning, GA, last November 19 in the hope of closing the notorious School of the Americas (see NVA, May-June). The SOA (renamed this past January as the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation”) has taught state-of-the-art killing methods to such people as former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, many of the Nicaraguan Contras, the death squads of El Salvador, Argentina and Chile and the military and paramilitary squads of Colombia. Last November, the “SOA 26” joined 3,400 others who “trespassed” onto a military base that is open 24 hours a day every day of the year and has no gates, fences or control over who comes and goes. For the most part, only SOA protesters have been deemed lawbreakers for entering the base. The 26 had crossed the invisible boundary line more than once and so added flouting a “ban-and-bar letter” to trespass. Eyewitnesses
to Horrors John Hunt spoke about his childhood growing up in the Panama Canal Zone. “We had a very comfortable lifestyle and were well provided for,” he said. “For a while I thought everyone lived that way. Then I discovered that less than five miles away, people, human beings like me were barely able to survive. … After having seen the effects of the SOA graduates in my home country, I realized that I had an obligation to raise the awareness of the citizens of this country.” Turning to the judge he predicted, “Our actions … will help wake U.S. citizens. Our voices of truth will reach into their hearts and minds and make it impossible for them to sleep soundly until the injustice of the SOA and U.S. imperialism is eradicated.” Sixty-six-year-old John Ewers of Ohio—dressed, like the marshals, in a dark blue three-piece suit—said he had been a manager in charge of six National Cash Register plants. During a Christian Witness trip to Colombia he saw “25,000 people living beside a huge garbage dump in plastic and cardboard shacks.” He learned that “paramilitary groups whose commanders were trained at the SOA [had driven] them off their land.” Ewers talked to a squatter who said the paramilitaries had demanded, “Sell us your land or we’ll buy it from your widow.” He had read that there were a million displaced people in Colombia—and that most of the 240 perpetrators so far identified as responsible for the paramilitary atrocities were SOA graduates. Lois Putzier of Arizona had worked in a bomb factory for Hughes Aircraft corporation where she helped develop the phrase “smart bomb.” It struck her as so sick that she had to quit her job. A trip to Guatemala confirmed her views when she heard of a massacre that was perpetrated solely to move people out of the way for a new dam. Hanrahan spoke about her older twin brothers, who volunteered for Vietnam. “Both returned, wounded in body and spirit,” she recounted, “and … burdened to their early graves by the horrors of that criminal war.” “I object,” interrupted the prosecutor. “This testimony is irrelevant.” The judge agreed. “Your comments,” he told Hanrahan, “are bordering on the immaterial and irrelevant.” “It’s just that my brothers went forth bravely doing what their country asked,” asserted Hanrahan. “As a nonviolent warrior I knew I had to also be willing to take personal risk.” She turned to Judge Faircloth. “I appreciate the due process and [the] careful way our rights are explained in this court. We were not dragged away in the middle of the night by SOA-trained soldiers. … The opportunity to speak is a precious privilege, even though we may be sentenced to long and harsh prison terms, more than any yet served by the perpetrators of these war crimes.” Campaign
Expands Bourgeois believes the SOA actions have consistently attracted large numbers because of the justice of the cause and the “resolutely nonviolent behavior of the participants.” He says their nonviolence “has prevented the authorities from feeling they need to use tear gas, pepper spray or rubber bullets.” Every protester goes through an intensive nonviolent training that makes it clear that those itching to break windows will be ostracized. Bourgeois thinks, nevertheless, that “comparing [the window breakers] to SOA-sponsored terrorism is ludicrous.” Still, the SOA protests are so “thoroughly nonviolent that the Columbus Chamber of Commerce now sends us invitations. SOA activism brings more people to the city than their other big event, the Southern Baptist Convention.” He adds that the protesters are as well behaved as the Baptists. “The prison witness of the SOA 26 is an especially formidable form of protest,” Bourgeois believes. “Each defendant is sure to get at least one article in their hometown newspaper and deeply affect their friends, family and acquaintances.” So far 50 SOA protesters have suffered 30 years in prison. Add to that the 11 and a half years’ worth of sentences given to these 26, and the SOA Watch is accumulating some serious jail time. Slapped
in the Face Retired MIT professor William Houston was making dive bombers when he realized he didn’t believe in killing. He converted to an “atheistic Quakerism.” His trips to Nicaragua and Haiti convinced him that the United States was mounting a “low-intensity conflict upon Latin America consisting of forced free trade, repressing indigenous people and squashing unions.” He believed the world was “controlled by multinational corporations and that the SOA was the military arm of those corporations in Latin America.” Defendant John Kilgour called it a “war on the poor.” Retired priest David Corcoran could barely speak because of the atrocities he’d seen in Colombia. He wept the entire time he was on the stand. The brother of 88-year-old nun Dorothy Hennessey had known El Salvador’s Archbishop Romero and talked to him 10 hours before Romero’s 1980 murder. He also knew the four U.S. Maryknoll nuns who were raped and murdered there in 1981—by SOA graduates, Hennessey maintained. The youngest defendant, 19-year-old Rachel Hayward, felt that to “remain silent in the face of such injustice is to comply with that injustice. The SOA has no place in a country that claims to believe in democracy and justice and human rights.” “When a military base cannot go about its mission without obstruction the event becomes serious,” answered Judge Faircloth. “Thank goodness we were not in a crisis so Fort Benning had time to process thousands of people and fill out countless reams of paperwork for a group whose cause is adverse to [the base’s] function.” Hayward’s mother and aunt were also on trial. Martha Hayward is a schoolteacher in Minnesota. Faircloth gave her three years probation and a $3,000 fine because, he said, “We need you teaching in the schools.” “I want to serve the same six-month jail term as everyone else,” Hayward responded. Faircloth refused to change her sentence, but noted, “If you violate probation you will be in contempt of court and subject to a much greater sentence.” Altogether, Faircloth sentenced 20 of the 26 to jail terms of six months. Steve Jacobs of Missouri got a year in prison; the rest received either three months in jail or two to three years probation. Many were also given fines ranging from $150 to $3,000. “Thank you for furthering our cause,” said Oregon defendant Josh Cohn as the judge sentenced him to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Immediately after the sentencing nine different activists were arrested trespassing onto Fort Benning to show that these harsh sentences would not stop the protests. Asheville, NC, resident Willy Rosencrans attempted to deliver a letter to the base commander banning the SOA from Fort Benning because of crimes against humanity. These nine are free and currently face charges. SOA Watch’s Father Roy Bourgeois noted that hundreds have already booked hotel rooms for the November 17, 2001, vigil and nonviolent action. What You Can Do
Bill Branyon is a writer and activist in Asheville, NC. |
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fellow defendants and I should not be on trial here,” said John Hunt to
the federal judge who had the power to put him in jail. “The School of
the Americas, the U.S. government, our entire economic system—this is
what should be on trial. They have sentenced hundreds of millions of humans
to lives of desperation, humiliation and destitution.” 