PHOTO OPPORTUNITY - The Oberlin SOA Watch will depart Friday, Nov. 17, 5:00 p.m. from Finney Chapel parking lot (135 W. Lorain St., in Oberlin.)

100 STUDENTS TO PROTEST ARMY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS

Next Friday, some 100 Oberlin College students will travel to Ft. Benning, Georgia to take part in a national protest at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) Saturday Nov. 18 and Sunday, Nov. 19. Most of the Oberlin students intend to risk arrest. One thousand Ohioans are expected to take part in the annual demonstration at SOA, known internationally for the numerous human-rights violations committed by its graduates.

The Oberlin School of the Americas Watch has been recognized as a national leader in the movement to close the SOA. The organization sent one of the largest student groups to the 1998 and 1999 protests. Photos of the students wearing matching green t-shirts reading "Oberlin Students Say Close the SOA" appeared around the country last year. A student coordinator of the group, junior Jackie Downing, joined the national steering committee for SOA Watch last April.

The national School of the Americas Watch, which is coordinating the rally, expects 15,000 Americans to make the trip to Georgia to call for the closing of the SOA. More than 5000 people are expected to peacefully trespass onto Ft. Benning in the largest act of nonviolent civil disobedience since the Vietnam War.

This November marks the 10^th Anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her 15-year-old daughter in El Salvador. 19 of the 26 officers cited in a U.N. Truth Commission as responsible for the massacre were graduates of the School of the Americas. SOA graduates, trained with U.S. tax dollars, are also held responsible for the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen - two of them from Cleveland (Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and laywoman Jean Donovan).

Since its founding in 1946, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American military elite. The SOA Watch says that one in every 100 graduates of the SOA is a known human rights abuser. The School was dubbed "School of Assassins" by a Panamanian newspaper, due to the well-documented trail of blood and suffering in every country to where SOA graduates have returned.

In an effort to stop the growing movement to close the SOA, last May Congress passed the Defense Authorization Bill, changing the name of the School of the Americas to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. An amendment to close the SOA offered by House Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) to this bill lost by a very narrow margin, 214 to 204.

More info: www.soaw.org

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