Lutherans Join Protest of the School of the Americas

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Several Lutherans were among more than 2,300 marchers who entered the Fort Benning (Ga.) Military Reservation to = protest the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) and run the risk of being arrested. The demonstrators were ejected from the base Nov. 22 with the warning that anyone re-entering the base would be fined or spend time in jail.
"It was a time of real soul searching as we walked the mile and a half through the residential area back to the base," Jean Martensen wrote later. "Was I personally prepared to spend six months in a federal prison?"
Martensen, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Commission for Women's associate director for leadership and studies, said the organizers of the protest were already there asking the marchers not = to "cross the line" again. There were no arrests this year; there were 600 arrests in 1997 for what has almost become an annual event.
The ELCA promotes advocacy over such demonstrations. In 1995 the church called on the U.S. government "to eliminate funding for the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., and to direct funds to programs that strengthen democratization and respect for human rights and provide support for victims of violence in Central America."
The 1995 action came at the request of the ELCA's Northeastern Minnesota Synod, which said the facility "has trained many of the elite Central and Latin American military leaders and units responsible for numerous assassinations, 'disappearances,' torture and mass terror." The synod's petition listed alleged acts of military persecution in Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru.
The ELCA's resolution went on to ask the church's 5.2 million members "to pray about and study this issue, and to contact their U.S. senators = and representatives."
Martensen wrote to Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) before he took office, asking him to join Sen. Richard Durbin's (D.-Ill.) efforts to end funding for the School of the Americas.
"We intentionally and nonviolently 'trespassed' to dramatize our government's 'trespasses,' which have violated the Universal Declaration = of Human Rights and cost the lives of thousands of people in the Americas = over the past 50 years," Martensen told her senator.
"The U.S. Army School of the Americas does not teach criminal conduct," Col. Glenn Weidner, school commandant, told reporters following the protest. "It exists to improve the performance of Latin American militaries as institutions accountable to the elected democratic governments of the region."
Weidner said values-based training is a priority of the school. "To meet the unique requirements of the region, it includes more training in democratic principles and respect for human rights than any other U.S. = Army School," he said, adding that the school is trying to help the same people as those who would like to see it closed.
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, author of "School of Assassins," spoke to more than 7,000 people who gathered near the base the day before the march. In an interview he said he told the audience "as long as the school remains open, it undermines U.S. credibility to speak about important human rights issues all around the world."
"We need to remember that the School of the Americas is just the tip of a very large iceberg," said Nelson-Pallmeyer. "U.S. soldiers are training soldiers in 110 different countries outside of congressional authorization or oversight." Even if the school is closed, "the SOA movement" must continue, he said, and those who went to Fort Benning epitomized that movement by spanning the generations and voicing a strong, spiritually-rooted nonviolent protest against violence.
Nelson-Pallmeyer is a member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) and teaches at the Roman Catholic University of St. Thomas and the ELCA's Augsburg College, all in Minneapolis.

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