A true giving of thanks for people of conscience
\nby Silvia Brandon P\u00e9rez<\/p>\n
On the eve of the celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States, and
\nwhile thousands across the land battled each other for yet another
\nnonsensical and highly expensive toy, I have returned from what I may
\ncharacterize as one of the most emotionally and spiritually uplifting events
\nof my life, and of some 40+ years of activism of one sort or another.<\/p>\n
I attended the annual School of the Americas rally in Fort Benning, Georgia,
\nwith my spiritual sister Susan Lyons. We flew in on Thursday, attended a
\nnumber of workshops, sometimes together, sometimes separately, acted as part
\nof the legal collective and as legal observers, and then together
\nparticipated in the solemn procession in front of the gates of this School,
\nwhich under its modern name of WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for
\nSecurity Cooperation) , continues to train the despots, satraps, torturers
\nand paramilitary assassins of the Western Hemisphere. It is security
\ncooperation, indeed; together, there is a cooperation in wholesale abuses of
\nthe human rights, freedoms and the very lives of anyone who threatens the
\n‘security’ (read financial wellbeing) of the powers that be. As just one
\nexample, 22 Colombians, mostly labor unionists, are assassinated each and
\nevery day under the aegis of our “Plan Colombia” by proud graduates of the
\nSchool, and with our weapons and our tax dollars.<\/p>\n
This particular gathering was attended, on Sunday the 19th of November, by
\nwell over 22,000 people, including many young high school and college
\nstudents, religious people, US American, Canadian and Latin Americans from
\nall walks of life, ages, creeds, national origins, ethnicities. We heard
\nfrom survivors of torture, from young and old walking wounded who had lost
\nchildren, siblings, parents and spouses or significant others; at times,
\nduring the procession, as the ‘collective’ from the stage would chant the
\nname of yet another 20 day old or 20 year old or 97 year old ‘desaparecido,’
\npeople would drop off the line and crumble on the ground to sob loudly,
\nhands covering their faces, or would continue to weep while they stood as
\nwitnesses, and chanted, ‘presente.’<\/p>\n
It was so necessary to stand as a witness, and I could see why there is such
\na compulsion to cross the fence, despite the assurance of a minimum of three
\nmonths of federal hard time for a puny governmental trespass infraction
\nagainst a government which has committed so numerous and such egregious
\ncrimes against humanity. It is as if you would embrace all of these wounded
\nbrothers and sisters, and attempt to alleviate their pain, and our pain, and
\nto share with them Donne’s words that ‘any man’s death diminishes me because
\nI am involved in mankind.’<\/p>\n
No man is an island. and 22,000+ of us gathered in a collective of grief,
\noutrage, and a determination to close this school, and to close down the
\nactivities of empire, and to finally heal our planet. We are involved in
\nmankind.<\/p>\n
Words fail me. If we have not succeeded in closing them down by next
\nNovember, I too will put my body on the line and say, PRESENTE, and say
\nBASTA, and say, NUNCA MAS.<\/p>\n
For now, I am grateful that I spent these days with these heroes of everyday A true giving of thanks for people of conscience by Silvia Brandon P\u00e9rez On the eve of the celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States, and while thousands across the land battled each other for yet another nonsensical and highly expensive toy, I have returned from what I may characterize as one of the most… Continue reading SOA Watch uplifting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grassrootspeace.org\/traprock_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nlife, that I was able to once again embrace that spirit that alleviates my
\ndespair at this modern life of greed and indifference. BASTA, BASTA, NUNCA
\nMAS. Close down the SOA and Guant\u00e1namo and the spirit that maintains them.
\nNUNCA MAS. www.soaw.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"