DN! - Thousands Turn Out for Annual School of Americas Protest

Thousands Turn Out for Annual School of Americas Protest

Here in the United States, up to twenty-two thousand people gathered outside Fort Benning, Georgia this weekend to call for the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas. Fifteen people were arrested after crossing the fence and onto the base. The U.S. military has used the school to train many Latin American and Caribbean military officials accused of abusing human rights. Protesters heard from several survivors of US-backed regimes, including Maria Guardado of El Salvador. This was the seventeenth year of the School of Americas protests. The weekend actions are timed to coincide with the anniversary of the November 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. According to the organizers, protests also took place in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru, as well as in Ireland, Canada and other cities across the United States.