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Dirty Little Secrets - Dirty Little Lies - The School of the Americas
By UAW Region 8 Webmaster John Davis

Armed guards protect the walls, as inside school is in session. The students listen attentively as coursework for the day is covered. However, it isn’t read, writing and arithmetic that are being taught, but rather guerilla war fare. Sniper training, intelligence and interrogation training, commando and psychological warfare and counterinsurgency techniques are all on the course list. School manuals advocate the use of torture, extortion and execution.

The school has a distinguished list of alumni who have accomplished all types of terrorist activities. Murderers, drug cartels and human rights violators have all gotten their start at this school. Some of their more famous crimes include the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, the execution of four American nuns at a mission in El Salvador and the assignation of Bishop Juan Gerardi in Guatemala. Genocide and university killings across South America are other more notable feats of this school’s alumni.

One may think this school is located in a Taliban controlled area of Afghanistan, or maybe a rebel outpost of Iraq. However, most Americans would be surprised to find the school is located at the U.S. military base of Fort Benning, in Columbus, Georgia. The institute formally known as “The School of the Americas” is now called the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.”

The “School of the Americas” dates back to 1946, when it was founded in Panama. Its mission was to train mercenaries to carryout political assassinations and coercions throughout South America. In 1984 Panama expelled the school from its soil calling it the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The school was then quietly moved to Fort Benning to continue to train these murderers in the name of national defense.

In 1989 six Jesuit priest, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were massacred in El Salvador. A U.S. Congressional Task Force investigated the incident and found those responsible had been trained in Fort Benning with our tax dollars picking up the tab. For them incident the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) movement was founded and is supported by a number of faith based and human rights groups. They have worked since that time to bring attention to the camp that has been the source of training for over 60,000 Latin American soldiers responsible for thousands and deaths.

In 1994 Congressman Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts introduces a bill to kill the School of the Americans but the bill failed to pass. SOAW continued their protest and begin to stage an annual protest each November outside the gates of Fort Benning. The protest continued each year, with six thousand supporters attending the 1999 protest, of which four thousand “crossed the line” and trespassed on government property. In 2000, again several thousands “crossed the line” with 26 repeat offenders being prosecuted.

One of the 26 was Rebecca Kanner, of UAW Vice-President Bob King’s staff. At the time, Rebecca was environmental educator for a non-profit environmental organization, going into classrooms, teaching children how they can make the earth a cleaner. “When I made the serious decision each time to participate in a direct action to close the School of the Americas (SOA)/now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), I was inspired by the Jewish concept of tikkun olam - translated from the Hebrew, this means the just ordering of human society and the world - or more literally, the repair of the world” Rebecca states “I was also inspired by the Jewish prophetic tradition of social justice. As a Jew, I am moved to work to repair the tragic consequences of the SOA/WHISC.

This School is funded by our taxes. Graduates of the School/Institute use the tactics learned, in courses taught by the US Army, against their own people. The victims of SOA graduates are those working for a better life - working for land reform, for better wages, for adequate housing and health care for the poor - and the victims of the SOA graduates are those just trying to simply live.”
Rebecca Kanner was arrested and sentenced to six months in a federal prison camp in Pekin, Illinois. She began serving her sentence in July of 2001. Even though this was a minimum security prison, Rebecca was punished for being an activist by spending six months of her life locked up like a criminal. The growing opposition to the School of the Americas had Congress considering pulling the plug. However, on September 11, 2001 a group of terrorist hijacked four planes and flew two of them into the World Trade Center Towers in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington. Any hope to close the school then faded as Congress was left in a position of taking any measure deemed necessary to fight terrorism. The School of the Americas was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and kept open.

Labor and the School of the Americas
In 1994, the Mexican Government began increasing the number of their participants who attended the SOA. This jump in participation was needed to look out for the interest of multinational corporations with the installation of NAFTA. Labor leaders at Mexican manufacturing facilities found themselves the target of many of the SOA alumni.

Coke-Cola workers in Columbia organized and won their right to bargain. However, in 1996 SOA alumni executed local union leaders at the Coke-Cola Bottling facility in Carepa, Columbia. There were almost 300 additional murders of union activist in 2000-2001 in Columbia, with 3,800 being killed since 1986. The bulk of these executions can be traced back to former students of the SOA. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals from the SOA. Included within those manuals was encouragement to carry out the terror tactics on those who “support union organizing or recruiting”, “distribute propaganda in favor of workers interest” and those who “sympathize with demonstrations or strikes.”

With the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) looming on the horizon, the number of recruits being sent through the SOA has increased. A force of assassins is being assembled to further protect the interest of multinational corporations in preparation for further spread of “free trade” across 34 more South American countries. These corporations benefit from the terror and murder of union labors, with our tax dollars picking up the tab.

In 2004 another protest was held in Columbus, Georgia with another round of protestors being sent to federal prison. Rebecca Kanner joined the protest just as she has each year since getting out of prison. She missed the 2001 protest, due to serving time. But UAW Vice-President Bob King took her place that year and has supported the event since. In 2004 Rebecca and Vice-President King were joined by a number of other UAW members including Larry Steele and Rick England from the Region 8 Organizing Department. The 2005 protest is scheduled for November 18-20, 2005. Any UAW member interested in joining the UAW delegation should contact Sandra Engle at Solidarity House.

On personal note, this dirty little secret is keep well hid from the American people. I consider myself an activist who takes pride in keeping up with the issues affecting working American and their rights. However, when UAW Region 8 Editor Kelly Santiman asked me about the SOA I had never heard of it. All Americans need to be aware that at a time when the proposed budget contains 2.6 trillion dollars worth of cuts to social programs and Social Security is supposedly in trouble to the point of canning it for private investment accounts, our government does have the money to fund a training school for terrorist to do the bidding of the multinationals at the detriment of the workers in other countries and the workers here. It appears to me this is a case of fiscal non-responsibility as well as a travesty to human rights.

When the war in Afghanistan began, President Bush stated, “If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves.” While the SOA does not promote itself as a school of terrorism, the results of many of its pupils constitute terrorist activities. Many years ago the United States took a heavy hand in training the “Freedom Fighters” for Afghanistan in the war against Russia. One of the more famous graduates of that effort was Osama bin Laden. Once these killers are trained and released on the world, there is no way to control them.

The U.S. needs to fight the war on terror, but wiping the blood from our own hands my by the first place to start. For more information on the November protest against the School of the Americas contact Kelly Santiman at the UAW Region 8 office in Lebanon, Tennessee.