Protesting violence against Latin Americans

Members of the UCC are traveling this weekend from churches nationwide, including from Colorado, to Ft. Benning, GA. There they will raise crosses for civilian victims of US-supported military and paramilitary violence.

Ft. Benning is the site of an army base housing an institute formerly known as "School of the Americas." At this school, nationals of other countries were (are?) schooled in deliberate techniques to inflict terror on women, men, and children as a way of combat. Use of these techniques dates to the CIA-sponsored 1980s Guatemalan repression of peasant efforts toward land reform.

The annual demonstration against the school, now called the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, draws thousands of people, including a core who commit civil disobedience and face jail or prison sentences.

For more on the protest story, see UCC link.