Cooperation Times
Volume 14, No. 3 ~ Sept.-Oct. 2000

Contents:

The U.S. Army School of the Americas - A School of Assassins
 by Markus Weyel

On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter were assassinated in El Salvador. Nineteen of the 26 Salvadoran officers cited by the United Nations Truth Commission for this atrocity were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). This massacre is but one example of the "work" of SOA graduates. Each November thousands gather at the gates of Fort Benning to commemorate the Jesuit massacre and call for the closure of the School of Assassins.

But what exactly is this School of the Americas? The SOA, or the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation (new name since May 2000), based at Ft. Benning, Georgia, is a U.S. Army training school where soldiers and other military personnel from Latin American countries are trained in the subjects of counter-insurgency, infantry tactics, military intelligence, anti-narcotics operations, and commando operations. Most instructors are from Latin America themselves and all the lessons are held in spanish.

Who are the graduates of the SOA? Since the school’s inception in 1946, almost 60,000 members of Latin American militaries have graduated from the SOA. Among those graduates are the notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower level SOA graduates were responsible for the Uraba massacre in Colombia, the El Mozote massacre of 900 unarmed civilians, the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the Jesuit massacre in El Salvador, the La Cantuta massacre in Peru, the torture and murder of a UN worker in Chile, and hundreds of other human rights abuses throughout Latin America.

What does this have to do with me? This case should touch and enrage every U.S. citizen, since these killers are trained in your country, supported by your government, and funded by your taxes. Yes, that’s right, you are paying for the training of those people who have committed some of the worst atrocities known to mankind—for more than 50 years now. And as long as the School of the Americas isn’t closed down, we all will continue being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Latin Americans.

But how can I help to shut down the SOA? Join thousands of others in solidarity with Latin American people on the weekend of November 17-19 in Columbus, Georgia, just outside the gates of Ft. Benning, where the SOA is located. There will be workshops, speakers, a vigil, and training in non-violent civil disobedience. On Sunday, November 19, the protesters will march in a silent funeral procession to the gates of the School of the Americas in remembrance of the thousands of victims of SOA graduates. Last year 12,000 people participated and more than 4,400 actually "crossed the line," which means they walked into the school, in an act of non-violent civil disobedience. Even more people are expected to attend the rally this year and hopefully you will be there, too, to show that you don’t want to support the killings of thousands of innocent people anymore.

So come to Ft. Benning on November 17-19! Hopefully many citizens of Topeka want to show that they no longer will be quiet about human rights abuses in Latin America, supported by the government of the United States. With your help we might be able to shut down the School of the Assassins forever. It would be great if we could show our government and the rest of the world that Topekans do care and organize a large group of people who will go to Georgia on that weekend.

I attended a weekend of leadership development on August 4-6 in Chicago in preparation for the November vigil and action. In attending this training I gained skills to prepare interested people in our community for the protest with nonviolence and peacekeeper trainings. I also attended media, legal, and direct action workshops. So if you are interested in attending the rally, preparation meetings, or simply want more information, please contact the CENTER (785-232-4388) or email me at soawatchks@hotmail.com. Also visit the National SOA Watch website at www.soaw.org for more information.

The founder of SOA Watch, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, will visit Topeka on September 13 to speak about human rights abuses by SOA graduates in Latin America, explain the connection between the SOA, IMF & World Bank ("Partners in Torture, Exploitation, Intimidation and Murder"), and why the U.S. Government doesn’t want to close the school. The event will take place in the Fellowship Hall at Southern Hills Mennonite Church, 511 SE 37th, and will start at 12:30p.m.

There will be time for questions and discussion after his speech. Snacks and refreshments will be provided.

Fr. Bourgeois will also speak at other locations in Kansas:

September 12, Manhattan, 7:30 p.m., Forum Hall on KSU Campus. September 13, Lawrence, 7:30 p.m., Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread. September 14, Wichita, 7:00 p.m., Lorraine Avenue Mennonite Church, 655 S Lorraine Ave.

The events are entitled "The U.S. Army School of the Americas - A School of Assassins!" Admission is free for all events and everyone is invited and welcome to attend. For more information contact Markus Weyel at the CENTER (785-232-4388).

(Markus Weyel is the CENTER's new administrative assistant and Coordinator of SOA Watch Kansas. See the article about him on page 4.)

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Work for Something Good
by Dan Nagengast

Political leaders can be unlikely peace heroes. Think of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Henry Kissinger for acknowledging that military domination of Vietnam wasn't working.

Vaclav Havel is a Czechoslovakian playwright whose truthful speech made him a political leader, and a peace hero.

Havel was born in 1936. He has written numerous plays, some of which have been presented in this country. He became very active in the 1968 Czech uprising known as the Prague Spring, which was crushed by the Soviets.

He was a founding spokesman of a dissent group known as Charter 77 and the author of many essays on totalitarianism and dissent. Charter 77 had, as an agenda, that laws be observed, and that this be publicly expressed. It was neither left nor right wing, and contained elements of both. As Havel says, its essence lies outside that spectrum.

Charter 77's concern was with the truth, with a truthful description of conditions, and a free, objective criticism of those conditions. In addition to often being accused of being left or right wing, its members were also often accused of being exhibitionistic, an attack that could stop a lot of activists in their tracks.

In 1979, he was sentenced to prison for 4 1/2 years for his involvement in the Czech human rights movement. While there he wrote several books.

He was released and in 1989 he helped found the Civic Forum, the first legal opposition movement in 40 years. In 1989 he also became his country's president after leading the Velvet Revolution which overthrew communist control at the time the Soviet Union was crumbling. This happened without guns—because of persistent voices.

Here are some Havel quotes that show where and how he led the Czech people to bring about change without violence:

"The role of the intellectual is to warn, to predict horrors, to be a Cassandra who tells us what is going on outside the walls of the city...the intellectual should constantly disturb, should bear witness to the misery of the world, should be provocative by being independent...should be the chief doubter of systems of power and its incantations, should be a witness to their mendacity."

People were commonly being locked up in prisons for years in the early 1970s, and no one paid attention. It was life in Czechoslovakia. Havel described the process of straightening the civic backbone as being "ant-like." It mostly entailed writing petitions of support for people who went to prison, rather than saying nothing.

Slowly, it came to be that anyone locked up for 48 hours made the newspapers all over the world, and things changed. The government had to take this new interest into account. Havel said, It must—though it may not want to—reckon with the phenomenon of its own shame.

Here are Havel's thoughts on hope:

"Hope is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something that is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breath-taking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from elsewhere."

Information for this essay was taken from Disturbing the Peace, A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala, by Vaclav Havel (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1990). The essay was originally presented as one of several this spring on Peace Heroes at Southern Hills Mennonite Church.

(Dan Nagengast is the Director of the Kansas Rural Center. He owns and operates Wild Onion Farm, a certified organic vegetable and flower farm, with his wife Lynn Byczynski, outside of Lawrence.)

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A Revenge-tax Cut: Mom and Dad are Calling
by Claude Lee

We executed Gregg last month in the normal course of business. As citizens in a democracy, you and I squeezed the needle—executioners by default.

Sister Helen Prejean of New Orleans relentlessly counsels, speaks and writes against the death penalty (Dead Man Walking). What follows is a letter I wrote to her about Gregg two years ago.

"Dear Sister Helen: In his famous Leopold-Loeb defense against death, my hero Clarence Darrow argued: ‘If to hang these two boys would bring him back to life, I would say let them hang, and I believe their parents would say so too... Bobbie Franks is dead, and we cannot call him back to life.’ He was not the first or last to wish for that impossible

legal remedy. I am writing for your opinion about a similar remedy that is possible and has in it the seeds of such a miracle. But, as you said in Atchison, first let me tell you a story.

"Gregg’s father Lelyn is my friend. We practice law together. Eight years ago, Lelyn was a very successful trial attorney in rural Kansas. His wife Gladys owned and operated a successful shop on Main Street. Their oldest son is also a lawyer and, until recently, was the county prosecutor. Their second son is a successful business man in Denver.

"Their third son, Gregg, received his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice in 1989, and at age 28 returned home to live with his parents. Gregg had some trouble with drugs and alcohol but a DWI was his only criminal record. He had no history of violent conduct whatsoever.

"One night in 1989, Gregg silently left his bed at his parents’ house, robbed two local stores, murdered both clerks, execution style, and returned to his bed. The next day, he fled to New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, where he robbed and murdered one clerk in each state. In [town] Oklahoma, Gregg told two clerks and one customer to lay face down on the floor and shot them all in the head. One died and two lived to testify. The total was five dead and two critically wounded in four days. All were strangers. The money was for cocaine.

"Gregg pled ‘no contest’ in all four states and went to trial only on the issue of the penalty. Then Kansas had no death penalty so the judge gave Gregg four life sentences and two 15 year sentences, all to be served consecutively. In Texas, his plea was enough to avoid death. In New Mexico the jury hung, so a life sentence was automatic. But Oklahoma was different. The victim was a well known and beloved owner of a downtown flower shop. Gregg’s court-appointed lawyer failed to properly argue for a change of venue, so the Judge denied it and weighed the evidence within sight of the victim’s business. Because of local prejudice, Gregg waived a jury and was at the mercy of the judge who, like everyone else in [town], Oklahoma, was a personal friend of the victim. The judge didn’t hesitate. In August of 1993, he sentenced Gregg to death.

"Gregg is still on death row in McAlester. Appeals are pending but hold little hope. Realistically, Gregg has no more than three years—until the Millennium.

"Lelyn and Gladys say that in 1989, their son "fell off the end of the earth." No one has a better explanation. Gregg’s story cries out for answers. How could this happen with no warning and no history of violence? The easy answer, ‘drugs’, is just not enough.

"The real answers are before us in raw form if we have the will to seek them. The evidence is convincing that violence is a communicable disease. Often its course is predictable but its cause a mystery. Malaria, polio and yellow fever were once mystery diseases. We examined the patients, isolated the germs and set about a cure. We did not rage and destroy the carrier before unlocking its secrets!

"I suggest federal legislation to create a national high-security hospital, dedicated to the sole purpose of studying the disease of violence, it’s cause and prevention. Legislation in the various states would permit or mandate sentencing defendants convicted of capital offenses to this federal hospital with absolutely no hope of parole. Under strict humanitarian supervision, the law would permit health professionals from all over the world to examine and experiment with the inmates. Researchers would come in droves. The opportunity to examine the extraordinarily vicious inmates (such as Gacy and Dalmer) beside the puzzling, counter-initiative inmates (such as Gregg) would be irresistible—and invaluable. And funding? Research grants would be a beginning. The Feds would invest seed money. Then collect from each state just half the millions each execution costs.

"I believe this idea would pass into law easier than first impression suggests. As you said in Atchison, nearly all Americans are uneasy with the death penalty. We just want to be safe. And most Americans are more optimistic than cruel. The choice would be to exchange the death chamber for a modern laboratory that would save innocent lives and be cheaper, a revenge-tax cut.

"Over time, with help from a bigger hand, we could provide the next–best thing to Darrow’s miracle—to save and isolate each sick life as precious evidence, to invest, to learn, to treat, to cure, and maybe—just maybe—to harvest a yield of blood not shed, vicious acts prevented, lives not scarred by violence. The worst that could happen would be to learn nothing demonstrably useful, ground covered and cleared, that in itself would add to our present knowledge—basic research.

"It seems unlikely that such an idea has not been suggested before now. If so, why haven’t we heard of it? If not, what do you think? You have the clout and visibility to plant the seed. Lelyn, Gladys and I want to help. /s/ Claude Lee, Topeka"

Of course the hospital idea was too late to save Gregg. Frantic last appeals failed and he died. Gladys told people she would not live to watch Gregg’s execution. True to her promise, she didn’t.

Since legalization, we have executed 660 Americans. One crash or crime that killed that many people at one time would be a historic, horrific disaster no matter what their crimes. But because the executions are intentional, predictable, preventable, spread over time and are carried out behind closed doors, society takes less notice. Why?

Can you and I do something? Do we have a duty to our conscience to try?

Gregg’s execution was another wake-up call from Mother Nature and Father God: "Learn from your mistakes!"

But first, do no harm. To paraphrase Hippocrates, forget the needle. Re-examine the wounds.

(Claude Lee, an attorney for the Kansas Department of Human Resources, specializes in employment law. He has been a long time activist for justice in the work place.)

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From Germany to Topeka

If you have called the CENTER or received a call from it since the beginning of July, it is very likely that you heard a different accent in the voice of the person on the other end of the line. That’s the new full-time administrative assistant, which CENTER Director Bill Beachy, is more than happy to introduce to you: His name is Markus Weyel (pronounced Vial) and the reason for the accent is that he is from Germany.

Markus is 21 years old and is performing voluntary service in the U.S. as an alternative to military or civil service in Germany. German law requires every physically able young man to serve either 10 months in the military or 13 months in civil service, such as working in an hospital, for Meals on Wheels or other charities. Markus is one of the few who chose to do neither. He decided to go to a foreign country for his alternative service for two years. He is in the Mennonite Voluntary Service program where he lives together with two other volunteers from the U.S. The program is supported locally by Southern Hills Mennonite Church.

Topeka is Markus’ second home in the United States. For 10 months he was part of a similar program in Albany, Oregon, where he lived with five other people and worked as a teacher’s assistant at a middle school and program staff at the local Boys and Girls Club. Due to his interest in peace and justice issues such as the struggle for freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, the closing of the School of the Americas, the anti-sweatshop movement, and others, he decided that he wanted to work the second part of his service term in the peace and justice sector. So the CENTER was the ideal place for him.

In addition to his administrative duties, Markus is organizing an SOA Watch chapter in Kansas (See above article)

Markus will be working at the CENTER through August of 2001. Stop by the Center or give him a call in the office (785-232-4388) to welcome him to Topeka.

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Morris Dees - "Voices of Hope and Tolerance for the New Millennium"
October 17, 8:00 p.m., Topeka Performing Arts Center, (8th and Quincy)

Concerned Citizens for Topeka presents Morris Dees, who founded the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971 to uphold laws that had been won by the Civil Rights movement. In 1981, he began filing a series of historic and successful lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for violating the rights of minorities. In 1991, he started the Teaching Tolerance project to foster tolerance education in America's schools.

Call 785-232-8808 for more information.

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Thank You Peace Camp 2000 Volunteers and Contributors!

Volunteers:
Karl Banks
Shawn Barber
Vicky Betchley
Peg Chrisman
Jessica Ciochon
Jessica Cook
Clay Davis
Emily Escher
Sally Fronsman-Cecil
Brittany Haley
Gabrianna Hall
Renee Hall
Emily Haury
April Hedman
Frank Heise
Diana Hershberger
Nellie Hogan
Leighann Houser
Missy Jasso
Anna Kaye
Jamie Kutter
Karen Long
Megan McKamy
Bree McReynolds
Brian Meredith
Helen Monroe
Betty Nelson
Sara O’Keeffe
Jensen Otte
Myrtle Pearson
Jayme Pelton
Justin Raines
Carol Rank
Kyla Reed
Margery Ridgeway
Donna Schultz
Kenny Smith
Mahin Stanley
Katie Strahm
Helen Svoboda
Dell Swain
Stan Voth
Markus Weyel
Meredith Williard
Carolyn Zimmerman
Jon Zimmerman

Contributors:
Albertson's Food & Drug Stores
Eleanor Bell
Dillons Store #64
First Christian Church
Grace Episcopal Cathedral
Grocery Surplus
Marge Heeney
Barb Jacobs
Michelle Kaberline
Roy Lacoursiere
Lowman United Methodist Church
Helen Monroe
Betty Nelson
Our Savior's Lutheran Church
Eldon Penick
Susan Rothschild
Sam's Club
Southern Hills Mennonite Church
Spiritual Assembly of Baha’is of Topeka
Taco Bell
Target Stores
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Walgreens Drug Store #3069
Wolfe's Cameras Camcorders & Computers
Zercher Photo

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