GUEST COLUMNIST -- frank forbath

I “crossed the line” Sunday afternoon past the main gate into Ft.

Benning, Ga., to march with my Oscar Romero, RIP cross toward the School

of the Americas in order to urge the Army to close it down! I wasn’t

alone. More than 5,000 people walked in a silent funereal procession,

until we were stopped perhaps a mile into the base by the military

police. We knew that we were subject to arrest for criminal trespassing,

but perhaps only a few hundred were likely to get the six months’ maximum

federal jail time. They are repeat offenders, who had been given a leave

and ordered not to return during previous years.

Some 7,000 others stood on the east side of the road to the gate to

support us and to sing and to pray to close the school, which is known

throughout Latin America as the School of Assassins. It was started in

Panama in 1946 by the U.S. to fight communism. There it soon became known

as the School of Coups. The school was evicted in 1984 and moved to Ft.

Benning.

I left for Los Angeles International Airport before dawn Nov. 19 and

arrived at Columbus, Ga., in the early evening in time to race off to a

nearby 1,300-seat tent set up on the bank of the Chattahoochee River to

hear the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, co-founder of group that monitors the

school. Before becoming a Maryknoll priest, Roy was a Naval officer in

Vietnam. As a Maryknoller, he served in a parish in Bolivia until he was

forced out of the country, and then he served in El Salvador.

In his talk, Roy pointed out that this 10th anniversary of the

assassination at the University of Central America of six Jesuit priests

and their housekeeper and her daughter -- who were being honored by those

at the school’s gates and across the U.S. last weekend -- focuses on only

one of the thousands of killings by the military and death squads of

Latin American poor and those trying to help them.

Saturday morning, I raced off to my nonviolence training session. I left

before the session was over to hear the Rev. John Dear, a noted writer

and peace activist, who reported that during his first stay at the

University of Central America two decades earlier, the president told the

seminarians that because the purpose of the school was to “build the

Kingdom of God,” they would not leave, even though they already had been

bombed 21 times and strafed numerous times, which once nicked the chair

that John was sitting on.

Saturday afternoon at the gate, I found that students from probably more

than a hundred colleges and universities were there, including

representatives from all 28 Jesuit schools. Rufina Amaya, the sole

survivor of the massacre of about 980 men, women and children in El

Mozote village in El Salvador, was one of the speakers. I also got

introduced to the Rev. Bill Bichsel of Portland, Ore., a former “crosser”

who had been sentenced to 18 months in jail.

The Columbus Methodist Church provided low-cost drinks and food.

Saturday night after Mass in the tent, I got a ride to the Days Inn to

join with Veterans for Peace from around the country and met Martin Sheen

in the lobby. I thanked him for his longtime dedication to the powerless.

Sunday breakfast was with Jack and Kay from the Minneapolis area. This

was their third visit to the School of the Americas. Thirty-five members

of their parish of 350 people came as a group. I arrived at the fort at

9:25 a.m., with thousands already waiting on the road to the gate. I

worked my way through the crowd on the west side of the street (the

“crossing” people) to get to the front of the line, constantly excusing

myself: “Sorry, but I have to catch a 5:50 plane.” (My lack of proper

departure planning was evident.)

There were brief speeches by many, including Roy, the Rev. Dan Berrigan,

Sheen and others, plus songs by 80-year-old Pete Seeger. Upon the

commissioning of crossing the line, we started the march at noon. It was

a slow, silent, prayer-filled, five-abreast walk, while responding

“presente” (present) upon the reading of each of the thousands of names

of those killed by the school’s graduates or their troops and raising our

symbolic grave markers -- crosses or the Star of David. (A Jewish woman

from the Chicago Religious Leadership Network walked next to me.)

Each cross or star bore the name of one killed. On my right walked Brad,

a former Wall Street lawyer who flew in from Cuernavaca, Mexico. Marta, a

professor at St. Michaels College, walked behind me. She, too, carried

the Archbishop Romero’s name; she had worked with him in San Salvador

until he was assassinated.

The sun was bright, and it was in the 70s, with intermittent clouds

starting at noon. An elderly man with a walker stopped by the side of the

road, with someone caring for him; a 60-ish man walked ahead of me with a

bad limp. And a man lay violently shaking, waiting for an ambulance. When

we finally were stopped, probably a mile down the lovely tree-lined road,

by military police, many sat down. The 100 or so who were “high-risk” for

arrest lay next to caskets, as if killed, with white “death” masks and

covered with “blood.”

I was chicken and, upon repeated prodding by police, joined others who

were stepping around those sitting, to board one of the 32 police buses.

No one on our bus was arrested. The buses drove us to a park where the

police released us, and we walked back some two miles. I finally headed

home via vans and planes for a midnight arrival in Costa Mesa.

I tried to provide a bit of support for all those who suffered and died

at the hands of the military and death squads supported by U.S. funds. In

the process, I met at least 50 to 75 great people from around the

country, who energized and renewed my by the commitment to justice.

* Activist FRANK FORBATH is a Costa Mesa resident.