|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
A Note from Prison--School of the Americas Watch Prisoner |
Current rating: 0 |
by RJ Kinane, posted by Ellen Knutson
Email: knutson (nospam) shout.net (unverified!) |
15 Oct 2001
|
|
Below is a letter from RJ Kinane who is doing six months for his non-violent witness at Fort Benning, Columbus, Georgia. He was in his fourth year of protests and was refusing to honor the 5 year ban and bar letter which he received the year previous to last. |
Sisters and Brothers,
Warm greetings from the far side of the line, from the Federal Prison Camp in Littleton, just south of Denver. 11 months ago, along with some 3400 other people, I crossed the line at Ft. Benning to protest one of the Pentagon's ongoing terrorist training programs.
This note was started at 3:15 a.m. before work-before helping make pancakes for some 300 fellow inmates. As for me, I'm just about halfway through my 6 months and I'm doing ok. This minimum-security prison camp has none of the dramatic threatening circumstances of the big house. I don't even have to fight rush hour traffic before 4a.m. Monday through Friday the only congestion I have to watch out for is the occasional jackrabbit dashing across the walkway between dormitory and the mess hall. Prison makes me appreciate all the more the love and daily support of my sweet lady, Gail, and the twins, and my family back East, and friends and supporters here in Boulder and around the world.
I apologize to the several of you to whom I owe responses to your great letters of support. Frankly, since September 11th, my energy has-like so many people-been very dampened. My ability to take in, digest, make sense of, and respond to the events has been profoundly challenged.
The criminal acts on the World Trade Center and Pentagon-US and Corporate military world wide command and control centers-has been used as an excuse for going to war. George W. Bush's vow to hunt down terrorists worldwide, wherever they may be, sadly, yet predictably the war on terrorism misses the mote in our eye. The SOA is just the most visible and infamous example of the ongoing institutionalized training of foreign military to be terrorists against their own citizens.
Yet, in mid-November people will peacefully gather at the gates at Ft. Benning Georgia. This year I won't be there in body. My duty is that of prison witness here at FCI Englewood yet, in spirit, I will be there as will all the SOA 26. We will demand the closing of the US army's terrorist training school-the SOA, now camouflaged as WHISC.
We won't come with planes, missiles or bombs-but many will launch their bodies across the line onto the base in disciplined non-violent disobedience.
No children, nor families, nor even battle hardened veterans will be killed. Yet, we gentle angry warriors of peace will inevitably succeed in our mission to close the School of Assassins.
Our puppets, are radical cheerleaders, our feet will solemnly march in respectful memory of the thousands of voiceless victims of the graduates of the US army's School of the terrorists.
Going to Ft. Benning in the midst of the war mania requires bravery, akin to the civil rights marches of the 1960's. Like segregation, the war machine will not be stopped by bullets and bombs, but rather by the sword that heals, as Dr. King described non-violent civil disobedience.
We will sing and dance and march. We will rise with compassion, intelligence, and courage to speak truth to the military, political and economic power that creates and nurtures terrorism. We will give voice to the voiceless, timeless call for justice, human rights, and for the peace that comes only with justice.
So, from the privileged position of prison witness I congratulate and thank those who will be able to go to Benning and those who will vigil in their hometowns the weekend before Thanksgiving. Together we will give peace a chance. |