|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
SOA Protest Journal |
Current rating: 0 |
by Danielle Chynoweth
(No verified email address)
Phone: 217.344.8820
Address: Urbana IMC |
17 Nov 2001
Modified: 18 Nov 2001 |
|
following the lanuage of war to Fort Benning ... meeting with desparation veiled at patriotism ... a ghost town for giants ... the pagan caucus ... police frisking ... a day hanging with older women |
Friday, Nov 16, 2001
After a 12-hour trip from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois without a map, we intuit our way through rural Georgia by following the language of war. We pursue signs leading to Veteran's Parkway, Fort Oglethorpe, Memorial Stadium, and sure enough we are guided into Columbus by a flag lined street called Victory Drive, the whole time feeling like part of a tailgate party for a non-existent game.
My first impression: Columbus wears economic hardship on its sleeve, right next to a God Bless America patch. The two seem intertwined - desperation and patriotism - at least in Columbus, Georgia.
The drive to the base from the highway, along Victory Drive, tells the story: Title loan agencies, pawn shops, cheap Chinese buffets, a half dozen topless bars, the strip of topless bars flanked by cheap motels where the visitors have local license plates. There's a "Gus's Chick n' Shrimp Drive-in" with a printed menu the size of two billboards and "Freddy's Fast Tattoos" just down the street from a strip mall with Army, Navy, and Air force recruiting centers. The Civil War Museum faces two expansive cemeteries across the street. Several billboards shout out the number of a hotline for compulsive gamblers. There is a shadow of green in the midst of all of this - grizzly gray grass struggling out of the cracks in the cement, looking like the beard of an unshaven old man.
The roads are wide; the parking lots are huge and empty. Giant flags flap every fifty feet for several miles. The face of Osama Bin Laden, ten feet high, looks over the highway, with the crosshairs of a gun sight laid over his face to advertise a local radio station. “We are All American Radio” the billboard declares, and its hostility proves it. A factory stretching several blocks lies vacant, its enormous steel gate rusting on its hinges, its wide loading docks empty, doors gaping open like wounds.
It is a city made for giants, but the giants must have left, cause all I see are tired looking black folks and mean looking white folks hovering around the shoulders of the highway like stray dogs.
In my search for life in Columbus, this is my inventory: hotels buzzing with men in uniform and several factories actively cranking out snack cakes. And then there's us. We have come to protest the SOA, and in doing so, have breathed life into the city for a weekend. Between the military and its opposition, the tourist industry of Columbus ekes out an existence. Luckily, I say to myself, the SOA protests come right in time to put a little extra cash into the pockets of people short for money for Christmas presents.
The first night, I attend the Women's Caucus, which I come to find is the first ever on 11 years of SOA Watch. I get a sense, which I have not yet had time to verify, that the anti-SOA movement is making conscious steps at growth to be more inclusive. Started by Father Roy Bourgeois in 1990 accompanied by a few small demonstrations, SOA Watch's history lies with progressive religious organizations awakened to fact of U.S. trained terrorism, by the 1989 massacres of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador. SOA Watch now organizes its yearly vigil and procession to accommodate over 10,000 with thousands risking arrest and several dozen currently serving jail time. SOA Watch has a new advisory committee with diverse representation from all of the country and in all colors of the rainbow. A pagan caucus, with a woman who identifies herself as an "anarcha-feminist-dianic-witch," speaks alongside other religious organizations. Feminist singer-songwriter Jolie Rickman enjoins the audience to celebrate "girl-kissing." It is time like these when I am reminded of my distaste for the "preaching to the choir" dismissal. As a movement grows and diversifies, there is a lot of nearest neighbor cross-pollination. I find this extremely hopeful.
Saturday, Nov, 17, 2001
I awake after half dozen hours of sleep crammed into a room with ten others. I sleep in the tiny gap between the bed and the wall hoping that no one will wake in the night and step on my head on the way to the bathroom. My friend sleeps in the closet, her legs hanging out into the foyer.
In the morning, I grab my gear and head for the rally in Golden Park. Every single person has their bags searched and some are frisked by police before entering a baseball field enclosed by billboards and a chain link fence. I realize right away that this rally will happen far away from the eyes of the public and have a the sinking feeling of disappointment. I remember Seattle, the joy of visibility, reclaiming the streets, the sweetness of winning a clear victory. Instead, we are going to have a pleasant day, all by ourselves, in the park. Ho hum. I remind myself that there will be more visibility tomorrow, when we make ourselves into a funeral procession, calling out the names of those murdered using techniques honed by the School of Assassins, and marching toward this same School calling for it to be shut down.
Today I will use my time well and seek out people I can learn from, asking them for interviews. I look around and see that I am surrounded by scads of older women. I am inspired. I go back out near the parking lot and accost the women as they enter the rally, looking to extract a bit of wisdom for my radio show on the 26th. The interviews are fabulous. I ask them when and why they first began to criticize U.S. foreign policy. The answers are various and stretch back into History: SOA, Iraq, the Contras, Vietnam. The have been to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia ...
I run into Peg McIntyre, one of my first activist mentors at the age of sixteen. She was a piece in the process of breaking the hold of the status quo on my mind. She was a major source of inspiration for me to organize a peace and justice organization in my high school. She is now 91 years old, spunky as ever, and hugs me so hard it hurts. Her political awakening occurred with the death of her brother, a member of the Abraham-Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.
Inside again, I sheepishly pull out a stack of newspapers - Urbana's IMC rag - the Public I. While trying to find a corner of table to unload them onto, I meet another person I have admired, Charlie King, whose song "If Jimmy Didn't Have to Go" makes me weep every time I sing it. He lets me rest my papers on the corner of his table and offers to do a show at the Urbana IMC. I am delighted by meeting him in person, by his offer, and by the eager hands that grab for the Public I saying "Cool! An IMC paper!" Again, I am filled with hope.
I escape from the crowd, with an hour of interviews, all of them older women. I consider with a smile the idea of exclusively interviewing older women for my show about the SOA protests, without billing it explicitly as such. I mean, after all, when I turn on the radio, most of the experts are men without being called "the middle class men's perspective."
This story ends with me typing wildly on my foldout keyboard at a Caribbean restaurant packed with SOA protestors. The owner is beaming from behind the counter with the prospects of today's profits. I am half way through the story when a man originally from Spain, now teaching Spanish in rural Georgia, joins me at my booth and begins to talk incessantly at me. I am tired and I let his stories roll over me. When I find out he is a Communist, I finally say "how do you make out as a Communist from Spain in the middle of Georgia?" He laughs at me and says, "I don't open my mouth much."
After stuffing myself on curried potatoes and making my exit from the stream of consciousness talk of the Spanish man (who didn't even pause when I stood up to pay), I go to the temporary apartment for the IMC, and elbow my way onto a computer, to finish this and send it out to you, wherever you are.
|
|
I feel I am there! |
by Jan Kruse
durljan (nospam) earthlink.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
18 Nov 2001
|
Thank You Danielle:
I was interested to read about the group in Georgia and how it is going. Your words have brought me a feeling that though I did not travel to Columbus....some how I feel present. Your words have given me a sense of the community where the SOA is located and those brave citizens who have come there to protest.
Thanks for posting this information and allowing those of us unable to be there in person to feel a part of this important undertaking.
I will be thinking of you all Today....Sunday Nov. 18 as you participate in these important events.
Take care and safe travels back to Illinois! |
