Oakland Tribune story on SOA: Peaceful protest routinely draws harsh jail time

Peaceful protest routinely draws harsh jail time

WHEN WE THINK of nonviolence, famous names from history come to mind. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau. Thousands -- maybe millions -- now follow the nonviolence model for peace.

Though you may find it unthinkable that an American would be sent to prison for peacefully protesting government actions in a country governed by the Bill of Rights, it happens routinely in some parts of the country.

Many sent to U.S. penitentiaries throughout the United States are members of a nationwide organization dedicated to shutting down the School of Americas (SOA), also known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation (WHISC) at Fort Benning, Ga.

Fort Benning is a U.S. Army school funded by the Congress.

It is alleged by an SOA Watch group that the school trains Latin-American military personnel who have abused human rights in South American countries and are now involved in atrocities and oppressive military tactics in Colombia and Venezuela.

Each year since 1991, SOA Watch has staged huge demonstrations at Fort Benning's gate, where the school has decreed it a violation of federal trespass law -- a misdemeanor -- to cross over a white chalk line arbitrarily drawn by the school. It's only on the two days of protest that the school closes its doors and bars visitors to its grounds. Otherwise, it is open to visitors. Last November, 87 were arrested for crossing over, including 10 from the Bay Area.