SHUT DOWN The School of the Americas Vigil Converge on Fort Benning! - November 22-24, 2013 www.soaw.org - Phone: 202-234-3440 - Email: i...@soaw.org
Mark Your Calendars! Tell Your Friends! We're heading to Fort Benning, Georgia, from November 22-24 <http://www.soaw.org/november> to keep up the pressure to close the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC). We carry with us the <https://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/t/10656/shop/item.jsp?storefront_KEY=777&t= &store_item_KEY=3430> strength of social movements in Latin America who are turning their back on the SOA. We won't stop! Will You Join Us? Read about why we mobilize. <http://www.soaw.org/november/schedule/why-we-mobilize> Thousands will gather at the gates, with speakers, music, street theater, workshops and networking with people from across the Americas. We come together at the gates of Fort Benning - where the killers are trained - to demand an end to US militarization and to impunity. The Vigil weekend is your opportunity to connect your communities with those across the hemisphere who are resisting Empire. In addition to the main funeral procession on Sunday, November 24, we will again have rallies, concerts, workshops <http://www.soaw.org/november/conference/register-your-workshop> , caucuses and street theater on Friday and Saturday. And this year, on Friday, November 22, we will once again kick off the weekend joining our sisters and brothers to demand the closure of private detention prisons, like the Stewart Detention Center, and to highlight the connection between militarization and forced migration. Come early! Check our our NEW Vigil website and STAY connected! <http://www.soaw.org/november> Activate Your Community! Getting ready for the Vigil is easier than you think. Each of us can be an organizer when we talk to our family and friends about US militarization. It all starts with you! Here are four things you can do right now: Tell your friends about the Vigil! <http://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/salsa/web/tellafriend/public/?tell_a_frien d_KEY=11912> Order a set of 100 bilingual Vigil palmcards at 100 for $6 <https://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/t/10656/shop/item.jsp?storefront_KEY=777&t= &store_item_KEY=3430> which are a great way to get people talking. Invite a Speaker! SOA Watch Activante in Honduras Brigitte Gynther and Latin American Liaison Lisa Sullivan will be hot on the speakers trail and are looking to come to your community! Contact Dominique at: domini...@soaw.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you can host a speaker. Plan your trip to Columbus <http://www.soaw.org/november/info/how-to-get-to-columbus> and find places to stay <http://www.soaw.org/november/info/staying-in-columbus> . Please Help Fund the School of the Americas Watch Vigil at Fort Benning. Make check or money order out to SOA Watch. And send to: SOA Watch 5525 Illinois Avenue NW Washington, DC 20011 If sending a check, please indicate that you would like your donation to go toward the November Vigil. If you'd like to make a tax-deductible donation, please write a check to "SOA Watch Educational Fund" and mail it to the above address or: click here to make a tax-deductible donation online <https://org.salsalabs.com/o/727/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page _KEY=8057> . Why We Mobilize "We will converge, many thousands strong, at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia in November because justice will not be delivered unto us. We will come to demand it." We mobilize because standing still is not an option... Remaining silent during slavery was to take the side of the slave owner, remaining silent now is to take the side of those who are committing genocide against the earth and the people... Because memory is not static. History is not a museum. Our narrative is too great for history books, our legacy larger than any casket or mass grave. Because reckless heaps of Earth in clandestine burials cannot silence the ghosts of our ancestors. No-these memories live on. Truth cannot be obscured by "courts which pretend to dispense justice" (paraphrase: Arundhati Roy). Truth is the glowing ember of justice. Let us feed the fire. Let us breathe life into the flame until it rises, white hot, to the heavens and banishes the dark from the night. We will converge, many thousands strong, at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia in November because justice will not be delivered unto us. We will come to demand it. To strip Empire of its mask of benevolence. We must mobilize to attack the icon-the gun, the prison, the border-and dismantle its foundations. Peace activists, indigenous peoples, student movements, prison abolitionists, activists for immigrant rights, fearless undocumented youth demanding liberation, and more will come to share their perspectives and strategy. Those who fight with their voice, the drum, the ballot, the paintbrush will come to show us their vision of another world. We will mobilize at the gates to shut down the School of Americas (SOA; renamed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC). But the implications of our convergence are much farther-reaching. Thirty years following the "scorched earth" policies exacted against the Mayan peoples of Guatemala, social movements there were able to secure the conviction for genocide of SOA-trained General José Efraín Ríos Montt. However, shortly afterward, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court overturned the verdict, and annulled the trial indefinitely. This decision serves as a reminder that the struggle for justice and reparations is never over. The very fact that this historic trial came to fruition is testament to peoples' determination and willingness to move forward, unyielding, in stride toward a brighter tomorrow. Following those who struggle against all odds, we stand and say: PRESENTE! The undeniable strength of people power is currently indicting the crimes of military corruption in Argentina as well. In March, a judge in Argentina began proceedings against 25 military generals from seven Latin American countries who participated in Operation Condor. Argentine SOA General Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military junta during the "Dirty Wars" of the 1970s and 80s, died in prison in May while serving out a sentence for crimes against humanity. Remembering all those who have disappeared but will never be forgotten, we say: PRESENTE! While banks like Wells Fargo and HSBC are pardoned for laundering drug money, because they are "too big to fail," thousands of our sisters and brothers are being massacred and tortured in Mexico, Honduras and Colombia, focal points for the US War on Drugs. SOA graduates toppled the democratic government in Honduras in 2009, initiating a bloodbath that has yet to see its end. Mexico's notoriously vicious Zetas drug cartel drew its strength from those trained at the SOA. Just as in Colombia, where SOA graduates are trying to break the back of social movements, in the name of fighting drugs, to make way for capital expansion projects. Together, we join hands and say: PRESENTE! For the hundreds of Kimani Grays right here in the United States - primarily poor people of color - gunned down and locked up in the name of the War on Drugs, the pernicious reality of oppression in our shared histories compels us to stand up wherever and however we can. PRESENTE! Against the desolation of imprisonment to the desperation of deportation, immigrants in this country are speaking out and fighting back. Private prisons, border fences and electronic surveillance have blurred the reality of US militarized foreign policy being the root cause of people leaving their homes. Support for brutal militaries and paramilitaries come from the economic elite who benefit from cutting social programs, devastating the environment and criminalizing the "other". We remain PRESENTE! To those in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere who are resisting death by drones, PRESENTE! To the Bradley Mannings who reveal the truths, PRESENTE! For those who see their liberation tied to the liberation of all, toward the end of impunity...PRESENTE! We do not say that the struggle for justice faces interminable odds, or a prolonged endgame. These are simple evocations of the need to resist. This is why we mobilize. Because, put simply, we must. Remaining immobile is to grant "mobility" to those who are systematically shutting off our souls and the soul of the earth... We mobilize for the right of our communities to exist in the face of the greed of capital and the misery of war. We mobilize for another world - JOIN US! www.soaw.org [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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