"Oberlin students are rockin the world. I led the march of over 4000 onto the base and the general in the US Army in charge of Fort Benning told my friend Kate Berrigan 'Oberlin has a fine tradition of civil consciousness'".
Not only is this protest the largest act of civil disobedience since the Vietnam War, but it is an historic step in the political development of my generation. Here in Ft. Benning, Georgia have gathered students and youth from every nook and cranny of our country. Thousands of us have traveled great distances physically, intellectually and spiritually to be here, and for many our presence may be a surprise. For we are living in passive, isolated days here in the twilight of the twentieth century. We are not accustomed to massive gatherings and protests. We are not accustomed to people raising their voices. And most of all, we are not accustomed to hearing these things from young people...After all, we are the "apathetic generation." People have learned not to expect this sort of political movement from us. And worse, we have learned not to expect it from ourselves. So when we arrive here in Ft. Benning, at the gates of the School of Assassins, by the bus load, by the thousands, many people
are shocked. They ask: Who are you? Why are you here?
Who are we? We are the children of America. We come from nearly every state and hundreds of colleges and universities.* We come from cozy suburbs and we come from urban poverty. We have traveled to Latin America and seen poverty and destruction. We have grown up in Latin America and come to America to escape this poverty and destruction. We come from every corner of this world. We are the products of a world of corporate giants, threatened cultures, state violence, globalization, loneliness and deep economic disparities.
But we are not the poster children of this self-centered, inarticulate cult of materialism that you have heard about. We are the ones who knew there was more to our country than what we learned in our high school textbooks. We are the ones who said, "Okay, if you won't teach us, we'll find out for ourselves." When told that without great wealth our voices don't matter, we are the ones who didn't buy it.
We are here today because we are students, we are learners. We have learned about the School of the Americas, about its graduates and the violence they have brought back to their countries. We are here today because we are also teachers. We want to tell the world the truth about the SOA. We believe it is so fundamentally Un-American and anti-democratic that when the American people learn the truth, they will demand it be closed once and for all.
We are here today because we believe in democracy and human rights. We believe the SOA represents U.S. policies - domestic and foreign - that value economics and profit over human rights and human dignity. And though you are not accustomed to hearing us speak out, we believe our voices do matter.
For many of us, this is not the first time raising our voices. When the bombs were falling on Baghdad, we were in the streets of our hometowns and cities chanting "No Blood For Oil!" We have lobbied for Tibet, clean air, and migrant labor rights. We were there when Matthew Sheppard was killed. When the people of Mexico rose up against NAFTA, we raised our voices in solidarity. We are anti-sweatshop activists who have taken over administration buildings for weeks. We have protested at the Pentagon, at the Liberty Bell, at the GAP, and just about everywhere else.
But you probably have not heard our voices. A great media silence follows us wherever we go. It will continue to haunt us until one day when our voices are too loud to ignore. On that day, America will turn on its heels and say, "Who are you? Why are you here?" And we will say, "We are the children of America and we have come to take back our country."
This has been our collective experience. Living in an age of great dichotomies of poverty and wealth, of comfort and suffering. A global society of winners and losers. We come from both sides of this imaginary line - this line separating Us and Them. We are here in Georgia not to "cross this line"...but to abolish it.
*There were student groups at Ft. Benning from at least 42 states and at least 232 colleges and universities.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2000
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited