And They Will Come: School of the Americas Protest Gains Momentum

By Gale Greenlee

Vol. 21, No. 4, Winter 1999 pp. 1, 6-7

In the beginning, only a faithful few gathered outside the gates of the Fort Benning military base to protest violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by graduates of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). That’s a far cry from the thousands of demonstrators who descended on the small town of Columbus, Georgia, last November to call for the closing of the school known by many as “Escuela de Asesinos” or “School of Assassins.” Last year, an estimated 12,000 demonstrators turned out for the vigil-up from 7,000 in 1998-and 4,408 crossed the line onto the military base, simultaneously risking arrest and almost doubling the number that marched onto the property in solemn protest the previous year.

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The much-talked about annual vigil started in 1990, following the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador; a United Nations Truth Commission found that nineteen of the twenty-six soldiers involved in the “execution style” murders graduated from the school. In ten years, the protest has developed into a full-blown grassroots movement attracting members of faith communities, labor leaders, and student activists, and gaining national media attention, as well as allies in Hollywood and on Capitol Hill. This has left SOA to denounce allegations of unscrupulous teachings of counterinsurgency, commando, and torture tactics.

Originally designated the Latin American Training Center-Division, the SOA was founded in 1946 at Fort Armador in Panama. According to SOA’s web site, during the Kennedy administration, the school’s named changed “to more accurately reflect its hemispheric orientation.” Under provisions of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty, the school moved to Fort Benning in 1984. Early on, SOA adopted a Cold War stance, asserting its role as protector of democracy throughout Latin America.

“The purpose of the School is to make sure students learn about democratic principles,” says SOA Public Affairs Officer Nicolas Britto.

But, as Maryknoll priest and Vietnam veteran Father Roy Bourgeois insists, “You do not teach democracy through the barrel of a gun.” Bourgeois, who lived in Bolivia for five years, founded and co-directs SOA Watch (see its web site at: www.soaw.org), the nonprofit organization that sponsors the annual demonstration. Along with other SOA foes, he asserts that the school teaches counter-insurgency, military intelligence, anti-narcotics operations, and torture-at the expense of the poor and U.S. taxpayers.

“Saying we teach those things is ridiculous,” states Britto, who maintains that no one has provided any evidence of wrongdoing.

“It’s not a complicated issue. It’s about men with guns. It’s about bullies. It’s about violence,” says Bourgeois, who has spent a total of four years in prison for his protest activities. “This SOA gives the Army a black eye. It brings shame upon the armed forces; it’s identified with bullies.”

With an annual enrollment of approximately 1,000 students, SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers and military personnel from 22 Latin American countries and the United States. Among its most “distinguished” alumni are Argentina’s Leopoldo Galtieri, Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer Suarez, Roberto D’Aubission, “father” of El Salvador’s notorious death squads, and Panama’s General Manuel Noreiga, who is now in a U.S. prison on drug charges.

Yet despite this infamous “who’s who” list, the Army repeatedly denies any wrongdoing, and as the school’s commandant, Col. Glenn Weidner said in an interview on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” the Army maintains that “less than one percent of those graduates have ever been linked to human rights abuses.”

While that figure may seem almost insignificant, SOA must deal with the gruesome realities obscured by the numbers. In 1993, a U.N. panel implicated two SOA graduates, out of three Salvadoran officers who were involved in the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Later in 1980, four Americans church workers-including two nuns who were friends of Bourgeois–were raped and killed. Again, SOA graduates were involved, according to the panel. The U.N. Truth Commission on El Salvador also implicated SOA graduates in the 1981 El Mozote massacre, which left nearly 1,000 villagers dead, and only one survivor.

Further supporting SOA Watch’s accusations, a U.S. Intelligence Oversight Board released a report in September 1996 referring to seven training manuals used at SOA, which outlined methods of execution, torture, and intimidation. According to Britto, “Someone brought in some books from outside the institution.” Britto did acknowledge

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there were some portions of the manuals that were not in line with Army policies and procedures.

Still, SOA’s opponents relish each small victory, in an effort to gather enough momentum to see the school closed. Last July, the House voted 230-197 to cut almost $2 million of the school’s $4.5 million budget, mainly funds used to bring trainees to the school. The vote, which marked the first time the Army has lost in five votes since 1993, later suffered a blow in a conference committee. According to SOA Watch Co-Director Carol Richardson, there are “varying figures” about what it costs to run the school, and according to 1994 Pentagon lobbying materials, which supported the school, the figure is closer to $18 million. Despite the loss, SOA Watch remains hopeful. “We feel pretty positive,” Richardson said, “because the fact remains that there were 230 people who voted to cut funding in the House. It was essentially some manipulation that cut the vote.”

Currently, companion bills H.R. 732, introduced by Representative Moakley (D-Mass.) and S 873, introduced by Senator Durbin (D-Ill.) are still pending in Congress, and may come to a vote as early as the summer. In an attempt to gain further legislative support, SOA Watch prepares for its April event, Fast 2000, a juice-only fast to close SOA, as well as major lobbying efforts. SOA Watch continues to join forces with other organizations, such as AFL-CIO, NAACP and SCLC, which have all passed resolutions calling for the school’s closure, and churches such as the predominately-black Atlanta-based Iconium Baptist Church, whose pastor, the Reverend Tim McDonald, sees a definite parallel to issues of poverty and civil rights in the United States.

Meanwhile, despite statements by Army Secretary Caldera, which alluded to potential changes at the school-such as a new location, different name or student reconfiguration-SOA continues to declare its mission to “promote democratic values and respect for human rights.” In fact, the school plans to host a “Human Rights Week” in February. For Bourgeois and SOA Watch supporters, any changes would be “cosmetic.” “There’s so much horror, bloodshed, torture and rape connected to this school. So it cannot be reformed, it can only be closed,” he said. “We’re going for the big enchilada; we want SOA closed down. We’re not going away.”

Like other anti-SOA activists, Kathryn Temple, of Asheville, North Carolina, one of sixty-five people arrested during last year’s protest, sees the school “in the context of international domination-the U.S. supporting the needs and wants of lots of multinational organizations.” Acknowledging that many of the 31 million Latinos living in the United States fled their homelands seeking refuge from militaristic regimes may cause many Americans to question the violence and oppression in Latin America. Ultimately, with the anti-SOA movement growing, the U.S. must examine not only its hostile immigration policies but its role in supporting repressive governments.

As Bourgeois explains, “This issue must be put in the context of U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, which we want changed dramatically. Foreign policy should be built on helping to relieve the suffering of people. Rather than healing, it’s causing suffering.”

Gale Greenlee is a writer and editor at the Carolina Peacemaker in Greensboro, North Carolina. She served as a training and technical assistance coordinator for the Corporation for National Service’s LEARNS program at the Southern Regional Council until October 1999

When Public Means Private: School Vouchers

By Gale Greenlee

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, pp. 12-13, 21

As the presidential race 2000 heats up, Democrats and Republicans take their places at opposite ends of the political totem pole to debate issues such as campaign finance reform, the Confederate flag, and police brutality. On the education front, no issue is more controversial than school vouchers. Voucher advocates, generally conservatives, plug school vouchers-which are often promoted as “school choice” or “opportunity scholarships”–as the cure-all for a beleaguered and much maligned public educational system. Detractors, generally progressive, teacher unions, minorities and many high profile organizations (such as the ACLU, the NAACP and the National Education Association), have publicly denounced such schemes as poorly disguised attempts by the right wing to subsidize religious schools, push a conservative political agenda and, in the process, dismantle public education as we know it.

Currently, only three programs–in Milwaukee, Cleveland and the state of Florida–use tax dollars to fund students’ education at private schools. Though the voucher movement is growing, it faces many obstacles and opponents.

On the national level, the voucher debate has gained widespread attention due to recent court battles. In 1998, Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court upheld Milwaukee’s voucher program. Last year, on December 13, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a Vermont case, in which parents wanted state money to subsidize their children’s education at parochial schools. One week later, a federal judge in Ohio declared Cleveland’s four-year-old voucher program unconstitutional, stating that it violates the separation of church and state; that case is likely to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. More recently, on March 14, Florida State Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith Jr., declared Florida’s school voucher program unconstitutional. The state plans to appeal that decision.

“Voucher programs have become prevalent nationwide,” says Steve Benen, spokesperson for Americans United for Separation of Church and State (www.au.org), a Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty watchdog.

Benen notes that interest in vouchers is spreading throughout the South, as states such as Alabama and Georgia consider programs, and others like Virginia and Kentucky debate giving tax credits to parents who send their kids to private schools. Additionally, Louisiana, which has a strong pro-voucher lobby within the Catholic Church, has repeatedly attempted to pass voucher legislation, albeit unsuccessfully. Perhaps the most important move occurred in June 1999 when Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed into law the nation’s first statewide school voucher program. Following Judge Smith’s ruling, the program will not

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continue next year, but the debate certainly will.

Under Florida’s plan, all public schools would be graded “A” to “F,” and students attending failing schools would be given the option of enrolling in another school, including religious schools-at the expense of tax payers. The plan faced stiff opposition, from the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as local and statewide PTAs.

In Escambia County, located in the panhandle approximately one hour from of Mobile, Ala., seven of the county’s thirty-eight elementary schools and two of its nine middle schools were given an “F” rating for the 1998-99 school year.

Barbara Frye, spokesperson for Florida’s Escambia County Schools, says the A+ plan was based on a fallacy. “The fallacy is that the children are not ‘trapped’ and we will also maintain that the schools aren’t failing,” she says.

She explains that schools are ranked based on the average score of fourth graders on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT). She argues that using an average score, rather than measuring individual student progress, skews the results and obscures the fact that “You can have many students not learning, sitting in an ‘A’ school.” She also criticizes the plan for not giving vouchers to low-achieving students, but rather to students who simply live in a district with a “failing” school. Furthermore, since the voucher schools are private, they are not required to adhere the same standards and regulations as public schools and therefore aren’t accountable to taxpayers. “It doesn’t make sense,” Frye says.

Regardless of the judicial challenges to Florida’s plan, it seems likely that Governor Jeb Bush’s brother and presidential hopeful George W., would, if elected, promote vouchers on a national level. In fact, the February 29 edition of the New York Times quoted the Texas governor as calling “portable” federal education dollars.

The South is also a key force in the school choice debate, not only because many conservatives live in the Bible Belt, but also because two organizations that fund private vouchers have roots in the region: Children First/CEO America Foundation and the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF).

CEO America, based in Bentonville, Ark. was started in 1992 and now operates more than 70 programs across the country. Its website clearly states its mission is “to promote parental choice in education through private

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tuition grants and tax-funded options.”

“We use these programs to demonstrate how these public policies could look,” says CEO America President Fritz Steiger. He says the organization proudly considers itself a “parent advocacy organization” that helps parents “understand how school choice works and how it helps them.”

Since 1992, the organization has given more than $1 million in scholarship money to students in Atlanta and Little Rock, more than $300,000 to ones in Chattanooga, almost $560,000 to ones in Mississippi and more than $8 million to programs in San Antonio, Texas.

Targeting low-income children, CSF is a two-year-old $100 million foundation underwritten by Republican fundraiser and venture capitalist Ted Forstmann, and CEO America board member and Wal-Mart heir, John Walton. Incidentally, Walton is also founder of School Futures Research Foundation, which manages charter schools in California, and he is a director of a for-profit corporation that also manages charter and public schools. CSF, which offers opportunity scholarships to disadvantaged kids, initially identified 40 partner cities, 15 of which are in the South-including Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, Savannah, Georgia, and Jackson, Mississippi. After its first year, CSF expanded its program nationwide to help needy low-income children.

People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org) argues that the two organizations work hand-in-hand; while CSF strives to create a grassroots demand for vouchers, CEO America lobbies for voucher legislation, and then entrepreneurs eagerly await the opportunity to “supply the new privatized education system.” Since privately funded programs don’t use public money, it’s difficult to criticize CSF’s efforts, which are often publicized as mere philanthropy.

If anything, the voucher movement has amassed a curious mix of conservatives and people of color advocating for better educational opportunities. In fact CSF’s national board of advisors includes Dorothy I. Height, chair and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women, as well as Martin Luther King III and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

Still, vouchers are not without critics. Governors of some Southern states, like Mississippi and North Carolina, remain staunch voucher opponents. In February, while giving his 7th Annual State of American Education address in Durham, N.C., U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley called for a renewed fight against voucher programs, saying they “divert us from the real challenge of lifting up all of our children.” Presidential hopeful Vice President Al Gore has also spoken out against vouchers, calling them a “big and historic mistake” that drains much needed funds from public schools.

A prime example of the loss of funds is Edgewood, Texas, part of the San Antonio school district. Backed by CEO America, the Horizon voucher project diverted more than $4.5 million from public schools as roughly 800 students accepted vouchers, worth up to $4,000; the district lost $5,800 in public funds for each student who left. According to Steiger, the project is a success in that it gives public schools competition and an impetus to reform.

As Benen notes, “Their [CEO’s] program is perfectly legal because it’s doesn’t use government funds. Still, I find it troubling that these ‘philanthropists’ have enormous funds to put into education but are using it in ways that I feel are counterproductive.”

Donna Fowler, spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) agrees. “It’s hard to be opposed to them [CEO America] because it’s private money,” she says. “But we have to look at what the effects are over time, and we’re seeing that the effects are minimal at best, and harmful in some cases.”

The jury is still out concerning whether voucher programs can actually raise student achievement. According to AFT, an evaluation of the Milwaukee program by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor John Witte found no difference in achievement levels for voucher students versus public school students. Still, that same data was later re-analyzed by pro-voucher advocates, and not suprisingly, showed that voucher students outperformed public school students in math and reading.

Whatever the case, voucher advocates and public school supporters continue to go toe to toe. For many Southern states with rural communities that lack private schools, public school is the only viable option. But for those with increasing numbers of charter schools, as well as private schools, publicly funded school voucher programs remain will continue fuel debate in the year 2000.

Gale Greenlee is a writer and editor at the Carolina Peacemaker in Greensboro, North Carolina. She served as a training and technical assistance coordinator for the Corporation for National Service’s LEARNS program at the Southern Regional Council until October 1999.