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Regional
Legislative Update
- From February legislative Lobby Days,
Washington D.C.
Legislative Working Plan for SOAW Great Lakes Region
There are 78 cosponsors (6 are Republicans.) Of those 78, 10 are
from Illinois!! That means we got our cosponsors from the last
bill to sign on as introducing cosponsors.
Currently our region is known to have 25 co-sponsors for SOAW BILL.
Co sponsors: 4 MN; 2 WI; 3 MI; 10 IL; 1 IN; 5 OH = 25
Plan to increase this by June: 1 WI, Gwen Moore; 2 IN who?; 2 IL,
Melissa Bean and one other.
We will
1) meet each of our REPs in their district offices
during District Work Periods
2) commit to a regional call in day the MONDAY after
the Bill has a number
designated (probably mid March)
3) mentor/do outreach for people in districts to get
more active.
4) encourage Congress. staffers to connect with their
friends in other offices to
support our Bill.- report back to
each other after the Memorial day recess.
2007
Information
Fourteen of the sixteen
defendants have reported to prison on March
21st and April 17th. Tina
Busch-Nema, Don
Coleman, Valerie
Fillenwarth, Martina
Leforce, Julienne
Oldfield, Sheila
Salmon, Nathan Slater
and Mike
Vosburg-Casey
will be reporting to prison on Tuesday April 17th. Melissa
Helman, Cathy Webster, Alice
Gerard, Philip Gates, Joshua
Harris and Graymon Ward reported
to prison on Wednesday, March 21. Katherine
Whitney Ray,
17 years old, was sentenced to one year of probation and 50 hours of
community service and Margaret
Bryant-Gainer was released after serving 71 days in Muscogee
County
Jail after refusing to post bail on November 19, 2006.
“You do
not stand alone; we will walk with you.”
Court Statements from IL Prisoners of Conscience
Liz Deligio, Chicago IL
At
the annual School of the Americas (SOA) protest and vigil at Ft.
Benning, Ga., Nov. 21, 2004, the author and 14 others, including two
minors, crossed the line onto SOA property to oppose the U.S. military
training of Latin American assassination and torture squads that takes
place there. She attended her first annual vigil just after Sept. 11,
2001. She was charged with criminal trespass and sentenced to 90 days
in federal prison with a $500 fine. The following is her testimony at
the trial. SOA was renamed “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation” (WHINSEC) in 2001, but is still popularly known as SOA.
“If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a
resounding gong or clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have faith so as
to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away
everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do
not have love, I gain nothing.” (Corinthians, 13:1-3)
Your honor, I recognize this is not the language of the court and there
would be those who would say I am a fool to use these words here today.
But I have not come here to be clever but to be faithful, so as I speak
here today may I be rooted in this love.
On Nov. 21 I handed over my body to the military officials of Ft.
Benning. I crossed a line that this court and the military wishes to
name a line of property, of law. I stand before you charged with
criminal trespass because I stood on military property and prayed for
the countless lives lost and for the humanity each soldier must
sacrifice in their own hearts to be these forces of death.
Your honor, if this is what constitutes criminal trespass — prayer and
witness — then I will proudly bear the label of criminal and I will
honorably go to prison. However I wonder if this truly represents the
forces at play, the forces that bring all of us together here today. In
crossing onto military property I did not simply trespass, I ended the
silence that enshrouds practices of assassinations, kidnappings,
torture and death. I challenged the lie that democracy and human rights
take root and flourish when the seeds are bullets and the soil is
innocent human life. And I upheld my duty as a citizen of this country
to hold the government and my own tax dollars accountable for their
impact on my fellow human beings, wherever they may live.
I do not believe we are gathered here today to ensure the protection of
government property — prayer and witness does not threaten the
integrity of physical property. Prayer and witness challenge the veil
we continuously wish to draw between what we do and its lived
consequences. Your honor, this courtroom today is filled with the
presence of the thousands who have died and suffered as a direct result
of the graduates of the School of the Americas. They are here because I
am here, because you are here, because our very humanity is bound up in
each other — wherever there is one hungry, dying, exploited, so are we.
So let us not play at charges of property. We are gathered together
today for something much bigger than the human laws which dictate
rights of space. You are protecting much more than a piece of land.
This court, the military, and the government are protecting egregious
abuses of power. Power without accountability is mere brute force, and
where is the wisdom or honor in protecting that?
Your honor, I claim no gifts of prophecy, nor the ability to comprehend
all mysteries, but one does not have to be a prophet or a seer to look
at the history or likely future of the School of the Americas and feel
both shame and fear. We may try to abstract these deaths, this
suffering, call them collateral damage, rebels, insurgency but
somewhere someone bends over a grave or kneels to pray for the missing
and wonders why no one ever seems to care. I am here then to care, to
love, with my body, mind and soul and to offer my freedom for the
chance that the prayers, anguish, and suffering caused directly by the
School may finally come to a close, may be finished.
Liz Deligio is a theology student and SOA Watch activist from Chicago.
Ron
Durham, Chicago IL
I would like to say first of all that I feel
privileged to have heard
some of my co-defendants speak so eloquently about their reasons for
being here. They have all spoke about the importance of closing the
School of the Americas and I believe that they are truly voices in the
wilderness of this courtroom. I feel that my action at Fort Benning in
November was necessary. It was something I had to do. Similarly, I feel
that it is necessary for
me to be here today to speak truth to power. Because it is necessary, I
am happy to be here, on my 24th birthday.
I believe my action at Fort Benning in November speaks louder than any
words I could use here today. But I would like to say that I committed
my act of peaceful civil resistance at Fort Benning because I believe,
as did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that noncooperation with evil is as
important as cooperation with good. And the School of the Americas is
certainly an evil institution. My action may have been illegal but the
training that goes on there is immoral.
By being in the courtroom yesterday and today, I am reminded that
everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal. And I'm sure that
there were people in Germany at the time of Hitler like those found in
our so-called "Justice System" today. People who simply enforce the
rules of the empire--even to the point of defending the violence of the
government.
Mr. Faircloth, yesterday you mentioned that the Bible plays a role in
court proceedings. (at this point the judge interrupted me but I
ignored him...he had said enough already.) Those of us who oppose this
terrorist training school, the SOA, are peacemakers. Remember the Bible
says, "Blessed are the peacemakers." It seems to me that those who
prosecute and convict the peacemakers must be ignorant of the meaning
of that Biblical statement.
I would like to say that my peaceful direct action at Fort Benning was
motivated by the compassion I feel for my sisters and brothers in Latin
America, especially those who met their deaths at the hands of SOA
graduates.
On this day, I would also like to honestly express compassion for those
among us, for my brothers and sisters, who enforce unjust laws and
comply with injustice. Today, January 25th, I mourn what seems to be
their spiritual death.
Finally, I would like to say that for all those who have gone before us
in this struggle, for all those with whom we stand in solidarity, for
all those who will follow us in this struggle and for our spirit of
resistance to injustice...PRESENTE."
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