I touched down at Dulles airport last night at midnight, 40 minutes after a 2-hour delay at Raleigh-Durham. Short my wallet and several hours of sleep, and facing a complicated question from my immediate pals: "How was the SOA protest?"
Erhem. Uhm, complicated. I walked into a scene that made me understand a couple of things pretty quickly:
* Why I was hearing from a variety of folks of Color who attend the School of the Americas (/WHINESEC) protest that it's very alienating, even by majority-white lefty gathering standards.
* Exactly what kind of an uphill battle my pal in the anti-oppression working group has taken on.
Don't get me wrong, it's really exciting that 5-10,000 people want the School of the Americas shut down. I'm so right there with them. It's just a little tough for me to understand, given the origins and entire philosophy that brought the SOA into existence, that it would be such a fight to get the mostly white audience to understand the connections to racism. Yipes.
There's very little longer-term interaction with the location of Columbus, Georgia, who has played host to the SOA protest for fourteen years. There are vegetarian menus at some of the local restaurants, and people vending food all along the protest courseway - the entrance to Fort Benning. The town is friendly, but small and it's economy is very clearly tied to the Fort. All the local billboards proclaim that it's OK if you have bad credit, they want to talk to you nonetheless. If you want military surplus, financing, used cars, bail bonds, and welcoming restaurant staff, you've come to the right place. Given this scenario, perhaps it's understandable that there's a cultural canyon from the mostly white, Jesuit university students, faculty, and community and the folks who live year-round in Columbus.
Given the number of bail bonds proprieters in town, I was struck by how watching relatively priviledged mostly white kids 'cross the line' to be dragged off to minimum-security prison for up to 6 months and five thousand dollars worth of fines, a tactic that has done little to actually stop the training of torturers in the course of 14 years, might seem absurd to local people. But I'm not all that sure - I should've spoken with people more directly myself. For the most part, and one of the few people with a rental car I was volunteering to schlep people all over town. I appreciate that people are living out their principles. I always appreciate that. But the apparatus and performance that creates it, that was harder for me to deal with. The invisibility of privilege, the lack of connection between, perhaps, the School of the Americas and torturous practices within U.S. prisons. Heck, people are being carted off to jail, it's not that hard to make the logical leap, that might make this all a little more relevant.
On the good side, it was the biggest gathering of its kind. The procession and liturgical reading of the names of victims from various SOA graduates is undeniably powerful and respectful memorial to those who have died at the hands of this institution. I just also want to know what it will take to get it to stop, for real.
My dear pal is working her hiney off to highlight these issues, as she's been a part of the SOA Watch community for a long time. I honor her fortitude and will try to support her as best I can; I just hope there are folks within her community who will do the same.
There was a 'gun and knife' show happening in the main convention center, just feet from the protest center. Cover was $7, which dissuaded us from checking it out on principle.
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By 3:00pm we were on the road, I drove us from Columbus, Georgia to just outside of Greenville, South Carolina. I have to stop and comment briefly on the ubiquity of waffles in the South...it is truly impressive! I've never seen so many various houses of Waffle, local and chain, in my life. By the time I hand over the driving, I've realized that my wallet is back in Georgia.
A brief dinner and we're on the road - being falsely led to believe we're near Raleigh/Durham. Tamara and I are dropped at the car rental counter by 10:30pm, off to get hopelessly lost in Chapel Hill, eventually finding our host, who has graciously prepared an air mattress, chips, salsa, tea, and her company. My old pal Brooke Dubose, whom I met in the Bay Area when she was working for Global Exchange - it was great to see her. We're up and out by 9:30 for a meeting with a student leader at Duke by 10, and at a protest by 11:30. North Carolina is beautiful, and one of these days I'll plonk down for a digital camera and blog some of these places so you'll see what I mean. Trees that change color are not overrated. Things I didn't understand until recently.
The protest was sparsely attended, but students had spent all night making brilliant T-shirts highlighting both the abuse of worker's rights and health conditions at their privatized dining facility. On one side was a rat (who became a mascot for obviously stomach-turning reasons) with fur in the shape of a corporate logo - on the back it proclaimed, "¡Adios, ratones!" I love it.
This is as much as I have time/brain cells to report, and I'm off for Connecticut on Thursday. How many states is that? How long have I been here? I'll draw a map and scan it at some point.
Signing off from D.C.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
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