Workers Rally to Shut Down School of Americas

by James Parks, Nov 25, 2009

Hundreds of union members joined religious and human rights activists in a vigil and rally outside the gates of the School of the Americas (SOA) last weekend to demand that it be closed.

Graduates of the school, operated by the U.S. Department of Defense at Fort Benning, Ga., have been linked to human rights violations and suppression of popular movements in the Americas, according to the activist group SOA Watch.

Many targets of assassination and torture in Latin America are trade unionists. More union members are killed each year in Latin America than in the rest of the world combined, primarily due to extreme anti-worker violence in Colombia, according to the International Trade Union Confederation.

Union members, young activists and religious groups joined in a labor caucus Nov. 22 and heard Colombian trade union members describe the dangerous conditions they live under daily. When 14 Colombian unionists were in the United States receiving training through the AFL-CIO over the past two months, four of their union colleagues back home were killed.

The caucus, which included members of the UAW, AFSCME, AFT, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, United Steelworkers and Carpenters, also heard from Honduran workers who condemned the recent coup that stripped democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya of his office. The military coup was led by SOA graduates in Honduras, says SOA Watch.

UAW Vice President Bob King said:

The continued economic crisis in our hemisphere and the continued assassinations of trade union and community activists in Colombia and throughout Latin America will only end when there is solidarity.  As Martin Luther King often said, we need to “break the silence so that we work together to end the violence and end the poverty.” Union solidarity is critical to breaking the silence, ending the murders and creating justice.  Closing the School of the Americas is part of our work.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said scheduled elections in Honduras could not be fair “with an illegitimate government in power.” Added Trumka:

The violent and coercive repression of political opposition to the de facto coup regime, including trade unionists, has continued. At least 12 trade unionists have died in the violence since June 28. National and international human rights organizations report ongoing human rights violations committed by state security forces, including killings, severe beatings, sexual violence, the imprisonment and torture of activists, as well as the arrest and detention of President Zelaya’s supporters.

The school has trained more than 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics, SOA Watch says.  

Recently, opponents of the SOA won a victory when a joint House and Senate conference committee agreed to include language in the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill that requires the Pentagon to release names of the graduates of the School of the Americas to the public. The Pentagon had classified the names after the continued involvement of SOA attendees in human rights abuses became public.

Also last weekend, members of the labor caucus joined a march and rally at a local Publix supermarket in Columbus, Ga., in support of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who are trying to get the grocery chain to agree to increase the pay and ensure better working conditions for workers who harvest most of the nation’s tomato crop.

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