Rep. Peter King’s office in Massapequa. If you can’t make it to big vigil at Fort Benning, please try to attend this local protest.

From SOAW Long Island:
This Friday, November 16th from 4:30-6:00 p.m. - THE
ANNUAL LOCAL PROTEST against the School of
Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute For Security
Cooperation takes place in front of the
office of Rep. Peter King’s office in Massapequa Park,
1003 Park Blvd., just north of the train.

This is the weekend when the annual SOA Watch vigil
takes place in Fort Benning, Georgia. The SOA/WHISC is
an institution long associated with human rights
abuses. So many of the Latin American soldiers who
have graduated from this “school” have committed
numerous atrocoties against the civilians in their
native countries. Many who have worked for labor &
human rights in Latin American nations have been
tortured & murdered by graduates of the SOA.

REP. PETER KING IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST SUPPORTERS OF
THE SOA AND THE ONLY NY REPRESENTATIVE WHO HAS NOT
SIGNED ON TO CLOSE THE SOA!! Call King’s office (516)
541-4225 and urge him to sign on to HR 1217, “The
Latin America Military Training Review Act of 2005.”
Then, come join us in Massapequa!

“No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.” - Margaret Mead

Contact Andy at (201) 207-1493–right now!–if you are interested in getting a ride to the annual Vigil and nonviolent direct action (Nov. 16-18) at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, to close the School of the Americas.

NYC SOA Watch organizes a yearly trip to bring people of conscience to the gates of Fort Benning to join with tens of thousands in a solemn Vigil to remember the victims of the “School of Assassins” and to call for the SOA’s immediate closure.

Transportation will leave from New York City on Friday, November 16, and return on Monday, November 19. Check out SOAW.org for the weekend’s schedule of events and other info.

On November 4, SOA graduate General Otto Perez Molina lost the presidential election in Guatemala to centrist candidate Alvaro Colom. Perez Molina was chief of Guatemala’s G-2 military intelligence when the staff was implicated in the assassination of Judge Edgar Ramiro Elias Ogaldez. According to acclaimed Guatemalan American writer Francisco Goldman’s new book, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?, Perez Molina was also involved in the 1998 murder of beloved Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was bludgeoned to death two days after presenting a truth commission about the country’s brutal 36-year civil war. The report cited that most of the 200,000 deaths from the war were at the hands of the Guatemalan Army. (In 2001, SOA graduate Col. Lima Estrada was convicted for the murder, along with two other army officers and a priest.)

Colom carried many rural and Maya voters to defeat the general. Mayans suffered the worst losses in the civil war.