COLUMBUS, Ga. – A woman gave empty-handed Weinberg freshman Mark Crain a white, handmade wooden cross to hold. That was when he finally felt he belonged.
On Friday, he and 13 other Northwestern students left campus and drove 16 hours to Columbus, Ga. They left to join 20,000 protesting the School of the Americas, a military training camp based there.
Most of the 40,000 hands here held crosses like Crain. They raised them in hopes of closing the SOA, a military training school that protesters say is a training camp for Latin American assassins. The American government calls it a training camp for Latin American soldiers, aimed to spread democratic values to Latin America. Since it opened in 1946 in Panama, the school has trained more than 61,000 soldiers.
For Crain, going to the protest meant skipping out on his academic responsibilities. One of four freshmen with the NU group, he spent most of the trip to Georgia with his headphones planted firmly over his ears and the book “Left Coast City” in his lap. He had a seven-page paper on the book due Tuesday, as well as a Diversity of Life test.
And Monday, the day the bus returned to Chicago, he had another essay due.
“My grades are important, but I just think this cause is greater than the first-quarter grade I get in Diversity of Life,” he said with a shrug.
As the bus passed through Indiana, Crain took a break from his reading and tilted his head, as if to contemplate the next two days and what they will bring. “I think it will be hard to come away disappointed.”
The SOA protest, held every November, marks the anniversary of the assassination of a young 14-year-old, her mother and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989. Many of the 26 Salvadoran army officers responsible for these assassinations were trained at the SOA.
In 2001, the school changed its name to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Protesters say this name change was “just to take the attention off of it.”
This year’s protest is particularly important – a bill to close the school will come before Congress this summer.
That’s why Crain made the journey. It has been one that the Detroit native has been meaning to make since his junior year in high school.
Through the events, he and his fellow classmates found new meaning. In their trip, they found a like-minded community, a chance to quell their curiosity and the inspiration to redefine the purpose of future protests back at NU.
SKIPPING FOR PEACE
The speakers all seemed to share the same message: Use peaceful protest to close the SOA.
After each declaration of nonviolence and talk of “peace and love,” Medill junior Nick Burt shook his head and looked down at the ground.
While the other NU students who took the bus to Columbus are a part of student advocacy group Peace Project, Burt came solely out of “curiosity.”
Protesting is in Burt’s blood. In his tenure at NU he has attended half a dozen anti-war rallies in Chicago, including emergency demonstrations at the Daley Plaza both when the U.S. bombed Fallujah in Iraq and when the Abu Ghraib photos were discovered. Burt said he was at a protest every week during Spring Quarter of his freshman year.
But something’s different about this one.
“I’m noticeably out of place,” he said.
No protesters were running around screaming. There was no fighting with the police, no real police interaction in general, unless the smiling policewoman taking pictures of the protesters counts – and “they don’t get to see such a cosmopolitan bunch of people but once a year,” said Chris Warren, a Weinberg sophomore.
The protesters kept their emergency contact information scrawled on their arms in permanent marker or pen, just in case something violent happened. But nothing did.
The only arrests police made were planned The 40-or-so who crossed the fence leading to the military camp’s entryway consciously prepared for the inevitable time in jail days, if not months, ago.
No, these protesters were nice. As each day’s events draw to a close, there are reminders about the SOA protest’s legacy of leaving the place cleaner than they found it. It evokes the “love your oppressors” theme, as Burt says.
“I scowl when people say ‘peace,'” he added. “It doesn’t work.”
As he jerks his head to the side, trying to push his hair out of his eye, he re-examines his statement, as fellow protesters – the hippie kind – look on.
“It’s not that I’m anti-peace – it’s a good tactic to use,” he admits. “But not one that you should always use.”
The folksy tune “Skip for Peace in the Middle East” comes on. Burt shoots a look at several elderly men and women conspicuously dressed in traditional “hippie” garb.
“Skipping around doesn’t do anything.”
A PULSE THAT WON’T DIE
Saturday night – students pack the Columbus Conference Center in the middle of the downtown district. There are no Columbus residents there. Maybe it’s always this vacant. Maybe they’re avoiding the exodus of protesters.
There is a direct action meeting for those who plan to cross the fence on Sunday. There also is a meeting focusing on grassroots movements joining together.
“Our Movements United: We Can Win,” chants the speakers panel.
The mood of the entire night evokes the panel’s optimistic message. Positive energy is swirling around the conference center, and by 9 p.m. the invigorated students from around the country seem unable to hold it inside.
A drum circle erupts. As SESP senior Sujata Shyam and Weinberg senior Becky Miller leave the speaker’s panel, the pounding and cheering is impossible to ignore. It draws everyone in.
“I like to be in the middle of it, but I don’t like to participate,” Shyam said, and Miller nodded in agreement.
Five minutes later both chanted and clapped.
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people because the power of the people don’t stop!”
“This is quintessential protest culture,” Shyam, a second-time attendee of the SOA protest, said with a smile. Looking around the crowd of diverse, impassioned students, it’s difficult to find a face without a smile.
Even as the protesters filter out of the center and load up the buses to their hotels to rest up for the vigil Sunday, the drumming continues. The pulse won’t die.
As the bus turns back toward the Days Inn where the NU students are spending the night, Miller begins to doubt in the na
