Protestors Urge:
‘Close School Of Assassins!’

FT. BENNING, Ga.

	District 6 Pres. John Lambiase (at right) with District 6 Political Action Co-Chair John Thompson at the rally. Also attending were Thompson’s teen-aged son Ian and Field Org. Mary McGinn; at rear are labor singers Pete Seeger and Anne Feeney. Lambiase was a rally speaker.

Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the slaughter of six Jesuit priests at the hands of U.S. Army School of the Americas graduates, many thousands from around the country protested outside the military training camp here Nov. 20-21 in the largest demonstration to date against a school regarded as a training ground for assassins and dictators.

Groups representing labor, students, war veterans and a diversity of faiths joined actor Martin Sheen in calling for the school’s closure.

"We do not want this school of war," said Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a founder of the nine-year-old movement to close the School of the Americas (SOA). "It can only be closed. It cannot be changed."

UNIONS CALL FOR CLOSING

UE called for the school’s closure at its national convention in late August; the AFL-CIO followed suit a few weeks later. The UE resolution cites the prominent role of SOA graduates in the assassination of union leaders and massacres of workers and peasants.

UE Genl. Vice Pres. John Lambiase, a rally speaker, described closure of the School of the Americas as a trade union issue. "The victims of the SOA are the poor, the unions, the workers. The victims of the SOA are also the American working class."

The UE leader explained that the suppression of free unions in Latin America encourages the loss of jobs in the U.S. and the general lowering of living standards. "There can be no free or fair trade without the free association of working people, without the right to organize," Lambiase said.

UE News - 12/99