Ways We Resist War Conference

On Friday, May 5, and Saturday, May 6, I attended
a conference entitled “Ways We Resist War” at the
University Friends Meeting House in Seattle. The
conference was presented by the Nonviolent Action
Community of Cascadia (NACC), in conjunction with
the Spring meeting of the National War Tax
Resistance Coordinating Committee.

The conference included a variety of panel
discussions and individual presentations, on
subjects including counter-recruitment, campus
organizing, war tax resistance, building
nonviolent alternatives, civil disobedience and
Plowshares actions, and veterans organizing for
peace. For me, the highlights of the conference
were definitely the talk Father Roy Bourgeois gave
on Friday evening, and the presentation of Sister
Jackie Hudson on Saturday afternoon.

Father Roy is the founder of SOA Watch, an
organization founded to watch and report on the
activities of the School of the Americas at Fort
Benning, Georgia, and to work for the closing of
the SOA. For those of you who don't know, SOA,
also known as School of Assassins, can only be
described as a training center for terrorists.
SOA graduates have been involved in the
kidnapping, rape, torture, and massacre of
hundreds of thousand of civilians in Latin
America, and in the assassination of religious
leaders like Archbishop Oscar Romero of El
Salvador. In addition, many Latin American
dictators, including Manual Noriega, were trained
at the SOA. (The name of the SOA was recently
changed to The Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation, often abbreviated WHISC or
WHINSEC.)

I was very impressed by Father Roy. He speaks
very calmly and quietly, yet with obvious passion
for his mission. You can't help but seeing that
he cares very deeply for the victims of the SOA,
and he truly feels their pain. Father Roy has
been involved in a number of civil disobedience
actions to call attention to the SOA. In his talk
at the conference, he spoke of his first action.
He and two others bought military uniforms, and
entered the SOA as officers. They took with them
a very loud boombox and a tape of Archbishop Oscar
Romero's last sermon. They hid out until it was
dark, then climbed a tree and played the tape.
The Military Police soon showed up with guns and
spotlights, and ordered them to climb down from
the tree, or they would be shot down. They did
climb down, but left the boombox in the tree,
playing the tape in an endless loop. He spent
time in prison for this action and for others.

I was also very impressed by the presentation of
Sister Jackie Hudson. Sister Jackie has also been
involved in nonviolent civil disobedience actions.
On October 6, 2002, Sister Jackie and two other
Dominican nuns cut the chain on the fence
surrounding silo N-8, which contains a Minuteman
III missile armed with a 300 kiloton nuclear
warhead. They poured their own blood on the lid
of the silo in the form of the cross, hammered on
the lid, and prayed until they were arrested.
Sister Jackie showed a video, entitled
“Conviction”, telling the story of this action.
Watching the video, it was clear that all three
sisters are very serious about working for the
elimination of nuclear weapons in the world.

I admire Father Roy and Sister Jackie for their
dedication to peace, for their willingness to take
actions to call attention to the issues of the SOA
and nuclear weapons knowing they could be arrested
and imprisoned for their actions, and for their
amazing dedication to what Father Roy referred to
as the “higher law” - the law of God.

As the conference included the spring meeting of
the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating
Committee, there were many war tax resisters
present. War tax resisters are people who refuse
to pay all or part of their taxes because their
conscience will not allow them to support the
killing of other human beings in war. I hadn't
realized the war tax resistance movement was as
big as it is. One slogan I often heard from war
tax resisters, and also saw on bumper stickers and
buttons is, “If you pray for peace, why pay for
war?”

Also present at the conference were other
activists, including one who has attended the
annual protest at the gates of the SOA every year
since the protest began in 1990, and has been
involved in protests in Crawford, Texas, the home
of George W. Bush. Another participant in the
conference, Peg Morton, is a 75 year old activist
who has been involved in numerous protests,
including illegally entering Fort Benning during an
SOA protest.

Others speaking at the conference included Antonia
Juhasz, author of “The Bush Agenda: Invading the
World, One Economy at a Time”; Glen Milner, an
activist with the Ground Zero Center For
Nonviolent Action; Tom Brookhart, President of
Chapter 92 of the Western Washington Veterans For
Peace; Jelani Jackson, a student at Seattle
Central community College and counter-recruitment
organizer; and many more.

I would like to consider myself an “activist in
training”; a person who wants to make the world a
better place. It was tremendously inspiring to
attend this conference and meet with those who
have been on the front lines of the movement for
peace.

I highly recommend that you visit the following
sites for more information:

The Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia: NACC

National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee: NWTRCC

SOA Watch: SOAW

A 40 page list of notorious graduates of the
School of the Americas, and some information on
the crimes they are responsible for can be found
at: Grad List (PDF)

The Wikipedia page on the SOA is here: SOA on Wikipedia

Information on the torture manuals used at the SOA
can be found here: Torture Manuals

In addition, I highly recommend you see the video
“Conviction”, featuring Sister Jackie Hudson, when
it comes to a theater in your area. For those of
you living in the Northwest U.S., the premier
showing will be June 4, 2006 at 6:30pm at the
Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington. I suspect
the video will also be available for purchase
online, probably at the Ground Zero Center For
Nonviolent Action: GZCFNA