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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	320
Proposal	Condemn the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation Endorse Nonviolent Direct Action
Presenter	GPAX, GPNC, GPSC, GPTN, GPUT
Floor Manager	Sarah echo Steiner
Phase	Closed
Discussion	10/09/2007 - 10/15/2007
Voting	10/16/2007 - 10/22/2007
Result	Adopted
Presens Quorum	34 0.6666
Consens Quorum	60 A Majority of Yes and No Votes

Background

NOTE: THIS IS AN EXPEDITED TIMELINE

The School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 to Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/ WHINSEC), located in Fort
Benning, Georgia, was founded in 1946 with the purpose of teaching
Latin American militaries the values of democratic civilian control
over military forces while promoting "friendly" assistance to our
Latin American neighbors.

The School of the Americas (SOA)/(WHISC) teaches such things as
assassination training, commando operations, counter-insurgency
techniques, intelligence-gathering, psychological warfare,
extortion, sniper training, and low-intensity conflict; and Pentagon
documents released to School of the Americas Watch, in September of
1996, through the Freedom of Information Act, show that training
manuals at least through the nineteen-eighties at the School of the
Americas/WHISC included instruction in such things as extortion,
assassination, threats and torture.

There is documented evidence that many SOA graduates have been
involved in murderous plots. This was demonstrated in the 1980
assassination case of Archbishop Oscar Romero in which two of the
three Salvadoran officers responsible were graduates of the SOA.
Further, nineteen of the twenty-six Salvadoran officers cited in the
November 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her
daughter, were also SOA graduates.

Guatemalan Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, an SOA alumni, was
implicated in the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine and Efraim
Bamaca.

It is estimated that there are more than 600 SOA graduates who
have been accused of human rights abuses including the massacres of
entire villages.

Millions of dollars of US taxpayer money is spent annually to
maintain the School of the Americas/WHISC at a time when budgets are
being cut at the expense of our own schools and children, and the
US Congress is currently reducing Federal spending on many social
services.

This history and the continued existence of the School of the
Americas/WHISC stand in the way of moving our country's
relationships with Latin America towards emphasis on Human Rights
and democracy.

Nonviolent direct action has been part of many struggles for
justice. It is also the backbone of the movement to close the SOA.
Countless actions have taken place in this country as well as in
Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Austria,
France, Germany and other countries around the world. Thousands have
put their bodies on the line, fasted and vigiled and hundreds have
gotten arrested for speaking out against the violence perpetrated by
the SOA and US foreign policy.

Proposal

The Green Party of the United States opposes the continued operation of The School of the Americas - which was renamed in 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/ WHINSEC) - and both calls for its immediate closure, and stands in solidarity with people across the Americas to support and endorse the nonviolent direct action proposed by School of the Americas Watch to shut down SOA/WHISCEC

Resources

TIMELINE: Until the school is closed

RESOURCES: Press release from the Media Committee when proposal passes

CONTACT: Gray Newman, 704-609-3160, dibloc (at) aol (dot) com

References

WWW.SOAW.Org

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