Americans on trial for protesting ‘terrorist training camp’ on US Soil

On Jan. 26 the federal trial for the 28 human rights activists from across the United States, facing federal charges for civil disobedience, begins in Columbus, Georgia. The 28 were among 10,000 who gathered in November 2003 to call for a closure of the notorious School of the Americas, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHISC). In an act of nonviolent civil disobedience, the defendants peacefully crossed onto Fort Benning property, site of the school, to commemorate the victims of SOA/WHISC violence in Latin America. They are charged with trespass and face up to six months in federal prison and $5,000 in fines.

The SOA/WHISC is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. Its graduates are consistently involved in human rights atrocities and coups, including the El Mozote Massacre of over 900 civilians and the failed coup in 2002 in Venezuela. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution.

SOA Watch, founded in 1990, is a national, grassroots, faith and conscience- based group committed to nonviolence. It has offices in Columbus, GA, Washington, DC and chapters in communities and on campuses around the country. Its goal is to expose and close SOA/WHISC. (SOA Watch)

MLK celebration sparks KKK protest

About 35 Ku Klux Klansmen opposed to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday clashed Jan. 18 in a war of words with an equal number of counter-demonstrators outside the Cocke County Courthouse in Newport, TN.

Klan organizer Ken Gregg of nearby Dandridge vowed to bring lawsuits against towns like Newport, which has had a MLK holiday for more than a decade. “This is not a racial issue to protest the Martin Luther King holiday,” an unidentified Klansmen said. “This is true Americanism against communism.”

“Communism is dead,” responded Chris Irwin, a University of Tennessee law student. “Our government has been hijacked by corporations and you are all arguing about the ’40s.”

The exchange lasted about an hour, ending without incident or arrests, though there were dozens of police and state troopers on the scene and the Klansmen did not have a parade permit.

The diversity festival drew hundreds from Cocke and surrounding counties in a show of unity, while the Klansmen came from several states, including Idaho, Alabama, Indiana and North Carolina. (AP)