Kim and Susan on the two-hour funeral procession march during which the names of those killed by graduates of SOA were read. After each name, the crowd replied, "presente" while holding up the crosses they carried.


Items of clothing commemorating the dead lie on the ground as marchers pass. People lie beside them pretending to be dead.

Giant images of the people of Latin America are carried during the procession.

Following the families are women carrying the symbolic caskets of the dead. When these women reached the gate of Fort Benning, they lay on the ground depicting the dead.

People processed holding photos of those murdered representing the families of the dead.

Kim, Sr. John Michele and Elise

Elise and Kim on the twenty-hour bus ride from Scranton, PA, to Fort Benning, GA.

IHM sisters are committed to confront the systemic evils that maintain the dehumanizing divisions among the global community.

Sisters, Mary Kay Faliskie, Margaret Gannon, Susan Hadzima, Maryalice Jacquinot, John Michele Southwick, Ann Walsh, Ann's friend, Mary Burne, and two Marywood University students, Kim Wayman and Elise Gower, traveled November 17-19 to the U.S. military’s School of the Americas (SOA) now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in Fort Benning, Georgia joining twenty-thousand others at a peaceful demonstration and vigil. Simultaneous demonstrations took place in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay; Fort Huachuca, Arizona and California.

Thousands of people raised their voices calling for a world free of militarism and the SOA/WHINSEC. The SOA trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, and Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians.

The protest is organized every year by Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois and the SOA Watch. According to Jesuit priest, John Dear, “It is one of the best organized and more hopeful events in the church and the country. And it is one of the best examples of active nonviolence in our history. Plus it is a beautiful and urgent liturgy of peace and conversion.”

“Every known terrorist training camp must be shut down,” said President George W. Bush. “Let the SOA be the first to close,” responded Dear.

For more information, log onto www.soaw.org

Leading the procession with giant images of the people of Latin America.

Representing family members of the dead, marchers carry banners at the beginning of the funeral procession.

IHM Sisters, Mary Kay, John Michele, Margaret,
Maryalice, Ann and Susan

Srs. John Michele and Margaret