Protesting the "School of the Americas"

For 15 years now, activists have gathered in Ft. Benning each November to protest WHISC/SOA, which trains military officers from Latin American countries. The school opened in 1946, and its graduates have been linked to the intimidation and murder of political opposition, the targeting of civilians by death squads, and other reported crimes against humanity. (Manuel Noriega studied at the school, as did several high-ranking members of Augusto Pinochet's government in Chile, among many, many others.)
SOA gained much of its public notoriety in 1989, after six Jesuit priests were killed in El Salvador by SOA graduates. The next year, a Catholic priest, Rev. Roy Bourgeois, founded SOA Watch - an independent group working to close the school - as well as the annual protest held -- in November, to mark the anniversary of the priests' murders -- to advance that goal. In 1996, declassified SOA training manuals, obtained by the Baltimore Sun via a Freedom of Information request, showed quite explicitly that the school's curriculum featured torture techniques.