While 12,000 people gathered outside the gates of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, 30-40 people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in the first ever solidarity demonstration in London. Others also gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Dublin.

The School of the Americas started in 1946 in Panama as a U.S. military training school for Latin American soldiers. Primarily a tool of the Cold War, the school trained its students in counter-insurgency-including the techniques of torture and massacring of civilian poupulations.

In the 1980s Panama threw the School of the Americas, and it moved to its current home in Georgia, on the Fort Benning Military Reservation. A movement began to grow in the U.S. Starting over 12 years ago with a vigil of 10 people outside the gates, now 10-12,000 people will gather every year to demonstrate and even do civil disobedience.

Last year the U.S. Congress came within a vote of closing the SOA. In an unconstitutional act, the Pentagon reviewed the bill and suggested they close the school and re-open it with a new name-the "reformed" Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The WHISC teaches more human rights courses, but does not require students to take them. It also trains soldiers in counter-narcotics, not counter-insurgency.

The school has trained numerous Latin American dictators, including Manuel Noriega. Currently, General Montoya, who is in charge of Plan Colombia on the ground, is an SOA graduate. The school continues to teach many future human rights abusers, as its agenda has moved from the Cold WAr to the Drug War and now to the War on Terrorism.

In a public statement George W Bush said "every terrorist training camp must go." WHy is the SOA not on the agenda?

#for more info www.soaw.org