SOA protest draws largest crowd in event's history; 18 arrested

Published: 2004-11-23

COLUMBUS, Ga. (CNS) -- This year's protest against Fort Benning's training school for foreign military personnel led to fewer than two dozen arrests Nov. 21 but drew a crowd estimated by organizers at 16,000 -- several thousand more than the demonstration has ever drawn. Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois and actor Martin Sheen led the demonstrators to the gates of Fort Benning in a "funeral" procession for Latin Americans tortured and killed by military forces of their own governments. At the gates the names of the victims were intoned before a silent audience and small wooden crosses inscribed with the victims' names were inserted in the chain-link fence that guards the fort's perimeter. Organizers initially said 20 people who engaged in civil disobedience by climbing the 10-foot fence topped with barbed wire were arrested for trespassing. The next day they changed the figure to 18. They said 16 were arraigned and released on bond until their court appearance Jan. 24. One refused to pay bond and remained in Muscogee County Jail. Another, Ed Lewinson, 79, who is blind, was not charged. Lewinson, who was also arrested but not charged in the 2003 demonstration, accused the court of discriminating against him because he is blind.

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