College student says Fort Benning protest a way to stand up for poor

Published: 2006-02-27

ROMEOVILLE, Ill. (CNS) -- College student Buddy Bell will have to serve a three-month sentence for trespassing at an Army-run school in Georgia and pay a $500 fine but he does not regret the action he took during the 16th annual demonstration last fall against the former School of the Americas. The school, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is on the grounds of Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga. "I try to tell the world that this (WHINSEC) is such a waste of human life. ... We pay soldiers to keep populations oppressed. ... It goes to class and issues of poverty," said Bell, a 23-year-old education major at Vincentian-run DePaul University in Chicago, and music director for St. Joseph Parish in Addison, in the Joliet Diocese. He made the comments in a telephone interview with the Catholic Explorer, Joliet diocesan newspaper. Background information on the institute's Web site says the goals of the facility "explicitly include strengthening democracy, instilling a respect for the rule of law and honoring human rights."

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