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Quakers continue protest against school's mission

The former School of the Americas is linked to human rights abuses in Latin America, the protesters say.

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published November 20, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Today more than a dozen area residents, many of them Quakers, will join thousands of people from around the country in an annual protest at a U.S.-run military school for Latin Americans.

This is Ruth Hyde Paine's sixth protest outside the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Ga.

As a Quaker, Paine, 73, feels compelled to join the throngs who say that graduates of the school have committed human rights abuses and even murder in Latin America.

"It's a chance for people to speak up on behalf of those who have been killed, so we go to give voice to the voiceless," Paine said last week, a day before she joined others in a rented van for the trip to Georgia.

"The procession on Sunday is especially moving. As we walk by the gate, the names of the people who have disappeared and their ages are read on the PA system and as each name is read, all the people that are processing lift a cross and say, presente, which is present. They are to be present for the people who have been killed."

Linda Hubner, 55, also made the trip. The mother of six children ranging in age from 17 to 34 also is a Quaker. She feels as strongly about the Georgia military school as does Paine.

"I think it is important for people to try with their presence at demonstrations like this to raise the consciousness of the country concerning these kinds of programs that are destructive to other people," said the family resource specialist in the early steps program at All Children's Hospital. This is the third time Hubner has made the trip to Georgia.

Over the years, arrests have been made at the march, though neither Paine nor Hubner has ever done anything illegal.

"I would consider it. I think it is really important," said Hubner, adding, however, that her responsibilities at home include a daughter with Down's syndrome.

Hubner has protested against the Vietnam War in New York and the Iraq war at BayWalk. She and other Quakers regularly join Veterans for Peace members to pass out leaflets to high schoolers letting them know about alternatives to serving in the military.

Hubner and Paine's pacifist leanings are rooted in their faith. They are members of the tiny community of the St. Petersburg Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, based in the Old Southeast neighborhood.

The denomination was founded in the 1600s by Englishman George Fox, who believed that God is accessible to all people. This belief is responsible for Quaker commitment to social justice both in the world at large and the communities in which they live.

Over the years, St. Petersburg's Quakers have worked on behalf of local issues. During the racially tense sanitation strike in the 1960s, a member was arrested for lying in front of a garbage truck. A few months after the 1996 disturbances, they gathered for dinner at Atwater's Cafeteria to offer support to the African-American community.

They are responsible for the popular Circus McGurkis. Christine O'Brien, an organizer of the popular event, said when there was no library in the city for African-Americans, Quakers banded with black women to help start the first library in southern St. Petersburg.

Paine believes the annual marches in Georgia, which began in 1990, are having an effect.

"My feeling is that it is an exercise in making people more aware of some of the actions of our government. And I think also one of the things I like especially about this protest or vigil is its very respectful and religious quality," she said. "I feel it is a good experience for the young people who are coming in greater and greater numbers on how to express their views in a way that can be heard."

[Last modified November 20, 2005, 00:54:20]