{"article":{"id":13046,"heading":"In Which I Do Not Get Arrested (an SOA Watch Protest Report)","author":"Sara A","created":"2001-11-22 00:34:30","modified":"2005-08-15 00:43:35","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:43:35","article":"

Saturday morning, I set out for the SOA Watch protest in Columbus...about a two hour drive for me. I took my honeysuckle pentacle that I had woven at Samhain, a personal Samhain tradition, and my drum, both of which proved useful. I arrived in the middle of the SOA Watch rally....a mass of people in a stadium.

Signs everywhere. \"We Mourn All Victims of Terrorism\" \"Benedictine Sisters\" \"Oberlin College\" And two spiral banners, one purple on green, one green on purple. The Pagan Cluster...mostly made up of a bunch of Reclaiming witches from Asheville and Gainesville and farther afield, people I already knew plus some I didn't. Soltahr had come from Boulder, Colorado. I met another Pagan whose name I didn't catch who had come from Seattle. We sat around and heard speeches, which I mostly didn't listen to, and music, which I danced to...Almost everyone is very friendly, very nice, although I catch plenty of people from Christian church groups of various sorts giving us as a group or my Witchy-jewelry-covered self in particular sidelong glances....

There are lots and lots and lots of people there. Many college groups, many religious groups: Buddhists, Quakers, Mennonites, Unitarian Universalists, many different Catholic orders, groups like Amnesty International and Witness for Peace.

At four, some of us moved out by the river to plan the ritual which was to happen at 5:30. The Jesuits had a permit to use Riverwalk Park and had a large tent pitched there; they had graciously agreed to let us hold our ritual in the park under their permit. As usual the discussion of the ritual intent was the longest part of the planning meeting; I held my usual position that short, succinct, and concrete is always better than long, wordy, and abstract; people always want to pack everything into a ritual intention, but Younger Self doesn't do ten-dollar words.

So I applied the same kind of \"listening\" I do when composing songs at a drum circle; I listened attentively to what people were saying and sort of hooked into it with the back-of-the-brain, diffused attention state they teach in Zen meditation, \"listening\" in an intuitive sense. From one person's fairly long statement the phrase that popped into my mind was \"Invoke the power from within\". The final intention was \"Create sacred space, hold the vision from within\". I volunteered to teach the chant we would use for the spiral dance, cast the circle, to call North, and to drum during the spiral dance. Sharon Circle had prepared strips of cloth on which the ritual participants could write our visions or things we wished to remember; these would go in the center to be charged by the spiral dance.

I was surprised by the number of people who showed up for the ritual....a lot. Maybe sixty, I'm not good with estimates. Not sure why I was so surprised; it was a weekend of gently deflected expectations. I placed my drum and pentacle in the center.

Mental note to self: The \"my heart to your heart\" circle casting is very beautiful and powerful for a group of about ten people. For a group of sixty...it's still beautiful and powerful, judging by what people said later, but it takes too damn long.

We had a hard time hearing each other, and once the chanting and dancing started I and the other drummer had a hard time finding the beat. But as people circled inward and could hear each other, the chant settled into one rhythm that we could reinforce with the drum. People sang \"We are a circle, within a circle, with no beginning, and never ending....Hold on, hold on, hold the vision that's being born\" They danced the spiral inward, and danced it out, and we drummed.

I chose a strip of cloth that had stars on it, and wrote my vision.

Afterwards, people came up and thanked me for being part of the ritual and I got lots of hugs from people I'd never met before :) A group of us wound up chanting and singing for a while. There were people who'd never been in a ritual circle before, and people who'd been Pagans for decades, and people who said \"this is just what I needed\".

We had dinner, and attended the orientation meeting. We were told that a judge had ruled that we could march on the streets right up to Ft. Benning, but that if we crossed the line painted on the ground that represented the boundaries of the base in order to go up to the fence, we were on Federal property and risked arrest. We were also told that since the city police had stated that it was not their jurisdiction and it was probable that the MP's would not open the gates in order to come out and arrest people, that crossing the line would not automatically mean arrest; but that we each needed to decide individually how much risk we were willing to take.

It had been decided previously that the Pagan Cluster would dance a spiral dance in front of the gates of Ft. Benning. Kostya was our representative at the Spokescouncil meeting for affinity groups; there it was determined that we would be at the end of the solemn funeral procession part of the march and before the Puppetistas and drummers.

In the morning we gathered at the protest site where there was a stage set up with a sound system. I am carrying my woven pentacle and the strip of cloth with my vision written on it. Blessings were given by Buddhists, a couple of different Christian representatives....and us, the Pagan Cluster. Three of us went up to read a blessing written by Starhawk; I volunteered for this mainly on the grounds that if nothing else, I do know how to project. The crowd was so huge that even with the large sound system they had, people at the back couldn't hear. But they heard me....

Waiting backstage, I was feeling the energy; the \"fire in the head\" coming down, so much so that I started wondering how well I was going to manage reading something off a piece of paper; I wished I'd had time to memorize it, but I didn't. This is the part I read:

May we bless the ground that grows our bread, and may we be a refuge for those who have fled; May we plant the seeds of our own rebirth, and may we dance upon the living Earth; May we take care of each other, like sisters, like brothers; May all the works of change be done, May we draw our strength from the wind and sun-- May We Be in the right place, at the right time, with the protection, the energy, the resources, and the wisdom----to do the work. As We Will It, So Will It Be! Blessed Be!

A small but discernable cheer went up at this. Yeah. How many prayers elicit that much enthusiasm?

Then it really began.

The first part of the protest was a funeral procession and litany for those murdered by graduates of the School of the Americas....whole villages massacred. At the head of the line were people robed in black, their faces painted white, carrying coffins, marching slowly. In the crowd where thousand upon thousands of people carrying white crosses, each with a different name written on it. Those on the stage would sing the name, age, and sometimes small bits of information about a victim, and the crowd would lift the white crosses, each with a different name, and sing back, \"Presente!\"

\"Fernando Guevara, 60 years old\" \"Presente!\"

Name after name after name....men, women, old and young. Many, many children. Too many names to remember or process. This person, that person: \"Presente!\" Someone's daughter, 4 years old: \"Presente!\" Someone else, 75 years old: \"Presente!\" I have to use the SOA Watch website as a crib sheet to remember the ones I name here. Not because I wasn't attentive; I was. There were just too many.

Someone's wife, 41 years old. \"Presente!\"

Moving to the back with the Pagan cluster, my mind wandered. It was strangely warm for this time in November, even in south Georgia, and there was a huge crowd of people, some of whom were quite interesting; there was also some confusion and negotiation about just **exactly** where in the line we were supposed to be, and who was doing what, and how much space and time we needed to dance the spiral, and discussion of whether to chant or not to chant and if so, what chant to use. I tied my pentacle to my belt with the strip of cloth.

Someone's husband, thirty five years old. \"Presente!\"

Zot Lynn points to a tuft of grass growing up through a crack in the pavement...making the crack wider, pushing through to the sun. \"That's us.\" We hear a rumor passed back from the front of the line that they are arresting people who cross the line to place their crosses and photographs and banners on the fence.

Another name.....eighty years old. \"Presente!\"

This goes on for hours. I read an estimate later that there were between 10,000 and 15,000 people present. All of them file slowly past the gate, slowly, call and response. We hear another report that they have stopped arresting people who just approach the fence to place something there; or maybe they weren't to begin with. They'd have to arrest all ten or fifteen thousand of us, pretty much. But, you never know.

The litany of names never stops. \"Presente!\" Another name. \"Presente!\" Another.

There are lots of signs, of course. One bears a quote from George W. Bush about how a government that sponsors and harbors terrorists themselves become criminals and murderers. Indeed. What about a government that teaches them how to do it? What about the governments that are themselves the terrorists?

I can't think too hard about each name as I hear it, it's too much. \"Presente!\"

As the line in front of us finally starts to move forward, the Pagan Cluster forms a double line and links hands. I've been in the light trance state of ritual off and on for hours already....simultaneously energizing and exhausting. We wait, we move forward some, we wait. We can see the gates.

\"Presente!\"

Many names go together, entire families...mother, father, children. I have a son, Raven. He once informed me, \"That Liberty statue stands for freedom. And do you know why? Because we NEED freedom. Freedom goes everywhere. It's invisible, actually. And when people don't have freedom, it goes to where they are.\" Raven is seven years old.

\"Joaquin Romero, son of Lucas Guevara and Rufina Romero, seven years old\" \"Presente!\"

We approach the gate. They clear a space for us to dance. We elected to not chant, to follow the rhythm of the litany. We form a circle, ground together, then spiral inwards, slowly, in silence. Slowly we spiral outward. We dance, in, out. When we come together in the center, spiraling into a tight cluster, we sing: \"Presente!\" and hold it out, it turns into a tone which grows in volume and intensity, a cone of sound and energy. We earth the energy, kneeling. Then we stand up and approach the gate in earnest.

I cross the painted line on the ground. \"Presente!\" There are hundreds if not thousands of crosses and banners on the fence; it's covered with them. Thousands of names: \"Presente!\"

Before this moment I wasn't sure why I brought my Samhain pentacle, woven by me from honeysuckle vines, with me in the first place. I hang it on the gate, tied with the strip of cloth on which is written the words of my vision and memory:

DREAM DANCE TRANSFORM

I start walking. I breathe out a long breath. I lose track of my affinity group, the rest of the Pagan Cluster, but we know where to meet up later. I pause to look at the Puppetistas, a fabulous indescribable procession: a huge paper mache dragon of \"Top Down Power\" attended by headless \"suits\" and people wearing skull masks, a large colorful Quetzal bird, drummers, jugglers. They are worth looking at, but for me the protest is over; I did what I came here to do and now it's time to go. I keep walking. I think maybe I should go back and find the others, but I am led onward.

I walk all the way back to where the van is parked, still trancey, fail to remember that the key to the van is hidden where I can find it, and go into an Arby's to get something to drink and eat. While I'm there, a man approaches me. \"Are you one of the ones who gave the Pagan blessing?\" \"Yes,\" I say. \"I never heard of that before. What do you mean when you call yourself a Pagan?\" So we have that conversation, and then I really am done. I have to wait for everyone else, though. They show up in twos and threes, eat, wander off again. I'm tired and overheated; I dutifully drink volumes of water and nap in the van until everyone is ready to go.

We head back to where the rest of our cars are parked, I say my goodbyes, call my love and tell him I'm on my way, and drive home in the darkness. I don't know if this really makes the world in general a better place; I think it does, but I can't really answer that question. But the world inside, it does.

Sarsen

For more info about the School of the Americas and why there was a protest in the first place, go to http:\/\/www.soaw.org

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