World Tour Radio presents: The Sounds of Protest at the School of the Americas

In "The Sounds of Protest" , we travel to Columbus GA, home of Fort Benning and the School of the Americas for the 2006 SOA Watch. We hear the stories of torture survivors: Salvadoran Neris Gonzalez, Colombian Hector Aristizabal, and Guatemalan Adriana Portillo Bartow. We speak to protesters like Kirk Bowman, a professor from Georgia Tech University; Steven Wing from Atlanta who sells bumper stickers like "Terrorists aren't born, they have to be trained. Close the School of Assasins at Fort Benning"; and Travis Lyons who lives next door to the protest and who is sells hotdogs in his yard to protesters. We hear performances and speeches by SOA Watch founder Roy Bourgeois and Charles Steele Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. During the Presente Litany, "performance poet" Chris Chandler describes the scene at the gates of Fort Benning: Father Roy Bourgeois and "a sea of 20,000 crosses" marching behind him. We learn some history of western Georgia, Columbus, and Camp Benning. We learn about the evolution of the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC. We hear recordings by Holly Near, Pete Seeger, Mercedes Sosa, and Roy Brown.