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Protest at the Gates of Fort Benning
A movement starts in the heart. The pulse of the blood rushing in and out provides the drum, the rhythm of our collective actions, the heart pumps life into all of the parts of the body of the movement and feeds the brain allowing for collective vision. Without the heart the movement can’t live.
A look back through time will show that culture has always been the heart of any substantial movement. The historical achievements of the Civil Rights Movement could not have been possible without the Freedom Singers, theaters such as the Free Southern Theater, musicians like Pete Seeger, Dr. Bernice Johnson Regan and even James Brown. Just as such, the movement to close the School of Assassins can not happen without the active engagement of the voices of singers, musicians, theater makers, puppetistas, visual artists, and an engaged citizenry that can communicate and be facilitated through community cultural practices.
At the November 2009 Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning arts and culture once again provided the heart to fuel the movement with the type of sustained energy that it will take to shut down this school for good. Professional musicians and singers, theater and visual artists that are united by the common desire to see peace and equity come to the people of South America converge on the gates of Fort Benning. These cultural bearers know, just as Dr. Martin Luther King did, that their freedom is inextricably entwined to that of their brothers and sisters south of the border.
The Musician’s Collective, which is made up of singers and musicians from around the country weave a beautiful thread of continuity to the parade of messengers from around the world that come to those gates to spread personal stories of tragedy and triumph in the battle to free their sons and daughters from the grips of the soldiers that rest comfortably behind the gates at Fort Benning. My brother and I have, for the past three years, been privileged to add our voices to this collective. Elise Witt, a friend and beautiful voice of peace and hope, first introduced us to the cultural organizer Chris Inserra. Elise knew our work as performers and community organizers and our passion for justice and introduced us to this process, one that we had no prior knowledge of.
Much like the Civil Rights Movement, the music of the SOA Watch in essence is the voice of solidarity uniting people in the face of fences, guards, and guns. We are the cultural reporters, charged with translating the news into the common language of the masses. With constant streams of music, drums, chants, speakers, puppets, protestors, and preachers, we create a ceremony of resistance that grows in numbers and strength each day. It won’t be through policy that our world begins to change, that is merely the outward reflection of the change that precedes it. The real change takes place when communities share food, stories and songs with each other in an attempt to define their own humanity. Artists are the conduits by which those messages travel to the masses.