wfn.org | 2 PC(USA) ministers face prison time

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Note #7337 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

10-July-2002
02241

2 PC(USA) ministers face prison time

Charged with trespassing on military base during protest 

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - A Presbyterian Church (USA) minister found guilty of trespassing on a military base is awaiting sentencing in Georgia while another awaits a verdict in a similar case.

Both were arrested for entering Fort Benning, in Columbus, GA, during a non-violent demonstration last November.

The Rev. Erick Johnson, 51, of Maryville, TN, could be sentenced to six months in prison and fined $5,000 for entering the base during a protest in which about 10,000 peace activists called for the closing of a training facility for Latin American military officers.

The Rev. Chuck Booker-Hirsch, of Ann Arbor, MI, pleaded not guilty of trespassing on July 9.

The training center, formerly known as the School of the Americas, has been renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). Training manuals released by the Pentagon in 1996 disclosed that the methods taught there included torture, extortion and execution.

Johnson pleaded not guilty but agreed that he had walked onto the base for reasons of conscience. His sentence will be handed down when the government has disposed of trespassing cases against 36 other human-rights activists.

Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth of the U.S. District Court has given each of the defendants a copies of the congressional acts establishing the training institute, which the protesters claim is embracing the same tactics despite the name change.

Johnson had been arrested during earlier protests. Booker-Hirsch is a first offender.

According to the rights group School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), Faircloth has issued maximum sentences in the past for activists engaged in non-violent protests of the school. 

Twenty-six people were prosecuted in 2001, including Dorothy Hennessey, an 88-year-old Franciscan nun who was sentenced to six months in a federal prison.

Longtime SOAW activists say the cases are opportunities to focus public attention on the abusive practices they claim are still taught at the school.

"These people are guilty (only) of telling the truth," said Matthew Smucker, a spokesperson for the Washington, DC-based organization. "We're here, clearly, to put the School of the Americas on trial. The specific charges (the defendants) are facing are not the real issue. ... But the judge and the prosecutor are trying to make them the real issue."

SOAW has kept a vigil outside the Columbus courthouse since the trials began.

SOAW says renaming the school was simply a Pentagon ruse to deflect public criticism, and argues that WHISC's purpose is to use Latin American military regimes to exert U.S. control over economic and political systems.

Johnson, a member of the Presbytery of East Tennessee and co-chair of its peacemaking committee, was accompanied at trial by his wife, Libby, and four of their five children.

"I was in the heart of a beloved community in the courtroom with roots deep in the spirit of non-violence," Johnson said, "but the seeds of peace were planted with every word spoken. And I am elated to be among (these people)."

He told the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) during a recess that his family is "pained" by the possibility that he will spend time in prison, but understands that that is part of the price that must be paid for justice.

"I am guilty of speaking the truth," Johnson said. "I am guilty of acting out of love and compassion to stop the killing of my brothers and sisters in Latin America. I am guilty of joining tens of thousands of others demanding the same thing. And I am guilty of responding to my own denomination to close this school of terrorism and close it permanently."

Johnson said PC(USA) missionaries posted in Central America have attested to atrocities committed by WHISC graduates. Speaking of the victims of terror in the region, he told the judge: "These members of my extended family are not obscure and nameless. I see their faces in my heart."

Booker-Hirsch told PNS that listening to the stories of other defendants has been very emotional. "It brought back a flood of memories of working with refugees," he said, recalling his involvement in such work in Tucson, AZ, and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He said his congregation, at Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, is preparing for the possibility that it will lose him for six months. He said his wife, Amy, who also is a minister, will help cover the pulpit.

The Stated Clerk of the PC(USA), the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, wrote a letter to Faircloth on Booker-Hirsch's behalf this month. He pointed out that the PC(USA) has consistently called for the closing of WHISC and that civil disobedience is a time-honored means of advocating for social change within the Reformed tradition.

"Rev. Booker-Hirsch stands in a proud tradition in his actions," he wrote. "There are, of course, often consequences to such disobedience, but I pray that you will recognize his actions as conscience-driven civil disobedience, as opposed to criminal trespass."

Seventy-one people have served a total of 40 years in prison for engaging in non-violent protests at Fort Benning since SOAW's annual November vigils began in 1990. The demonstrations are held every Nov. 16, marking the anniversary of the killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in the 1980s.
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