It has come to my attention that State Representative Mark Pocan and State Senator Brian Burke have introduced a resolution calling for the closure of the US Army School of the Americas(SOA) in Ft. Benning, Georgia . The SOA gives military training to soldiers in countries throughout the Americas. The tactics and training learned at Ft. Benning have resurfaced in many Central and South American countries in the form of torture, repression and crimes against humanity.

One graduate, CPT Eduardo Ernesto Alfonso Avila, planned and ordered the assassination of beloved Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero on March 24, 1980.(United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993) Also in El Salvador, graduate GEN Oscar Edgardo Casanova Vejar planned and covered-up the rape and murder of three U.S. nuns and a Catholic layworker. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993)

The list of SOA graduates is long and so it that of their atrocities. May I also mention that Manuel Noriega was a student of the SOA.

After years of protests, the Pentagon has recently changed the name of the School of the Americas to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. It will now be run directly by the pentagon instead of the Army. But the mission remains the same.

(Mr./Mrs.) ___________, I urge you to sign on to this resolution for the sake of our neighbors to the south, democracy, peace, and the integrity of our country.