October 13, 2004
by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - A retired Presbyterian minister imprisoned earlier this year for entering an Army base during a protest has been released from jail.

The Rev. Donald F. Beisswenger of Nashville, TN, was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Manchester, KY, on Oct. 1.

After returning to Tennessee that day he was greeted by a group of supporters at the Nashville Peace and Justice Center, and three days later a liturgy of celebration was held for him at a local church.

The retired Vanderbilt University Divinity School professor - who turned 74 on Oct. 12 - served a six-month federal prison term on a misdemeanor charge of trespassing.

The sentence stemmed from a November 2003 conviction after he pleaded guilty to protesting outside a military base at Fort Benning, GA, earlier that month.

Beisswenger was among more than 1,000 peace activists who took part in the annual peaceful demonstration, demanding the closing of a training facility for Latin American military officers formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA). More than two dozen people were arrested.

"I would do it over again, I sure would," Beisswenger said, when asked if he regretted participating in the civil disobedience that landed him in prison.

Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assemblies in 1994 and 1995 condemned the SOA and urged that it be closed, citing human rights abuses perpetrated by some of its graduates, who include former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and Chile's ruthless former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) hosts the annual demonstrations at Fort Benning's main gate in memory of six Jesuit priests and two others killed in El Salvador in 1989 by graduates of the school, which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).

The Army acknowledges that some graduates of the school - a few hundred, it says, out of more than 60,000 who have attended over more than 50 years - have been guilty of abuses.

It says all WHISC students now receive instruction in human rights. And it claims that the institute is largely responsible for the spread of democracy in Latin America.

While he was incarcerated Beisswenger stayed in touch with friends mainly through letters. He also compiled three personal journals about his stay in the minimum-security facility.

"I had about 200 folks I wrote to at least once a month," Beisswenger said. "I used it as a way of getting my own thoughts together."

He said during his prison term he received more than 1,200 cards and messages of support from around the United States and globe, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Spain, and Belgium.

"A lot of people care, they really do," Beisswenger said. "I felt held in a very large community of folks. It's really quite remarkable."

The retired professor said he plans to visit friends and family and take a vacation before attending the annual protest at Fort Benning next month, although he does not plan to cross onto the Army base this time.

Beisswenger taught at Vanderbilt from 1968 until his retirement in 1996. He also has served PC(USA) congregations in Arkansas, Ohio, Illinois and Iowa, and was involved in a Presbyterian business-and-industry ministry in Chicago. He is now a parish associate at Hillsboro Presbyterian Church in Nashville and a member of the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee.

He has taken part in the WHISC protests several times before, and in 1999 was banned from Fort Benning for five years.

Beisswenger said he was one of about 35 protesters from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF), which has long opposed WHISC.

The PPF is an affinity group of the PC(USA) that promotes peace and non-violence. It receives no funding from the Presbyterian Church (USA) but sometimes works with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

Presbyterian News Service