December 10, 2007
by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE – At least two Presbyterians – one of whom is a pastor – are among 11 demonstrators facing federal charges after being arrested for crossing onto the U.S. Army's Fort Benning in Georgia to protest a controversial training school for Latin American military officers.

The Rev. Chris Lieberman, 54, of Albuquerque, NM, and Le Anne Clausen, 29, of Chicago, both face up to six months in federal prison and fines of up to $5,000 for trespassing on military property during the peaceful demonstration Nov. 18.

Lieberman was released after posting $500 bail. It was unclear how much bail was posted by Clausen, who is traveling in Iran as part of an interfaith peacemaking delegation and could not be reached for comment.

Federal court hearings for the two are scheduled for Jan. 28.

The demonstrators were at Fort Benning near Columbus, GA, to protest it housing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

Opponents want the combat training facility shut down. They say forces from Latin American countries are taught counter-insurgency measures at the institute and use that knowledge to commit murder, torture and other human rights abuses in their home countries.

The event marked the 18th anniversary of protests at Fort Benning – disparagingly referred to by critics as the "School of the Assassins" – demanding the training facility be closed.

Federal authorities said the 11 protesters were arrested when they went onto the military base during this year's rally organized by a group that calls itself School of the Americas Watch (SOAW). Lieberman said he ventured onto the grounds by slipping through a hole in a chain-link fence.

More than 100 Presbyterians are believed to have taken part in the demonstration, which involved as many as 20,000 protesters from around the country.

The students, clergy, veterans and retirees who made up the majority of the crowd ranged in age from 25-76, according to SOAW.

The two Presbyterians arrested were among at least 50 participants from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF), which has long opposed the military training facility.

The PPF is an affinity group of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) committed to nonviolence and peacemaking. It receives no funding from the denomination but occasionally works collaboratively with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program on matters of common concern.

Lieberman, a member of Santa Fe Presbytery, is co-pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, along with his wife, the Rev. Joyce Lieberman, who is also stated clerk of Santa Fe Presbytery.

"For me this was a calling. Almost a personal thing between God and me," Chris Lieberman said of crossing onto the Army post. "I felt a call from God to participate in this activity and it was a discernment process. I've been thinking about it for several years."

The Liebermans have served as co-pastors of Immanuel Presbyterian since 1995. Earlier the clergy couple, who have two adult children, served 10 years as associate pastors at First Presbyterian Church in Portland, OR.

An Oregon native, Chris Lieberman earned a degree in elementary education from the University of Portland, and a M. Div. degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, CA. He also completed a graduate degree in biblical studies at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.

Clausen is a student in her final year at Chicago Theological Seminary, which is related to the United Church of Christ, where she is co-chair of the student senate.

Two days before her arrest, an editorial written by Clausen was posted on the seminary's Web site announcing her intentions to "cross the line" at Fort Benning and spend part of the spring term in jail for doing so.

She called on other seminarians to join her at the protest.

Clausen said she attends human rights classes and serves as a student pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, located in the Windy City's Woodlawn neighborhood.

She is coordinator of SeminaryAction and the Center for Faith and Peacemaking in Chicago's Hyde Park, which organizes young religious leaders and global activists.

The seminary student was raised Lutheran but now is a Presbyterian candidate for ordination, Clausen wrote. She has a degree in Christian-Muslim relations and has attended previous SOA protests.

"I am going now, in seminary, because it is a cause I have believed in for so long . . . ," Clausen wrote of plans to attend the demonstration. "I am going now, in seminary, because I believe that nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience is an important part of my formation in ministry."

At the protest, demonstrators paraded, chanted, carried black coffins and raised white crosses outside the main gate of Fort Benning, the home of the Army's Airborne, Ranger and Infantry training.

There was some disagreement about how many people attended the protest. Monica Manganaro, a spokeswoman for Fort Benning, said there were 11,200 demonstrators. Organizers said they counted 20,000 people.

At last year's vigil 16 demonstrators, including at least four Presbyterians, were arrested for trespassing onto Fort Benning, which is located about 85 miles southwest of Atlanta on the Georgia-Alabama state line.

The protest has been held on a November weekend since 1990. It marks the anniversary of the Nov. 16, 1989, slayings of six priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter in El Salvador. Eighteen of the 26 soldiers involved had attended the School of the Americas, SOA Watch organizers say.

The SOA, which was founded in 1946 in Panama and moved to Fort Benning in 1984, was replaced in 2001 by WHINSEC, moving from U.S. Army sponsorship to the Defense Department.

The name change came after the Pentagon released manuals in 1996 substantiating activists' claims that techniques taught at the school included torture, assassination and extortion.

SOA opponents contend the name change was only cosmetic, even though human rights courses are now mandatory at the school.

Marilyn White, a PPF national committee coordinator, said Maj. John W. Kiser, a Presbyterian minister and a chaplain at WHINSEC, attended a PPF breakfast held during the event and offered tours of the school, in which several people took part, White said.

She said Col. James S. Boelens, a Presbyterian minister and chaplain with the Army's U.S. Southern Command, also came to the breakfast on Nov. 17.

"We saw a very strong propaganda effort on the part of the chaplains connected to the school to emphasize that there has been reform and a change and that people shouldn't be concerned about it," said White, a former Colombia accompanier. "But we've seen the legacy of the school in Colombia and Central America and we know that not enough has been done.

"Our friends in Latin America really won't feel closure about all the damage and the human rights abuses until the school is actually closed and until there's been some kind of truth and reconciliation process and an effort to thoroughly investigate all the graduates of the school," White said.

White, a retired IBM computer programmer, who currently resides in Austin, TX, was arrested during the 2002 protest along with Presbyterian Ann Huntwork, a former missionary in Iran who lives in Portland, OR. The two women served six-month prison sentences for trespassing before their release in October 2003.

The PC(USA) General Assembly passed a resolution in 1994 calling for the closing of the school after the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and longtime opponent of the SOA, spoke about the military institution during a GA breakfast meeting.

Graduates of the training facility include former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and Chile's ruthless former dictator Augusto Pinochet. The Rev. Chuck Booker-Hirsch, pastor of Northside Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor, MI, who was arrested at the annual demonstration in 2001, said it's important for Presbyterians to be concerned about the school.

"It teaches us so much about basic Christian discipleship that deals with repentance and responsibility and commitment to human rights and standing up against idolatry and tyranny and oppression of all kinds," said Booker-Hirsch, who attended this year's protest with his wife, the Rev. Amy Booker-Hirsch, and their 10-year-old son, Andrew Booker. "People need to know that there's lack of accountability in our government."

The Army has acknowledged that some graduates – a few hundred, it says, out of more than 60,000 who have passed through the school in more than half a century – have been guilty of abuses, but argues that the training facility shouldn't be judged on the basis of a few extreme cases.

Army spokesmen have pointed out that all WHINSEC students now receive instruction in human rights, and claim that the institute is largely responsible for the spread of democracy in Latin America.

Lieberman, when asked if he regretted participating in the civil disobedience action that could land him in prison, said: "I'm taking the first steps that for me are an affirmation that I want to be faithful to where God will lead. I feel like it will expose me to the gospel in a deeper way and in a way that I want to pursue."

It's unlikely Clausen, who has known people impacted by human rights violations, was having second thoughts about crossing the fence line at Fort Benning.

Clausen wrote in her editorial about having friends in seminary that had been tortured and now are refugees, compliments of the United States.

Clausen also wrote about her work with families of inmates detained at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where she served on a Christian Peacemaker Team. Reports of torture and other unsavory interrogation excesses at the prison have dogged the Bush administration since April 2004.

"The SOA is one big way in which our country is responsible for torture," she wrote. "I am going now, in seminary, because religious leaders have been tortured and killed by the SOA."

The crowd at Fort Benning also included scores of other Presbyterians from around the country and a number of students from Presbyterian-related educational institutions such as McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago; Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA; and Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC.

In addition to Booker-Hirsch, there were other Presbyterians attending who served time in federal prison for their involvement in SOA/WHINSEC protests, such as retired minister the Rev. Donald Beisswenger of Nashville, TN; and Philip E. Gates, a retired public school superintendent from Prescott, AZ, who was arrested at the 2006 protest along with Julienne Oldfield, an activist from Syracuse, NY, who also attended this year's event.

Also present was Dwight Lawton, a Florida resident and Korean War veteran who was one of the first Presbyterians known to serve prison time after being arrested at a SOA protest in 1997.

PPF member Lois Baker of Monroe, WI, turned out. There was also Anne Sayre, Dick Junkin, and Ross and Gloria Kinsler, all former Presbyterian mission co-workers in Central America.

The Rev. Milton Mejia, former executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia, attended along with his wife and two young sons.

Presbyterian News Service