Coming to Town: The Harrisonburg Four Road Show

19 March 2002

by D.D. Delaney, Port Folio Weekly

The Harrisonburg, VA, Four, charged at Ft. Benning, GA, last Nov. 18 for criminal trespass and resisting arrest and now awaiting a federal trial date, have put together a Road Show which will visit Hampton Roads this weekend.

The Road Show is a combination puppet theater, personal testimony, and teach-in on U.S. Latin American policy and the military's School of the Americas, located at Ft. Benning. It will play at William and Mary College at 5pm on March 23 and at Old Dominion University in the Hampton/Newport News Room of the Webb Center at 7:30pm March 24. The ODU appearance is sponsored by the Tidewater SOA Watch.

Critics have long charged that the School of the Americas, renamed two years ago the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), is a training camp for terrorists and assassins operating in U.S. interests in various Latin American countries. Documented reports of rape, torture, kidnaping, murder, and wholesale slaughter of civilians, including clerics -- some of them U.S. citizens -- have been traced to SOA graduates.

Since 1990 an annual demonstration to close the SOA has been held at Ft. Benning under the leadership of Jesuit Priest Roy Bourgeois and the Washington, DC-based organization he founded, the SOA Watch.

Arrested on federal charges this year when they defied officials by entering the base were four from Harrisburg: Abi Miller, Lee Sturgis, David O'Neill, and Peter Gelderloos. According to O'Neill, they intended to deliver an indictment charging the SOA with crimes against humanity under U.S. and International Law.

When they crossed onto federal property, he says, officials "were waiting for us with a warning of arrest. We continued (but) didn't walk very far. About half-way to the main drive they (military police) were right there and handcuffed us, put us onto school buses, and drove us into the main part of the base, where we were processed."

Fourteen of 83 detained were subsequently charged before Federal Judge G. Mallon Faircloth, who set bail at $1,000 each and sent them in the custody of U.S. marshals to the Moscogee County Jail for the night.

The next day, says O'Neill, Faircloth released them on their own recognizance. "We were told at that point we'd be notified about a trial date in early January, but we haven't heard anything since. We're just waiting. It's an interesting way to live," he adds, "waiting to go for trial."

O'Neill operates an organic farm with his wife and fellow trespasser Lee Sturgis, who doubles as a social worker. Both are graduates of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, as is Abi Miller, a waitress. Gelderloos is a JMU student.

When they returned home they created the Road Show with JMU alumna Anna Mitchell, a partner in the organic farm who did not risk arrest at Ft. Benning. Should the others be sentenced to jail time -- from 6 months to a year is likely -- Mitchell will be a jail support person, representing their interests on the outside and visiting them inside.

The Road Show will make stops in Charlottesville and Richmond on its way to Hampton Roads. After a skit in which a large, hand-crafted dragon puppet -- militaristic capitalism -- oppresses Latin American peasants, with the audience providing the resolution, the Four recount their arrests, provide information on SOA/WHISC, and answer questions.

In Harrisonburg "we've found a lot of support," says O'Neill. "We've been speaking at different churches and meetings on the average of once a week since November. People are interested and really concerned," probably because the Harrisonburg area is home to Eastern Mennonite University, founded by the largest of the three American pacifist churches and a training ground for its international corps of humanitarian workers. "A lot have done voluntary work in Central America," says O'Neill and, presumably, understand the issues.