The following is the essay written one weekend with Lilly:
I believe in the streets. I believe in their power, their healing, and their sanctification. I believe in the holy act of civil disobedience.
Yes, the streets are a political platform to advocate for the oppressed. But, I am an echo, not their voice. Just as I fight against public injustice, I am fighting for my own self-preservation.
I have to fight for peace of mind – the right to use the streets for political change and a private peace. It is only in the streets that I can translate this anger and this sadness into a prophetic witness. Into joy. Into hope. The streets save me from being lost in translation.
Just as I believe in the transformative power of the streets, I believe in one date in particular – November 21. You will find me at the gates of Fort Benning. I am holding a cross that bears the name of a woman killed in the massacre of El Mozote.
November 3, three weeks before the School of the Americas protest, I am touring the work of their graduates. 800 civilians dead. Our group is walking now. We carry our books for class and our cameras. To our left is the new church. The old one was used to burn children alive. We turn.
We walk to the house where the women were held before being lined up and shot. This? This is the tree that the only survivor of the massacre hid behind. And that? That is the riverbed she laid in before she could escape the 26 soldiers of the Actlatal Battalion.
November21. What am I doing here?
I am looking for other believers.
I am being photographed. I am being watched by soldiers stationed at even intervals around us. While they line the streets, a helicopters hovers over us.
How did I get here? I am a kid from the suburbs. While I stay on the streets for three days, my beautiful family waits nicely behind in our gated community appropriately named … The Enclave. In the Enclave, there is only room for whispers of social justice. I can drink fair trade coffee and try to buy clothes not made in a sweatshop. But, I have read the sign, NO soliciting! Dissent will not be tolerated. There will be no call to arms within gated communities.
With three years in the streets on November 21, this I have learned. I am called to exile. To leave the gated community and suburbs and head to the streets. There, we will find room for truth and justice. Not whispers, but shouts. There I can lay my cross alongside thousands of others at the gates.
Why am I here? Because 19 of the 26 soldiers of the Atlactal Battalion were trained at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia. Because my country sent billions of dollars to a tiny country in Central America to fight a dirty war against civilians. Because in the streets, my life has integrity.
This I believe. There is truth to be found behind barricades and between police officers.
Memorial to the victims of the El Mozote massacre, El Salvador
The new school beside where the old school once was
The names of the children are listed below the mural
The destroyed home where the women of El Mozote were kept still shows bullet holes
School of the Americas Protest, November 19-21, hosted by School of the Americas Watch:
"presente"
Gates of Fort Benning after the November 21 Memorial Service
Rufina Amaya, the only survivor of El Mozote
Father Jon Sobrino, the only survivor of the Jesuit Massacre in El Salvador at the UCA carries a cross for Ignacio Ellacuria at Fort Benning. This was the first time Father Sobrino attended the vigil since his brothers were killed on November 21, 1989.
For more information, please see Mark Danner's "The Massacre at El Mozote"
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