Protester home to bid adieu before entering federal pen

Mr. Ring, a native of the Albany Diocese who grew up in St. Patrick's parish in Cambridge, will be serving a three-month sentence for protesting at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas, or SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Last week, the protester was back in the Albany Diocese to give a talk at the Rosa House Peace Community, a Catholic Worker house in Troy -- and to say goodbye to his parents.

Protests

The U.S. Army says that the school, which admitted in 1996 to teaching torture techniques, protects U.S. interests in Latin American countries and that the government can't be responsible for the actions of its alumni after they graduate.

For Mr. Ring, the need to close the SOA hit home last year when he spent six months in Guatemala. First, he learned that two of the country's most notorious dictators, Jose Efrain Rios Montt and Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, were SOA alumni.

Americans haven't necessarily heard about the SOA, but "you can walk into a cornfield in Guatemala and people know what you mean when you talk about the SOA," Mr. Ring recalled. "The school is very well known there."

Spurred to act

At the trial of the assassins, Mr. Ring found that the prosecutors had been threatened and harassed, and several judges had even quit the case out of fear.

When Mr. Ring came home, he joined a group going to the annual protest at the SOA in November 2001, demanding its closure. The group held a demonstration outside the SOA that included a ceremonial "die-in"; more than three dozen protesters then walked around a fence and onto the grounds.

Arrests

"I expected to be arrested, but I did not expect to be prosecuted," Mr. Ring told The Evangelist. "In the past, the first time [you entered the SOA without permission], you got a letter."

The announcement that even newcomers to protesting could be jailed came the night before a similar protest in Washington, D.C., so Mr. Ring saw the announcement as an attempt by the government at intimidation. However, he and his peers would not be silenced; he described the trials of all 37 protesters as "very moving -- you heard these really incredible stories, many of them from priests who shared their experiences in Latin America."

Going away

He hopes to use his prison time as "a sort of spiritual experience" and said he would remember that he is alive, while "people in the countries where SOA graduates are working are being killed every day."

Mr. Ring estimated he had told his story to about 1,000 people through talks and other contact before entering prison. Since the 36 other protesters are doing the same, he said, the government "has chosen very poorly" in prosecuting them.

"They've raised the ante, and we're proving them wrong," he said. "I think the school will close."

Going to jail is "absolutely" worth that cost, he said, adding: "This is how change comes."

(For information about the SOA, visit www.soaw.org, or call Mr. Ring's father at 677-3547.)

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