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05/04/2004 Entry: "POSTAL WORKER JAILED FOR PROTEST AT MILITARY SCHOOL"

Over 50 years the U.S. military has trained 60,000 Latin American soldiers in interrogation techniques and counterinsurgency tactics at the School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, GA.

According to SOA (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institutre for Security Cooperation in 2001) training manuals, the insurgents targeted for torture include people who "support union organizing or recruiting" and make "accusations that the government has failed to meet the needs of the people."

SOA graduates have been responsible for massacres and political killings throughout Latin America, and in Columbia have killed striking workers and union leaders.

When American Postal Workers Union leader and U.S. army veteran Greg Poferl represented his union at an international labor conference in Puerto Rico in 2000, he met Latin American postal workers who told stories of union organizers assassinated or disappeared by U.S.-trained soldiers.

Inspired, Poferl joined the annual protest at Fort Benning in November 2003 organized by SOA Watch, a group of religious and peace activists dedicated to closing the SOA. During the protest, Poferl committed civil disobedience by "crossing the line" into the base was arrested and charged with criminal federal trespass, with 26 others.

Poferl reported to federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota April 6 to begin a 90-day sentence. Send a message of solidarity to Greg in jail at: Greg Poferl, FCI, PO Box 1731, 1000 University Drive SW, Waseca, Minnesota.

Source: LABOR NOTES

Visit SOA Watch's website at www.soaw.org for more information and to write letters to tell Congress to shut down the SOA.