| LOUISVILLE —
A retired Presbyterian minister has been sentenced to a federal
penitentiary for trespassing during a non-violent demonstration
at a Georgia military base last November.
On Jan. 26, the Rev. Donald Beisswenger, 73, of Nashville, TN,
was sentenced in U.S. District Court to six months in a minimum-security
prison and fined $1,000.
However, Beisswenger said he isn’t sorry for what he did.
“I do not regret it,” he told the Presbyterian
News Service on Feb. 3. “In fact, I feel proud and happy
about it. It seems right, congruent.”
Beisswenger, a professor emeritus of church and community
in the divinity school at Vanderbilt University, was arrested
for going onto federal property at Fort Benning, near Columbus,
GA, on Nov. 23. He has not been told when or where his sentence
will be served.
“They just said within 30 to 60 days they’ll let
me know,” he said. “Then after that I have two weeks
to self-report.”
Beisswenger said he must also pay a refundable $260 “prison
fee” and is permanently banned from entering the military
post. He also will lose his Social Security benefits while he
is incarcerated.
He was one of 27 protesters who appeared last month before U.S.
Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth on trespassing charges related
to the November demonstration against a military training facility
at Fort Benning long known as the School of the Americas (SOA).
It has been renamed the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).
The maximum punishment is six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
About 60 Presbyterians are believed to have taken part in the
protest, the 14th annual demonstration demanding the closing of
the combat school.
The demonstrations are held to mark the anniversary of the Nov.
19, 1989, deaths of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. Opponents
of the school claim that some of the people responsible for the
priests’ killings had been trained at the Fort Benning institute,
which in the past has offered instruction in practices such as
extortion, execution and torture. The Department of Defense says
the curriculum no longer includes such training.
Police estimated the number of demonstrators at 7,500 to 8,000.
School of the Americas
Watch (SOAW), the group that organizes the protests, said
about 10,000 people took part. Last year, more than 6,000 people
turned out and 88 were arrested.
Beisswenger said he was one of about 35 participants in last
year’s demonstration representing the Presbyterian
Peace Fellowship (PPF), which has opposed WHISC for years.
The protesters also included a number of students from Presbyterian-related
Warren Wilson College
in Asheville, NC. Beisswenger is believed to be the only Presbyterian
arrested.
Two Presbyterians arrested during the 2002 protest — Marilyn
White, of suburban Houston, TX, and Ann Huntwork, of Portland,
OR — served six-month prison sentences for trespassing and
were released in October.
The Rev. Clifford W. Frasier, the United Church of Christ minister
who is coordinator of Presbyterian Welcome, the New York City
regional affiliate of That All May Freely Serve (TAMFS), also
was arrested last year. He also got a six-month sentence and was
released in November.
SOA Watch, founded in 1990, is a grass-roots national organization
committed to non-violence. It has offices in Columbus, GA, and
Washington, DC, and local chapters in communities and on campuses
around the country.
The PPF is an affinity group of the PC(USA) that promotes peace
and non-violence. It receives no funding from the Presbyterian
Church (USA), but sometimes works hand-in-hand with the Presbyterian
Peacemaking Program. The 1994 General Assembly called for
the closing of WHISC.
Beisswenger said he’s working to form an anti-SOA group
in Nashville to raise awareness of the controversial school and
to lobby lawmakers in Washington to investigate the institution
and shut it down.
“We’re going to reach out as a group to influence
the system,” he said.
Beisswenger taught at Vanderbilt from 1968 until his retirement
in 1996. He has served PC(USA) congregations in Arkansas, Ohio,
Illinois and Iowa. He is now a parish associate at Hillsboro Presbyterian
Church in Nashville and a member of the Presbytery of Middle Tennessee.
Beisswenger has taken part in the WHISC protests several times.
In 1999 he was banned from Fort Benning for five years.
The Army acknowledges that some graduates of the school —
a few hundred out of more than 60,000 who have attended in more
than half a century — have been involved in abuses. It says
all WHISC students now receive instruction in human rights, and
claims that the institute is largely responsible for the spread
of democracy in Latin America. |
