Dismantle Border Imperialism:  End White Supremacy - Our 40K Goal

In order to increase SOA Watch's capacity by the end of the year, we are seeking to raise $40,000.  These funds will go to pay for our organizer salaries, staff time spent on the Border Encuentro, space for the action, and SOA Watch's fall political education tours.  

To do this, we are increasing our capacity by:

• Employing all of our organizers full-time until the Border Encuentro, and increasing their days post-Encuentro
• Supporting all staff in making this year’s Border Encuentro the biggest direct action yet
• Costs related to Border Encuentro such as space reservations
• Organizing two fall political education tours to engage a new set of solidarity activists.
  

The breakdown of the costs are as follows:

• $15,000 for organizer’s full-time salaries plus health insurance
• $5,000 to cover additional staff time organizing the Encuentro
• $15,000 to cover Encuentro costs
• $5,000 to cover the costs of the political education tours

Each year our community has come through to support SOA Watch and we are grateful to everyone who has donated in the past. This year marks yet another in the history of U.S. state violence in Latin America and domestically against Latinx communities, so we hope you will give urgently and generously to sustain our movement and to continue the fight against border imperialism and white supremacy. We know this is possible because when we fight, we win.

Uprooting State Violence:  Our Track Record of Success

SOA Watch has continued its track record of confronting the violence in Latin America sponsored by the United States and in addition to the name change of the School of the Americas, SOA Watch has succeeded in:  

• Forcing Congress to release the torture and disappearance manuals, used in Latin America and the Middle East, created in Ft. Wachuka and Ft. Benning, that exposed the brutality of these programs that not only taught graduates how to execute abuses but also how to deal with the victim’s family and larger public pressure responding to the abuses
  

• Uplifting the root causes of migration and underscoring U.S. policies that have to lead to devastation within Latin American countries, but also violent policies domestically such as family separation

• The formation of a radical grassroots movement accompanied by a strong base of solidarity activists and a shifting political consciousness that incorporates an understanding of the role of U.S. state violence

• Organizing 28 years of direct actions at Fort Benning and at the U.S. - Mexico border with annual attendance that have galvanized tens of thousands to action
  

• Introducing the Berta Caceres act in Congress in 2016 & 2017 commemorating and calling for accountability for Berta, a Honduran environmental rights activist by the Honduran government and facilitated by an SOA graduate

Help Us Increase Our Capacity!

The Organizers

SOAW is fortunate to have two incredible women of color, specifically Latinx organizers leading the fight against border imperialism! But in order to make this year’s Encuentro a success and tie up loose ends for the end of the year, we need to increase their hours to full-time as they are both working part-time, though often exceeding these hours because of the many rapid responses needed from SOA Watch.

Most of our SOA Watch family know our amazing organizers, but for those who don’t, their bios are below!

​Devora González – Field Organizer

Dévora González is a mother to a wonderful little human named Tlecuiani. She is a Salvadoran-Guatemalan, descendent of Pipil and Mayan peoples, woman and mother that was born and raised in Los Angeles to migrant parents that found refuge in the city.  Being raised in a Central American community, the political and historical knowledge she gathered stemmed from oral history and narratives of migration from her family, friends, and community. The gaps in her understanding led her to California State University, Northridge where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Central American Studies and Psychology and felt empowered to create positive change in her community.

Aware of the anti-migrant sentiment, structural border conditions that fueled deaths at the desert, and feeling a strong connection to the communities forced to migrate to the United States, she relocated to Tucson, Arizona in 2012. Since, she has been part of the Missing Migrant Crisis Hotline that was a project of the Coalición de Derechos Humanos and No More Deaths, has helped with abuse documentation for the report Deprivation, Not Deterrence by the Guatemala Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project (GUAMAP), and has been active in migrant rights work, resistance, and resilience of Border Communities in the face of militarization.

Maria Luisa Rosal - Field Organizer

María Luisa has been an organizer with the SOA Watch staff collective since 2013. She earned her BA in Political Science from Virginia Commonwealth University and earned her Master’s in Human Rights and Democratization in Latin America and the Caribbean from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A political refugee in the US, Maria Luisa, and her family fled Guatemala during the height of the armed conflict after the 1983 disappearance of her father.

The 2018 Encuentro:  Dismantle Border Imperialism! Struggle, Create, Power to the People:

The Encuentro is part of a long tradition of direct action by SOA Watch protesting US-sponsored and facilitated state violence whose purpose is to create spaces that foster a sense of shared understanding and vision that nourish a network of engaged, confident, and collaborative organizations and individuals. We seek to connect common struggles, uplift the voices of those most directly impacted by state violence and to challenge the violent, dehumanizing mainstream discourse against migrants and refugees. Each year, SOA Watch’s direct actions have mobilized thousands of activists demanding changes in policies, demonstrating solidarity across borders, and building the political power and momentum needed to close the School of the Americas and all other institutions of state violence. 
This year’s Encuentro will be held at the U.S. Mexico border and the projected costs are $60,000 not including staff time to make this critical event happen. We know our community will come through because this gathering is critical to demonstrating our power in the face of violent state repression - and most importantly that we will not back down.

Fall 2018 Political Education Tours:

This Fall, Devora, and Maria Luisa will accompany the Border Studies Speaking Tour across the Midwest to build on our work and engage students and young people through generating discussions about the connections between border militarization, migration and U.S. intervention in Latin America. Together, we will explore the expansion of U.S. Border Imperialism and its relation to the ongoing violence that forces people to flee their homeland specifically. The tour aims to foster conversations around the importance of making these connections and make the case for a renewed and active call to solidarity, all from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist framework.

Following the Border Studies speaking tour, Maria Luisa will embark on a tour from California to Illinois to educate about how the recent past is intimately linked to the search for justice in the present. As SOAW, we have actively accompanied processes of memory, truth, and justice in order to educate our base about the historical legacy of intervention and human rights atrocities committed by the U.S. throughout the region. For example, SOA Watch followed and uplifted the Molina Theissen family's 37-year struggle for justice in Guatemala. In May of this year, after decades of denouncing the forced disappearance of 14-year-old Marco Antonio Molina Theissen and the rape and kidnapping of his sister, Emma Molina Theissen, by the Guatemalan army, the Molina Theissen family achieved some justice. Benedicto Lucas García, Manuel Callejas y Callejas, and Francisco Gordillo - all SOA grads, along with Hugo Zaldaña, former Guatemalan military official, were each condemned to 33-58 years in prison for crimes against humanity, rape, and forced disappearance. In speaking about these types of cases, we are able to think about how those in the U.S. can find ways to hold state actors accountable for the training, financing, and equipment of repressive regimes in Latin America.

How You Can Help Our Movement to End State Violence:

1. Support the School of the Americas Watch on this page. Every dollar counts!

2. Share this LaunchGood campaign via email and social media with all your family and friends using the link:  www.launchgood.com/DismantleBorderImperialism and the hashtag #DismantleBorderImperialism

3. Spread the word about the work of the School of the Americas Watch and our work to resist state violence and fight border imperialism.