Circle of Mercy Member Prepares for Jail

Linda Mashburn, a member of Circle of Mercy congregation in Asheville, N.C., will spend Holy Week and Easter in a West Virginia prison for a November moment of prayer near Columbus, Ga. Her three-month sentence (and $500 fine) won’t be enjoyable, for her or her husband Bill. But some consequences are chosen in light of deeper convictions.

Mashburn, a retired nurse and community health educator, was among the estimated 19,000 people taking part in last November’s “School of the Americas” action at Ft. Benning. Part of her family and two other members of Circle of Mercy accompanied her. But only a few people traveled the final steps, “crossing the line” onto the base. Mashburn, along with 31 others, was convicted in late January of misdemeanor trespass.

Often referred to as the “ School of Assassins,” the Ft. Benning facility provides counter-insurgency training for troops from Latin America. Hundreds of its graduates have been implicated in human rights abuse cases, especially in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and, more recently, Colombia. Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca has referred to the training facility as the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”

The school’s activities first prompted significant Congressional attention in 1996, after public disclosure that textbooks provided instruction in torture, extortion, and execution. In 1999 a bill to close the school was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives but failed to make it out of a conference committee in the Senate. The following year, a similar vote narrowly failed. A new Congressional initiative (HR 1217) to close the school has currently garnered123 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors.

Reacting to public pressure, the Pentagon briefly closed the school and then reopened it under a new name, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Fr. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest who has worked in Latin America, doesn’t believe the change was substantive. Bourgeois is the founder of School of the Americas Watch, which has been sponsoring the annual protests since 1990. Since that time, 183 people have been convicted of “crossing the line” and collectively have served more than 81 years in prison.

Linda Mashburn’s personal opposition to the school’s function began with a trip to Nicaragua in 1985. Since then she’s made at least a dozen trips to Central America, with various organizations and on her own, most recently as the volunteer staff member for Sister Parish, which fosters partnerships between Central American and U.S. congregations.

“I witnessed firsthand the terrorist tactics” used by SOA graduates in Nicaragua, Mashburn said in a court statement prior to her sentencing. And in Guatemalan refugee camps in southern Mexico she “heard similar stories about massacres carried out by soldiers in the Guatemalan highlands.”

In her trial testimony, Mashburn rooted her convictions in two authoritative traditions. One is the conclusion of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, which set internationally recognized legal precedents following World War II, stating that individuals “have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Her other taproot of conviction is as a follower of Jesus. “I believe Jesus preached nonviolent resistance to evil and was crucified by the Romans because of it. Many down through the ages have followed his example and have sometimes met a similar fate.” Being aware of these witnesses, and having seen the “horrors visited on Central Americans by SOA graduates, prison is not such a terrible ordeal,” said Mashburn.

Her goal, Mashburn said to the judge who decided her penalty, is to call attention to the fact that the U.S. is “running the largest training school for terrorism in the world.” Since its inception in 1946, the school has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers.

Linda Mashburn’s vision, courage, and compassion testify to the same Spirit that prompted the ancient prophet to declare: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). This same Spirit prompted Jesus to insist that love of enemies is the touchstone of both spiritual and social transformation (Matthew 5:43-44).

Spending Holy Week in jail will add an extra dimension to the season for Linda Mashburn. And Easter’s resurrection promise will be all the more audacious.