[WestMALocals] Fwd: [ArisePeace] Press Advisory for Judy Ruland Press Conference

[Owen Broadhurst]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Lindberg <michaellindberg at burntmail.com>
Date: Feb 17, 2006 5:05 PM
Subject: [ArisePeace] Press Advisory for Judy Ruland Press Conference


Arise For Social Justice
94 Rifle St.     Springfield, MA 01105
(413) 734-4948,     Fax: (413) 781-3712
________________________________________________________________________
Press Advisory
Contacts:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Michael Lindberg:
413-734-4948                                                          
                                    Today’s
date:  February 16, 2006
Ellen Graves: 413-736-4774

HEADED FOR PRISON, â€Å"School of the Americas” Peace Activist,
Judy Ruland,  To Hold Press
Conference at Arise For Social Justice

Springfield Woman to Serve Two Months Prison Sentence for Nonviolent
Trespass at the
â€Å"School of the Assassins”

SPRINGFIELD -- Judy Ruland, 47, of Springfield, Massachusetts will hold a
Press Conference at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at the Arise
For Social Justice office, 94 Rifle Street in Springfield on her protest at
the â€Å"School of the Americas” in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Judy was one of 31 human rights activists who are being sent to prison for
Nonviolent trespass. Those arrested were among 19,000 who gathered in
November outside the gates of Fort Benning to demand a dramatic shift in U.S.
foreign policy and the closure of the U.S. Army’s School of the
Americas, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security
Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC). The demonstration was the 16th annual one
organized by School of the Americas Watch, a faith- and conscience-based
organization working to close the school.

The SOA/ WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training
manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution.
Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses
connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation
into the facility has ever taken place. New research confirms that the
school continues to support known human rights abusers. Despite having been
investigated by the United Nations for ordering the shooting of 16
indigenous peasants in El Salvador, Col. Francisco del Cid Diaz returned to
SOA/ WHINSEC in 2003.

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--
Owen R. Broadhurst
Candidate for State Representative
Third Hampden District
http://www.owenbroadhurst.org