by Mary Ann McGivern
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This Sunday, Nov. 22, 2,000 people will process to the front gates of Fort Benning in protest of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Two years ago I wrote a blog about why we call for closure of WHINSAC, aka the School of the Americas.
But today I want to tell you about the list of people whose names will be sung during the litany. Communities have been collecting the names of the dead for decades, publishing them, singing them, demanding justice for them. Listening, they are heartbreaking:
Mexican boy, 3 years old
Mariania Garcia, lawyer, 1983
Maria Mejia, Guatemala, 1990
. . .
The names go on and on. Many of them are published in the World Latin American Agenda. It's a desk calendar that publishes a partial necrology as well as developing a social justice theme.
The theme for 2016 will be "Inequality and Property." You can order it in English or Spanish. In it you can learn that Maria Mejia was killed on Saturday, March 17. She was a Quiche campesino mother involved in Catholic Action, assassinated in Sacapulas, Guatemala. The agenda is a daily reminder.