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SOA Watch Day 2 Woke up to rain today (as it did off and on all day yesterday), but no lack of activity around here... Yawn. Yesterday it was revealed that all demonstrators approaching Fort Benning would be subject to search at police checkpoints (see the decision). SOA Watch and the ACLU of Georgia filed a suit against the City of Columbus, but a Federal Magistrate Judge ruled that the searches would not be a violation of the First and Fourth Amendment rights of protestors. Not sure what police anticipated finding. The SOA Watch vigil has been going (and growing) on twelve years, with no arrests in the past due to violence. They're apparently not finding much yet, as I've only heard so far of such things as staples and a bicycle trailer being confiscated at the checkpoint just up the road from the Fort's gate. Things have kicked off at the gate. A press conference was held earlier this morning, though I'm told not a whole to speak of happened there -- mainly just a "welcome to this thing we're doing." Some media from Brazil were present, perhaps a reporter from the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Fox News was supposedly coming, but hadn't arrived at the time. Now there's music coming from the direction of Ft. Benning. The police tasked with the searches are reportedly 'going through the motions,' with little tension at the checkpoints. Noon-ish The streets are filling up. One speaker said, from the stage just in front of the Ft. Benning gate, "I can't see the end of the people." On stage, music and speakers alternate. A statement was read from the senior pastor of the South Columbus United Methodist Church, which has opened it doors to the SOA Watch in the past to provide meeting space and food. Trying to get the text of that statement at some point. Shortly after, Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, senior minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C., spoke, sounding strangely reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. All kinds of people are here... From gray-haired women dancing in the street to babies in strollers pushed by anarchist-armband-wearing fathers. The police do seem to be merely going through the motions. Walking through an opening in the barricades as I returned to the street from the SOA Watch media office, I was waved through without a 'wanding' while the man directly in front of me was 'wanded'... Anywho... call this just notes from the day as I go in and out... And back out I go... Two-PM-ish and later The Puppetistas have been rehearsing behind the ATL IMC space, as are a group of drummers currently. Spirits seem to be high. And it really kinda comes down to spirit, if you ask me. Shut down the School of the Americas -- the point of the weekend activities here, name change notwithstanding -- could as well be Don't learn from America's example, learn from America's mistakes. A nation that began as an experiment in liberty and spiritual freedom has, over the past 200+ years, has become spiritually bankrupt, setting an example not of the freedom mankind really desires, but instead, substituting the freedom to explore the depths that misguided and misused freedom can take us. Free to take consumption, greed, and corruption to new levels? Here today, instead one sees thousands of people coming together, many involved in creative displays of dissent...A puppet show/pageant, anti-corporate cheerleaders, huge tapestries that tell stories, homemade t-shirts. Even the local residents are involved -- some of their children are marching with demonstrators, some are keeping us fed and caffeinated. And emphasis is on imagination, as we have to spend some time thinking creatively about the world that is possible, an alternative to the world in which we currently find ourselves.

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