UAW President Bob King will join thousands of social justice activists from across the Americas in an occupation of the main gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., on  Nov. 18-20.

Activists will call for an end to U.S. militarization and closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of Americas (SOA).

Created in 1946 by the U.S. government, the SOA was initially set up in Panama. During the Cold War, it was the primary training grounds for military hierarchies across Latin America. SOA's military graduates were trained and equipped to violently attack community and religious activists, missionaries and trade unionists. One of its most famous students is Manuel Noriega, Panama's former military dictator, who is currently in prison in France for drug trafficking.

The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Despite this shocking admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses connected to soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the training facility has ever taken place. And SOA violence continues in these countries: 

• Mexico, where one-third of the original members of the Zetas drug cartel were trained at the SOA and where the United States is promoting military solutions to the drug problem.
• Colombia, which has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to train at the SOA, and where SOA graduates are involved with extrajudicial killings and other serious human rights violations. 
• Honduras, where SOA graduates overthrew the democratically elected government in 2009.
• Guatemala, where SOA graduate Otto Pérez Molina just won the presidential elections, and throughout the Americas. 

"An attack on a trade unionist in Central or South America is an attack on the UAW," said UAW President Bob King, who started attending the November vigils in 2001.

"In our early organizing days, the UAW would never have been successful without the support of other unions and people of conscience," King added. "We have a moral responsibility to support unionists, community activists and others in Central America working for democracy and justice."

In August 2011, 69 members of the House of Representatives, including Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., Ron Paul, R-Texas, and James McGovern, D-Mass., delivered a letter to President Obama, calling on him to shut down the SOA by executive order. 

McGovern introduced legislation - H.R. 3368, the Latin America Military Training Review Act - on Nov. 4. The bill calls for suspension of the SOA/ WHINSEC and an investigation into the connection between U.S. military training and human rights abuses in Latin America.

The UAW supports SOA Watch, a nonviolent grassroots movement that works for the closing the SOA and a change in U.S. foreign policy.