¡Presente!
News writer Nathan Bobinchak shares his experiences while protesting the School of the Americas in Georgia
Nathan Bobinchak
Issue date: 11/20/07 Section: News
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Though the vigil started in the early 1990s with only a few people, in recent years the attendance has ballooned to include students from every Jesuit university and numerous Jesuit high schools.
This trip was my fifth down to the military base, and the first with Loyola. I also have gone from Detroit with my high school. Our numbers grew consistently every year, but we never had a group larger than 11. Going down with more than 50 of my fellow students, each passionately committed to closing the SOA, was quite a different experience.
The four-day journey began Thursday night with a prayer service and a final send-off by the Rev. Michael J. Garanzini, S.J. Energized and alert, we all piled into the packed bus, with a long, relatively sleepless 16-hour bus ride ahead. Eight hours later, the sun found us traveling across the Appalachian mountains, still hours from our destination. Undaunted, we filled ourselves with cheap truck-stop coffee and continued on our way.
It's easy to see the appeal of the South when you visit it in late fall. The leaves are still many shades of red and, in many cases, still entirely green. Stumbling off the bus in Columbus, Ga., the city closest to the fort, everyone shed their winter coats and fleeces for short sleeves as the balmy Georgia breeze swirled around us. As beautiful as the weather always is, that isn't the reason for our annual pilgrimage. We hardly had time to check into our rooms and grab a quick dinner at a local Mexican restaurant before it was time to begin the Ignatian Family Teach-In across the street from our hotel.