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The November anniversary of the UCA massacre continues to be an important focus for the growing grassroots movement to close the SOA/WHISC. Indeed, the original band of ten resisters who gathered at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 1990 to commemorate the first anniversary of the UCA massacre has grown in recent Novembers to a teeming resistance community of 10,000. People come from all over the country and even the world to honor victims of the SOA – as well as their survivors – with music, words, puppets and theatre. Traditionally the legal vigil and memorial service concludes with a mock funeral procession, using the Presente Litany , onto Ft. Benning, with all who choose to march onto the post technically at risk for arrest. Subsequent to 9/11 and the erecting of a security fence at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 2001, protesters who wish to take their mourning onto the post need to go over, under, or around that fence, as opposed to the simple marching of the past. Over the years, hundreds and even thousands have chosen to risk arrest for criminal trespassing. At the 2002 protest, the city of Columbus began requiring all attending the event to submit to a metal detector search at the designated entrance. After a lengthy legal battle, however, in October of 2004 the Eleventh Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled unanimously that the forced search was unconstitutional.
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