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SOA Watch
School of the Americas Watch is an advocacy organization founded by former Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters in 1990 to protest the training of mainly Latin American military officers, by the United States Department of Defense, at the School of the Americas (SOA). Most notably, SOA Watch conducts a vigil each November at the site of the academy, located on the grounds of Fort Benning, a U.S. Army military base near Columbus, Georgia, to protest human rights abuses committed by some graduates of the academy or under their leadership, including murders, rapes and torture and contraventions of the Geneva Conventions. Military officials state that even if graduates commit war crimes after they return to their home country, the school itself should not be held accountable for their actions. Responding to "mounting protests" spearheaded by SOA Watch, in 2000 the United States Congress renamed the School of the Americas the Western Hemisphere Institute for Secu ...
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Advocacy
Advocacy is an Action (philosophy), activity by an individual or advocacy group, group that aims to influence decision making, decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to influence public policy, laws and budgets by using facts, their relationships, the media, and messaging to educate government officials and the public. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes, including media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research. Lobbying (often by lobby groups) is a form of advocacy where a direct approach is made to legislators on a specific issue or specific piece of legislation. Research has started to address how advocacy groups in the United States and Canada are using social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action. Forms There are several forms of advocacy, each representing a different approach in a way to initiate changes in the s ...
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Larry Rosebaugh
Lawrence "Larry" Rosebaugh (also called Lorenzo) (May 16, 1935 – May 18, 2009) was an American streetwise priest, peace activist, and missionary from Wisconsin who spent many years working in Central and South America and was murdered by masked gunmen in Guatemala in 2009. Early life Rosebaugh was born in Appleton, Wisconsin on 16 May 1935, the son of Donald and Mildred (O’Gorman) Rosebaugh. His father worked as an insurance claims adjuster and was eventually transferred to the St. Louis area, where Rosebaugh attended Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Pursuing membership in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, he attended St. Henry’s Seminary in Belleville, Illinois, and completed his theological studies at Our Lady of Snows Scholasticate, the Oblate seminary in Pass Christian, Mississippi. He made his perpetual vows as a member of the Oblates in August 1960, and was ordained to the priesthood in March 1963. Milwaukee After a brief parish assignment and ...
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Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". Hence, civil disobedience is sometimes equated with peaceful protests or nonviolent resistance. Henry David Thoreau's essay ''Resistance to Civil Government'', published posthumously as '' Civil Disobedience'', popularized the term in the US, although the concept itself has been practiced longer before. It has inspired leaders such as Susan B. Anthony of the U.S. women's suffrage movement in the late 1800s, Saad Zaghloul in the 1910s culminating in Egyptian Revolution of 1919 against British Occupation, and Mahatma Gandhi in 1920s India in their protests for Indian independence against the British Empire. Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's peaceful protests during the civil rights movement in the 1960s United States contained impo ...
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Military Police
Military police (MP) are law enforcement agencies connected with, or part of, the military of a state. In wartime operations, the military police may support the main fighting force with force protection, convoy security, screening, rear reconnaissance, logistic traffic management, counterinsurgency, and detainee handling. In different countries it may refer to: * A section of military forces assigned to police, or garrison, occupied territories, usually during a war. * A section of military forces assigned to policing Prisoner of war Detentions. * A section of the military responsible for policing the areas of responsibility of the armed forces (referred to as provosts) against all criminal activity by military or civilian personnel * A section of the military responsible for policing in both the armed forces and in the civilian population (most gendarmeries, such as the French Gendarmerie or the Spanish Guardia Civil) * A section of the military solely responsible for po ...
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Razor Wire
Barbed tape or razor wire is a mesh of metal strips with sharp edges whose purpose is to prevent passage by humans. The term "razor wire", through long usage, has generally been used to describe barbed tape products. Razor wire is much sharper than the standard barbed wire; it is named after its appearance but is not razor sharp. The points are very sharp and made to rip and snag clothing and flesh. The multiple blades of a razor-wire fence are designed to inflict serious cuts on anyone attempting to climb through or over it and therefore also has a strong psychological deterrent effect. Razor wire is used in many security applications because, although it can be circumvented relatively quickly by humans with tools, penetrating a razor-wire barrier without tools is very slow and typically injurious, often thwarting such attempts or giving security forces more time to respond. Use Starting in the late 1960s, barbed tape was typically found in prisons and secure mental hospita ...
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Eleventh Circuit Court Of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (in case citations, 11th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the following U.S. district courts: * Middle District of Alabama * Northern District of Alabama * Southern District of Alabama * Middle District of Florida * Northern District of Florida * Southern District of Florida * Middle District of Georgia * Northern District of Georgia * Southern District of Georgia These districts were originally part of the Fifth Circuit, but were split off to form the Eleventh Circuit on October 1, 1981. For this reason, Fifth Circuit decisions from before this split are considered binding precedent in the Eleventh Circuit.Stein v. Reynolds Secs., Inc.', 667 F.2d 33 (11th Cir. 1982). The court is based at the Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. Court of Appeals Building in Atlanta, Georgia. The building is named for Elbert Tuttle, who served as Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit in the 1960s and was known for issuing ...
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September 11 Attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the Northeastern United States to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and the third plane into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States military) in Arlington County, Virginia. The fourth plane was intended to hit a federal government building in Washington, D.C., but crashed in a field following a passenger revolt. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and instigated the war on terror. The first impact was that of American Airlines Flight 11. It was crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03, the World Trade Center’s S ...
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Trespass
Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels, and trespass to land. Trespass to the person historically involved six separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem (or maiming), and false imprisonment. Through the evolution of the common law in various jurisdictions, and the codification of common law torts, most jurisdictions now broadly recognize three trespasses to the person: assault, which is "any act of such a nature as to excite an apprehension of battery";''Johnson v. Glick'', battery, "any intentional and unpermitted contact with the plaintiff's person or anything attached to it and practically identified with it"; and false imprisonment, the " or of freedom from restraint of movement".''Broughton v. New York'', 37 N.Y.2d 451, 456–7 Trespass to chattel does not require a showing of damages. Simply the "intermeddling with or use of … the personal property" of another gives cau ...
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Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements, using self-organization, encourage community members to contribute by taking responsibility and action for their community. Grassroots movements utilize a variety of strategies from fundraising and registering voters, to simply encouraging political conversation. Goals of specific movements vary and change, but the movements are consistent in their focus on increasing mass participation in politics. These political movements may begin as small and at the local level, but grassroots ...
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El Salvador
El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. The country's population in 2022 is estimated to be 6.5 million. Among the Mesoamerican nations that historically controlled the region are the Lenca (after 600 AD), the Mayans, and then the Cuzcatlecs. Archaeological monuments also suggest an early Olmec presence around the first millennium BC. In the beginning of the 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the Central American territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. However the Viceroyalty of Mexico had little to no influence in the daily affairs of the isthmus, which was colonized in 1524. In 1609, the area was declared the Captaincy General of Guatemala by t ...
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Central American University
José Simeón Cañas Central American University ( es, Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas"), also known as UCA El Salvador, is a private university with nonprofit purposes in San Salvador, El Salvador, run by the Society of Jesus. It was founded on September 15, 1965, at the request of a group of Roman Catholic families who appealed to the Salvadoran government and the Society of Jesus in order to create another university as an alternative to the University of El Salvador, becoming the first private institution of higher education in the country. The Jesuits also run Central American University in Nicaragua (UCA Managua), opened in 1960. History UCA has since evolved to be one of the best institutions of higher learning in Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama). This is the case, despite the university's focus on playing a decisive role in the transformation of the unjust Salvadoran society. Such a focus within the Sa ...
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