Number 90967-020 likens her prison time
to Third World reality

People of Faith
Name: Catherine (Kate) Fontanazza Age: 54 Parish: St. Michael, Milwaukee Line of work: Teacher and artist Book recently read: "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver Favorite movie: "Tree of the Wooden Clog" Favorite quotation: He shall judge between nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall learn war anymore. -- Isaiah 2:4

Milwaukee activist Kate Fontanazza recently took up temporary residence in Greenville, Ill. -- as number 90967-020.

Fontanazza is finishing the fourth of a six-month federal prison sentence for civil disobedience. Like most prisoners, she has plenty of time on her hands, so she writes -- so much that she's developed "writer's elbow." Sometimes it's letters, cranked out on an old typewriter; sometimes it's poems:

"Sitting here in a concrete cubby
Listening to the huffing and puffing of the breathing machine of one of my roommates
My prayers are for the families who have lost loved ones because
We send guns and bombs, tanks and landmines with our tax dollars
It's time to change....
It's time to send our president
and lawmakers
To week-long intensives
With the hungry children of
South America and
The thirsty children of Africa
Where our president and cohorts
can learn why
It's time to learn conflict resolution and
The basic law of
Love your neighbor
It's time to change."

Fontanazza, along with 42 others, was tried and sentenced in July 2002 for her part in the 2001 Ft. Benning protest, an annual demonstration against the former School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) housed at the Georgia base. Several thousand people routinely make the yearly November journey. This year, as she was imprisoned at the time, Fontanazza's husband Stan Spence traveled to Georgia on her behalf.

"She always raised hell," Spence told the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer in a Nov. 18, 2002, story. "I'm here in her stead."

According to the School of the Americas Watch Web site, www.soaw.org, the School of the Americas was founded in Panama in 1946 as the U.S. Army Caribbean Training Center. (It moved to Georgia in 1984.) Its original goal was the professionalization of Latin American and Caribbean militaries. In 1963, under President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress program, it was renamed and refocused on the Cold War. It continues as a U.S. Army school that trains soldiers and military personnel from Latin American countries in such subjects as counterinsurgency, counter-narcotics operations, infantry tactics, and military intelligence. The Pentagon has released training manuals that were used in the school until 1991 which back up activists' claims against it.

The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), deeply involved in the Ft. Benning protests, was founded by Maryknoll Fr. Ray Bourgeois in 1990, and through its research found that teachers, peasants, catechists, and union leaders in several Latin American countries were being tortured and killed by SOA graduates.

The long road to Ft. Benning started for Fontanazza in 1979, when she learned of the revolution in Nicaragua under the Somosa regime. "Many horrible acts of repression were taking place when the people united and formed a new government," she wrote in a letter to the Catholic Herald. The democratically minded Sandinista government was eventually overthrown by the U.S.-funded Contras. Reports of priests, nuns, and bishops being murdered by Latin American military forces continued to grow.

Outside of her social justice work, Fontanazza teaches art in the Milwaukee Public School system and at Urban Day School as a Head Start teacher. She also volunteers as an art teacher in the Milwaukee County Jail, and is an education advocate in three inner-city parishes (St. Michael, St. Rose, and St. Francis). She said it all makes her "acutely aware of the effects of the drain of resources from people who are poor and the poverty of many in the city and rural areas." So she decided to get involved.

In 1984 Fontanazza signed a "pledge of resistance," obligating her to demonstrate, make signs, and help organize prayer vigils. "As I found out more about what was happening, and the effects it was having on the poor people, I became involved in non-violent direct action," she said.

In 1999, Fontanazza went to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress, and was arrested at the non-violent Pentagon demonstration that year. She was also arrested on her first trip to Ft. Benning and given a five-year "ban-and-bar" letter from the military. On her second trip in 2001, she was arrested and charged with trespassing on government property. It is a "petty offense" in military terms and a misdemeanor in civilian ones and carries a maximum six-month sentence.

Fontanazza said she believes that Judge G. Mallon Faircloth's sentencing recommendation was harsh. "I feel as though he would like to have wiped us from the face of the earth as many of our Latin American brothers and sisters have been," she wrote. Yet she is willing to make the sacrifice.

"Ordinary people in Latin America have been suffering for many years because of our military budget. I believe in life, and our military government is willing to harm anyone who is standing in the way of profits. ... It is important to draw attention to the fact that our country is training terrorists and hundreds of thousands of people are being killed."