"After ridding the world of a few more liquified dinosaurs, and trekking about 1100 miles along the way, our crew arrived in Columbus, GA yesterday.   We reached our destination just in time to gather our things and set up for the first nonviolence training of the weekend.   Considering it was two days before the action we were surprised to have a good 20 people show up!   This was just a small precursor to todays trainings, though, as we had almost 200 people participate in a number of trainings throughout the day.   These are all  minute numbers in the context of the weekends activities but considering there  will be  93 planned workshops happening, it's a good start.

 One of the most heartening aspects of the trainings today were the number of people who were here for the first time.   Just about three quarters of the participants had never come to protest the SOA/WHINSEC before.   Also great to see was the array of places that participants had travelled from to reach here.   People from every region of the US have already started to gather and many more thousands are expected in the next couple of days.    

While we spent the day facilitating nonviolence trainings many other folks were facilitating their own workshops and sharing information about many issues concerning peace and justice in Latin America.   Today was just a preparation day for the street actions of Saturday and Sunday but there was a certain excitement and  electricity already in the air.   If there was one way of describing the general feel of the day it was that people are ready to get out there tomorrow and make a statement!  

Patrick Sheehan-Gaumer