Since 1990, tens of thousands of Americans have made pilgrimages every November to the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia, to protest the Pentagon’s School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, and call for its closing.

Convictions: Prisoners of Conscience, released in October 2004, focuses on some of the 200 SOA protesters who collectively have served more than 80 years in prison for their non-violent civil disobedience -- some receiving sentences as long as 18 months and fines up to $10,000.

They give up their freedom in the hope that doing time in federal prison will call attention in their home communities -- and in Congress -- to the grassroots campaign to shut the school.

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