Crossing Lines

Donte can reapply to go to Georgetown in Spring 2007, but he's not at all sure that's what he should do. It might be better to go to Berkeley or Chicago. He's asked for a delay in beginning his sentence so that he can honor a commitment he made to volunteer at a battered women's shelter in D.C. He mentions one women's studies professor, Elizabeth Velez, who supported him, cared about him.

Before deciding to actually go over the fence, he talked to his friends. Thousands of people came and demonstrated outside the school. It was only the 32 who went over the barbed wire who were arrested. Why did he have to take that extra step? He concluded that he was called to do this and that he was doing this for the right reasons. Afterward, though, he hasn't gotten as much support as he expected from his friends. They were busy with class and other activities. Activism today is a lonelier cause than it was in the '60s.

Sitting in my kitchen, he seems vulnerable and alone. We agree that he should think about whether he wants to go forward with press in his hometown, to tell all his friends and neighbors that this former three-time UIL district champ in debate is going to prison.

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It's a few days later, and now I'm sitting in Donte's kitchen, listening to him as he prepares dinner for his family. His two younger brothers are somewhere upstairs. Mom, a postal worker, and Dad, a truck driver just back from the Middle East, are elsewhere. Donte has just learned that the judge won't delay his sentencing; he'll have to go soon. He doesn't know where he'll be sent.

In his freshman year, Donte got involved in gay activism and women and gender studies movements. He found his classes challenging and absorbing, but he also wanted to be doing something in the world. He worked at a battered women's shelter and a pro-choice center. He got involved in labor organizing for the support staff at Georgetown. An on-campus hunger strike lasted 11 days. Donte was on a water-only diet and thought he was going to die. The students won; Georgetown signed an agreement to improve employee wages, but Donte says when students came back this fall, not everything had been put in place the way they'd intended. "We won, but we didn't," he says.

During this effort, Donte became friends with a fellow student who moved to the United States from Colombia after some of his family members were killed. Meeting his friend's family drew Donte deeper into South American political issues.

For years now, protesters have set up at the School of the Americas (briefly shut down and renamed in 2001) in November. The military puts up an extra portable barbed wire fence, while activists hold seminars nearby. On the fourth day, a Presente ceremony is held in which the names of people killed are read out. "It's a way of accounting for those who died," Donte says.

This year, Donte decided he should be at the November vigil. A dozen students from Georgetown went down on a bus.

Donte was handed a cross with the words "child, 4" on it. After his arrest, Donte searched out the background of his cross and found out it stood for Jairo Caucail, one of several children and adults killed in a chain-saw massacre in Choco, Colombia, in 2001, according to the Colombian Justice for Peace group.

After the Presente ceremony, they marched over to the military installation. At 12:10 Donte went over the barbed wire fence and sat down. He did not smash anything. He did not hit anyone or spit on them. Georgia state police and military police quickly descended upon him. "The cops nabbed me in five minutes, not even. My first thought was: 'There's so many people watching me get arrested.' "

Donte and the others were carried to the bus where they sat for four or five hours without moving. "We sang songs. 'We Shall Overcome.' 'This Little Light of Mine.' The nuns were really great about leading us in song."

Then they were moved to Fort Benning, where they were processed by the military in groups of four and five. Each was handed a "Ban and Bar" letter telling them to stay away from Fort Benning for the next five years. Fingerprinted, put in heavy chains, they were carried back to the bus and taken to Muskogee County Jail.

There, a nurse took out the piercing in Donte's ear with pliers. "It took her 15 minutes. The piercing broke and my ear started bleeding." Father Louis Vitale, a 73-year-old Jesuit priest, spotted Donte across the detox tank and encouraged him to persevere. Guards were about to put Donte in the general population, but when Donte confirmed he is gay, he was put in a special holding cell where he spent the next two days. The School of the Americas Watch group provided his $500 bail, and with the Georgetown bus long gone, he hitched a ride back to campus with another protester.