Crossing the Line

Pete Seeger, Martin Sheen and Phil Berrigan

Movingly depicts how the campaign to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) has become an international grassroots movement. Narrated by Susan Sarandon.

On November 22, 1998, over 7,000 students, teachers, church people, activists and former military—some trained at Ft. Benning—met outside the gates of that Georgia army base, where SOA is located.

Led by actor Martin Sheen, 2,319 of them risked arrest and imprisonment by crossing the line onto the military base, the largest act of civil disobedience in the U.S. since the Vietnam war.

Carrying symbolic coffins and crosses bearing the names of thousands of men, women and children assassinated by SOA graduates in Latin America, they demanded that the U.S. government stop training foreign soldiers and close SOA's doors forever. "Crossing the Line" documents this inspiring and dramatic non-violent protest.

16 minutes