WYNC.FM carries on interview with the Rev. Luis Barrios about his experience in federal prison for a protest at the School of the Americas now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The school trains military personnel from North, Central and South America and some of its graduates have become notorious for human rights.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Lower Manhattan, houses federal prisoners of all security levels. Bernard Madoff, accused of defrauding investors of more than $50 billion, is there, awaiting sentencing. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian shiek convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, also spent time there. So did the late mobster John Gotti.
And so has Luis Barrios. He’s an associate priest at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan. He’s also the chairman and professor of the Department of Latin American and Latina Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He was jailed at the MCC for two months, for trespassing on federal property, during a protest at Fort Benning, in Georgia, against the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation.
Listen to the interview: