WAFFLE HOUSE MASSACREE Click here for Updated Lyrics (27Nov01)
  words John Heckenlively
   music Arlo Guthrie
   arrangement Marc Frucht

We call this song "Father Roy's Protest Movement." It's about Father Roy, and 
the protest movement. But Father Roy's protest movement is not the name of 
the movement, that's just the name of the song, which is why we call the song 
Father Roy's Protest Movement.

CHORUS:
Well you can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
Just look for the signs, they're yellow and black
You can get a hearty meal, or a light snack
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House 

This song  starts at the Waffle House. People from up north don't know about 
the Waffle House, but about the only thing the south has more of is Kudzu.

It was about two Thanksgivings ago, that's two years ago around Thanksgiving, 
when I was sitting at the  Waffle House... you're probably wondering, what's 
a yankee doing down south in a Waffle House... well,  I had come down to 
protest the School of the Americas, that's the U.S. Army's School of the 
Americas at Fort Benning...

So I'm sitting in the Waffle House on my way to protest the SOA when.... Now 
you're probably wondering, why is he protesting the School of the Americas

Well, this is a long story, so you might just want to sit down for a spell. 
Now the protesting part starts around 10 years ago, but the school, well, the 
school goes back to 1946. Now, at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Because back in 1946 we were fighting the communists. And the communists were 
the biggest, baddest people on the whole planet. So if you had to kill a few 
people in Latin America to preserve freedom and democracy, it didn't seem 
like a very high price to pay.

So the school went on for about 40 years, teaching murdering and torturing 
and all sorts of mean, nasty, horrible, ugly stuff. And nobody really 
complained, excepting for a few liberals, and nobody listens to them. Besides 
the school was in Panama, and who pays attention to what goes on in Panama?

But then - a terrible thing happened...
The Panamanians decided that they didn't like all the murdering and torturing 
and other mean, nasty, horrible stuff being taught in their country - and 
they kicked the school out.

So the army moved the school to Fort Benning - you remember Fort Benning, 
from back  at the Waffle House.... And that seemed to work out fine, because 
people pay almost as little attention to what happens in Georgia as they do 
to Panama.

But then, a second terrible thing happened - the Cold War ended - and we had 
won.
All of a sudden, all of the big bad terrible Communists we had fought for 40 
years weren't there anymore. It was a dramatic thing. The Berlin Wall came 
down, and people were selling chunks of it to anyone dumb enough to buy a 
piece of concrete.

Unfortunately, the word didn't spread very fast - at least not to folks in 
Central America. It was right around Thanksgiving, 11 years ago -- that's 11 
Thanksgivings ago -- about a week before Thanksgiving, that a group of 
soldiers in El Salvador got in a lot of trouble. 

These soldiers, who were sort of like the Green Berets, except with a nastier 
attitude, killed some university professors and their housekeeper. Now I know 
university pro-fessors do tend to be on the liberal, communist-type side.

Of course, these professors happened to be Jesuit priests. Now, being a 
priest and being a communist  might seem mutually contradictory, given the 
atheism and all. But you have to understand Central America.

These priests thought it was a good idea if rich people had a little less 
money and poor people had a little more money. And in El Salvador, that is 
called Communism. So the gung-ho soldiers, under the impression they were 
killing big, bad communists, murdered some priests and two women.

Not it probably won't suprise you, but most of these bad apples were 
graduates of the School of the Americas.

And it's right about here that the protesting party of the story begins. 
Because a priest from Louisiana named Roy Bourgouis heard about this, and he 
got pissed off. I mean mad, with MAD in capital letters. And he decided that 
he would shut the place down - no matter how long it took.

Now, at the time, Father Roy was taking on the biggest military machine in 
the history of the world., a machine run by guys Bush and Cheney. And he 
might have underestimated how determined they would be. Then again, the 
Pentagon underestimated Father Roy.

Now some people are just born troublemakers, like Gandhi or Martin Luther 
King. And you have to count Father in that number. When he was in Bolivia, he 
got arrested for starting up a human rights group. Well,  Hugo Banzer, the 
dictator down there, knew that if you gave people human rights, the next 
thing they'd want is democracy - and well, that's just bad for business. So 
he nipped those human rights trouble-makers in the bud. So Father Roy got 
kicked out of the country, as "persona non grata," which is Latin for 
troublemaker.


1983 - El Salvador - Romero protest
Judge Maximum Bob Robert Elliott
Lt Calley/Martin Luther King in Jail

Well, back in 1989, they actually allowed Father Roy to visit the School, and 
he did, just to find out what was going on. And there was an in-structor 
there, and he was saying: "I wanna kill. I wanna kill. I wanna see blood and 
gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, 
kill, KILL. KILL" Of course, he was saying this all in Spanish, so it was 
doubly frightening. 

So Father Roy, I'll just called him Father Roy, because Bourgeouis is awfully 
hard to spell, set up shop right outside Fort Benning. Can you imagine that, 
setting up shop right outside Fort Benning? That's what he did, and said he 
wasn't leaving until the School of the Americas did too.

TIMELINE

1990 - Father Roy, blood on walls of SOA Hall of Fame
Judge Elliott 
truth cannot be silenced - Elliott disagreed, sent Father Roy to jail
Justice is truly deaf and dumb when Judge Eliott's on the bench.

1991, 1993 - 70 protestors
1994 - 5 arrested
1995 - 10 arrested, including Father Roy

1996 - 400 protested, 60 arrested

1997 - 2000 protested, 601 arrested

The next Thanksgiving, in 1998, an amazing thing happened. 7000 people, can 
you imagine, 7000 people showed up, and there was a might fine rally. 

But right in the middle of the rally, a military po-liceman came out with a 
paper in his hand and he read: "Whoever-within-the-jurisdiction-of 
-the-United-States-goes-upon- any-military-naval-or-Coast-Guard reservation, 
post, fort, arsenal, yard, station, or installation, for any purpose 
prohibited by law or lawful regulation or whoever reenters or is found within 
any such reservation, post, fort, arsenal, yard station or installation...." 
and he went on for about five minutes, and nobody understood a word he said. 
But everybody had a good time singing folk songs and getting their pictures 
taken with Martin Sheen and such, and they just waited there ready to march 
over the line. And over 2300 people did.

But the police were ready, or at least they thought they were. They had 27 
blue and white buses, blue birds painted on the side, with a driver inside 
each one ready to transport the transgressors.

And at first this worked out fine. The cops had a fine old time putting the 
protestors in the buses, until... well, they got to the last bus, and there 
were a lot more people. I mean a whole lot. So the cops looked at buses, and 
they looked at the crowd. And they looked at the buses, and they looked at 
the crowd. And right then and there, I think I saw one of them cry. 

Well, they knew they were beat, so they just took everyone to Rigdon park and 
dropped them off. And everyone had a fine old time marching through Co-lumbus.

And that bill we'd been trying to get through Congress? Well, we finally got 
it through  -- well, on the House side anyway, but the Senate killed it.

So we can back again, that next Thanksgiving, and this time, this time, well, 
there were 12,000 people - yes 12,000 people. And 4400 of  'em crossed line. 
And you know, not only did they have same 27 buses with the drivers in each 
one, they even had porta-potties. Every now and then, there's something to be 
said for military planning.

Well, after that, Congress got sneaky and changed the name  of the School. 
It's now the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation. Kinda 
makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it, with all those fine 
words like Defense and Cooperation? 

Except the only they changed was the name. They're gonna keep on teaching the 
same old thing. Which means that Father Roy and the protest movement will 
have to keep on -- doing the same old thing. Which finally gets me to the 
point of this song.

Imagine if one person, just one person, marches up to Ridgway Hall and sings 
"You can get anything you want at the Waffle House." They'll probably think 
they're crazy, and since they don't want crazy people in jail, they'll 
probably just give them a ban and bar order and kick them off the base. 

And if two people, if two people sing it, in harmony, they'll think they're 
gay, and they certainly don't want to put them together in a cell. And if 
three people, can you imagine, three people singing "Waffle House", they'll 
think it's an organization. And can you imagine fifty people a day, I said 
fifty people a day, singing "Waffle House" and getting banned and barred. And 
friends they may think it's a movement.

And that's what it is, the Waffle House Close the SOA Anti-Massacre movement, 
and all you have to do to join is to sing it the next time it comes around on 
the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come on the guitar, here, and sing it 
when it does. Here it comes.

CHORUS:
Well you can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
Just look for the signs, they're yellow and black
You can get a hearty meal, or a light snack
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House 

Now that was horrible. If you want to Close the SOA and stuff you got to sing 
loud. I've been talking for 20 minutes now, and I could go on for another 20 
minutes. I'm not proud ... or  tired.

So we'll just wait for it to come around again, and this time with four part 
harmony and feeling. We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're 
doing.

All right now.

CHORUS:
Well you can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
Including waffles
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House
Just look for the signs, they're yellow and black
You can get a hearty meal, or a light snack
You can get anything you want, at the Waffle House 

Da da da da da dum
At the Waffle House

muzIK!