Leisa Faulkner-Barnes picked up a flier 218260;2 years ago about a new peace activists& group on campus. Since then she has traveled to foreign nations and has even spent several months in a federal prison as part of her personal mission to share her message with the rest of the world.

Faulkner-Barnes wasn&t always the activist type. She got married shortly after graduating from high school and spent the next several years as a stay-at-home mom, raising five boys, the youngest of which has Down syndrome.

As her sons grew up, she decided to go back to school to pursue her bachelor&s and master&s degrees. It was during this time that she received her calling to begin peace work.

Faulkner-Barnes began doing peace work in 2003, she said, in response to the war in Iraq. After seeing fliers for a new student group voicing their opinion against the war, she showed up to a meeting for Campus Peace Action.

&There was just me and two faculty members at that first meeting,& she said. &At the time there were no politically active clubs on campus.&

Campus Peace Action&s membership grew to more than 450 students within the next several months, she said. That spring it held the largest demonstration ever at Sac State, with over 550 students participating.

Faulkner-Barnes also became involved with the organization SOA Watch. The group is opposed to the School of Americas (recently changed to &WHINSEC&), a Ft. Benning, Ga., training academy for military leaders in Central and South America. According to SOA Watch, many of the school&s graduates have been accused of crimes against humanity.

In November 2003, Faulkner-Barnes joined Bourgeois and SOA Watch in a protest that involved walking onto federal property at Ft. Benning. She and a handful of others were arrested for trespassing. Faulkner-Barnes was sentenced to three months in a federal prison.

&People were afraid for me,& she said. &They all asked, &Are you sure you want to do this?& &

Faulkner-Barnes kept a journal while she was incarcerated in the Dublin, Calif., women&s facility. She sent her entries to her friends and family in Sacramento, and Campus Peace Action posted many of her entries on its Web site.

&I really learned to value women I wouldn&t otherwise have had a chance to know,& she said.

Since returning from prison, Faulkner-Barnes has remained active in the peace movement. She has continued working with SOA Watch and traveled to Haiti in March for the one-year anniversary of the ousting of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

According to Faulkner-Barnes and SOA Watch, graduates of the school are in charge of death squads that still commit atrocities in the struggling nation.

&Going to Haiti was a full circle,& she said. &I got to look into the eyes of the people I went to prison for.&

While representing the Haiti Action Committee, she photographed squads of men in police uniforms that were aiming their rifles into the crowd with their fingers on the triggers. She said it&s routine for them to open fire on crowds of poor people in the street.

Faulkner-Barnes returned from Haiti and embarked on a weeklong speaking tour of Northern California with Bourgeois in an attempt to educate people on the School of the Americas/WHINSEC and to share her experiences in Haiti.

She plans to continue working with SOA Watch until the school is closed, but her peace work is far from finished, she said.

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Andy Laughlin can be reached at

[email protected]