BY CANDACE WAGNER
CHESTER, Pennsylvania- Fifty-five residents and supporters
marched here June 1 to protest recent mock invasions by U.S.
Army Special Operations forces in this town just south of
Philadelphia.
The training exercises, dubbed "Exercise Roller Ghost," were nighttime attacks on vacant buildings in residential neighborhoods. Soldiers stormed vacant public housing project dwellings, detonated bombs, and sprayed live gunfire. Helicopters buzzed overhead.
Residents nearby were alarmed and angry. "Chester is under siege, that's what I thought," Yvonne Carrington, a tenants' council president, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"They wouldn't have done it if this wasn't a Black community," Anita Porter told the Militant. Porter lives one block from the site.
Over the week of May 11-16 similar operations took place in Camden, New Jersey, and in Philadelphia.
An uproar has followed the attacks in Chester. A federal judge launched an inquiry into which city officials gave the army permission to carry out the exercises there. The director of the Chester Housing Authority (CHA) testified that after being contacted by army officials for permission, he expressed concern. The next notice he received was that the exercise had already taken place.
Brig. Gen. William Leszczynski testified that the army was given permission by Robert Bettelli, director of technical services for the CHA. Bettelli said he hadn't notified his boss because he had signed a secrecy oath.
The June 1 march, as well as an earlier picket line, targeted Chester mayor Dominic Pileggi, who also gave his permission for the assault.
Residents of the 500 block of Fairview Avenue in Camden, New Jersey, are also outraged by the May 13 U.S. Army "invasion" of their community.
Residents watched in bewilderment as dozens of men in black combat dress sprinted into an abandoned building across a narrow street from their homes. The residents report that the detonation of explosives and gunfire shook the neighborhood until 1:00 a.m. Windows in an adjacent abandoned building shattered from the blasts.
Mendingo Williams, whose home is directly opposite the invasion site, told Militant reporters that a Camden police officer on the scene told Williams he "was not obligated to tell me" what was going on.
Williams was not surprised that the army chose his neighborhood for the training exercise. "They could have done this where no one would see it," he said. "It was a fear tactic. They weren't hiding it. They are letting you know what they can do."
The Camden fire chief told the media that he was informed that operations were to prepare for the Republican Party convention, which will be held in Philadelphia in the year 2000. Army spokesmen denied this, stating that the training was for fighting "urban terrorism" in other countries.
"Exercise Roller Ghost" was part of national "counter- terrorism exercises" carried out by the U.S. Army in more than 20 other urban areas of since 1994. These include "Operation Urban Warrior" in the San Francisco Bay Area in March of this year. That exercise included "enemies" - actors portraying rioters, people said to be sheltering terrorists, and hungry earthquake victims. Similar exercises have been cut short in Houston, Pittsburgh, and Charlotte, North Carolina, after residents protested.
James McFadden contributed to this article.