Compiled from reports by Ed Kinane, Patrick O'Neill, Eric LeCompte and others

"I'm a pawn in all this," declared Federal Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth as he found all of the SOA 26 guilty of trespass on May 23, after a two-day trial in Columbus, Georgia. "If I find you not guilty, that makes Fort Benning and the government look like a laughing stock, but if I find you guilty and sentence you to the maximum, I make martyrs of you."

In a leisurely series of sentencing hearings that stretched from just after lunch until 8 p.m., the Magistrate spoke to each defendant individually, proceeding to give 19 of the SOA 26 maximum prison time -- six months. Five received shorter sentences and two, probation and fines.

The SOA 26 were all repeat "offenders". They were arrested last November at the U.S. Army's Fort Benning for protesting the School of the Americas, in violation of ban and bar letters received at previous protests. Among the thousands who "crossed the line" onto the base in a massive civil disobedience action, including scores of repeaters, only these 26 were singled out for prosecution.

Despite Judge Faircloth's professed "discomfort," he found it within himself to sentence Dorothy Hennessey, 88, a Franciscan nun from Dubuque, Iowa, to the max. Sr. Hennessey had rebuffed his original sentence of six months "mother house arrest," telling Faircloth "I'd rather not be singled out for special treatment. I am not that much of an invalid." He likewise gave her biological younger sister, Gwen Hennessey, 68, also a Franciscan nun, the max. Bill Houston, a retired Antioch math professor, also got six months, while his wife Hazel Tulecke got three months.

In another family cluster, 19 year old student Rachel Hayward and her aunt Mary Lou Benson each got the max; while her mother Martha Hayward got three years probation. Richard John Kinane, 51, brother of former SOA prisoner Ed Kinane, was also among this mustering of martyrs. RJ got the max.

Duluth Catholic Worker Joel Kilgour unaccountably only got 30 days prison time and Rita Hohenshell, grandmother of five, got three months. Another Catholic Worker, Steve Jacobs from St. Louis, got two six month consecutive sentences for two counts of trespass.

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Of the ten people arrested at the Pentagon during SOA Watch protests there on April 2, five found their charges dismissed by the June 20 court date. Of the four who faced the court that day, Lisa Guido's charge was dismissed without prejudice when her arresting officer failed to show. A continuance was granted to Nathan Gray until July 6, and to Ally Styan until July 20. Eric Robison, already sentenced to jail as one of the SOA 26, chose to go ahead with his trial. He was convicted of disobeying a lawful order and interfering with government function, and sentenced to three days in jail.

Six Oberlin college students stood trial June 20-22, 2001 in Washington, D.C. Superior Court for a nonviolent demonstration last April 2 against the Sikorsky Corporation, manufacturer of the Black Hawk helicopter. To protest Sikorsky's profiteering from the Black Hawk's role in the "War on Drugs" in Colombia, the six women locked themselves around a pillar inside the National Guard Memorial Museum, causing the opening session of a Sikorsky Corporation conference to be canceled.

The women represented themselves, and two who had visited Colombia in January testified about the violence and herbicidal poisoning of food crops attendant to the drug war, which they had witnessed firsthand. The judge denied any affirmative defense, and the jury convicted the women of unlawful entry. They were fined $75.

Jeff Winder, arrested February 28, Ash Wednesday, pouring ashes at the State Department in repentance of U.S. support for the war against the people of Colombia, had his charges dismissed when his arresting officer failed to show up in court May 30.

Also sentenced to six months in prison were John Ewers, 66, Dayton, OH; Lois Putzier, 69, Tucson, AZ; Clare Hanrahan, 53, Asheville, NC; William Houston Jr., 71, Yellow Springs, OH; Eric Robison, 21, Spokane, WA; John Gilroy, 65, Endwell, NY; Mary Vaughn, 68, White Bear Lake, MN; Miriam Spencer, 76, Bellevue, WA; Russell DeYoung Jr., 54, Newport News, VA; Elizabeth McKenzie, 71, St. Paul, MN; John Alfred Hunt Jr., 33, Boone, NC; Rebecca Kanner, 43, Ann Arbor, MI; Joshua Raisler-Cohn, 24, Portland, OR; and Karl Meyer, 63, Nashville, TN. The only defendant to plead guilty, North Carolina artist Kathryn Temple, received two years probation. Besides their sentences, 14 were fined from $150 to $3000. Why such disparities? Who knows. Courtroom observers and defendants alike left perplexed.

Karl Meyer, Joshua Raisler-Cohn, and John (Jack) Gilroy each refused the option of self-surrender at some undetermined date, and began serving their six month sentences immediately in the local county jail. The others await word from the court about when and where they are to begin serving their sentence.

Even as the 26 were being sentenced, eleven more people engaged in nonviolent civil resistance actions on the base and were arrested. Three people simply walked onto the base, including Lana Jacobs, wife of Steve Jacobs who was sentenced to one year in prison. Three others removed the white line at the gate, which, they said, strangles political discourse on the post. Five more people delivered a letter to the new director of the SOA, now known as WHISC, for Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Regardless of the name, the letter "banned and barred" the counter-insurgency training school for its violations of human rights. Among witnesses of the gate action was supporter Jeff Moebus, a 28-year Army veteran (Vietnam) nearing the end of a 52-day juice-only fast and vigil he began at the gate on Good Friday, April 12.

Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch and recidivist resister imprisoned for witnessing at Ft. Benning 17 years ago, and again in 1991-92 and 1996, observed, "The prison witness is going to energize the movement. It is madness, and all I can think of is shame on that judge. These people are going to prison for six months for what? For crossing onto Ft. Benning in a solemn funeral procession to remember the dead, to call out their names and to say 'presente,' to keep their memory alive?

"While those graduates, trained at the school down the road, who killed, tortured and raped, they get pardoned. It's going to backfire sending all of these people off to prison. What it's going to do is bring more people down here in November to cross that line and I'm going to be one of them. I've made a decision that I'll be crossing that line in solidarity with Sr. Dorothy and all the others."

SOA resister Charles Liteky is due to be released from federal prison in California in late July, after completing a one year sentence for repeated trespass at Ft. Benning.

For more information, contact SOA Watch, PO Box 4566, Washington, DC 20017; (202)234-3440, info@soaw.org.

Letters of support should be sent individually to Joshua Raisler-Cohn, Jack Gilroy and Karl Meyer, c/o SOA Watch (address above), and to Charles Liteky, #83276-020, FPC Lompoc, 3705 W. Farm Road, Lompoc, CA 93436. When the other 21 resisters report to prison, their ID# and prison address will be posted at www.soaw.org.