Biography
Christine Gaunt crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during the annual SOA Watch vigil to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Convicted of trespass on a military installation and sentenced to 6 months in federal custody.
Each year on the November anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, peace activists gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia (now Fort Moore), site of the U.S. Army School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), to commemorate the dead and to call for the school's closure. Hundreds have crossed the line onto the base over four decades of vigils; many have served federal sentences ranging from 30 days to a year for trespass.
The participant self-identification reproduced in Sara Koopman’s ACME article explicitly gives Christine Gaunt’s birth year as 1956. The year is not calculated from age; no month or day is established.
A separate June 28, 2008 Des Moines anti-torture vigil led to overnight detention; the report states all charges were later dropped.
