Biography
Donald W. Nelson 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 3 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.
