Elizabeth Anne McKenzie
Biography
Elizabeth Anne McKenzie crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during the November 2000 SOA Watch vigil. Sentenced to 6 months, $500 fine.
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, 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.
Portrait: Betty McKenzie (Elizabeth Anne McKenzie), photographed by Sarah Whiting for Minnesota Women’s Press, February 2014, page 16. The original caption identifies her holding a blanket crocheted by fellow imprisoned protesters.
Minnesota Public Radio reported January 14, 2002 that Betty McKenzie had been released that morning after six months in federal prison in Illinois. The January 17 end-date in the December 2001 prisoner roll was prospective.
In her February 2014 interview, McKenzie describes her first arrest at a 1986 Honeywell protest in Minneapolis and placement in a separate holding cell because she lacked identification. The former teacher and Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet identifies her last arrest with the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
