Biography
Fredrick Brancel crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during an SOA Watch vigil to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas / WHINSEC. Sentenced to 90 days in federal custody for trespass on a military installation.
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.
Sources
First-person Oxford imprisonment account
Flashbacks, January2007, pp11-12 publishes Fred C. Brancel’s January30,2006 statement to federal court in Columbus, Georgia. A February7,2006 postscript says the sentence was three months in federal prison and a $500 fine, and that he expected to self-report when directed by the Bureau of Prisons in four to six weeks. That forecast is not proof of an admission date. The editor and Brancel’s later first-person reflections confirm that he actually spent three months at Oxford, Wisconsin, in2006. His December2006 devotional reflections are retrospective; their dates are not evidence that he remained in prison in December. The independently recorded April11-July7,2006 custody dates are left unchanged.
Source: Flashbacks, United Methodist Historical Society of Wisconsin, volume33 number1, January2007, pp11-12. A January30 court statement is not itself proof that sentencing occurred that day.
