Alice Gerard is a journalist and peace activist who lives in Buffalo,

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Work with School of the Americas Watch

After protesting at the School of the Americas in

Fort Benning Fort Benning is a United States Army post near Columbus, Georgia, adjacent to the Alabama–Georgia border. Fort Benning supports more than 120,000 active-duty military, family members, reserve component soldiers, retirees and civilian employees ...

, Georgia in 2003 as part of a group from

SOA Watch School of the Americas Watch is an advocacy organization founded by former Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters in 1990 to protest the training of mainly Latin American military officers, by the United States Department of ...

, Gerard was convicted of trespass. She was sentenced to three months in the federal prison camp in Danbury, Connecticut. She crossed the Fort Benning fence two more times (2004 and 2006). She served six-month sentences in the federal prison camp in Danbury in 2005 and in 2007 In addition to fence crossing, Gerard has also written articles about controversy surrounding Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (the current name for School of the Americas) for Buffalo's Alt Press, including "Same Old, Same Old: Medieval Practices in a Modern Era", and she is a member of SOA Watch's Legislative Working Group.

Other work

In 2008, she participated in a Witness Against War walk that was organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence. The 500-mile walk began on July 12 in Chicago, Illinois, and ended on August 30, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The group, which included a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq (and now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War), Kathy Kelly (who had been in Iraq at the start of the war in 2003), and others, walked through the state of Wisconsin and gave presentations in various venues, including churches, libraries, and community centers. Their goal was to share the human cost of war through eyewitness accounts. The group also held a vigil at Fort McCoy, which was preparing to send the largest contingent of National Guard since World War II into active deployment in Iraq. In 2009, she participated with 49 others in a Walk for Peace from Camp Williams, Wisconsin, home of the US Property & Fiscal Office (USP&FO) for the State of Wisconsin, as well as the

Army National Guard The Army National Guard (ARNG), in conjunction with the Air National Guard, is an organized Militia (United States), militia force and a Reserve components of the United States Armed Forces, federal military reserve force of the United States A ...

's Consolidated State Maintenance Facility to Fort McCoy, an active US military training center in Wisconsin. In the spring of 2010, she participated in a Walk for a Nuclear Free Future, from Salamanca to New York City.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Writers from Buffalo, New York American pacifists American women journalists Journalists from New York (state) Activists from Buffalo, New York 21st-century American women {{US-journalist-20thC-stub