Biography
Josh Raisler Cohn crossed the line at Fort Benning, Georgia during the November 2000 SOA Watch vigil. Sentenced to 6 months, $1000 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.
The May–June 2005 prisoner report states that Raisler Cohn completed a thirty-day sentence for a Greenpeace coal-smokestack protest and was released.
Josh Krysak’s February 16, 2005 courthouse report individually names Josh Raisler Cohn among the six Greenpeace smokestack defendants who pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and summary criminal mischief. It identifies Judge Terry Grimes and District Attorney Marjorie Fox. Felony and federal charges were dropped, as was the criminal-trespass charge. Five defendants received five-day sentences; Joshua Raisler Cohn received thirty days because of a prior nonviolent-protest conviction. The April follow-up reports that the defendants had spent time in jail and specifically says Cohn served thirty days. The restitution dispute remained unresolved in April; the original $94,577 award is not treated as a final surviving restitution outcome. Original sentencing report; April restitution follow-up.
