Biography
Michael David Omondi 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 6 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.
The Nuclear Resister’s December 2010 report identifies Michael David Omondi with the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. Its August 2013 account names community member David Omondi among three arrested at the downtown federal building on August 28 in solidarity with Chelsea Manning. They were charged with misdemeanor failure to disperse and blocking an entrance and released an hour later. The account supplies no jail admission or later verdict for this episode.
The Nuclear Resister, December 20, 2010, page 3; The Nuclear Resister, August 28, 2013.
The May 2, 2016 report describes David Omondi’s April 21 sentencing for the August 8, 2015 Vandenberg action. The court initially proposed six months of supervised probation, 200 hours of community service, a $100 fine and $35 costs. After Omondi explained that he preferred no probation because he hoped to return to Kenya and would likely not comply, Magistrate Judge Louise LaMonthe, as named by the report, changed the sentence to sixty days in federal prison. The May 3 surrender was still prospective; no actual jail admission, release or completed duration is established here. The Nuclear Resister, May 2, 2016.
Michael David Omondi was released from federal prison in Los Angeles on June 28, 2016 after serving a two-month sentence for trespass at Vandenberg in August 2015. The contemporary report calls him David Omondi and its recently released roster names Michael David Omondi. His later brief detention at Vandenberg was a separate event. His first prison admission for this sentence is not established, and the reported two months are not converted into a fixed number of days. Source: The Nuclear Resister No.182, September 6, 2016, printed pages 1 and 3.
