Free Chelsea Manning Now-Hands Off Edward Snowden
Hello Friends! Please take a few
minutes to read my timely article, and enter into dialogue with me about it! I
also posted the article on my website: www.debvanpoolen.com
sending love from nyc,
deb
ps. My court date to receive a sentence
for my civil disobedience action of interrupting David Petraeus is April 15 in
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Where is the Domestic Debate on the US
Military?
April 5 is the fourth anniversary
of Chelsea Manning's
leak of the Collateral
Murder video of footage from an Apache helicopter which shows trigger-happy
soldiers killing twelve civilians. Manning, former US intelligence officer,
also leaked massive troves of documents which include details about war crimes
committed by US army personnel, such as the condoning of torture and killing of
innocent civilians in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Four years after the
releases, not one of the people implicated of war crimes in those documents or
in the Collateral Murder video has been prosecuted. Rather, Chelsea Manning was
arrested on May 29, 2010, charged with 22 crimes, endured a three-month court
martial throughout the summer of 2013, and was sentenced on August 21, 2013 to
35 years in prison. As of the writing of this article, she has been in jail
1405 days, or almost four years.
Chelsea Manning’s story
inspired me to make courtroom sketches each day of the three month court
martial. My goal was to help publicize the historic trial which the world’s
mainstream media was mostly ignoring. I spent many hours observing Chelsea and
her attorneys. She appeared to me as a very patient, strong, focused,
reasonable, and mature individual. She did not dramatize her own suffering
during the trial and still avoids calling attention to the injustice of her
ordeal.
Rather, every time
Chelsea has been given the chance to speak, she shares her thoughts about the
power of true information in the public’s possession.Manning stated in a
pre-trial hearing: “I believed that if the general public, especially
the American public, had access to the information contained within the [Iraq
and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the
military and our foreign policy in general, as well as it related to Iraq and
Afghanistan.”
Chelsea spoke again this past
Thanksgiving when Time magazine published a letter from her in which she lists
Americans who risked their own safety in order to find and share true
information with the public. Chelsea states “… I’m thankful that one
day—perhaps not tomorrow—because of the accomplishments of such truth-seekers
and human rights pioneers, we can live together on this tiny “pale blue dot” of
a planet and stop looking inward, at each other, but rather outward, into the
space beyond this planet and the future of all of humanity."
Four
years after Chelsea’s arrest and imprisonment, the UN Human Rights Committee
called for the release of the Senate Intelligence Report on the Bush
Administration’s Torture and Rendition program. On DemocracyNow.org
last week, Amy Goodman stated that the UN Human Rights Committee report listed
several US programs which violate human rights: Obama’s drone program, racial
profiling, life sentences for juveniles, NSA spying, police brutality, the death
penalty, and the detention of homeless and immigrants. Specific actions which
the committee called for include closing Guantanamo and prosecuting those who
have been involved in torturing prisoners.
When presented with
lists of egregious US programs, most people don’t hesitate to assign blame to
people in governmental, military or corporate leadership positions. I agree that
tremendous responsibility does lie in the laps of such people. However, when
Chelsea has had the chance to speak publicly, she has not talked about being a
victim under the thumb of people in influential positions of organizations with
massive powers. Rather, she has consistently appealed to average citizens to be
the arbiters of change.
Other public figures
have also called for ordinary citizens to act, as if they can actually make a
difference. Andy Shallal, founder of the very successful Washington DC Bus Boys
and Poets restaurants and DC mayoral candidate, said in an interview last week
for The Real News Network: “I think it’s important to have inspirational
leaders. I think the other part is the people have to rise up. The people have
to worry and get upset enough for them to make change. I really do believe
that. I think people power has not been harnessed in this country.”
Dr. Cornel West spoke
last year in Asheville, North Carolina about the impact of people’s response to
injustice: ”You have to call into question indifference. That is the one trait
that makes the angels weep.” He simply stated that not enough regular people
care. He called our attention to some of those things which the UN Human Right
Committee highlighted last week, for instance: “We spend over a half a trillion
dollars on the prison-industrial complex for the new Jim Crow and act as if it
is invisible. Why can we just turn our backs? White and black folk both do
it.”
Reverend Barber, one of the leaders of the Moral
Mondays movement in North Carolina, appealed to the people at a February 8, 2014
protest: “In this moment we cannot be silent. . . . We must become the trumpets
of conscience.” In that same speech Barber quotes Martin Luther King who said:
“It’s not the words of your enemies that you remember, but the silence of your
friends”.
Many people say that
the problems are too big and intimidating to confront, stating that their
solitary actions can't make a difference. Grace Lee Boggs, author of The Next American Revolution has been
a leader in civil rights, women’s and environmental movements, which have
prioritized massive street protests. But when I met with Boggs at her Detroit
home, she mildly rebuked me for being another one of the many activists who
overemphasize “critical mass” as a strategy element of social movements. Boggs
referred to Margaret Wheatley who writes in Leadership and the New Science about
how the differences between Newtonian and quantum physics should inform our
activist strategies. In Newtonian physics, significant, globally-influencing
change only occurs following the impact of very large forces. In quantum
physics, the world is so energetically interconnected that small, individual
actions actually have reverberations which are felt across the whole world.
Wheatley states: “We need a paradigm shift in our understanding of how
change happens. . . .Changes in small places also affect the global
system…”
We
begin Part One of this two-part series, entitled “Extreme Makeover: Florida
Tomato Industry Edition,” with Rev. Terry’s words because in those words can be
found the central theme of this post. In short: In the space of just a few
short years, a New Day of respect for fundamental human rights has dawned in
Florida’s tomato fields, and that New Day has brought new life to an industry
that, before the transformation, was fighting for its very survival. 
CHEERS
for the students at American University in DC who protested Dick Cheney — and
forced him to deny being a war criminal.
