*****Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

*****Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me. (A decision upheld by the Convening Officer of the First District, General Buchanan in early 2014. The defense team is now preparing a full-blown brief to be presented to Army Court Of Military Appeals when ready.)

Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include: 
*that Private Manning  was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

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Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

 

Updated-September 2015  

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting in Cambridge about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts, the Act itself, as it relates to Chelsea and its constitutionality will be the basis for one of her issues on appeal) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. (She had already been held for three years before trial, the subject of another appeals issue and as of May 2015 had served five years altogether thus far and will be formally eligible for parole in the not too distant future although usually the first parole decision is negative).

That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea. The question of her sexual identity was a situation than some of us already had known about while respecting Private Manning’s, Chelsea’s, and those of her ardent supporters at Courage to Resist and elsewhere the subject of her sexual identity was kept in the background so the reasons she was being tried would not be muddled and for which she was savagely fighting in her defense would not be warped by the mainstream media into some kind of identity politics circus.

I had responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, and there is no question that Private Manning is one despite the fact that every United States Attorney-General including the one in charge during her trial claims that there are no such prisoners in American jails only law-breakers, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually falls by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years.

At that point I informed him of the details that I did know. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her trial defense lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures.

At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind.

Locally on Veterans Day 2013, the first such event after her sentencing we had honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014 and will do again this December of 2015).  Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well).   

 

At our February 2015 monthly meeting that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still being reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Criminal Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming. A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation concerning Private Manning’s case. The lawyers had in June 2014 also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere.

 

On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco (and had a contingent supporting her freedom again in the 2015 parade). Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having herself faced such torture down in Quantico adding to the poignancy of that suggestion. More recently she has written articles about the dire situation in the Middle East and the American government’s inability to learn any lessons from history and a call on the military to stop the practice of denying transgender people the right to serve. (Not everybody agrees with her positon in the transgender community or the VFP but she is out there in front with it.) 

[Maybe most important of all in this social networking, social media, texting world of the young (mostly) Chelsea has a twitter account- @xychelsea

 

Locally over the past two year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May [2014] and the fifth this year with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day 2014, celebrated her 27^th birthday in December with a rally (and will again this year on her 28^th birthday).

More recently big campaigns by Courage To Resist and the Press Freedom Foundation have almost raised the $200, 000 needed (maybe more by now) to give her legal team adequate resources during her appeals process (first step, after looking over the one hundred plus volumes of her pre-trial and trial hearings, the Army Court Of Criminal Appeal)

Recently although in this case more ominously and more threateningly Chelsea has been charged and convicted of several prison infractions (among them having a copy of the now famous Vanity Fair with Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner’s photograph on the cover) which could affect her parole status and other considerations going forward.     

We have continued to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.

After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past couple of years in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. I do so here, and gladly. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along in Veterans for Peace and elsewhere- we will not leave our sister behind… More later.              

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

When Doctor Gonzo “Walked With The King”- A Hunter Thompson Saga

When Doctor Gonzo “Walked With The King”- A Hunter Thompson Saga

BETTER THAN SEX, HUNTER S. THOMPSON, BALLANTINE BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1994

Know this. The late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, was something of a muse for me although our politics, in the final analysis, were light years apart. In the end he never found a Democratic Party candidate the he even, if grudgingly, could not support. I have read everything of his that I could get my hands on. During many a troubled time when I got down on the seemingly hopeless struggle in the fight for socialism his savage humor aimed at the inanities of bourgeois politics and politicians carried me through. That said, the book under review Better Than Sex about the trials and tribulations of covering the ill-starred 1992 presidential campaign eventually ‘won’ by Bill Clinton is not one of his better efforts and even with his vast journalistic skills must have been a chore rather than something to really dig into. I will tell you my take on the why of this matter.

Hunter Thompson started making a name for himself as a political journalist in his first efforts at trying to understand presidential police campaigns during the ill-fated Democratic campaign of George McGovern against one Richard M. Nixon in1972. HisFear and Loathing on Campaign Trail 1972 stands a classic of ‘alternative’ journalism on the issue. He stated then that a political junkie, and by any definition he was one, could only really stand in the vortex of one such campaign before burning out. Nevertheless he pressed his luck. Unfortunately, Thompson found himself in the place where Teddy White found himself after his seminal ‘straight’ reporting on the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign, The Making of President.White too, went on to write more such books and not to his benefit. In short, pigeon-holed. Take that lesson for what it is worth.

The real problem with Better Than Sex is that Thompson had written it all before, and to better effect. The writing seems frantic and tired, very tired. It did not help that his cast of main characters- one incumbent President George H. W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton and the genuine dingo bat Ross Perot- would make even a political junkie get him or herself to the nearest rehabilitation center. The book reflects that in many ways not the least is the extraordinary amount of filler (literally with ‘draft’ notes, letters, etc.) that clutters the book. If that does not convince you then a three star rating on a genuine five star journalistic hero of mine tells the tale. Still, there is more than enough savagely funny analysis and humor for a real Thompson junkie to get by with on a few lonely political nights. Enough said. Oh, no, not enough said- Hunter, I hope you are still searching for that elusive brown buffalo.

From The Amnesty International Podcast-Listen to Chelsea’s story: In her own words-Free Chelsea Manning Now!

Listen to Chelsea’s story: In her own words

February 15, 2016 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
Chelsea Manning was the subject of the second episode of Amnesty International’s podcast In Their Own Words, a brand new series featuring the stories of human rights activists around the world.
One of the most trying aspects of Chelsea’s imprisonment has been the inability for the public to hear or see her; prison restrictions do not allow any kind of photographs, visual or audio recordings. The most recent photo we even have of Chelsea was taken by the prison in February of last year, and Chelsea had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to even receive it!
And yet, our voices and our image have always been an integral part of our identity. Our humanity. Chelsea has said, “I feel like I’ve been stored away all this time without a voice.”
In this episode, Amnesty finally gives Chelsea a voice, for the first time in years, employing actress Michelle Hendley to speak and breath new life into Chelsea’s words. Through Michelle, we finally hear Chelsea tell us who she is as a person, what she’s been through, and what she’s going through now.
“I have to say, I cried a few times listening to this,” said Chelsea, after a Support Network volunteer played the podcast for her over the telephone. “Hearing her speak, and tell the story. She sounds like me. It sounds like the way I would tell my story.”
Since its release on Feb 5, the podcast has already been listened to over 10,000 times, passing up Amnesty’s first episode voiced by actor Christian Bale by over 4,000 listens. It received attention from Vice’s Broadley, BoingBoing, Pink News, Fight for the Future, the ACLU, the Advocate and numerous other online blogs and tweets.

Read the full transcript here:

Download (PDF, Unknown)

Special thanks to Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon for the transcript.

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Chelsea Manning-From The Guardian -Prison keeps us isolated-Free Chelsea Now!

Prison keeps us isolated

Prison keeps us isolated. But sometimes, sisterhood can bring us together.
I had never spent any real time with another transgender woman before I was incarcerated. At the loneliest time in my life, her friendship meant everything
February 8, 2016 by Chelsea E Manning

It’s easier to control us if we’re divided from one another. But you can still find friendship in a prison. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters/Corbis

Prisons function by isolating those of us who are incarcerated from any means of support other than those charged with keeping us imprisoned: first, they physically isolate us from the outside world and those in it who love us; then they work to divide prisoners from one another by inculcating our distrust in one another.
The insecurity that comes from being behind bars with, at best, imperfect oversight makes us all feel responsible only for ourselves. We end up either docile, apathetic and unwilling to engage with each other, or hostile, angry, violent and resentful. When we don’t play by the written or unwritten rules – or, sometimes, because we do – we become targets. It’s easy enough to make us go away; it’s easy enough to make us “someone else’s problem”.
The unique problem for transgender women in prison is that our health and welfare are also the responsibility of those charged with overseeing us. We live in an environment in which the same staff given the job of keeping us in prison for lengthy periods of time and occasionally “teaching us a lesson” are the same ones given the job of ensuring our transitions, when we’re allowed to transition at all. The first job always takes precedent over the other, seemingly more annoying one.
The day I first arrived at the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Leavenworth, Kansas on 22 August 2013, I announced my status as a trans woman intent on transitioning as soon as possible. At the time, the idea of a trans woman in a US military prison was considered unprecedented and even outlandish to the military brass and the outside world. However, when I arrived at the prison – and for nearly a year afterward – I was not the only trans woman at the facility, nor was I the first one to make such requests for treatment.
In 2009, another trans woman (who I’ll call Alice) had arrived at the same prison. She was not the first openly trans woman to arrive at the prison either, but she was the first woman to have documented a request for hormones and other treatments. Unsurprisingly, her requests were ignored and even mocked by the very same staff members who today oversee the decisions about the conditions of my transition.
Though Alice had multiple diagnoses of “gender identity disorder” – which was changed to gender dysphoria in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) – the medical and mental health providers at the prison acknowledged and denied her request. They told her what they told me four years later: the Army and the US Disciplinary Barracks do not provide hormone treatments or other gender-confirming healthcare.
Without any financial resources, personal support inside or outside, any knowledge of the legal complexities of making such a complaint and “exhausting” all administrative hurdles before doing so, any access to lawyers with knowledge of trans issues in prisons, or even knowledge that such resources existed, Alice stopped trying to get the medical treatment she deserved.
That was, of course, until I made my announcement: after seeing an outpouring of support for me and my request, Alice restarted her battle.
After spending about 40 days in a “reception” status in a self-contained portion of the prison, I finally met Alice in October 2013. She hurriedly and excitedly approached me in the prison dining area and described at machine-gun speed her own battle to receive healthcare, and how her enthusiasm to continue was re-ignited by my own efforts.
Alice told me the rest of her story, about her diagnosis and about how she had been ignored for all these years. I felt sick hearing her speak about being forced to live so many years without medical care; I tried to keep the tears, the concern, the anxiety, and the anger from boiling out of me.
I told Alice that I would do everything that I could to help her out. She smiled, and then she frowned and said “I don’t want a lot of attention.” I told her that I understood, but that I could help not by shining a media spotlight on her, but by showing her how to make another formal request, how to appeal the expected denial – an arcane and required bureaucratic process that many prisoners don’t understand – and how to petition for a change of name.
I didn’t tell her then, but Alice was one of the few trans women with whom I had actually interacted with for more than a few fleeting moments. And then, even though we were housed in different parts of the prison, she instantly became my closest friend and confidante.
Over the next six months, we bonded more and more. As promised, we started Alice’s paperwork and, by the beginning of 2014, she finally started seeing a psychologist in the prison regularly.
She then began the same evaluation process that I had gone through earlier in late 2013. Because she was without any money or meaningful way of earning it, I also showed her how she could file for recognition of her indigence before a state court as part of her name change petition.
Though Alice had years of frustration and despondency behind her, she was starting to feel better. She became more outgoing and vocal as a person. Before, she told me, she had just given up and “stayed quiet”. From what I saw, though, she was clearly not going to be doing that anymore.
Unfortunately, our friendship and the assistance I gave her created a problem for prison management: instead of only having to deal with one legal challenge over gender-confirming healthcare, the prison and the military had to deal with two. And, to make matters worse for administrators, Alice’s documented request dated back over four years earlier.
Fearing the possibility of potential liability and providing healthcare for which they had no existing expertise, the military prison sought to transfer me to a civilian prison in April through July 2014. At the same time – unbeknownst to either of us – Alice was considered for a similar transfer.
Still, we moved ahead with our requests and, in July 2014 after exhausting all of my administrative appeals, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) began representing me and submitted a demand letter to the senior prison and military officials.
A few weeks later, my best friend and ally at the prison was suddenly approached by prison officials on her way to work one morning. They pulled Alice aside and told her that she was going back to her cell to gather her belongings and “pack out”. She was being transferred to a federal prison.
I happened to be walking by as a guard led Alice to the same area for people being processed in and out from the prison. She was pushing a large cart filled with what few belongings she had, looking scared but confident. I asked her what was going on and she explained the transfer. I stalled her, trying to say a longer goodbye, but the guard escorting her told her to start moving again. I wanted to hug her, but the best I was allowed was a quick high five, a sad head-nod and a little wave.
In my cell during lunch break, the reality that Alice was gone and that I would probably never see her again sunk in. I broke down and cried behind my closed door for at least an hour: I wanted her to get the treatment that we both need to survive, but I also wanted us to be able to be friends.
I often still think about Alice and wonder how she is doing in a civilian prison. The times we spent together make me smile; the thought of seeing her with an uncertain look on her face pushing that big cart makes me sad.
While we came from different backgrounds and had different access to resources, we faced the same system. Alice started to become more confident and empowered once she became connected with more support and resources on the outside; that power she found from our friendship and from the hopethat she might finally get the medical treatment she needed made prison administrators nervous, and they took it away from both of us.
But even though helping Alice ended up limiting my time with her, I have but a single regret: I wish I’d told her that I love her as a sister. I wish I could tell her that I still do.

Help us provide support to Chelsea in prison, maximize her voice in the media, continue public education and build a powerful movement for presidential pardon.

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True Stories From the Hole-Chelsea Manning's Torture At Quantico -Free Chelsea Now !

True Stories From the Hole

True Stories From the Hole
Book Review: Hell is a Very Small Place
February 10, 2016 by Chelsea E Manning

By Editors Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, Sarah Shourd

During the weekend after New Year’s Day, I read an advance copy of Hell Is a Very Small Place, a book just published by The New Press in February.

To put it mildly, it was one of the hardest books for me to read in years.

Compiled by three different editors, this book is an engaging compilation of works on the experience and practice solitary confinement. One of the editors, Sarah Shourd, is best known for her experiences in solitary confinement when she was detained by Iran near the Iran-Iraq border, and then held for trial there for many months.

Hell is a moderate read, with just under three hundred pages. It took me about six hours, over two afternoons, to read. The first part of Hell contains moving articles by prisoners who describe in extraordinary detail their experiences of being held in some of the most sterile and extreme prison conditions in the world. The second section contains analysis by experts on the effects of solitary confinement. They walk us through — in straightforward language — the damage that these conditions inflict upon tens of thousands of people every year.

Diagram of Chelsea’s cell at Quantico – Image source: Clark Stoeckley

The personal accounts by prisoners contained in this book are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read. There were many points throughout the book when my emotions became very overwhelming, and I had to pause and catch my breath. These accounts seemed so much like what happened to me—and brought up all of the feelings I had been trying to avoid for so long. I was often caught off guard and needed time to reflect.

This book captures many of the thoughts and feelings that I am afraid to talk about. I was held in extreme solitary confinement for just under 11 months. First, in an 9″ by 9″ cage in Kuwait. Then, in an 8″ by 6″ cell stripped of all material items in Quantico, Virginia. I was watched by at least two people at all times.

I confess, I’m afraid of talking about the pain. Rather than re-experience it all — as I had to do in a hearing in December 2012 — I would rather forget that it ever happened. But many of these prisoners have bravely written that experience for me. They write in a language that is more eloquent than I feel I am currently capable of.

If you really want to know what being held in a sterile box for months or years on end is like, then I recommend that you read this book.

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In Artist Edward Hopper’s World

In Edward Hopper’s World

 

Click on the link below to check out a Facebook page dedicated to the great American artist Edward Hopper

https://www.artsy.net/

 

Socialists In The Age Of Bernie Sanders

Frank Jackman comment:

Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself, or let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. (And have giving my reasons on the Sanders campaign of 2016.) I do so here.     

 

RSVP to the March for Bernie Here!

9 Days Left Until The Nationwide Day of Action for Bernie   Two days until Nevada! Nine days until the March for Bernie! Twelve days until Super Tuesday! Bernie is officially up in the polls in Massachusetts by 7 percent!  With twelve days until the primary we've got to get out and show our strength by doing something unprecedented.  On February 27th we're going to march in the streets for a candidate that doesn't take corporate cash, calls for a political revolution, and stands unapologetically with the 99%. In order to have the biggest showing possible, we're hanging up hundreds of posters around the city and will be passing out thousands of fliers all next week If you would like to join our army of grassroots volunteers in this effort, please come to the final organizing meeting (LINK HERE) to sign up for shifts this Saturday, Feb. 20th, at 4:00pm in Downtown Boston (9A Hamilton Pl. right by Park St.) Click here for the Facebook Event for The March Click here for the event on the Bernie Sanders website   Solidarity, Boston Socialist Alternative and #Movement4Bernie Like us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Check out our website! Email us!

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