Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Amnesty renews call on US govt to free Manning

Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Chelsea Manning!

July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency.  Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”  Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:

Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.

Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.

“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.

“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”

After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.

Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.

Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.

Chelsea Manning is now actively engaged with her lawyers in fighting her conviction.

 "The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.

“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.” 

Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defence at her trial.

In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.

It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

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.              

 
     





    

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

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.              

PAPER magazine’s Chelsea Manning interview

PAPER magazine’s Chelsea Manning interview

September 1, 2015 by Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Metahaven and Jacob Appelbaum / Portrait by Heather Dewey-Hagborg
“We Are At the Very Beginning of a New Epoch:” Chelsea Manning On the Luxury of Privacy
PAPER is proud to present this conversation between an affiliation of artists and activists and Chelsea Manning. In the following exchange, conducted via US mail and encrypted web platforms, Manning takes questions from electronic-music artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst; design duo Metahaven, aka Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk; and Web-activist Jacob Appelbaum. Together, they weigh the strictures and possibilities not just of government, but of technology, culture and gender.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s forensic DNA phenotype of Chelsea Manning. The sex parameter was left out of the process.

Jacob Appelbaum: This is Jacob. I am an American by birth and for the last two years, I have been living in exile in Berlin as a reward for my work with WikiLeaks and The Tor Project.
Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst: Hi, this is Holly and Mat. We are musicians who are interested in creating new fantasies for new realities.
Daniel van der Velden and Vinca Kruk: Hi, we are Daniel and Vinca of Metahaven, an Amsterdam-based group of designers who are interested in identifying radical aesthetics with progressive politics. We collaborate on numerous projects together. Most recently, we designed a “FREE CHELSEA MANNING” T-shirt that contained the slogan “INFILTRATE WITH LOVE.” We first sold the shirt at a packed concert in Berlin we played recently, and were able to deliver a speech in honor of those who have taken a stand for transparency and compassion. It was a beautiful evening. We have managed to raise thousands of euros so far, and all proceeds are being donated to your legal defense fund. As may be clear from our questions, we are interested in other ways we might help you in our capacities as public artists, designers, journalists and activists. 
Herndon & Dyhurst: We see our digital selves as emotionally integrated with our physical selves, which we try to represent through our work aesthetically. Has your relationship to your digital self or your avatar changed since your incarceration, in that your avatar is able to interact with the public through Twitter? 
My relationship with my digital self has changed a lot over the last few years of incarceration. I feel that my digital representation — my avatar, as you put it — has been restricted by the various filters that I’ve had imposed on it, first throughout my initial confinement at Quantico, Virginia, then through my court-martial, and now my time here at Fort Leavenworth. It  — or rather she — has been through several changes, including gender, voice, and frequency and intensity of interaction. Beyond the obvious physical disconnection with me, personally — she has been filtered through the administrative restrictions — mostly military-specific — imposed on what I can and can’t say through her. It can be frustrating, but the challenge is absolutely worth it.
Kruk & van der Velden: The American philosopher and activist Cornel West has said about whistle-blowing that “justice must be rescued by something deeper than justice, namely love”; “justice is what love looks like in public”; “you’re a militant for gentleness”; “a subversive for sweetness”; “a radical for tenderness.” This pretty much sums up how we feel about you! Do West’s words resonate with you?
I don’t consider myself a “radical.” In fact, none of Cornell West’s statements come across as radical to me. Radical in American society has, I think, become this buzzword that makes a lot of ideas and discussions seem foreign or new to people — whether for or against them. Is it radical to seek justice? Is it radical to be rescued by love? Is it subversive to be sweet? I think if you go around the country and ask people they will almost universally agree — at least in principle. Instead of trying to be “radical”; I just try to be true to myself! Is it radical to be true to yourself? Maybe it is? I don’t know, but it just makes sense to me, haha!
Appelbaum: The African National Congress and their allies struggled for nearly 100 earth years before they brought post-racial democracy to South Africa. The resistance movement against apartheid, just as apartheid itself, cost lives. Looking at Aaron Swartz, Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond, Edward Snowden, Sarah Harrison, Julian Assange and yourself, one asks oneself, Is our struggle of this magnitude? Is this only the start of things with darker times to come, or are things starting to turn around, where we can see the dark times as a matter of history?
I believe that we are just at the very beginning of a new epoch. I’ve believed this for a very longtime, probably starting around my early teens when I was really spending a lot of time online to “escape” my life — school, bullying, my awkward relationship with family, my gender identity — at night. I think that with ubiquitous and total access to highly connected information technology, and with ubiquitous digital and robotic automation, and with increasingly elegant and intuitive human/machine interfacing we are slowly beginning to blur the lines between the concepts that have seemed so separate for generations, such as the relationships between gender, sexuality, art and work. As we begin to ascend into a new era — which sometimes includes ideas of “transhumanism” and the information, economic and technological “singularity” — perhaps we are going to begin to slowly embrace, or fear, a post-human world? If it happens quickly enough, we might even find out ourselves!

A Wikimedia image of the military prison at Fort Leavenworth

Kruk & van der Velden: In a push for a more just, less hierarchical social and political model, with more solidarity, maybe what we need are new and unexpected coalitions. Maybe there is such a coalition around you, consisting of people (including ourselves) who feel deeply inspired and touched by your work, who care about you and publicly support you. We also need new shared actions for a more horizontally democratic and thriving community embracing progress, crypto, complexity and beauty. What could a next chapter be, and who should meet and form coalitions?
I absolutely believe that there is a coalition that is forming. I don’t think it’s new or unexpected at all though. It’s the coalition of humanity! We’ve been slowly acting and encouraging and inspiring and discovering for thousands of years, and we’re only just scratching the surface. I think that we’ve been realizing the existence of structural and institutional problems in our society for millennia, and challenging them and improving them — especially in the last five hundred years or so. As for our next chapter, it’s already starting to happen. We’re starting to realize that there are other people who don’t look like us or experience the world like us that actually think and feel the same way that we do. Its’ an incredible leap for humanity to start to break down the automatic factionalism that gender, race, sexuality, and culture have been the basis of since time immemorial. In America, we can see this with all the different vectors and factions that are starting to align with each other in a way that doesn’t fit into a “one size fits all” category. This will continue at an exponential rate, I hope.
Herndon & Dryhurst: Since your avatar plays such a vital role in your participation at the moment, how do you feel about platforms such as Facebook not allowing people to choose their own identities online, including name and gender? Is it liberating to use an illustration instead of a photograph to represent yourself online?
Facebook’s policies are a reflection of their unique history — first as a Boston/Cambridge area student social media site — and current business model. I think that their targeted advertising and “big data” search filters require taking discrete and “accurate” — from the perspective of their advertising clients — data for tracking and analysis. This is why they do what they do, and why such big institutions resist allowing us to define ourselves, because it takes away from their power — either directly, especially in the case of governments, or indirectly, as in social media’s advertising models.
Appelbaum: In a struggle for the Internet — which represents in a sense, a civil society in an ideal form — what are the actions each person might take, and what are the values that we should work to attain as realities? In the varied Cypherpunk communities, we see a trend of running Tor relays, of using encryption for communications, for writing and using Free Software for Freedom. What should we do to declare our independence from anti-democratic forces seeking to monitor, to censor, to tamper and even to eradicate other humans?
I think it’s an odd paradox that technology is providing for us. We are more diverse and open as a society — yet we also seem to be more homogenous and insecure than ever before. I think that today’s technology certainly provide tools that can be used to declare a kind of digital independence from institutional control through monitoring, censorship, and political — and physical — eradication. But, I don’t think these tools are any more necessary than they are without them. We can still be independent without technology. Some people might even find their independence in embracing the Luddite philosophy and shunning technology. Ultimately though, in this constant technological arms race, we are always only one breakthrough away from making our methods to get past such institutions irrelevant or unusable. We might wake up tomorrow and find out that the Riemann hypothesis has been solved by some brilliant person or group of people, suddenly making most of our encryption algorithms weak — or we might wake up tomorrow and find out that a six-to-ten-qubit quantum computer has been built, accomplishing the same thing! My point is, technology only takes us so far. For me, the most important element is the human one — let’s try not to forget that!
Appelbaum: Your situation is intolerable and beyond reason; you sit in prison for thirty-five years while those who carried out torture, murder and other war crimes walk American streets freely. While many fight to free you, the system is simply stacked against us all. Given these restraints, what are the specific things that we could do or rally around to improve your situation?
You can certainly work toward improving my situation by donating to my legal defense fund. We’re working on a lot of big issues in my case — which has the potential to become landmark precedent in the American jurisprudence system — that affect a lot of people in America. It’s so very important that they get help too. Paying the legal bills is the biggest logistical hurdle to that at this point. Ultimately though, keeping me motivated — because sometimes it can get pretty tough emotionally — and ensuring that people haven’t forgotten just how important this case is for our ensuring that our rights are protected in our society, will certainly work toward that end as well.
Herndon & Dyhurst: How might we, or others, use art to ensure that the things that you and others expose are not in vain? 
Read everything. Absorb everything that is out there and act as your own filter. Hunt down your own answers to questions. This is the only advice that is actually worth anything. If you don’t read these things yourself, then you can’t say that you truly understand what humanity has done, and where we are going. We can’t spend our lives getting spoon-fed all of our information every day and then expect to understand our world. Only then will you understand that people are still hurting and dying in the world around us.
Herndon & Dyhurst: London-based economist Guy Standing writes about the left’s collective need for paradisic alternatives to our contemporary conditions, something that the right has understood for some time. We see our art practice as an arena to develop and enact new fantasies — without relying on nostalgia or past ideals. What would be your idea of a paradise politics? What are your fantasies for the future? 
It’s difficult to say what my kind of political paradise or utopia would look like. I mean, given the fact that humanity has thus far managed to avoid it, yet still improve upon it, a practical and realistic vision of utopia is, I think, currently beyond our biologically imposed ability to construct or comprehend. I do believe that three things would likely contribute to a situation in which we might figure it out: an abundance-based economy where energy and matter are never scarce, virtually instant and infinite access to every other person and all the available information in such a society, and a wisdom or insight that allows such a society to act in harmony. Is it possible? I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?
For PAPER’s interview with artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg about the making of her Chelsea Manning portrait, click here.

To donate to Chelsea Manning’s defense fund, go here.

Many thanks to David E. Coombs, Madison Donzis and Melissa Keith [Chelsea Manning Support Network] for their logistical help with this story.

Chelsea Manning Defense Fund information

Chelsea Manning Defense Fund information

Your donation allows us to fight for Chelsea Manning

Now that Chelsea’s legal appeals are finally underway, your support is needed more than ever. Our legal team of Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward are preparing to argue numerous issues before the military courts of appeal–issues that we fully expect can significantly reduce Manning’s 35 year prison sentence. However, it’s more challenging than ever to raise those needed funds without the high-profile media coverage of an upcoming trial. We are currently focusing on paying for Chelsea’s critical upcoming legal appeal hearing before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals–we’re short about $40,000 (as of August 1, 2015)
How to donate to the Chelsea Manning Defense Fund

• Online via credit card | Visa, Discover, MasterCard, American Express | tax-deductible
  ^{(https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591)}
• Online via PayPal | PayPal account, e-check, credit cards | not tax-deductible
  ^{(https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=VDTDZV62A23KW)} 
• Check or money order | sent via postal mail | tax-deductible
  Payable to: “Courage to Resist/AfGJ”
  Mail to: Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610, USA
  Please note “Chelsea Manning” on the check’s memo line

How to donate to Chelsea Manning’s legal expenses exclusively

• Check or money order | sent via postal mail | not tax-deductible
  Payable to: “IOLTA/Manning”
  Mail to: Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610, USA
  
• Online via the Freedom of the Press Foundation
  Limited time online campaign.

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Fiscal reports

• Most recent one month period available (August 2015)
• Summary of the first 18 months of the appeals phase (Jan. 2014 – Jun. 2015) PDF
• Summary of the pre-trial and trial history (Jul. 2010-Dec. 2013) PDF

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Background and the various ways to donate

The Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning Defense Fund is hosted by Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org) in collaboration with the Chelsea Manning Support Network. Courage to Resist is a fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) non-profit organization.
Funding Chelsea Manning’s chosen legal defense team has always been our top priority. In the wake of the outrageous 35 year prison sentence decreed by military judge Colonel Denise Lind, we believe that the final outcome will depend on not only on legal arguments, but on public opinion as we enter into pardon and clemency petitions, as well as the appeals process.
The majority of donations are made to the Chelsea Manning Defense Fund either online via our primary credit card gateway (https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38591), or postal mailed to us via check. In either of these situations, donors receive a tax-deduction for their contribution. However, when folks mail a check, we save credit card processing fees that amount to 2.75-4% of each online donation. Checks payable to “Courage to Resist/AFGJ” can be mailed to Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610, USA–please note “Chelsea Manning” on the check’s memo line.

PayPal

Some folks have problems with our primary donation gateway, especially friends trying to use credit cards outside of the USA. We encourage those folks to try donating via PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=VDTDZV62A23KW). However, these PayPal transactions are not tax-deductible. Our relationship with PayPal has been “complicated” to put it mildly. On January 29, 2011, PayPal restricted access to our account based on the “need for additional information.” After a month of trying to find a possible resolution with senior PayPal staff, we issued a statement on February 24, 2011, regarding the situation. After thousands of supporters signed a petition and contacted PayPal in protest, our account was restored without explanation.
The Chelsea Manning legal trust account is managed by her lead appeals attorney Nancy Hollander, under regulation of the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) Program and the American Bar Association. 100% of contributions directly offset Chelsea’s ongoing legal expenses. Any funds remaining at the end of her legal jeopardy would become hers with interest. However, these IOLTA contributions are not tax-deductible. Checks payable to “IOLTA / Manning” can be mailed to Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610, USA. These checks are deposited into Chelsea’s IOLTA account at the Dubuque Bank & Trust, Dubuque, Iowa. We can provide wire transfer information upon request for larger contributions.

“Lay Around Mama And Put A Good Buzz On”-A Jonathan Edwards Interview

“Lay Around Mama And Put A Good Buzz On”-A Jonathan Edwards Interview

A while back, a few years ago now, I did a series of CD reviews of male folk singers from back in the day, back in that early 1960s folk minute who were “not Bob Dylan.” Guys like Dave Von Ronk, Tom Rush, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton. The question I posed as part of the rationale for the series was why given their obvious talents as singers and song-writers did they not challenge Dylan for the king of folk “crown” and what happened to them later. We already know about Dylan and his never-ending tour so that is backdrop. (I also did a series for the distaff side, for the female folk-singer who were “not Joan Baez”). There were plenty of reasons why they did not challenge Dylan from burn-out to block as the folk minute faded.

The folksinger/songwriter, Jonathan Edwards,  whose interview I am linking to here did not face that problem, see he started performing at the very tail end of folk minute and is still performing forty years later. What is interesting is what he tells the interviewer about his trials and tribulations. So listen up. Oh yeah, for the record, we heard him a few years ago at Club Passim in Cambridge and like he mentioned in the interview about the way he performs “he left nothing on the floor.” See and hear him when he comes around your way.            

Click on link:


https://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/09/03/jonathan-edwards-tomorrows-child