[act-ma] Save The Date To Defend Embattled Whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and Protect the 1st Amendment Tuesday June 11, 2019 - Harvard Square (Red Line Stop) - 5-6 PM

[alfredjohnson34 at comcast.net]

Save The Date To Defend Embattled Whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and Protect the 1st Amendment Tuesday June 11, 2019 - Harvard Square (Red Line Stop) - 5-6 PM     


We Still Will Not Leave Our Sister and Brother Behind.Smedley Butler Brigade, Veterans for Peace, Boston and its allies are standing out on June 11 from 5 to 6 PM in Harvard Square, calling for freedom for heroic Wikileaks whistler-blower Chelsea Manning and for WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange not to be extradited to the US. Ms. Manning has been in the government’s legal sights since as an Army intelligence specialist in 2010 she forwarded information to Wikileaks about massive cover-ups of American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the American public needed to know about. She would subsequently be court-martialed at Fort Meade in Maryland, found guilty and sentenced to 35 years. Before President Obama left office he commuted her sentence to a little more than time served, seven years.     


What links the Manning with the Assange cases is that a federal grand jury in Eastern Virginia subpoenaed her to testify about her connection back in 2010 with Assange, in short to “snitch.” The judge ordered her held in contempt for the duration of that grand jury, which adjourned in May, after she had spent a couple of months in jail. To add insult to injury, the next week a new grand jury subpoenaed her for the same information. She is now being held pending various legal challenges by her legal team.  Sign Code Pink's petition for her release at: https://www.codepink.org/handsoffchelsea https://www.codepink.org/handsoffchelsea


Here is Chelsea’s address: Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center, 2001 Mill Road, Alexandria, VA 22314. Her jail does NOT accept: -books or cards. You CAN write letters with pen or colored pencils on paper and send newspapers.


Julian Assange was arrested in April 2019 by British police after years of asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy, after they unceremoniously kicked him out (and took away his Ecuadoran citizenship). Mr. Assange is now serving a year sentence in a maximum-security British prison and his state of health is alarming.  The last news, and what only adds a further layer of insult to the interlocked cases, is that an Eastern Virginia grand jury has indicted Assange on 17 counts of espionage, which could lead to 170 years in prison!  We need to call for his freedom and to stop the extradition proceedings between the UK and US against him. Sign:https://www.change.org/p/free-julian-assange-before-it-s-too-late-stop-usa-extradition https://www.change.org/p/free-julian-assange-before-it-s-too-late-stop-usa-extradition?signed=true