Category Archives: human rights

outtake: Capt. Rockwood, who took the Marine Corps Values too seriously.

I really tried to keep this one, perhaps because when I interviewed him in 1996, I didn’t realize I was beginning my life’s work. He’s also someone I’ve seen repeatedly over the years since, not just when I interviewed him again in San Diego but at Occupy in 2011, and the Manning trial in 2013.ButContinue reading “outtake: Capt. Rockwood, who took the Marine Corps Values too seriously.”

Outtake: Scott Olsen, who almost died for Occupy

Eight years ago this week, a NYPD riot at New York’s Zuccotti Park evicted the last remaining Occupy Wall Street activists. That year had seen an incredible amount of movement-building, with organizing from coast to coast–including by dissenting veterans.  Below, a vigil for Iraq vet Scott Olsen at Occupy Oakland. In 2011, Obama’s Afghanistan “surge”Continue reading “Outtake: Scott Olsen, who almost died for Occupy”

Well, that felt like an episode of Law and Order. But #Justice4Reality?

In the courtroom, we all listened to bits of the audio of that day in June, and I could feel the tightness in her voice. She wasn’t about to show these strange men what she was thinking and feeling, really.

Notes from the road: my inner Smedley Butler

This morning, I get to pretend I’m 1/3 my age, when I didn’t think much of getting up early to ride halfway across the world for a good cause. (Above: 18-year-old me in Washington, D.C., at the 1981 Women’s Pentagon Action. I’d traveled there from Binghamton, New York.) In this case, I’m catching a rideContinue reading “Notes from the road: my inner Smedley Butler”

reality winner and the politics of grief

Veteran and Whistleblower.   That’s Winner in the spring of 2017, when she came across evidence (since publicly confirmed) that the Russian government had successfully hacked into some U.S. voter registration lists. She was spending her days, as an intelligence contractor, facilitating drone strikes in the Middle East, which under Trump have escalated the number of civilian casualties.

Listen to Matthew Hoh

I’ve been hoping to interview Matthew Hoh for nearly a decade, and hope to meet him next month: but meanwhile you can see this from his blog.”The most important things American veterans can do is to speak openly and plainly about what they saw during their time in the military, what they took part inContinue reading “Listen to Matthew Hoh”

The day I finally met Chelsea Manning

Updated to add this link, in which Chelsea Manning spoke more clearly about her case than she felt able to do at Penn. (Forgive the deadname in Atlantic’s title; it was before she came  out to the world as the assured young woman you see above. The photo above was taken on November 29, 2017,Continue reading “The day I finally met Chelsea Manning”

VIDEO: Millennials and conscience

Some video reminders why this book has to exist. A simple question, posed 6 years ago by a respected journalist to an author, was already being answered Chelsea Manning, soon to be echoed by the voices of the whistleblowers above. I discovered the first as I was reshaping – for the last time, I hope!Continue reading “VIDEO: Millennials and conscience”

Who has Reality Winner’s back? We do.

I just got off the phone with Billie Winner-Davis, a clinical social worker in Texas who’s been in the press lately because of her daughter, Reality. Our chat was brief, and stayed away from the facts of Reality’s legal case. I still congratulated her on the support network she’d started in partnership with Courage toContinue reading “Who has Reality Winner’s back? We do.”