Organizing for Bradley Manning, in anti-war movement’s wake

[cory777]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Rhiannon12866 (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Waging Nonviolence

Supporters of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, are about to do something that many progressives may find counterproductive, if not downright distasteful, in the midst of a close election. This week, beginning on Thursday, September 6, they plan to stage a wave of nonviolent direct actions across the nation as President Obama gives his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The basic template was demonstrated on August 17, when Manning supporters occupied several Obama campaign headquarters on the West Coast, including those in Oakland, Los Angeles and Portland. The groups demanded that Obama apologize for a statement in 2011 when he said that Manning “broke the law,” which appears to assume the soldier’s guilt even before the case went to trial. They also demanded that the president ensure that no one else should endure the kind of barbarous treatment that Manning suffered at the military base in Quantico, where he was consigned to solitary confinement (against the advice of psychologists), deprived of sleep and routinely forced to strip naked.

Activists were arrested at the Portland and Oakland actions, but while it might be expected that discord between the Democratic Party and a progressive group might catch headlines, relatively few national mainstream media outlets covered the story.

“We are planning to replicate [those occupations] on a bigger scale in dozens of cities across the U.S. on September 6, the final day of the DNC, when Obama will be making his acceptance speech,” says Nathan Fuller, spokesperson for the Bradley Manning Support Network. “If he said anything on the matter, it’d be better than his silence since declaring Bradley Manning guilty.”



Read more: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/09/organizing-for-bradley-manning-in-anti-war-movements-wake/

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[Cleita]

1. Are these the same people?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/occupy-protesters-block-dnc-buses-184907071--politics.html

[patrice]

5. Priorities? How does "Obama is a traitor" help their message about Bradley Manning?

[AtomicKitten]

7. The irony is thick.

[Agnosticsherbet]

2. If people find it distasteful, it is because they are focused on the election in exclusion

of all else.

I think what they are doing is important, and it shows they are a legitimate grassroots movement and entirely unlike the Tea-party astroturf. I hope their protest is successful.

They should be supported by liberals because what they are doing is in support of very basic liberal philosophy.

[midnight]

3. K&R

[LiberalLovinLug]

4. Good for them

It does no harm to criticize and put a spotlight on an issue towards Obama at this time, if its an issue that Republicans want silenced as well.

[struggle4progress]

6. "We're clueless so we've decided to harass campaign volunteers"

[ProgressiveChristian]

8. I know I am going to take heat for this

But Manning is where he belongs. You cannot release National Security information to a third party, because you are pissed off at the Army. He should never have been recycled at Leonard Wood, he should have been discharged as incompatible to military service. He was screaming back at his Drill Sgt's, for God's sake. When you join the Military, you understand that there are certain things you give up, you cannot for example, attend a political rally in Uniform, and your Free Speech rights are certainly limited to some extent. He also assaulted a female soldier and was awaiting discharge on those charges. The Army failed him, and he failed himself.

[Swagman]

9. "pissed off at the Army"

interesting.

[ProgressiveChristian]

10. By all accounts

including his own, He was. He was a not a "whistleblower" despite what people have made him out to be. A whistleblower obtains specific evidence of specific incidents and exposes them. He simply took all the sensitive information, he could get his hands on and threw it out into cyberspace. There is no way, he could have known what was in half those documents. It would have taken him years to go through that information. That's a tantrum, not whistleblowing. Lt Col. Donald L. Davis is a whistleblower and a hero, Manning is no Davis.

[randome]

11. The 'man' Bradley Manning who doesn't even want to be a man.

The guy is a nut who punched a superior officer, stole classified secrets and was once found curled on the floor in a fetal position after having carved 'I want' into a chair with a knife.

The guy needs psychiatric help and probably hormone replacement therapy, not mindless drones celebrating his unbalanced nature.

[jerseyjack]

12. If your response is that he needs psychiatric help,

Then he should not be prosecuted. Treat him and then discharge him.

[randome]

13. I'd have no problem with that.

The Army is equally at fault for losing classified information since they gave a mentally unbalanced soldier access in the first place.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. Locking, sorry, this is analysis, not breaking news.

Please consider reposting in GD. Thanks!