Quarterly Fundraiser Day 1: Seeking $2500 (£2000) to Support My Guantánamo Work, Campaigning and Creativity Over the Next Three Months
11.3.19
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months of the Trump administration.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my work as a freelance journalist and activist, working primarily to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, but also working on social justice issues in the UK, particularly involving housing.
This time of year is always significant to me, as it was when, 13 years ago, three things happened that brought me to where I am today. On TV, on March 9, 2006, I watched ‘The Road to Guantánamo’, a dramatization by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross of the experiences of three British prisoners known as ‘the Tipton Three.’ Around the same time I also bought and read ‘Enemy Combatant’, Moazzam Begg’s account of his life and his time in Guantánamo, and a few days earlier, on March 3, the Pentagon, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Associated Press, released 5,000 pages of documents relating to the prisoners.
When two prisoner lists were subsequently released — one listing 558 prisoners on April 19, 2006, and another listing 759 prisoners on May 15, all the components were in place for me to begin what seems to have become my life’s work — going through all these documents, and thousands on other pages released by the Pentagon, telling the stories of the prisoners, and working to get the prison closed.
13 years later this is still what I’m doing, having written The Guantánamo Files, an acclaimed book based on my research, followed by over 2,200 articles about Guantánamo, as well as co-founding two campaigning organizations, co-directing a film, singing and writing songs about the prison, visiting the US to call for its closure on a dozen occasions, and engaging in numerous TV and radio shows, as well as undertaking lectures and other speaking engagements.
And although, throughout this journey, I’ve worked for and with numerous organizations and publications, I have, for several years, been entirely dependant on donations made by you, my readers and supporters, to enable me to continue this work.
So please, if you can make a donation to support my ongoing efforts to close Guantánamo, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.
You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month, and, if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.
The donation page is set to dollars, because the majority of my readers are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.
Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (to 164A Tressillian Road, London SE4 1XY), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send cash from anywhere else in the world, that’s also an option. Please note, however, that foreign checks are no longer accepted at UK banks — only electronic transfers. Do, however, contact me if you’d like to support me by paying directly into my account.
Over two years into the execrable presidency of Donald Trump, it’s clear that Guantánamo is not closing anytime soon, but this only highlights the effort that is needed to try and keep the horrible injustice of Guantánamo in the public eye, an objective to which I remain committed.
With your help, I will continue to work for the closure of Guantánamo — and if it’s of any interest to you, I’m lox grateful to receive donations for all the other work I do for which I receive no funding, and which are increasingly difficult in this technological world in which so much of what we do is supposed to be for free, because only the tech companies seem to end up getting paid — my housing activism in the UK, my photography via my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London,’ and my music via my band The Four Fathers.
Whatever donation you can, or cannot give, it remains essential for me to let you know that everything I do only has meaning because of your interest in it. Please keep reading, watching and listening, and if anything I do moves you, then please act on it! A better world is possible!
Andy Worthington
London
March 11, 2019
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (click on the following for Amazon in the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from six years of bike rides around the 120 postcodes of the capital.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of a new documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, the resistance continues.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
10 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Dear friends and supporters, it’s that time of the year when I ask you, if you can, to make a donation – however large or small – to support my work on Guantanamo (and/or, if you wish, my housing activism, my photography and my music). Primarily, of course, I realize that Guantanamo – telling the stories the men held there, and working to get the prison closed – has become my life’s work, and I’m reflecting today on how three things happened 13 long years ago that helped to drive me to become the advocate for the closure of Guantanamo that I still am today – the release of the film ‘The Road to Guantanamo,’ Moazzam Begg’s book ‘Enemy Combatant,’ and 5,000 pages of documents relating to the prisoners, released by the Pentagon in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Associated Press, which were the basis for the 14 months I subsequently spent writing my book ‘The Guantanamo Files,’ and seeking to tell the stories of all the men held at Guantanamo.
If you can make a donation, please click through to the page on my website, and then click on the PayPal ‘Donate’ button. If you can make a regular monthly donation, that will be particularly gratefully received. Tick the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and fill in the amount you wish to donate.
...on March 11th, 2019 at 10:03 pm
Anna says...
Hi Andy, not really on topic, but just wanted to wish you guys in the UK some heavenly intervention tomorrow.
Apart from the previous two years of May’s autocratic mess – and heaven knows how disastrous they have been ! – here she is presenting those who are supposed to vote intelligently tomorrow a backstop amendment on the night before that vote … So what are they supposed to do ? Spend the whole night discussing whether that changes anything and if so, what ?
At first sight and without of course knowing any details, it looks mostly like (peace in) Ireland is being thrown under the bus to secure DUP votes …
How far will this cynical woman go to get her way in this war of attrition which she has been waging not only with the UK public but even with her own Parliament ?!
Hang in there Brits, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the whole idiocy to collapse this week and the EU granting an extension in order to hold a second referendum – this time with proper information debunking all the previous Brexit lies.
...on March 11th, 2019 at 11:43 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your support, Anna. I suspect you are studying this more closely than 99% of the British people, who seem to have either given up, exhausted, or are still fanatically insisting that “Brexit means Brexit”, and insisting that nothing in their pitiful lives has ever been more important than leaving the EU, even though they can’t provide a single reason why it is so important and so imperative to do so.
I can only hope fervently that there’s an extension to Article 50 and that this whole disaster is somehow derailed, but I would still prefer it if MPs definitively shut Brexit down, across Party lines, and then called an election. The problem with the notion of a second referendum – beyond the ‘People’s Vote’ tag, which is deeply insulting to, presumably, the inferred troglodytes who voted leave the first time around – is that 12.9m people never voted last time, and all it would take is for a million of them to vote leave, something that is appallingly easy to imagine when you live here, with the disgusting right-wing tabloid media, the seemingly pro-Brexit BBC, and the huge misplaced anger outside the main cities against the EU and immigrants. So it would need to be a completely different referendum – with a two-thirds or 70% threshold, as should have happened last time – but if that were to happen who’s to say that there wouldn’t be some massive mobilisation against the alleged unfairness of it all?
So again I say: it should be the MPs, because, after all, it is wth them that sovereignty in the UK resides, which is what those who voted leave were supposed to have been restoring in the first place.
...on March 12th, 2019 at 12:31 am
Andy Worthington says...
Shahela Begum wrote:
Thank you Andy for all your years of dedicated journalism and activism, keeping the focus on this. If it weren’t for your determined work in telling the truth, many people would not know about this or care.
...on March 12th, 2019 at 12:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Shahela – and for your support of my work over many years!
...on March 12th, 2019 at 12:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Two more supporters donated overnight – and two other readers, by chance, made donations yesterday even before I’d launched the fundraiser. That’s nearly $200 (£160) so far. If anyone else can help, it will be very greatly appreciated!
...on March 12th, 2019 at 12:21 pm
Tom says...
Hi Andy,
Can’t help by donating money. Instead I post links to much of your work in high visibility places.
...on March 12th, 2019 at 7:37 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I appreciate that, Tom. Thanks!
...on March 12th, 2019 at 11:39 pm
Tom says...
Watching the continuing House Brexit votes, there’s a similarity between this and voting for impeachment here. In the sense of the politicians involved are all scrambling to save face while appearing to be doing the “right thing”.
May’s deal has been voted down twice. An Article 50 extension? If the EU says no, how can she say that no deal wouldn’t cause any damage?
Her Cabinet and party say when do we dump her? Who do we replace her with? She has party confidence till the end of this year. A snap general election? Her ego would never allow it.
Question. Who does Jacob Rees Mogg think he is? I don’t care that the PM passed a vote of no confidence. She should do the honorable thing, immediately resign and then let me take over because I am far superior to her? At least nobody’s flaunting Boris Johnson anymore.
Are the crack media pundits bored out of their minds yet? How many ways can Rob Watson say this is seriously messed up in one day and make it sound interesting?
...on March 15th, 2019 at 4:55 am
Andy Worthington says...
Good hear from you, Tom. It’s just the most phenomenal mess, isn’t it? No leadership, no vision. Little cliques operating without any reference to the British people. I honestly think that hardly anyone understands what is going on now – the Leavers with their tiny unworkable obsession with “just getting on with it and leaving” (an insanely complex thing, however you look at it), and Remainers looking for some sort of confirmation that politicians recognise that leaving the EU cannot happen. In a sane and responsible world, MPs would shut it down, and then call a general election, but they’re mostly too obsessed with their jobs, and their party loyalties, to put the country first. An absolute shambles.
In the US, in contrast, I see that lawmakers in Congress finally said no to Trump regarding his insane non-existent ‘National Emergency.’ There is hope! https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/senate-vote-trump-national-emergency-declaration-resolution/index.html
...on March 15th, 2019 at 1:57 pm