Fundraiser Day Three: Still Seeking $2000 to Support My Work on Guantánamo

Please support my work!

Thanks to the generosity of twelve friends and supporters over the last two days, I have raised nearly $400 of the $2500 that I’m hoping to raise to support my work over the next three months. My thanks to those who have helped out, and, while I understand that many of my friends and supporters would like to fund my work, but are financially unable, I would like to use this opportunity to put out another appeal, as a freelance investigative journalist in the new media, to those who read my work and might be able to contribute.

Just $25 or $50 — £15 or £30 — from dozens more readers will make a big difference, and will demonstrate that reader-funded journalism is viable, and will also allow you, the reader, to know that you have contributed to help me write the articles that I’ll be writing — more or less on a daily basis — for the next three months.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. 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 (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

Since I began blogging nearly five years ago, the Internet has transformed the way we see the world, allowing researchers and commentators like me an opportunity to challenge the mainstream media’s narratives, to provide sustained commentary on issues that ebb and flow with the short attention spans of the news cycles, and to cover topics in depth that are only sporadically covered by the mainstream, or, in some cases, not even covered at all.

It has been rewarding to be part of this world, in which readers and other bloggers — via search engines, and, increasingly, through social networks — decide what is, and what isn’t important, rather than being dictated to by those with corporate agendas, or a misapplied, or even deceitful sense of “objectivity.” In addition, it has been rewarding to realize that, as a journalist in the new media, if you choose your topics, work assiduously, and have some ability, you will find an audience, as I have, and may also, eventually, end up securing paid work.

I’m grateful to Cageprisoners and the Future of Freedom Foundation for their constant support, and to other organizations for the projects and commissions that come my way out of the blue — including, this year, WikiLeaks, amongst others. However, as I hope to have demonstrated over the last three months, working on the biggest project of my life — “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series, telling all the Guantánamo prisoners’ stories, and involving a forensic analysis of the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks — I am constantly working on material that is only partly funded, and, in the case of my coverage of other pressing issues — the Occupy movement, economic crises and austerity measures, revolution in the Middle East, and the US prison system — is not funded at all.

So there you have it. You get the message. Please support me if you can. Yesterday, I published the latest instalment of “The Complete Guantánamo Files” — Part 32 of the series, featuring 13 stories and 20,000 words (enough for a slim book), which involved many days of work — and I’d be delighted if you can help me to complete the project, while also keeping an eye on the social and political movements that, we all hope, are leading us towards a better world, in which the 1 percent no longer dominate us with their financial crimes, their wars of aggression, and their disdain for the law.

Andy Worthington
London
December 7, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.