23.1.16
From January 8-18, I was in the US for a brief tour to highlight the importance of closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, coinciding with the 14th anniversary of the opening of the prison, on January 11. I visited Miami, Washington, D.C. and New York City, and videos of my various escapades can be found here, including appearing with my friend and supporter, the music legend Roger Waters, on Democracy Now!
I also took part in a number of radio shows, and am making those available below. I hope you have time to listen to them, and to share them if you find them useful. I’m keeping my description of them quite brief, as I’m snowed under with other Guantánamo-related work right now — in particular the launch of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, a new initiative, via the Close Guantánamo campaign I set up with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012, asking people to print off a poster calling for President Obama to close Guantánamo before he leaves office in a year’s time, to photograph themselves standing with the poster, and to send it to us to put up on the website and to publicize via social media. I hope you will get involved!
On the morning of January 11, just before I took part in the annual protest outside the White House, and a panel discussion at New America, I spoke to Jerome McDonnell on his show “Worldview” on WBEZ 91.5 in Chicago. The show is available on Soundcloud, and is posted below, and this is how Jerome described it:
Today marks the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo Bay prison. Throughout his Presidency, Barack Obama has vowed to shut down the prison, but so far, has not achieved his stated goal. There are currently 104 prisoners remaining [now 91]. We’ll talk about efforts to reduce the detainee population, as well as the recent release of several prisoners, with Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and co-founder of the ‘Close Guantánamo’ campaign.
Just before I left the UK, I was interviewed by New York-based activist Cat Watters for her show “Organic News” on Awake Radio. Cat and I have spoken before, and we had a wide-ranging, hour-long discussion about Shaker Aamer and Guantánamo, which began with Cat playing “Song for Shaker Aamer” by my band The Four Fathers, which was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I launched in November 2014 with the activist Joanne MacInnes. You can buy the song here — and our album “Love and War” is also available to download or on CD. The show is below, via YouTube (audio only):
On January 14, while I was in New York City, and about to do a talk at Revolution Books in Harlem, I spoke for the umpteenth time with the Texas-based libertarian Scott Horton. Our 23-minute interview is here, via MP3, and this is how he described the show:
Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, discusses his lobbying effort to finally get Guantánamo closed, release the prisoners who are wrongly-held, and try the remaining few for terrorism in proper federal courts on US soil.
That interview took place after ten men had been released in Oman, bringing to total number of men held to 93, and Scott spent most of the show talking about these men, who they were, and why they never posed a threat to the US.
The day after, on January 15, I spoke — also not for the first time — to Michael Slate on KPFK in Los Angeles for his weekly show.
The hour-long show is here, via MP3, and my interview starts at 24:52 and ends at 41:20. Also speaking was Debra Sweet, the National Director of the World Can’t Wait, who, as every January since 2011, organized my visit to the US.
It was great to talk on all these shows, and while I was at the World Can’t Wait offices I was also interviewed for a Spanish language channel, HispanTV, and the video of that is also posted below, via YouTube, for Spanish speakers:
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 debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — 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. 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).
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, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see 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, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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5 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, collecting the radio interviews I undertook on my recent US tour to highlight the need to close Guantanamo on the 14th anniversary of the opening of the prison – with Worldview in Chicago, with Cat Watters, Scott Horton and Michael Slate – plus my appearance on a Spanish-language news show. I hope you have time to listen to the shows, and to share this article if you like what you hear.
...on January 23rd, 2016 at 7:48 pm
Andy Worthington says...
My friend Jan Strain wrote:
The Andy Worthington tour revisited
...on January 24th, 2016 at 1:09 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jan. That’s almost the last of it – but not quite. There’ll hopefully be a surprise in the coming week!
...on January 24th, 2016 at 1:09 am
Andy Worthington says...
Jan Strain wrote:
OOOOOOO, I love surprises!!!!
...on January 24th, 2016 at 1:10 am
Andy Worthington says...
🙂 Jan!
...on January 24th, 2016 at 1:10 am