7.12.16
Since launching my latest quarterly fundraiser on Monday, I’ve had four donations, for which I’m very grateful, but I’m still a very long way from my target of $3500 (£2750) for the next three months. As a reader-funded journalist, the work I do on Guantánamo — researching, writing, campaigning, making media appearances, making personal appearances, maintaining this website, running the admin, and replying to myriad emails — is mostly unpaid; or, in other words, is only possible with your generous support.
I have no institutional backing, so if you value my independence as a journalist, commentator and activist — as I know many of you do — then please, if you can, donate to enable me to keep working to get Guantánamo closed. A donation of just $25 (£20), for example, is just $2 (£1.50) a week, not a huge amount, I hope, for the work that I do.
So please if you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to donate via PayPal (and I should add that you don’t need to be a PayPal member to use PayPal).
You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated. I currently have a number of monthly sustainers, and it’s always reassuring to know that some money is guaranteed every month.
Any amount will be gratefully received, whether it is $10, $25, $100 or $500 — or any amount in any other currency (£10, £20, £50 or £250, for example). PayPal will convert any currency you pay into dollars, which I chose as my main currency because the majority of my supporters are in the US.
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 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.
Since my last fundraiser in September, when I raised around $1500 of the $3500 I hoped to raise, the situation at Guantánamo appears to have taken a turn for the worse with the election of Donald Trump, who, on the campaign trail, promised to keep Guantánamo open, to bring back torture, and even to send US citizens to Guantánamo to face military commission trials.
With your support, I will be able to continue resisting any efforts to keep Guantánamo open, to add to its population or to revive torture, as I remain committed to bringing to an end indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial as a policy of the United States, and I continue to believe that those who authorized and implemented the post-9/11 programs of extraordinary rendition, torture and arbitrary detention must be held accountable for their actions.
I do hope that, if you can, you will support my particular experiment in reader-funded journalism and activism, which has been ongoing now for over ten years. I fully respect mainstream media outlets when they do justice to Guantánamo, but often they do not, either because their reporting is too sporadic, or too watered down by the liberal obsession with “objectivity,” which, more often than not, ends up giving credibility to those who do not deserve it.
On Guantánamo, I have never pandered to those in power, and the excuses they make to try to justify their unjustifiable policies and actions, and I have never wavered in my opinion that the prison is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and that every day it remains open is an insult to the values that the US claims to hold dear. I am profoundly disappointed that Barack Obama has not managed to close it despite promising to do so nearly eight years ago, and I will continue to push him to remedy that before he leaves office, but time is running out, of course, and all of us who care about decency and the rule of law need to be prepared to stand up and be counted if Donald Trump takes advantage of Obama’s failures — to close the prison and to throughly repudiate all the crimes of the Bush administration — to embark on a new era of dangerous and counter-productive lawlessness.
I hope you will be with me.
Andy Worthington
London
December 7, 2016
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’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). 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.
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, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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4 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN: It’s Day 3 of my quarterly fundraiser to support my ongoing work on Guantanamo, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of my target of $3500 (£2750) for the next three months. A donation of $25 (£20) is just $2 (£1.50) a week – not too much, I hope, for all the work I do, which is only possible with your support. I have to reiterate that, as a reader-funded journalist and activist, I have no institutional backing and am reliant on you to enable me to continue my work. Thanks for your support!
...on December 7th, 2016 at 9:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Can anyone get the ball rolling today/tonight? I’ve still had just three donations since Monday and I also have one new monthly sustainer. If that’s something that interests you, it’s very much appreciated. On thePayPal page, you tick the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and enter the amount. It really is very reassuring to have regular donations every month.
...on December 7th, 2016 at 9:35 pm
Andy Worthington says...
One donation just received, for which many thanks. Can anyone else help out, please?
...on December 7th, 2016 at 11:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
My friends, it’s now Day 4 of my quarterly fundraiser, in which I’m trying to raise $3500 ($2750) to support my work on Guantanamo and related issues for the next three months, and although I’m grateful to the four people who have made donations since I launched the fundraiser on Monday, I’ve only raised 4% of my target, and I won’t be able to continue the work I do without further support. $25 (£20) is just $2 (£1.50) a week for the next 13 weeks – not too much, I hope, if you appreciate all I do writing, campaigning and making media and personal appearances, most of which is unpaid. Any amount, however large or small, will be very gratefully received.
...on December 8th, 2016 at 8:50 pm