Quarterly Fundraiser Week Two: Still Seeking $2000 (£1600), As I Celebrate Publication of 2800 Articles, Mostly About Guantánamo, Since 2007

Please support my work and my efforts to raise $2000 (£1600) to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

This is my 2800th article since I first began writing here, on an almost daily basis, back in May 2007. Nearly three-quarters of those articles have been about Guantánamo, with others covering related topics, and, when I have found time, the political situation in the UK, which is my home.

Most of my work is unpaid — or, rather, is reader-funded, meaning that I rely on you, my readers, to make donations to support what I do if you find it useful, and if you recognize that, as the traditional model of advertiser-funded, pay-per-newspaper  print journalism steadily fades away, trustworthy online voices are increasingly important. This is what I have been trying to do here for the last ten years (in direct contrast to the growth of right-wing websites and, recently, fake news sites), and I’m grateful to everyone who has supported me throughout many years of fundraisers, which I run every three months.

Last week, I launched my latest fundraiser, hoping to raise money to maintain the struggle to close Guantánamo in light of Barack Obama’s failure to close it for good, despite promising to do so, and Donald Trump’s desire to keep it open and to expand it. However, although over 20 supporters and monthly sustainers have donated nearly $500 ($400) to keep me working for the next three months, I’m still a long way from my target of $2500 (£2000) — not a huge amount, I’m sure you’ll agree, for the 50 or so articles I write and publish here very quarter. A donation of $25 ($20) is just $2 (£1.50) a week for the next three months, but any donation, however large or small, will be greatly appreciated.

So 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). And if you’re intrigued by my mention of monthly sustainers, above, you can make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly)” on the PayPal page. If you’re 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.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, using any currency , The default setting on my PayPal page is dollars, because the majority of my readers are in the US, but PayPal will convert from any currency. 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.

I leave the final word, for now, to my friend, the US academic Diana Coleman, who, last week, encouraging people to donate to support my work, wrote the following kind and supportive message:

Andy Worthington’s daily work is more important than ever. He is an independent journalist who has worked on the issue of Guantanamo with a sustained and committed focus. (He also does some great writing on the NHS, and plays in a cool band). I am fortunate to call him friend, but I would ask you to support his work even if I didn’t know him personally. His commitment to parsing narrative truths out of the constant deluge of misinformation is inspiring. Please help out if you can.

Thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington
London
March 20, 2017

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.