Video: Andy Worthington Discusses “Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda” with Carl Dix at Revolution Books in Harlem, Jan. 16, 2018

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I’m delighted that the video is now available of my speaking event, “Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda,” at Revolution Books in Harlem, which took place last week as part of my annual visit to the US to call for the closure of the prison on and around the anniversary of its opening — on January 11.

This year — the 16th anniversary of its opening, and the first anniversary in which it was open under the control of Donald Trump — I was particularly aware of the passage of time, and the prison’s horrendously long existence. As a result, I came up with a revival of the Gitmo Clock that I first set up under President Obama in 2013, counting how many days the prison has been open — 5,845 days on the anniversary, and 5,859 days today — and if you’re interested at in the closure of Guantánamo, then please get involved. Posters for every 25 days are available on the Gitmo Clock website, and the next poster is for 5,875 days on February 6. Please take a photo with the poster, and send it to us, and we’ll post it on the Close Guantánamo website and on social media.

In my various talks on my trip, and in discussions with fellow activists, I also made frequent allusions to how long the prison has been open, noting that my son, who just turned 18, was only two years old when Guantánamo opened, and asking people to think about how long it would take them to think of 5,845 things, one for each day the prison has been open. I’d actually like to make a video featuring one image of each day Guantánamo has been open, and if you’re a filmmaker, and this is of interest to you, then do get in touch.

The video is below, via Vimeo, on Revolution Books’ Vimeo channel:

Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda from Revolution Books on Vimeo.

At Revolution Books, I decided that I would run through Guantanamo’s history, as I perceived it, and also run through my involvement with researching it under the Bush administration, when it was still largely shrouded in secrecy, telling the story of the men held there, and working to get it closed, via the various endeavours I have undertaken along the way — over 2,000 articles, a film, the Close Guantánamo campaign, the We Stand With Shaker campaign, work with the United Nations and WikiLeaks and other organizations — all to end up, after eight disappointing years under President Obama, with Guantánamo still open, and inaction and verbal hostility the hallmark of Trump’s first year in charge of America’s most notorious lawless prison.

I hope you have time to watch the video, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful. I’m grateful to everyone who turned up — some old friends and supporters, and some new faces — and I’d particularly like to thank Carl Dix for introducing me and moderating the evening. Carl is a a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, and became a revolutionary while imprisoned for two years in Fort Leavenworth for refusing to fight in Vietnam, one of six GIs in Fort Lewis, in Washington state, who refused orders to go to Vietnam in 1970. Carl has a deep and measured analysis of America’s crimes, helping to place Guantánamo into a wider domestic context, and his questions to me, and the questions posed by the audience members, helped to create a memorable evening, and one that, I hope, bears repeated scrutiny through this recording.

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 the Donald Trump No! Please Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2017), 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.