Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking $2500 (£2000) for My Guantánamo Work and My London Photo-Journalism

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo, and/or for my London photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.

 

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my ongoing work researching and writing about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and campaigning to get it closed down once and for all. I’ve now been doing this for 15 and a half years, and, as a reader-funded journalist, commentator and activist, I rely on your support to keep going.

If you can make a donation to support my ongoing efforts to close Guantánamo, and/or my photo-journalism, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be very much appreciated.

The donation page is set to dollars, because the majority of those interested in my Guantánamo work are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.

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 (to 164A Tressillian Road, London SE4 1XY), 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.

Right now is a pivotal time for Guantánamo, after the U.S.’s departure from Afghanistan and the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks just two days ago, and with the 20th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo just four months away.

As the US liberal establishment undergoes some soul-searching in the wake of the end of a war in Afghanistan that has lasted nearly 20 years, has cost over two trillion dollars, and yet has had no positive lasting effect whatsoever, many of those undergoing this moment of reflection will also be aware that the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay is now even more incomprehensible that ever.

This will hopefully amplify the calls for its closure that were widespread during President Biden’s first six months in office, as numerous prominent organizations and individuals, including 24 Senators and 75 members of the House of Representatives, who not only wrote to him to demand the prison’s closure, but also pointed out that it has become intolerable that the US continues to hold men indefinitely at Guantánamo, without charge or trial, and may do so until the end of their lives unless someone takes definitive action.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, 2022, I’ll be doing all I can to keep the focus on the need for Guantánamo to be closed — and, very specifically, for the ten men already approved for release to be freed, for the 17 “forever prisoners,” officially held indefinitely without charge or trial, to also be freed, unless any of them are going to be charged, and for the ten men facing trials to have those trials moved out of the broken military commission system that is incapable of delivering justice, and into federal courts, where they can finally be resolved.

And, finally, if you like my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London,’ in which, every day, I post a photo from nine years of bike rides throughout the capital, along with an accompanying essay, I’m also delighted to received donations to support it, because, as with my Guantánamo work, I have no institutional backing for it, and I’m reliant on your support to keep it going.

With thanks, as ever, for your interest in my work.

Andy Worthington
London
September 13, 2021

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), 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 see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison 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, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.55).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the resistance continues.

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, The Complete Guantánamo Files, 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.