Please Support My Truly Independent Reader-Funded Work on Guantánamo as a Journalist and Activist

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 over the next three months.

 

I never meant to become a world authority on Guantánamo, or the most persistent independent journalist and activist campaigning for the prison’s closure, but over the last 18 years, as my youth has given way to middle age, that is, apparently, what I’ve become.

I’ve done this through a combination of personal tenacity, through persistent efforts to navigate and not drown in the ever-changing media landscape of the 21st century, through a refusal to accept the false distinction between journalism and activism that makes far too much “liberal” journalism self-defeating, and through a belief that, in the face of almost complete indifference from politicians, the mainstream media and the American people, those of us who recognize that the prison at Guantánamo Bay is a uniquely lawless affront to all notions of decency need to do all that we can to persistently raise our voices and to be heard.

When I began this work on a full-time basis, in March 2006, social media and smartphones barely existed, and the internet was much more of a level playing field than it is now. Drawing on publicly available documents — largely extracted from the US government through Freedom of Information legislation — I spent 14 months researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files, and then began writing and publishing articles here on my website, which has subsequently become the largest repository of publicly available information about Guantánamo, with none of it hidden behind a paywall, and none of it having been erased, as is sadly the case with the archives of so much of the mainstream media.

Since 2007, I have published over 2,500 articles telling the stories of, and humanizing the men held at Guantánamo, and following every twist and turn in the sordid story of what the Bush administration’s post-9/11 flight from the law has meant, and how it has poisoned everything it touches over the last 22 years.

For most of this time, although I have sometimes worked for organizations that have paid me, I have largely focused my efforts on creating an ongoing narrative of Guantánamo journalism and activism here and on the Close Guantánamo website, which I established with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012.

To do so, I have been — and I continue to be — reliant on your support, as my readers, to enable me to continue this work, and not just the writing and campaigning, but also my media appearances and personal appearances to promote the cause, most of which are unpaid. Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation, however large or small, and if you can help out at all your support will be very greatly appreciated.

If you can make a donation to support my work, 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 join my monthly sustainers by making a recurring payment, 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 greatly 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.

As 2024 unfolds, those of us who care about Guantánamo are acutely aware that President Biden is running out of time to act decisively to free the 16 men (out of 30 in total) who have been approved for release, and who, in most cases, have been waiting for many years to be freed, and to take steps towards the eventual closure of the prison.

In many ways, the situation is reminiscent of President Obama’s last year in office, when campaigners recognized how important it was to exert as much pressure as possible on him, not least because of the fallibility of his cosy assumption that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.

This time around, as Biden signals his determination to seek a second term, Donald Trump is, almost incredibly, looming once more, meaning that it is of unprecedented urgency that any unfinished business regarding Guantánamo needs to be undertaken as swiftly as possible.

I’m doing my utmost to highlight this, through my new series of articles telling the stories of the 16 men approved for release, and through campaigns including the ongoing monthly coordinated global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure that I initiated last February, as well as an ongoing photo campaign via Close Guantánamo, and I’ll be doing all I can to step up action as we count down to November, for which your support — via donations, as well as via supporting these initiatives, and others to come — is invaluable.

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

Andy Worthington
London
March 11, 2024

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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 (see the ongoing 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 you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

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, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

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.