Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my work as an independent journalist and activist, primarily as the chronicler of the prison at Guantánamo Bay over the last 16 — now nearly 17 — years, telling the stories of the men held and campaigning to get the prison closed.
I also work on other topics — the extraordinarily urgent climate crisis, and the unjust imprisonment of Julian Assange, to name just two — as well as chronicling London on an ongoing basis via my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, and making protest music with my band The Four Fathers.
All of this work is unpaid — or, more specifically, is only viable because of your support, so 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.
Dear friends and supporters,
Ten and a half years ago, at the comparatively youthful age of 48, I set out on my bike, armed with a small point-and-shoot Canon camera, on an ambitious mission to photograph the whole of London — or, more specifically, the 120 geographic postcodes that make up the 241 square miles of the London postal district.
3,839 days later, I’m now close to my 60th birthday, I’ve cycled tens of thousands of miles and taken tens of thousands of photos, as well as getting through two bikes and four cameras — with the most recent of these, a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mk. II, having transformed my photography since I first bought it nearly four years ago.
For the last five and a half years, my ambitious mission to record the changing face of the capital has manifested itself as ‘The State of London’, a unique photo-journalism project on Facebook (and Twitter), which involves me posting a photo from these journeys every two days, along with a detailed accompanying essay (I used to post a photo and essay every day until July this year, when I finally realised that the daily schedule had become too arduous).
Dear friends and supporters, and any kind passers-by,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my work as a reader-funded independent journalist and campaigner, primarily in relation to the main thrust of my work over the last 16 and a half years — reporting on the US “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, and campaigning to get it closed, but also via my forays into other territory, especially the unparalleled, life-threatening severity of the climate crisis, which finally hit home in the UK this summer, and the ominous hijacking of the British government by a new leader, Liz Truss, chosen by just 0.0017% of the electorate, who has surrounded herself with dangerous far-right “libertarians.”
I also continue — again on an unpaid basis — to involve myself in housing issues in the UK, in chronicling London via my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, and in making protest music.
I’m a week late in posting this fundraiser, which I delayed because of the ten-day period of mourning in the UK for the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which, extraordinarily, caused something close to a media blackout on any other news, in what should, with hindsight, be regarded as a shameful dereliction of duty by the mainstream media. I didn’t stop working throughout this period, of course, but now that normal life has resumed, I expect that the next few months will be very busy indeed, and your support will be very welcome.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, an entirely reader-funded endeavour, in which, for the last five years and three months, I’ve been posting a photo a day, plus an accompanying essay, drawn from the photos I’ve been taking on daily bike rides throughout the capital for the last ten years.
If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s £5, £10, £20 or more!
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 my PayPal page also covers donations to support my ongoing work to secure the closure of US prison at Guantánamo Bay, and many of those supporters 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.
Dear friends and supporters,
It’s over 16 years since I first began working full-time as an independent journalist and author writing about Guantánamo, telling the stories of the men (and boys) held there, and campaigning to get the prison closed, and it’s 13 years since I first began asking you, every three months, to enable me to continue this work by making a donation to support me as a reader-funded writer and activist.
Your support has been invaluable in enabling me, via this website, and the website of the Close Guantánamo campaign (which I established ten years ago with the US attorney Tom Wilner), to keep shining a light on the injustices of Guantánamo, especially in the face of frequent indifference from the mainstream media, and to present what I continue to hope are powerful perspectives on the prison and the men held that are based on my particular experience of researching and writing about the prisoners and the prison for the last 16 years.
This work began in 2006-07 with the research for my book The Guantánamo Files, and it constitutes a bedrock of knowledge about the prison and the men held there that I have built on ever since, and that I continue to write about as the main focus of my work because of my conviction that detailed knowledge of the truly monstrous lawlessness of Guantánamo requires those who come into close contact with it to remain focused on it, and not to drift with the tide of endlessly breaking news, or, indeed, to become seduced by the false notion that journalistic objectivity — presenting both sides of the story, and letting readers make up their own minds — should apply to somewhere as grotesque as Guantánamo.
Ten years ago today, on May 11, 2012, I set out on my bike, with a little Canon camera that my wife had bought me for Christmas, to record the ever-changing landscape of London in photographs, intending to visit and take photos in all 120 postcodes of the London Postal District (those beginning with WC, EC, E N, NW, SE, SW and W), which covers 241 square miles. It took me two and a half years to visit every postcode at least once, and rather longer to find the camera that particularly suited the requirements of the project. In February 2019, after a number of upgrades, I ended up with the camera I still have, a Canon PowerShot G7X Mk. II, and if I have one regret about this project, it’s that I didn’t buy it sooner.
Back in May 2012, I had no idea where this journey would take me, but ten years later it has become a running commentary on the best and the worst of this sprawling, infuriating and sometimes inspiring city that has been my home for the last 37 years.
Exactly five years after I first embarked on this photographic project, on May 11, 2017, I set up the Facebook page ‘The State of London’ to post a photo a day, with an accompanying essay, from these journeys, where I have now posted nearly 1,800 photos and essays, and where, I’m delighted to report, the project now has over 5,000 likes and over 5,400 followers. I also post the daily photos on Twitter, where the page has over 1,250 followers.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo — telling the stories of the men still held, and campaigning to get the prison shut down. As a reader-funded journalist and activist, I rely on your support to enable me to keep running three websites (Andy Worthington, Close Guantánamo and the Gitmo Clock), maintaining the associated social media, and engaging in public speaking and media events.
It’s now 16 years — over a quarter of my life — since I began working on Guantánamo on a full-time basis, inspired by three particular events in March 2006: the publication of former prisoner Moazzam Begg’s memoir, Enemy Combatant, the release of the documentary-drama ‘The Road to Guantánamo’ (about the three British prisoners known as ‘The Tipton Three’), and the release — after the Pentagon lost a Freedom of Information lawsuit — of thousands of pages of documents relating to the prisoners.
When the names and nationalities of the prisoners were finally released in the months that followed, I was able to begin analyzing them, to work out who the prisoners were, and to compile a timeline of their capture, for my book The Guantánamo Files, which was published in September 2007.
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support ‘The State of London’, my reader-funded photo-journalism project, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever.
It’s now nine years and nine months since I first set out on my bike to record the changing face of London in daily photographs, and four years and nine months since I first began posting a photo a day — with an accompanying essay — on Facebook, and I’m thrilled that the project now has nearly 5,200 followers, and that so many of you clearly enjoying seeing the photos everyday, and reading the accompanying essays.
I hope, however, that you don’t mind me pointing out that, although it’s free to view and read, ‘The State of London’ is a significant daily undertaking on my part, via my bike journeys, the research I undertake for each photo chosen, sharing on social media, and responding to everyone’s comments, and even if I were to raise £1,000 it would only work out at slightly over £10 a day — way below the minimum wage!
Dear friends and supporters,
Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo — researching and writing about the shameful lawlessness of the prison and the plight of the men still held, and campaigning to get it closed down. I’ve been doing this work for nearly 16 years now, and, as a reader-funded journalist and activist, I rely on your support to enable me to keep running three websites (Andy Worthington, Close Guantánamo and the Gitmo Clock), maintaining the associated social media, and engaging in public speaking and events.
Shamefully, we’re just a month away from an anniversary that all of us opposed to Guantánamo’s existence hoped would never arrive — the 20th anniversary of the prison’s opening, on January 11, 2022. And sadly, despite huge efforts this year to push Joe Biden to take decisive action (including by Senators and Representatives in his own party), very little has actually happened. Just one man has been freed, and while eight of the 39 men still held have been approved for release by Periodic Review Boards (a high-level US government review process) since he took office, none of them have been freed, and five others approved for release before he took office are also still held.
As the anniversary approaches, I’m working on a number of online events to highlight the need for Guantánamo to be closed (and I’d also like to ask you to take photos with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s posters marking 7,300 days of the prison’s existence on Jan. 5, and 7,306 days on Jan. 11, and to send them to us), and I’ll let you know more about these plans as they develop.
Dear friends and supporters,
It’s now over four and a half years since I first began to post photos — and accompanying essays — on Facebook, as ‘The State of London’, from the archive of photos that I’d been building up since I first began cycling with a camera and a curious eye throughout London’s 120 postcodes five years before, in May 2012.
This has, from the beginning, been a labour of love. No one asked me to do it, and no one was paying me to do it either, but as time has gone on and the project has become more popular (with nearly 5,000 followers now on Facebook), I have also devoted more and more time to it — particularly through the research I undertake into the subjects of my photos, and the essays I write to accompany my daily posts, which I know many of you appreciate.
As a result, earlier this year I began posting quarterly fundraisers asking you to make a donation, if you can, to support ‘The State of London.’ If you can help out, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s £5, £10, £20 or more!
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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