Photos and Report: Eight Global Vigils For the Closure of Guantánamo on May 1, 2024

Photos from the the monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on May 1, 2024. Clockwise from top L: Outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in New York City, in London, and in Cobleskill, NY.

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With Gaza, understandably, dominating the news, as Israel’s genocide continues, and peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors at campuses across the US are being violently assaulted by police on behalf of their universities’ administrators, it’s a tribute to the tenacity of human rights campaigners at five locations across the US — and in London and Brussels — that, on Wednesday, they came out onto the streets to also try to remind people of the ongoing existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and, in particular, the plight of the 16 men (out of 30 still held in total), who have long been approved for release but are still held.

Coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of Guantánamo have been taking place across the US and around the world on the first Wednesday of every month since I began organizing them last February, and on Wednesday, May 1, vigils took place in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Brussels, Cobleskill, NY, Detroit and Los Angeles.

San Francisco didn’t hold a vigil this month, but coordinator Gavrilah Wells took photos at two events at the weekend, and campaigners in Mexico City were also unable to take part, although Natalia Rivera Scott arranged instead for two former prisoners to take photos with posters calling for the prison’s closure.

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Free the Guantánamo 16: Photos Of Nine Global Vigils For the Closure of Guantánamo on April 3, 2024

Photos from the monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on April 3, 2024. Clockwise from top L: At the European Parliament in Brussels, outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in London, and in San Francisco.

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On Wednesday (April 3), the latest monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place at five locations across the US, in London, in Mexico City, and, as a special one-off event, in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi (second from left) joins members of the Comité Free.Assange.Belgium at an exhibition of Guantánamo prisoners’ art in the European Parliament in Brussels on April 3, 2024.
Campaigners in Washington, D.C. outside the White House on April 3, 2024.

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Photos and Report: Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure on March 6 Demand Freedom for 16 Men Long Approved for Release

Photos from the coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on March 6, 2024. Clockwise, from top L, Washington, D.C., London, San Francisco and New York City.

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Campaigners outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on March 6, 2024. As Helen Schietinger of Witness Against Torture explained, “In the photo are Malachy Kilbride, Bob Cooke, Steve Lane, myself, Frank Panopoulos, and a friend.” As she also explained, “We’re not little leprechauns: the fence keeping us out is really that tall now!”
Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network in Parliament Square in London on March 6, 2024 (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners on the steps of the Public Library on Fifth Avenue in New York City on March 6, 2024. As Debra Sweet of the World Can’t Wait explained, “Amazingly, 14 people came out today in heavy rain.” (Photo: John Breitbart, Movement Sound Plus).

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Photos and Report: Eight Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on February 7, 2024

Photos from the coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on February 7, 2024. Clockwise, from top L, Washington, D.C., London, Mexico City and Cobleskill, NY.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.





 

As the prison at Guantánamo Bay continues its miserable existence, now in its 23rd year of denying justice to the men held, and betraying every legal principle that is supposed to distinguish the US from dictatorships, I’m grateful to the campaigners across the US, and around the world, who, following the annual protests for Guantánamo’s closure on January 11, the 22nd anniversary of its opening, have resumed the monthly vigils that I initiated a year ago to try to keep a light shining on Guantánamo once a month rather than just once a year.

Via organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and The World Can’t Wait, vigils took place on Wednesday (February 7) in Washington, D.C., Cobleskill, NY, Detroit and San Francisco, as well as in Mexico City and London, where I joined fellow campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, and in Brussels and Copenhagen, where campaigners held their vigils on the preceding days.

Campaigners outside the White House in Washington, D.C. on February 7, 2024.

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Photos and Report: The Close Guantánamo March and Rally in Central London, Jan. 20, 2024

Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network in Parliament Square during the march and rally for the closure of Guantánamo on January 20, 2024 (Photo: Sinai Noor).

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On Saturday (January 20), a colourful and inspiring march and rally for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place in central London, organized by the UK Guantánamo Network, which consists of members of a number of local Amnesty International groups from across London and the south east, plus other campaigners, myself included.

The event was organized to mark the recent 22nd anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, when a handful of campaigners braved bitterly cold weather to stage a vigil outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, as part of the monthly coordinated global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure that I initiated a year ago. See here for my report about, and photos from the 16 vigils that took place in the US and around the world to mark the anniversary.

Complementing that vigil, the march and rally took place on a Saturday for maximum visibility, and would have taken place on Saturday January 13 had it not been for the fact that a massive March for Palestine was scheduled for that particular date, which I posted photos of — and commentary about — here.

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Photos and Report: The Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 22nd Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening

Coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on January 11, 2024. Clockwise from top left: New York, Washington, D.C., Mexico City and London.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.





 

Campaigners in Washington, D.C., including representatives of Amnesty International, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), Witness Against Torture and Dorothy Day Catholic Worker held a vigil outside the White House on January 11, 2024. (Photo: NRCAT).
Campaigners in New York City held a vigil on the steps of the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue on January 11, 2024. The event was organized by the World Can’t Wait, whose National Director, Debra Sweet, is on the mike. Other supporters included Brooklyn for Peace, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace and NY War Resisters League. Around 60 people attended in total, and other speakers were Daphne Eviatar of Amnesty International USA, Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture, Jessica Murphy of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Imam Saffet Catovic, and Rosemarie Pace and Mary Yelenick of Pax Christi. A video by Joe Friendly is here. The event also raised money for the Guantánamo Survivors Fund. (Photo: Felton Davis).

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8,000 Days of Guantánamo: Vigils Take Place Around the World and 170 Former Prisoners, Lawyers, Politicians and Campaigners Join Photo Campaign

Coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on December 6, 2023. Clockwise from top left: London, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Mexico City.

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Wednesday December 6 was a big day for Guantánamo activism, as it marked 8,000 days since the prison opened, and also coincided with the date for the latest global vigils, calling for the closure of Guantánamo, which I initiated in February, and which have been taking place across the US, in London, Mexico City, and elsewhere, every month since.

To mark 8,000 wretched and unforgivably long days of the prison’s existence, I encouraged anti-Guantánamo campaigners around the world to take a photo with the 8,000 days poster, hosted on the Gitmo Clock website, an initiative of the Close Guantánamo campaign, which I established nearly 12 years ago, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo.

The Gitmo Clock has been counting, in real time, how long Guantánamo has been open for nearly six years, since the 16th anniversary of the prison’s opening, on January 11, 2018, when the lamentable Donald Trump was president, and when the prison had been open for 5,845 days.

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Celebrating 2,400 Days of ‘The State of London’: Please Donate to Support This Unique Photo-Journalism Project

The most recent photos posted in Andy Worthington’s ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.





 

Dear friends and supporters,

Today marks 2,400 days — or a little over six and a half years — since I first set up ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, and began posting a photo a day, with an accompanying essay, drawn from the photos I had been taking since I first began cycling around London and taking photos throughout the capital’s 120 geographic postcodes five years before — on May 11, 2012, to be precise. I also post the photos on X (formerly Twitter).

From the beginning, this has been something of a deranged hobby. I have no financial backing for the project and, as a result, am reliant on you, my readers and followers, to provide me with any kind of monetary recompense for the ridiculous amount of time that I’ve spent cycling around London with a camera over the last eleven and a half years — and, in particular, the many hours I spend researching and writing about the photos that I post to entertain and inform you about London’s history, its social housing, its takeover, in recent decades, by predatory capitalism, the changing seasons, forgotten corners, rivers, hills and canals, parks and graveyards, seats of power, poverty and protests.

In the last six months, for example, I’ve celebrated pubs and cafes, inter-war council estates, Art Deco and Brutalist triumphs, delved through the archive for coverage of lost or soon to be lost reminders of London’s history — Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, prior to redevelopment, slipper baths in South Bermondsey, council flats in Homerton, a lodge in Archway and a prefab in Stepney Green, and have also posted about horrible new developments in Pimlico, Canary Wharf, the City, Vauxhall and Lewisham, as well as covering the massive and frequent protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

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Photos and Report: The Coordinated Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on November 1, 2023

Photos from the coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on November 1, 2023. Clockwise from top left: London, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New York City.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.




Campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, London on November 1, 2023. Normally in Parliament Square, we move to the US Embassy every six months, but we had no idea that, yesterday, the US Vice President Kamala Harris would be visiting at the same time. As her cavalcade passed by after her visit to the Embassy, to visit Rishi Sunak, we all stood with ‘Close Guantanamo’ placards, which must have been noticed! (Photo: Andy Worthington).
Campaigners in Washington, D.C., on November 1, 2023, moved from their previous location, on Capitol Hill, to the White House, to attract more attention. Helen Schietinger of Witness Against Torture wrote, “We were five at the White House for our November Close Guantánamo Vigil in Washington D.C.: Steve Lane, Frank Panopoulos, Judith Kelly, David Barrows and myself. President Biden never showed up.”
Campaigners in New York City, on the steps of the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, on November 1, 2023, including, in the purple jacket, Debra Sweet, the National Director of the World Can’t Wait. The New York vigils always involve speeches, and on the mic is blogger The Talking Dog.

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Grenfell Six Years On: Still Crying Out for Justice

Posters on Bramley Road in North Kensington, close to Grenfell Tower, June 14, 2023 (Photo: Andy Worthington).

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Six years ago today, on June 14, 2017, I watched in horror on the news as an inferno engulfed Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey block of council flats in North Kensington, in west London.

London — and the UK as a whole — would never be the same again.

Compelled to visit, as a photo-journalist covering London for my project ‘The State of London’, I cycled from my home in south east London on what was, objectively, a radiant sunny day, through a city that was going about its everyday business as though nothing had happened. It was only as I got closer and the charred, still smouldering skeleton of the tower finally rose up, make me feel slightly queasy and, disturbingly, rather ghoulish, that the enormity of what had occurred struck home.

On the ground, the local community had gone into overdrive to help the survivors, donating vast amounts of food and clothing, and seeking to do all they could to help, but, throughout this heartfelt humanitarian effort, it was clear that they were alone; no one in a position of authority was anywhere to be seen.

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Andy Worthington

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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