Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Veterans Ask Barbara Lee to Speak Out for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
Ann Garrison, BAR contributor
17 Apr 2019
🖨️ Print Article
Veterans Ask Barbara Lee to Speak Out for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange
Veterans Ask Barbara Lee to Speak Out for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange

Worried constituents in Oakland are wondering, “Does Barbara Lee still speak for me?”

“Lee recently voted to approve a $17 billion increase in military spending.”

Veterans for Peace has issued a press release in support of both Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and East Bay Veterans for Peace, Chapter 162, want to talk to Congresswoman Barbara Lee about it. Opponents of US wars have idealized Lee, California’s District 13 Congresswoman, for her antiwar record, and might therefore expect her to defend Manning and Assange for exposing US war crimes. 

“Barbara Lee speaks for me” became a popular slogan both in and outside California’s District 13 after she voted against the Patriot Act and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the “War on Terror,” right after 9/11. She has demanded a new AUMF every time the US has started a new war since, and she usually votes against military spending bills, as her constituents demand. However, she recently cast a deciding vote in the House Budget Committee to approve a bill with a $17 billion increase in military spending for next year and another such increase for 2021.

“Military and civilian leaders were lying to the US people.”

I spoke to Daniel Borgstrom, a member of East Bay Veterans for Peace, Chapter 162.

Ann Garrison: Daniel,I understand that you are requesting a meeting with Barbara Lee to talk about the federal indictment and extradition request for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Daniel Borgstrom: Yes, we are. 

AG: And what has her East Bay office said in response?

DB: We submitted our request in writing this week. Then we called her Oakland office to ask how long we might expect to wait for a response, but they couldn’t give us an estimate.

AG: Could you summarize the Veterans for Peace statement in support of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange?

DB: It says, "What Chelsea Manning released through WikiLeaks was evidence of the routine killing of civilians by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the routine cover-up of these war crimes. The Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diaries also revealed that military and civilian leaders were lying to the US people when they presented rosy assessments of the progress of those wars. If more people had paid attention to these revelations, many thousands of lives could have been saved."

We also include one of Chelsea Manning's statements at her court martial:

“I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general as it applied to Iraq and Afghanistan. It might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day....I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”

AG: And what else do East Bay Vets for Peace plan to do about this besides talk to Barbara Lee?

DB: Talking to Barbara Lee is our top priority right now, but we also plan to join emergency protests, initiate our own protests, contact our other elected representatives, talk to our friends, and write op-eds and letters to the editor. Defending Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is as essential to the antiwar movement as opposing US wars in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and whichever country the US and NATO bomb, invade, or economically strangle next.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize  for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann@anngarrison.com.

Daniel Borgström is a member of East Bay Veterans for Peace, Chapter 162, and a member of the KPFA Radio-Berkeley Local Station Board. He spent 4 years in the US Marine Corp, from 1959 to 1963. In 1971, four years before the end of the Vietnam War,he was arrested occupying the South Vietnamese consulate in San Francisco. He and 12 other ex-GIs were acquitted of all charges at the end of a 4-week trial. He can be reached at danielfortyone@gmail.com.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

U.S. Imperial Wars

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Afghanistan is No 'Graveyard' for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination
Black Alliance For Peace
Afghanistan is No 'Graveyard' for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination
25 August 2021
Black Alliance for Peace analysis on Afghanistan, Haiti and the U.S. effort to maintain hegemony.
Freedom Rider: Losers, Suckers and War
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Losers, Suckers and War
09 September 2020
Democrats are up in arms over Trump’s latest mouth-burst, but the truth is that both corporate parties have made the people suckers for endless, “b
Freedom Rider: Media Silent as Trump Declares Wars
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Media Silent as Trump Declares Wars
22 July 2020
  Donald Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, Syria and Iran are criminal, but Joe Biden vows to be even worse.
A New Cold War on China Is Against the Interests of Humanity
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
A New Cold War on China Is Against the Interests of Humanity
22 July 2020
Ajamu Baraka and Margaret Kimberley join with the No to the New Cold War coalition to demand Donald Trump back off his confrontational stance with
A Universal Appeal for Humanity to End Militarism and Stop War
Abdallah El Harif and Vijay Prashad
A Universal Appeal for Humanity to End Militarism and Stop War
20 May 2020
A bloc of countries, led by the United States of America, is stubbornly persisting in using force to maintain and extend their global dominance.
US Blocks Vote on UN’s Bid for Global Ceasefire Amid COVID-19
Telesur
US Blocks Vote on UN’s Bid for Global Ceasefire Amid COVID-19
13 May 2020
The US veto trashes the UN’s efforts to convince armed factions in more than a dozen countries to call for temporary truces as the world battles th
Message to the US Corporate Media: Capitalism is Responsible for the Deaths of Millions of People
Solomon Comissiong
Message to the US Corporate Media: Capitalism is Responsible for the Deaths of Millions of People
04 March 2020
Corporate media snake-oil salesmen/women are doing their best to convince the masses that socialism is the devil itself.
Building the New Antiwar Movement
Russell Rickford
Building the New Antiwar Movement
26 February 2020
Will a new wave of activism finally produce a real mass movement against “boundless” militarism?
The World Demands U.S. Out of the Middle East – Will the U.S. Listen?
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
The World Demands U.S. Out of the Middle East – Will the U.S. Listen?
29 January 2020
American troops in Iraq are at increasing risk every day the US stays in that sovereign nation.
The World Must End Washington’s Illegal Economic War
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
The World Must End Washington’s Illegal Economic War
15 January 2020
The US is currently attacking one-third of the planet’s population with 8,000 economic sanctions, ongoing acts of war against 39 nations.

More Stories


  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Congo Activists to NBA: Black Lives Matter in DRC, Cut Ties with Rwanda
    19 Feb 2025
    As Rwandan troops tightened their grip on the capitals of DRC’s Kivu Provinces, activists protested the National Basketball Association’s close collaboration with the Rwandan regime.
  • Erica Caines , Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Prison Imperialism: A Critical Examination of Bukele’s Deal with the U.S
    19 Feb 2025
    The deal for a prisoner exchange proposed by the El Salvadoran president presents a dangerous threat to incarcerated people in the U.S. The continued outsourcing of the U.S. penal system…
  • Jon Jeter
    Another Love TKO: Falling Marriage Rates Stagger Black Family Formation, and Community Development
    19 Feb 2025
    The economic stress on African American people shows itself in phenomena like marriage rates. What once was a benefit to Black communities and a path to the middle class, marriage is becoming…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    STICKUP: MORE for the GREEDY; less for the needy!!
    19 Feb 2025
    "STICKUP: MORE for the GREEDY; less for the needy!!" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Nato Koury
    Guantánamo Bay’s forgotten history of detaining Haitian migrants
    19 Feb 2025
    The threats by the Trump administration to detain migrants in Guantanamo Bay will not be the first time the United States has used the facility for migrant detention. Not too long ago,…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us