I was on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, to discuss ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s role in the Iraq war and the use of torture on the day that his new memoir Known and Unknown was released. Click here to watch the video.
Winter 2009
Witness Against Torture:
The Campaign to Shut Down Guantánamo
Edited by Anna Brown, Matthew Daloisio, Michael Foley, Patrick Stanley, and Matthew Vogel
Yellow Bike Press, 2008, 164 pages, $15–$25
As the history books are written, few words or places will symbolize the Bush years more than “torture” or Guantánamo. While much of the country has seemed to ignore―or at least remain quiet about―these horrors, not everyone has been silent.
Inspired by the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, a group of 25 activists calling themselves Witness Against Torture (WAT) embarked on an unprecedented 50-mile march in December 2005 to the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Although they were unable to visit the inmates as they’d hoped, the group came closer than any civilians had and took a meaningful stand for human dignity.
Upon returning to the United States, WAT activists launched a creative campaign to bring the plight of those at Guantánamo directly to the halls of power. They organized major demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience in New York City and Washington, D.C., helping spark and then fuel a worldwide movement to shut down the nightmarish offshore penal colony and ban torture.
Witness Against Torture: A Campaign to Shut Down Guantánamo was clearly a labor of love, put together by these activists to chronicle this grassroots movement, educate the wider public about the issue, and inspire more people of conscience to take action. The book is chronologically ordered and contains a collection of personal reflections on the actions by participants, court statements by the protesters, press releases, photos, posters, flyers, and even an hour-long DVD that effectively transports the reader to the streets, courtrooms, and jail cells where the group’s witness has led them.
Throughout this concise volume are the heartbreaking stories and words of prisoners at Guantánamo, passionate pleas for justice by their lawyers, and excerpts from various fact-filled reports on the detainees that will undoubtedly be useful for anyone trying to articulate why the prison is an abomination.
