Ten years after Guantanamo was opened to take prisoners that the U.S Govt didn't want to bring into the USA, we are still outraged by the existence of this prison. This protest outside the Federal Building in San Francisco was designed to dramatize that.

  

     

     

        

  

  

Barry Hermanson was there gathering signatures to get on the ballot as a Green Party Candidate for Congress.

     

  

     

Cynthia Papermaster explained that they had made slips of paper, each one representing somebody that was still detained at Guantanamo. She wanted each of us to take one, because later we would all be reading their names one at a time.

I picked this one, partly because the guys name is so long.

     

Marsha Feinland was gathering signatures to get on the ballot as a Peace & Freedom Party candidate for U. S. Senator.

        

        

That Irish woman spoke representing Amnesty International. She had just come in from overseas, and told us "you are not alone." As an Irish citizen she was outraged by the fact her government had supported the Bush regime's torture policy by giving the planes a place to land and refuel on their way from the middle east to Guantanamo. She explained that made her country an accessory to the crimes the same way selling gas to somebody that was about to use the car to rob a bank would, especially if you knew what they were going to do, which her people did.

     

     

     

David Rovics was really there in person to sing for us? Yup.

     

           

John Walker Lind's mother talked about how it felt to be the mother of Guantanamo detainee #0001. She said that before he had been convicted of war crimes she could visit him and touch his hand. Now that he has been locked up with a 20 year sentence, when she visits she can only look through the glass at him. She seemed deeply unhappy.

The guy in orange was introduced as a leader from Veterans for Peace and is an official on a Berkeley Human Rights Commission. He said that the continuing usurpations of the federal government that seems to go on and on regardless of which Party owns the White House at the moment mean we have to look beyond electing someone else for the answer. He said that he is very certain a nonviolent revolution is possible, and that we need one.

The woman from the Bradley Manning support committee said that Bradley's condition has stopped deteriorating now that he has been moved to a better prison. She will be calling for visible support when the trial gets underway, which should be soon.

Carol Brouillet said that we need a lot more candidates for office that are willing to run against the status quo. If nobody runs against it, how can we vote against it?

There was a large crowd listening by the end of the speeches.

     

Then this guy asked us to all line up and read the names of the Guantanamo detainees one at a time. He wanted us to line up arms length apart.

The line went all the way from the federal building to the end of the block and up the other side of the street. I ended up far enough down that I had a good view of the stage from across the street. Then one by one people started reading names. They kept going until the wireless microphone got out of range of the speaker system. Then they had a bit of an interruption while they found a megaphone to replace it. That worked for a while, but then its batteries died.

     

I read my name, and then took this picture of Kathy reading her name. There were many more after that before it was done. Then we marched back to the federal building before going our separate ways.