2011-06-03 Bradley Manning Support Rally at Leavenworth on June 4 - Interview with Organizer Jeff Paterson

The Bradley Manning Support Network will be having a rally to support Bradley Manning at Leavenworth tomorrow.

I interviewed Jeff Paterson, who is with Courage to Resist and serves on the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee.

You can listen to the interview by clicking on the embedded player:

Paterson discusses Manning's transfer to Leavenworth saying it "came about only because more than a half million people took action" through protests, letters, singing songs directly to the president etc. And, it was a victory that ended the "torturous conditions" he was being subjected to at Quantico.

Paterson also deconstructs recent portrayals of Manning in films produced by PBS and The Guardian.

Manning has been imprisoned for over a year and is still in pre-trial confinement. That's part of the injustice supporters will be calling attention to on Saturday.

He expects hundreds of people from the Kansas and Missouri area and some activists from further distances will come to show solidarity.

While there are tremendous peace and justice communities and pacifist churches in the Kansas City/Lawrence areas, Paterson notes Leavenworth is a very small rural military area. The community is very much tied federally and economically to the military base.

He says, "We are going to do our best to reach out to the local population and explain why we’re there and hopefully break some stereotypes of crazy hippie outsiders coming into the community."

For more on tomorrow's rally at Leavenworth, go here.