About 75 free-speech advocates gathered at "The Bean" in Millennium Park to speak out on the sentencing of queer WikiLeaks whistleblower Pfc. Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley Manning) Aug. 21.
The rally was organized by Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network.
Military Judge Col. Denise Lind convicted Manning last month on 20 charges including espionage and theft; on Aug. 21 she sentenced Manning to 35 years in a military prison. Manning will also be dishonorably discharged from the military, lose her pay, and have her rank reduced to private. Manning will be eligible for parole after serving at least eight years of her sentence. (Manning has started serving the sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.)
Manning has indicated that she will be sending President Obama a plea for a presidential pardon next week. A petition has also been submitted to the White House website asking Obama to restore Manning's human rights record and grant her clemency.
"Today the military judge ruled that Bradley Manning would be sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. What is at issue here is that [Chelsea] Manning embarrassed the Bush and Obama administrations and showed that their foreign policies have little to do with the preservation and promotion of human rights," said Thayer.
Manning "is someone we should be honoring rather than persecuting," he added. "The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every single previous administration combined, escalated Bush's war on civil liberties and violated the law thousands of times. ... As we learned during the sentencing portion of the trial, Bradley Manning didn't harm let alone kill, through [her] revelations, a single person, ... Without Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden's revelations we would be in a much deeper civil-liberties situation than we already are.
"The fact that the government threw everything including the kitchen sink at Manning and the fact that they are even attacking the gay partner of a courageous journalist such as Glenn Greenwald shows the utter contempt that this administration and its allies has for civil liberties and freedom fighters around the world."
A number of other Manning supporters spoke about the United States government's attack on civil liberties following Thayer's remarks.
Millennium Park officials wouldn't allow the distribution of pamphlets by protestors nor would they allow them to use a microphone during the rally.
Chicago is among a number of cities around the world that participated in protest actions in support of Manning following the sentencing.
Manning announces changes
In an Aug. 22 announcement, Manning plans to live as a woman named Chelsea and wants to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, according to CBS News.
Manning announced the decision in a written statement provided to NBC's Today show, asking supporters use feminine pronouns and a new name. The statement was signed "Chelsea E. Manning."
"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me," the statement reads. "I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible."
Manning acknowledged Aug. 14 that she "hurt people and hurt the United States" by leaking thousands of pages of classified documents, according to CNN. Her statement followed testimony from a military psychologist who said Manning appeared to be under intense pressure being a soldier dealing with gender-identity issues.
The National Center for Transgender Equality: Trans People Unequivocally Have a Right to Health Care in Prison
FROM A PRESS RELEASE
Washington, DC - In a statement issued yesterday, Chelsea Manning announced that she is a transgender woman and will be transitioning. The National Center for Transgender Equality's Executive Director Mara Keisling released the following statement:
"Regardless of what people think of Private Manning or her actions, her transition highlights the larger topics of respectful treatment of transgender people, protection for all prisoner, and whether prisoners should receive healthcare. The media has focused particularly on whether Private Manning will be permitted to access transition-related healthcare, and the Army has already released a statement saying that it will deny her access to healthcare treatments that are widely recognized as effective and appropriate for transgender people who medically transition.
Private Manning faces 35 years in the prison system, during which time she has a right to expect, like any other prisoner, that prison administrators will keep her safe and provide her basic needs, including healthcare.
We are troubled that the Department of the Army has already issued a statement denying such care to Private Manning, a decision that we will advocate against. In the United States we do not deny healthcare to prisoners. It is unconstitutional and it is morally wrong.
The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the denial of adequate medical treatment to prisoners. The medical profession is in agreement that transition-related medical treatments, including psychological therapy, hormone treatment, and even sex reassignment surgeries can all be appropriate treatments for gender dysphoria when deemed necessary by a treating medical provider. Deliberate indifference to transgender inmates' health needs by refusing such treatments outright is therefore a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment.
We expect, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, that all prisoners in military prisons will be permitted to access medical treatments that are determined by doctors to be appropriate."
To learn more, please contact Vincent Paolo Villano at vvillano@transequality.org / (o) 202-903-0112 (c) 202-631-9640.
The National Center for Transgender Equality is a national social justice organization devoted to ending discrimination and violence against transgender people through education and advocacy on national issues of importance to transgender people. By empowering transgender people and our allies to educate and influence policymakers and others, NCTE facilitates a strong and clear voice for transgender equality in our nation's capital and around the country. The National Center for Transgender Equality is a 501(c)3 organization.
Lambda Legal: Constitution Requires that Manning Should Receive Medical Care at Ft. Leavenworth
FROM A PRESS RELEASE
"It would be a shame if the U.S. military prison system held itself to a lower standard than civil prisons."
(New York, August 22, 2013) — Today following the announcement that the Chelsea Manning may not receive proper care in prison, Lambda Legal issued the following statement by Transgender Rights Project Director Dru Levasseur in support of her medical care while serving time in Ft. Leavenworth:
"Transgender people—like all people—deserve health care and are constitutionally protected in prison. Period. In fact the U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled in Farmer v. Brennan on the right of transgender people to be free from cruel and unusual punishment while in prison which includes withholding medically necessary treatment.
"It would be a shame if the U.S. military prison system held itself to a lower standard than civil prisons. The Constitution requires that Chelsea Manning receive medical care at Ft. Leavenworth—to do otherwise would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment."
In the 1994 seminal Eighth Amendment case involving a transgender plaintiff, Farmer v. Brennan, the court stated that "prison officials have a duty under the Eighth Amendment to provide humane conditions of confinement. They must ensure that inmates receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care."
Just last year the U.S. Supreme Court declined review of a 6th Circuit decision in Fields v. Smith striking down as unconstitutional a Wisconsin law that barred medical care for transgender prisoners. Lambda Legal and the ACLU won that case on behalf of transgender prisoners.
More information on this case, Fields v. Smith, can be found on Lambda Legal's case page at: www.lambdalegal.org/in-court/cases/fields-v-smith.html .
ACLU Response to Chelsea Manning's Disclosure of Gender Dysphoria
FROM A PRESS RELEASE
The following can be attributed to Chase Strangio, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Project:
"In response to Chelsea Manning's disclosure that she is female, has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and will be seeking hormone therapy as a part of her transition during her incarceration, public statements by military officials that the Army does not provide hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria raise serious constitutional concerns. Gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition in which a person's gender identity does not correspond to his or her assigned sex at birth, and hormone therapy is part of the accepted standards of care for this condition. Without the necessary treatment, gender dysphoria can cause severe psychological distress, including anxiety and suicide. When the government holds individuals in its custody, it must provide them with medically necessary care.
"The official policy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and most state agencies is to provide medically necessary care for the treatment of gender dysphoria, and courts have consistently found that denying such care to prisoners based on blanket exclusions violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution."
