 I'm a local journalist and anti-war activist. I'm here with the Answer Coalition. It stands for act now to stop war and end racism. And we're, you know, we've been a part of demanding freedom from Julian Assange since, you know, long before he was arrested, when he was de facto arrested inside the Ecuadorian embassy and detained there for many years. So I want to talk today, you know, as an anti-war activist about why Julian Assange has been so essential to the movement for peace and against war that is led, of course, by the US Empire globally and has its lackeys like the British to help them out. And I was reminded of a quote this morning as I was thinking about what to say today by, I thought of a lines from the poet Rook Dalton. And he was, of course, a Salvadoran revolutionary, revolutionary poet who was fighting the US-backed Salvadoran government in the 1960s. And there's this great line that said, todos juntos tenemos más muerte que ellos, pero todos juntos tenemos más vida que ellos. Altogether they have more death than we, but altogether we have more life than they. And I think about this in the context of the way that the US wages were around the world, that it is the foremost purveyor of violence in the world, right? Dr. Martin Luther King noted that many decades ago, and Julian Assange played such a pivotal role in exposing the dirty tricks of the US war machine and its crimes. Collateral murder that was mentioned earlier is just one example. There were so many other crimes that he's also exposed and the dirty dealings with talking behind the back of the government's manipulating and all of that. All of that is part of the same. It sounds silly to say, but it is really a quest to dominate and rule the world. And we know that the US Empire poses a permanent danger to the world because of this constant warmongering. And the war in Ukraine is the most prominent example of that in many decades. We know that the US has provoked the war in Ukraine by advancing the NATO Alliance eastward, by insisting on arming the Ukrainian government, insisting on pushing them into war, saying, no, you don't have to negotiate, no, you don't have to take other countries, you know, secure realistic security concerns into consideration. And I saw something the other day because the Vladimir Putin said something about nuclear weapons and whatever. And of course, every time he mentions them, the US media just loses its mind about, he's threatening nuclear war and whatever and stuff. And of course, that isn't what he said. He was talking about the reality that this is a very bad military situation for Russia and NATO because Russia feels that it is fighting all of NATO. And they're kind of hard as a proxy war that NATO is waging there. But the issue of it, it reminded me of something that I saw recently called the escalation ladder. Has anybody ever seen this before, the escalation ladder? The escalation ladder is a concept that is used to describe the slow descent from normal relations between countries into nuclear war. And the reality of what's happening in Ukraine is that this has brought the world closer to nuclear war than we have been in a very long time. And there's a key part of that escalation ladder. I appreciate this concept because I always thought it was just like, we'll push the button one day and all the missiles fly and that's the end of it. But that's actually not how it happens. Usually the way that people think about how it might happen is it's a very slow descent from two nations to have a quarrel all the way down to the point where cities are being annihilated without second thought. And there's a key turning point in that kind of slow decline where the implicit assumption by people that nuclear weapons are not about to be used and will not be used disappears. And I want to think back a year ago, before the war began and all of that, and was there any thought in anybody's minds that nuclear weapons could be used tomorrow? Was anybody actually even discussing that? Like that was not in anybody's minds. And now we've clearly crossed that barrier because while nobody's talking about using nuclear weapons, they now have to come out and say, we're not going to use nuclear weapons. We're not talking about it. And a year ago, nobody had to say that, you know. And so we're descending down this ladder of escalation. And that's really scary. And that's why it's so important that we demand that our government stop supporting this war, that the US force pressure everywhere they can, that the Ukrainians to come to the negotiating table and the Russians to come to the negotiating table and end the conflict before this spirals goes too far down the drain into a situation where that the use of nuclear weapons is a serious consideration that people are considering. And we have to understand that the US has provoked this war as a proxy war because it, as I said, it wants to militarily dominate the world. It wants to be the unipolar power. It can't stomach the idea of treating Russia or China or any other nation as equals. They all have to be subjugated. And I think that the prosecution and arrest of Julian Assange is really emblematic of the same idea because you have an Australian journalist who was arrested in the United Kingdom for breaking a US law. And the presumption that US law applies to everybody on the planet, that the US can have anybody arrested and extradited for why is Julian Assange subjected to US law? He didn't do any of that on US soil. And so it's, this is like the height of imperial presumption, right? The attitude that they can do this. And so when we fight for Julian Assange, when we fight for peace, when we fight to limit the power of the US empire, we are, that's what we're fighting for. We are fighting for, it's, it's, we have to understand this as an anti-imperialist project, an anti-war project. And so that's, that's really what, what we have to do. And, and why it's so important that we're all out here because, as people said before me, we achieve this through struggle, right? And the fact that, you know, Matulia Shakur is going to be spending his final days outside of a prison, it's sad that it took decades to get him out, you know, is, and she, my friend Jackie mentioned so many other people too, is proof that if we fight, we can win. And, and so we need to fight forward to free all political prisoners. I actually love this banter too. I want to give this banner a second shout out because I was going to mention Leonard Peltier and Miao Jumol in my speech anyway. So I'm glad that it's on other people's minds too. Thank you so much. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Jacqueline Lukman and I am a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. I am the co-coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Region for the Black Alliance for Peace and I am the co-host of, by any means necessary, on Radio Sputnik here in Washington D.C. with my comrade and friend Sean Blackman. It's interesting that, you know, I am here representing two organizations or two entities that have faced repression from the U.S. government. Sputnik News that has been the subject of U.S. government attempts to shut it down since 2016 when Russia gate proliferated all over the country because the Democrats lost the election that they didn't want to admit that they lost for their own foolishness and the Black Alliance for Peace, one of many Black radical organizations that are always underscrewed by the U.S. government, the State Department, the FBI, particularly our comrades in the African People's Socialist Party that were raided a few months ago. These realities of how we exist and operate in the alleged land of the free are always near in our consciousness. We always understand that there are those of us in this country who are not free. We are not free to speak our minds. We are not free to print whatever we choose, especially if what we print is the truth about the crimes this government commits. And, of course, this brings me to why we are here today, and that is Julian Assange. Julian Assange is imprisoned not because he committed a crime, not because he spied against the United States, not because he violated the ex-espionage act. Julian Assange is imprisoned because the United States government, right along with their friends, the British government, are punishing him because he printed the truth about the crimes this government was committing in other countries. So, this is why you don't hear Julian Assange's name mentioned at all on corporate media, because if they talk about Julian Assange, they have to talk about why he's imprisoned. If they talk about why he's in prison, they have to talk about that collateral damage video. They have to talk about WikiLeaks in general and how nothing that has been published by WikiLeaks was false. Every bit of it was true, and every bit of it implicates the corrupt people and the very corrupt institutions that make up this government and its allies, like these folks, the British, who are colluding with the United States to deny Julian Assange his freedom as a member of the press to attack him mentally, to wear him down physically. But this is par for the course, you see, for how the United States government and its allies treats political prisoners. I'm so glad this sign is here. Free all political prisoners, Mameda Abu Jamal, Julian Assange, Leonard Peltier, see, you have to understand that this is how the U.S. government deals with all of its political prisoners. They deny you health care. They create conditions in these institutions, prisons, these U.S. and British penal colonies. Let's stop acting like Russia is the only place with a penal colony. The United States carceral state is a penal colony. The Department of Corrections is the U.S. Gulag, the political institution that controls all the prisons. Let's stop slinging around these ridiculous words, accusing Russia or any other country of being less democratic than the country with 5% of the population of the world, but 25% of all incarcerated people on the planet. So the way Julian Assange is treated is being treated. His health is declining. His mental capacity is declining. This is the way the United States treats all political prisoners. And for those of us who have been in the struggle to free political prisoners, those of us who have been in the struggle to get Mameda Abu Jamal off death row successfully, and we're continuing to struggle for his freedom, those of us who have struggled to free Dr. Matulu Shakur, those of us who struggle to free Brother Jamil Amuntakim and others and all these other political prisoners we're fighting for. We understand that what is happening to Julian Assange is what this country has always done. This is how it treats political prisoners. They want to throw our people behind the wall, throw away the key, and they hope that we forget about them while they rot away in 40 years of solitary confinement and die. Never being thought of again, but that cannot happen. Not with Julian Assange and not with all the other political prisoners behind the wall. They can be free. We can free Julian Assange and other political prisoners. We can free Leonard Peltier. We can free all of these other political prisoners. We just have to fight for their freedom because as we are fighting for their freedom, we're fighting for ours. So whatever you do, do not forget that it is possible a better world is possible for political prisoners. Their freedom is possible and a better world for us is possible. We just have to fight for it. I'm Jackie Luquan with the Black Alliance for Peace. Washington D.C. Code Pink, in my case since 2006. And primarily what's important to me today is to see all of you here and to know that being here and showing your faces is the most important thing that you can do right now for Julian Assange and for the First Amendment rights. And my experience has been as an activist and probably you can echo the same thing, that when you see a bit of progress on any issue that you care about, any bit of progress helps you sleep at night and just showing up reduces your stress level. So that's sort of bottom line. But when you see progress like we've seen in the past week or so with finally the New York Times and Guardian and LeMond and so we're finally showing what they should have been showing for quite a while. We do thank them for finally having a backbone of stating that Julian Assange is not a criminal, that he's a publisher and that he is needs to be released and sent wherever he wants to go and probably into a hospital because he is in a failing condition given what he's been through. We can't even imagine what that would be like. My experience has been as an activist as been inspired primarily by Medea Benjamin who day after day after day has risked her physical being and her mental being and somehow or another thinking of one action after the other that brings light to her issues, our issues. Our coping has grown professionally over the past few years with increased staff and this is an example of what one organization and a few strong leaders this morning. The staff person in charge of China had a really good article and I hope you're on the line to get this but laying out the difference between the United States and China and our different war like quote war like positions. So looking at the armaments and the amount of personnel military personnel distributed around the globe. It was a quite detailed kind of thing to save your hard drive because you'll need it for your articles. So without going on too much longer I just want to thank you for being here and for continuing to be here and for whatever articles you can write whatever details you can add on your emails or your Facebook or your Twitter or to bring a friend along the next time or if you're just in a social group to speak out for a song and to let people know what the details are what the truth is break the myths because I have people in sewing group and book club and whatever who are in some cases wives as CIA agents oddly enough who bring up myths. I mean there's just so much disinformation that we must continue to belie. So thank you so much for continuing to do what you're doing and for speaking out and know that it is having an effect maybe taking a while but it is having an effect it just isn't always so apparent. Power to the people it always comes down to that doesn't it power to the people and one of the slogans that came out of our struggle which I think is a really important um is it okay? One of the struggles is that the people always win. The people always win. The people always win. The people always win. Sometimes even if they don't organize sometimes even if they don't organize but the people have to be very clear where the power really lies and so I am here representing the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition. We are at an organization of organizers. Everyone in our coalition is an organizer and we have been fighting now for seven years against fraud, waste and abuse in Montgomery County. Montgomery County is determined that they are going to erase black people from the face of the earth they thought they've tried it for at least the last 300 years. First there were major plantations on River Road. If you ever go to the Whole Foods Market on River Road in Bethesda that was a site of a mass killing ground right there. The entire area in fact was basically a mass burial ground and so we have been fighting to bring forth this history. Of course Mark Elridge and the rest of the criminals in Montgomery County have been fighting us every step of the way but we are winning. We're winning and maybe some of you saw the FMSNBC reporting on us yesterday. Next week is going to be some other major news outlets but the truth is somehow getting through because you cannot hide the truth and that's what Julian Sodge is all about. I'm also a whistleblower. I'm an EPA whistleblower. I blow the whistle on Union Carbides practices in South Africa. At the dawn of the Nelson Mandela government I was succumbed to the White House to work with the Mandela government in order to basically reorganize their environmental programs and I found out that Union Carbide was operating a vanadium mine in South Africa and everything that you see around you has vanadium. The cameras, the street lights, anything that has steel in it has vanadium in it which means that vanadium is more important to the U.S. economy than gold. It's in all the cars, trucks, airplanes, everything that you use and we found out that the vanadium mine workers were being murdered by a multinational corporation and when I went to Al Gore and arrested these guys and told them what was happening they told me to let them die and I was in the same position that most whistleblowers are in. I had to make a decision whether I was going to keep working with the White House, keep you know promoting my career doing whatever I was going to do to protect my family of whether I was going to blow the whistle and like Julian Assange I decided to blow the whistle. And that started basically a 10-year fight with the United States government in which also I was the target of death threats. My daughter was almost kidnapped. It's a very long story that I wrote a book about called No Fear because we eventually got a law pass which turned out to be the first civil rights whistleblower law of the 21st century called No Fear which is the notification of federal employees anti-discrimination and retaliation act of 2002. A better world is possible but we have to fight for it. I wanted also just to really give a shout out to Daniel Ellsberg today because Daniel is still lighting the way he really is the godfather of this movement in so many ways and he recently revealed that he had all the possessions of the Chelsea Manning information before it was sent out to the press and so what he is now doing is challenging the U.S. government to arrest him under the Espionage Act. I mean what kind of courage does it take to go on national TV and say I am blowing the whistle on myself and I dare you to put me in prison. I mean this is incredible courage and it's going to take all of us now to defend Daniel Ellsberg. All of us we all have to step up to the plate now because he's putting it all on the line for us just like Julian Assange and just like all the whistleblowers throughout this country. So I'm going to end with a quote from my friend and my colleague Nam Chomsky and I did this before but to me Nam really speaks to this issue better than anyone else. He says Julian has been subjected to years of torture, false charges, now the threat of extradition in which he will face possible lifetime of imprisonment and the press is not coming to his defense. Do you see the Washington Post here? Do you see the New York Times here? The press is not coming to his defense. It's those voices in the streets which can end this tragedy of the Assange torture and persecution. We are the answer. We are the answer and that's the reason why we say the people always win. Thank you very much. Thank you. Assange go France. I guess we have to say that since we're here to tell the British that they are complicit in a crime. The persecution of Julian Assange and an attack on the free press you know something when we as the United States fought for our independence from the British one thing we fought for was the First Amendment and the free press. A concept they don't even really have in the UK and so it is our responsibility I think as US citizens to show that we actually believe in this here in the United States. We believe in a free press and we are going to fight to say the UK should not extradite Julian Assange. He has no chance at facing a fair trial in the United States and the precedent that the UK has already set by essentially kidnapping him is horrible for people like me who work due journalism to expose the crimes of the transatlantic evil empire and our greatest partner in that transatlantic evil empire is the United Kingdom. That's right and you know one of the best things that I have experience in my life lately is getting to raise my daughter and I think I just my heart breaks for Julian Assange who's been robbed of that right to spend time with his children and his children have been robbed of their father and just on that personal level I hope that one day we we get to see Julian reunited with his children we've all heard the horrible stories of what his boys had had to go through to meet him in prison very invasive searching of young young children who are just trying to visit their father who's been taken away from them and that's all being done by the UK government you guys not much to be proud of there I mean we're standing here to tell you that you should be ashamed shame shame shame on you shame shame on the UK the last thing I'll say is that tomorrow I'll be going to Miami to cover a case a trial of someone else who was kidnapped by the United States that's Alex Sop the Venezuelan diplomat who was fighting against the same transatlantic evil empire defending Venezuela against the sanctions not only levied by the United States but by the UK government and this government has also stolen billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan gold they use the coup the cover of Juan Guaido to basically just make sure that gold that Venezuela was trying to repatriate and bring back to its country is forever in the coffers of the central bank of England so there is just so much criminality coming out of the government that these people in this building work for and so we're going to keep showing up and tell you you can't watch your world cup game in peace shame on you shame on you we will not stop until Julian Assange is free and I you know the rest of the world it feels like sometimes has moved on or forgotten and so I'm so happy to see that there are people that haven't forgotten and that will always show up and say nothing I would usually want to for France really but hey in this on this day when we're all here for us on go France