 Information for parking bicycles and maps that's kind of difficult Came in to DC there were a lot of roads blocked off all around the city today Especially around Constitutional Avenue Constitution Avenue right down there a lot of police cars blocking the roads I think there's a march for life happening in DC today as well a pro-life anti-abortion protests happening in DC the same day Yeah, it took me it was a logistical night there for me to get into the city I had to drive around 45 minutes just to get to this half the city Once I got in so probably best if anybody still isn't here yet to take the metro In terms of bicycles, I don't know if there's anywhere for it looks like people have some bikes over there So if you come with a bike, you can just kind of set it up Right over here and leave it over here Let's talk to some people so any of you guys want to explain why you've braved the cold to come out here today We're out here in solidarity with Julian Assange Right now. I think most people know who Assange is right? He's a journalist who's being persecuted horribly by the United States for the crime of telling the truth of exposing US brutality of exposing US war crimes I mean every day all of us live with the brutality of this system, right? We know what it is what it's like to be chewed up by capitalism People abroad know what it is to be chewed up by imperialism What people are getting killed by drones by bombs by economic warfare? And what Julian did was he exposed the US so horribly, right? He embarrassed the US She embarrassed President Obama personally because that collateral murder video that came out like four or five months after Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize Yeah, and in the interim the US denied the video and then they lied about it And then they said there was nothing wrong in the video and they said the rules of engagement were followed and they did some sort of sham Investigation and not that game of it What came of it was that people's eyes were opened and that's all thanks to Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, the people like Daniel Hale and John Kiryalko and other whistleblowers And so I'm here because I know what the US is. The US is a horrible system and Julian Assange was exposing that And I'm gonna stand out here with everyone in solidarity with Julian Assange Hell yeah, we've got to be out here in the 30 degree 25 degree freezing weather because you know If we're not who's gonna show up and you're with Code Pink Nice You guys do good work. I always love the work you guys do. All right. See you later. I'll be back So that was somebody from Code Pink Making really good critiques of US imperialism US militarism The role that Assange played in exposing US imperialism and militarism The idea that nothing changed after that, you know, we're still engaged in wars around the world Assange is still being persecuted just for the crime of publishing information about US war crimes Let's talk to somebody else see if anybody else wants to answer the question Hey, would you want to explain why you brave the cold to come out here today? No understandable Truth is not a crime. That's a trafficking DC today. Yeah, Code Pink's always been Out here in solidarity with Julian Assange Over the summer. I had been at a protest here outside the DOJ building and Lots of people from Code Pink came out to support Yeah, would you guys want to talk about that on the stream? Why we need a socialist program in the US? Ecosocialists Totally agree Totally fine. I just did Kobe my name is Kobe. I'm an independent journalist a member of the Green Party actually so eco socialism. I love eco socialism Maryland mm-hmm. Yeah, I grew up in Montgomery County Live in Frederick County now What in Frederick? Yeah, I feel you That's why I am currently studying abroad in Sweden Yeah, just back for a few weeks in Lund Lund Sweden. Yeah Not as cold there surprising you think it's far north solid in Uppsala nice Never been Department of peace and competition. Oh, wow Chair of the department And in doubt chair Lifetime chair and so he hit six having to go to senior status What made what what kind of work does he do with that? peace and comfort Oh, wow, I wonder if my professors have used it Say I'm a human rights master's student. So I would bet Know their name at the same time Wow We need a lot more peace and diplomacy, not war. That's why I wanted to study human rights in Sweden. I figured learning it in an international context, in a Swedish context, they're like, no, not at all, not at all. And they actually, what, they've recently passed their own whistleblower law, I think, that if you publish information about the Swedish government's ties with other governments or something like that, classified information, the same sort of crimes, I think it was Nils Melzer who had talked about it. I don't know all the semantics of that bill, but they passed the bill that will make it even harder to publish information about their dealings with the world. Yeah, global phenomenon censorship. We are just waiting for more people to show up to get started today. Like I said earlier, there's going to be some speakers. Very, very cold in D.C. You can see everybody's very bundled up today. Go look at some of these signs. Department of Justice, criminalizing journalism, and Justice Julian. If you can, definitely write a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for him to, and the Biden administration general, to drop all charges against Julian Assange. Like I said earlier, they're trying to send him to prison for 175 years just for working with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq war logs. The journalistic activity, you know, journalists always work with whistleblowers and publish their documents. It's important to remember that those Iraq war logs that Julian published with WikiLeaks were also published by other journalism outlets, like I want to say the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and Germany. And so if they can arrest Assange for what he published, you know, the confidential information revealing U.S. war crimes that he published, if they can get him what's to stop them from going after any other journalist who publishes classified information that reveals wrongdoing by the U.S. government. That's the precedent we're talking about here. That's why international journalism organizations from around the world have called to drop all the charges against Julian Assange. I think we're getting close to getting started now. So like, subscribe, share the video. Sorry it's not a portrait view, horizontal view. I was trying to set it up that way, but I don't think it automatically adjusted. I've always taken this Julian Assange activism pretty seriously. His work was my entry point into learning about horrible U.S. militarism and imperialism. I was in high school, actually. We published the Iraq war logs. We watched a documentary about it in my AP policy class. Hello. How's it going? Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm going back in two weeks. I finally found housing for this semester. Yeah. Yeah. That had been a mess. Yeah. Then I missed the deadline to extend my lease, so I had to find new housing and found it this week. So that's nice. That's it. Luckily, yeah, in Sweden, in Lund. Luckily, all of our classes are online because of COVID for two or three more weeks, so I'm not missing anything. But they didn't start yet, did they? Not yet, no. Nope. I think we're waiting on somebody. Hey, long time no see. I know. I was trying to get back here. Very, very cold. Yeah. It's colder than Sweden. Yeah, it hasn't been colder. So do you want to tell the camera who you are or why you're out here protesting for Assange? Sure. How long have you been doing Assange activism? I know I saw you here over the summer. Nice. Yeah. Any progress it feels like? Any momentum? Well, now we're seeing governments around the world kind of using it as a political football. Yeah. Some momentum, but we'll see. A little bit, but... All right. We are officially getting started. Welcome, everyone. The coldest day of the year. Believe me, I didn't choose this day because of that. Yeah. I'm Paula Isawa. I'm one of the co-organizers of the Boston Area Assange Defense Group. Today's action is in response to the December UK High Court ruling to greenlight Julian's extradition to the US. Julian remains in solitary at Belmarsh Prison as the appeal process drags out. Julian's life depends on us applying pressure on Congress in order for them to apply pressure on the Biden administration to stop this prosecution. We must lobby Congress hard. There's material on the information table to help you educate and lobby your representatives. Please sign and address one of the sample letters to Merrick Garland. There's some bumper stickers on the table. Please help yourself to them. Any donation to Stella Morris's legal team fundraiser would be appreciated. We have a stellar lineup of guests speaking today. Before I forget, we want to take a group photo around 3 o'clock. Tomorrow between 4 and 6 p.m. I'll be doing my seventh vigil outside Attorney General Merrick Garland's home. This one will be small, like they all are, and peaceful, and it's going to be a lantern-like vigil. I hope some of you are interested in joining me. If you're interested, please talk to me, take me aside and I'll give you some details. I would like to leave you with an image today, the square footage of these two fortress-like dehumanizing doors is larger than the prison cell that the U.S. Intelligent Agesings hope to imprison Julian in. Now I'd like to introduce Randy Kredico, who graciously offered to emcee today's event. As a comedian, Randy at age 27 made an appearance on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. As an activist, he spent four years in Tulia, Texas, bringing national attention to a racially charged mass drug arrest. He is the former director of the William Moses Consular Fund for Racial Justice. As an activist in the political arena, at age 37, Randy began a campaign against New York State's Rockefeller drug laws, which he knew were too harsh, disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities. Randy currently hosts Live on the Fly and the Assange Countdown to Freedom. He is a natural radio host for this truck to pass. He is a natural radio host. I have never known anyone to create such quality content in such a short, overlapping amount of time. Randy's gift is producing on the fly. Thank you, Randy, for being here today. I'm going to wait for the truck to come back by before I start talking. I have to say. All right. First of all, can I just take this off for a second? Paula, Cella, thank you. And she deserves a huge round of applause for putting this together. Paula, she's been amazing. And it's people like you that are going to make this happen. I know there are radio hosts like me and radio hosts, like my good friend who's coming up soon, Brian Becker, that can spread the information. There are lawyers out there that can do the work in the courtrooms, but without a ground game, without winner soldiers, this movement will not succeed. So it's important that people look at this example, Assange Defense putting this together, and people around the world. I know there are people in Dublin or people in Rome, in Mexico City, Sydney, London, my friend, MVP, who are always out there. And so without a huge movement, something, this represents what Thomas Payne called the winner soldier. And that's what it really requires, our winter soldiers. And this is one of those days where we have winter soldiers out here. So thank you for showing up. I have a lot to say, but I think I'll kind of spread it out. As people come in, not a lot to say, but I have some things to say. I'm going to bring Brian Becker up here first. I want to say, Brian Becker, before I bring up, we just had four years ago, four and a half years ago when I was subpoenaed by the Justice Department or by the House Intel Committee and supposedly a back channel from Julian Assange to Roger Stone as if Julian Assange would like, here, give this to Roger Stone, all right, before I put it out here. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Give it to Roger. He'll keep it quiet. Right. I mean, the whole thing was so ludicrous. But you know, you got Harry Melbury. You got Chris Hedges or Chris Hayes. I'm sorry about that. Chris Hayes and all these other clowns coming out, even Jeremy Stahill, that believed it, you know. And I took the fifth and Julian, Julian did not want me to take the fifth. He wanted me to go out there and say it didn't happen and bring my dog. It's all paid for the dog to go down there. And I came down here and I did Brian's show with John Kiriakou. One of the few Loud and Clear shows, Loud and Clear did it. They were the ones that were the first ones that came out slamming the entire operation on Julian Assange. And I appreciate that. I did that show that first time when I came down and I said no. And that night I got a call from John Pilger saying that he was in the embassy with Julian listening to that show. And he'll be appreciative of you, all right? So Brian Becker is the national coordinator for ANSR, the ANSR Coalition. He's been anti-war for decades. Worked with the great late Ramsey Clark. And he's out there, man. He's a real grunt. He's got a show, a podcast, the socialist program. That's it. And so without further ado, Brian Becker. And thank you, Paula. I agree with what Randy said about Paula and the fact that people taking initiative and actually trying to make a difference does make a difference. It's the only thing that makes a difference, basically. When you go over the last just the things that we know about in the last, say, 70 years, like the passage of the 64 Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Congress that passed those two far-reaching pieces of legislation from a point of view of composition, it was the same Congress in 1954 and 1955 that upheld apartheid in America. The composition of Congress didn't change. What changed was the people changed. The people were in the streets. There was the Civil Rights Revolution. That's what changed the country. And that's ultimately what changed Congress. And so without people like Paula and like all of us, actually, organizing and doing the work day to day, change doesn't happen. And sometimes when you feel a little bit despondent because the change isn't happening at a given moment or the crowd's not big enough at a given moment, we have to remember that all of those leaders of the civil rights movement, before they became leaders of a mass movement, they were leaders of very small movements because big movements don't just drop from the sky. They come about as a consequence of all of this day to day rain or shine kind of activism. And then there are moments when the small movements become big movements. And that's what we have to think about with Julian because I'd say the majority of the people in the world agree with us that Julian Assange should not be imprisoned because he revealed U.S. war crimes. And that's the only reason he's in prison. Nothing that WikiLeaks published is untrue. Nothing. There's no fake news there. And it wasn't just WikiLeaks when Julian worked with Chelsea Manning and revealed the criminal murders of journalists and Iraqi civilians in the Iraq war logs. It wasn't just WikiLeaks, the Washington Post published it. And the New York Times and the Guardian. Well, if he's in jail, why are they not in jail? And if he's in jail, why are they not speaking up to the man that he'd be out of jail? Because they did exactly what he did, published materials that are true. And at the time they published them, they were very proud of them. So what happened? What changed? I mean, as the government decided to persecute and prosecute Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the so-called free press abandoned them instead of showing journalistic integrity and courage and basic human decency, basic human decency. They allowed Julian to be taken down, to be incarcerated. And when the United Nations said that his long stay in the Ecuadorian embassy was an example of arbitrary detention, why was that not big news? Arbitrary detention means he's illegally imprisoned. Why is that not big news? So, you know, the free press, so-called, they could talk about this or that difference between this or that Democratic or Republican politician, but when it comes to the war in Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan or the sanctions on Venezuela or the blockade of Cuba or any of the issues that are priorities for US imperialism, they close ranks. So we are standing here today in front of the Department of Injustice and demanding on behalf of people who, and we believe we are the majority, that this prosecution and persecution of Julian Assange end, that it be ended, and that it be the Department of Justice wants to even pretend to have the name justice in the name of the agency. There can be no other course but then to free Julian Assange. So I'll just end it there. Again, Paula, thank you very much. It is the coldest day of the year, and we don't blame you for it. In fact, we salute you for taking the position that rain or shine, warm or cold, we're gonna stand together and demand freedom for Julian Assange. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're very well said, Brian. Thank you very much, and you know, I came here last night. Paula asked me last week, did your life come down? I said, yeah, of course. I didn't say, of course. Let me think about it for five minutes and I'm coming. All right, so I said, do you mind if I, if I'm gonna come down here at night, I'm gonna do a, at the Tabard Inn, we were here four months ago, and we had a comedy show that called Stand-Ups for Assange, and I said, why don't we invite everybody? It's free, we're gonna have one tonight at seven o'clock at the Tabard Inn. Just show up and say you're a part of this and you're free, you get in. All right, so I got some great comics, I got some great John Kirok who's gonna be speaking and so is Chip Gibbons gonna be speaking, so that's at seven o'clock at the Tabard Inn, I'll make that announcement at the end. I showed up yesterday from New York last night from Union Station, and when I was here before, I saw a stark reminder how bad this city is, in terms of the homeless. There were a lot back then, but when I arrived last night, walking through Union Station, there were tons of people, nameless, hopeless, sleeping on the ground at Union Station, and I said to myself, if they were to take the money that they're spending on prosecuting this journalist from Australia and put it into the homeless problem in this city, they could solve it instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars. That's what they're doing, spending hundreds of millions of dollars and leaving all of these people, not just at Union Station, but across Washington, D.C. This place is shameful what is happening in this city, and they are ignoring it, and they're putting their money and ensconcing the guy inside what really is the Tower of London. I looked at a picture of his wife and his fiance this morning, and the two kids. How can you look at that? Not only does it affect you in a sense, look at Stella Morris. Just look at her, and those two kids have been separated from their father for a moment. You know, it's just disgusting. This brilliant individual that has shown the light, as Brian said, on the war crimes and the mass surveillance that the DOJ, the DOD, the CIA, the National Security Agency, these, you see it, these are pretty wanna put Julian Assange out of business and stop committing these crimes and stop spying on us for Christ's sakes. So I'm looking at that picture and I'm seeing it out there every day, like Lucy Parsons, remember Lucy Parsons? On the corner. And she had two kids, and he was framed on the Haymarket Square fire by a bombing in 1886. They're executed. Wasn't even there. And she spent the next 30 years, the next 30 years proclaiming his innocence on the corner there in Chicago, just like, on days like today, it's even colder in Chicago. That is what the Scalaboros is doing. To keep that in mind, he's after like Lucy Parsons every day, doing what she can. So we gotta keep fighting. That inspires me when I see that. You know, you mentioned Tulia, Texas. I just wanna get this out of the way. I was there, I got a call back in two, this is Germain, in 2000 from a preacher actually Margaret Kunstler did. She got a letter from a preacher in Tulia, Texas talking about this drugs thing in the city of 5,000 where 10% of the black population was arrested and put in jail for drug dealing based on one witness, a witness like the guy that they hired by the name of Ziggum, all right? And so we went down there, we spent three and a half years organizing, we made videos, we made a great documentary, Sarah and Emily Kunstler, Bob Herbert came down, we got so much press. And then three and a half years later, just on the precipice of this thing, actually having a good ending, somebody parachuted in and presented herself and said, I'd like to work on one of the briefs. So she worked on one of the briefs, she worked on Hami's brief. And the next thing you know, she's taking credit for everybody getting out and she used it to get the job here 20 years later. Her name is Vanita Gupta, all right? Vanita Gupta's third in line, she parachuted in the Tuya, Texas, presented herself as this woman that worked at coffee shops and go to law school, get out of Fordham or something. Now her father is one of the biggest hedge fund operators in the world in the chemical companies worth billions of dollars. That's where the money comes from, all right? So now she's here, Dick Durbin saying she was the hero Tuya. Well, she came in four years later. She's third in line here. Why is she not standing up and saying, I quit. She should quit. Otherwise, everything she did in the past and she worked for the ACLU, all the groups that she was associated with before are now in support of Julian Assange. All of them. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, reporters without borders. And yet this woman parachuted in, got a lot of press and it's because of that press that she is where she is today. And what they're doing, if they're successful, we'll snuff out the press. If Julian Assange is indeed extradited and sent to a supermax in Colorado. That'll be the end of the press. So we all have something here, something here at stake. This is, as John Pilder said, the end of this fragile ersatz democracy will totally collapse if this were to happen. So that's why we have to continue fighting every day. And I'm gonna, that's enough for me right now. Got none of my system. All right, Vanita, did you hear me? Write her a letter, Vanita Gupta. So, Leo Ford here today, he's one of the most active members of the, you know, pro-free right now. He's with the good side of Venezuela. I think we met at the Venezuela embassy a few years back, three years ago. Yes, it was really cool there. All right, so Leo Flores. Give him a round of applause. Woo! Thank you to Randy and Apollo, of course, for organizing this. And to everyone who's fighting for a condom on a daily basis, I see you on Twitter every day. I call you all on Twitter. I'm really grateful that people keep pushing this statuette into jail in a way to get criticism for the U.S. He's in jail because he published the truth. I mean, that's the long and short of it, right? He's in jail for embarrassing the United States. And one of the interesting things is, you know, Brian mentioned how, eventually, the New York Times and the Washington Post, they published some of these videos. They published them at the least number of weeks. But they wouldn't have published it. They wouldn't even have looked into these stories until much, much later, had enough of for Julianne's side. And the thing about Julianne is that he exposed the U.S. pretty much almost in real time. Maybe a couple of years to lay it in some cases. But it wasn't these cases where we're waiting 20, 40, 50 years for Freedom of Information Act requests to go through. Well, where you learn the truth right after, like long after everyone involved has been dead, long after anyone involved can be prosecuted, we learn the truth in real times a couple of years after it happened in terms of the collateral murder video. And that collateral murder video was so important, in part because it came, it was published maybe four or five months after Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, right? And in that interim, the U.S. government, they tried to deny the video existed. Then they said they'd seen it and it was okay that everyone had followed the rules of engagement and they got compliant media, members of the media to say the same. And then when we all saw it, we saw that they were lying to us. Like they always lied to us about everything that in terms of foreign policy, everything in general, we do have good reason to believe the U.S. is lying. I mean, all of us live every day under the brutality of this capitalist system. People throughout the global South live feeling the brutality of U.S. imperialism, whether it's bombs or drones or economic warfare. And Julian exposing that is really kind of encouraging to see because it makes it clear what we're fighting against, right? In a very real way. And that's why they're going after Julian Assange. It's such a brutal way. Last summer we were all here and I know that I remember Gabriel shipped in his brother, gave a talk at the National Press Club and he was recounting this tale about how Julian's partner and children were able to visit him at one point. But the guards, once at such extreme lengths, they checked the children's mouths to see if they were carrying anything inside their mouths. Making the children cry in front of their father who had already been tortured for how many years, I don't know, for several years by that time. And it's sickening. It's sickening that they're continuing to do that to Julian Assange. And we know that Julian Assange, if he were free right now, he'd still be doing the same thing. He'd be exposing US empire and capitalism and be fighting with the rest of us for a better future. Free Julian Assange. Free Julian Assange! Thank you, Leo. Muchas gracias, Leo. En faremos. See? How's that for my Spanish? I was in Nicaragua in the 80s. My Spanish was so bad they thought that I was a new ambassador from the US. Ha ha! Way back then. Well. I used to do my Reagan impression down there, yes? Okay. Sandinistas have done it again. They invaded Honduras. Have a photograph that bears me out. It's not exactly a photograph, it's a shadow graph. As you can see. I did that on tonight's, you're right, I was on the tonight's 184. I got kicked off because I said that, Jane Kirkpatrick, I said every time I look at Jane Kirkpatrick, I ask myself, Dick Eva Braun, died in that bunker in 1945. Ha ha! And that was it. Johnny said, no more. All right. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. We're gonna have to come to the comedy show tonight because we're gonna have to laugh. All right, so my candidate in 1980 for president is here today. Really, a remarkable individual. If anybody saw the debates, the one that really did stick out was Mary Ann Williamson, who you know. She's been a long time advocate for the poor, for the hungry, for peace. She has had a great idea of the department of peace. And I would think that would be such, if I, if you become, no, you should be the head of the department for peace. Seriously, our president, you'd be president and then your communications director would be Julian Assange. That would be my dream team. But you all know Mary Ann Williamson. She's got a wonderful podcast. I had the honor of being on with her, with a whole bunch of people. She said the biggest podcast ever on the signs just a few weeks back. Would you please welcome Mary Ann Williamson. Woo! Woo! Woo! It's an honor to be here. And of course, I agree with everything that has been said so far. And every time we have these kinds of gatherings, whether here in Washington, that occurred in London, we need them to occur all over this country and in many different places in the world. It's a conversation which must be amplified and so I'm glad that we're all here to do so. I don't have anything to say that we don't already know, but I think every time that we join together to say these things, we deepen our own understanding and our ability and our willingness to articulate that which needs to be said so that it becomes a larger and larger issue and hopefully a larger and larger inconvenience for the people who work in this country. Woo! Freedom of the press is obviously as central, as meaningful, as important to our freedom as is anything. And all of us who are gathered here and all of the people around the world who are making a stand for Julian Assange realize that the prosecution and the persecution of Julian Assange is not just directed at him. It is directed to all activists and all people who care about freedom of the press. And so for us to draw our lines, what's happening here is that officialdom sees Julian Assange as a line they're choosing to draw. And we're here because Julian Assange is a line that we are choosing to draw. And even though, as is always the case, throughout history, whether it was the forces of slavery, whether it was the forces of the institutionalized suppression of women, whether it was the forces of segregation, it has always been true that when huge forces of injustice are backed by power, money, and government authority, these things are only changed when people just like us stand up and say in the most traditional American way possible, hell no. And I agree with what has already been stated here as well, that the profound eloquence and graciousness of Stella Morris is such a beacon of light, such an example of, I think, sort of womanhood at our best of refusing to go away, refusing to shut up, but also refusing to in any way deviate from the best and the most gracious that is within her. We must stand as people now, not only for freedom of the press, we must stand for a radical humanitarianism. It's already been mentioned here, the lack of humanitarian values, the extraordinary lack of mercy that is being shown towards Julian Assange and to his family, but there's an even larger lack of humanitarianism, lack of empathy, even lack of sanity, a larger example of sociopathology, and that is the American war machine that ever perpetrated those wars in Iran and Afghanistan to begin with. It's so important that we get the word out there, the Julian Assange case has nothing to do with Hillary's emails. They have been so, the forces at work here have been so successful in a smear against Julian based on deep disinformation about this case. This case is about torture. This case was about murder. This case was about atrocities. This case was about war crimes. The person who revealed those things is not the criminal. The people who perpetrated those things are the criminals and they should not be protected by the people inside this building. When we were talking about a department of peace, the reason there isn't a department of peace is because peace building does not make the corporate profits that making war makes. We must change from a war economy to a peace economy the same way that we must change from a dirty economy to a green economy. But it will only happen if we, just us, those of us who are here and those who agree with us and those who are doing the same thing we're doing around the world continue to have this conversation. And the conversation is meaningless if we're not willing to stand up for Julian Assange. This case is a vortex. This case is a locus. It's all here. It's not only someone who revealed the crimes of the US war machine but it is someone who is being punished criminally. The punishment is what is criminal here. The prosecution is what is criminal here. The persecution of him is what is criminal here. He is not the criminal. And we are standing up here today because we are defending not only Julian Assange but we are defending US press freedom and we are defending not only the right but I believe the responsibility of people in our generation as it is the responsibility of Americans in every generation to make sure that the US military has a moral core. And when at times such as this, it so clearly does not, it is our responsibility to say so. I hope that all of us here today will leave this place being even more convinced, more committed, more devoted, more articulate and more willing to say hell no to systems of injustice that absolutely must be pushed back for ourselves and honor of our ancestors and for our descendants. Go Julian Assange, thank you very much. Thank you. Are you running again in 2024? You should. You should. It's good that you get out there. You made a lot of great points. I was hoping Bernie Sanders would have picked up on some of your stuff. You were much better than him. We expected him to say something about Julian Assange but you would only want to do. All right, you're right. Marianne Williams and thank you. Remember 2024, that's draft. All right. All right, well, I didn't recognize someone. I'm not wearing my glasses today. I'm not wearing my glasses and I had infected tooth coming down but then to sit in some antibiotics this morning. So it's starting to melt there. Now I look like I had a mouth full of tobacco or chewing gum but she's here and she has been here patiently. Eleanor Goldberg is a, she is a creative activist and writer and she is the founder of Rooftop Revolutionaries. Revolutionaries, it's a hard rock group, would you say? It's a hard rock. She's the one that founded it and she's the lead singer and she's the host and writer of occupy.com, free speech, TV, syndicated and shout out. All right, I told you I cannot read. I should have memorized that but she's here now and she's terrific. She really is a hardcore activist and a winner soldier. Say hello to Eleanor Goldberg. I actually can do it, okay? So if they're gonna get my name wrong, I want another one on my list. So I'll be Goldberg. Brandy, leave me on a high note. You'll have to excuse me. I'm not accustomed to notes but I'm also not accustomed to having a seven week old child. So I had to write you down because my brain is in the bush at the moment. But thank you for inviting me out from baby world. It's kind of nice. I'm sorry you couldn't be here but with all the child labor going on in this country he's now job teaching, so. So interestingly enough, before I do a little spoken word for you so I wanted to get, y'all might already know this but the DOJ now has a new domestic terrorism unit which I think it's hilarious because they are a domestic terrorism unit. And of course this is evidenced not just by what's going on with Assange but historically too. They have a long, long rich history of going after truth seekers, of going after those who demand and facilitate transparency, who demand accountability and human rights in a livable future. They will always go after these people and label them terrorists when they are in fact the terrorists for denying these basic human rights. And when people in Assange brought this kind of terrorism to light and that's why they are the enemies of empire and that's also why they are the greatest allies of we the people. And I think it's important as an activist to point out what Assange and Wikileaks have done for our movements. They have powered our movements by giving us information to fuel our fight. And that's why it's so important that regardless of how you feel about Assange that you fight for him because this information is vital for the fights that we have before us not just to fight the empire but to build an alternative, build something better. And so I think it's important that we remember not to let ourselves be sidelined by petty character assassinations that the like the DOJ will put out there but to find more reasons to fight together than to fight each other. So this is a piece that I wrote about Assange a few years ago because fuck this has been going on for far too long. And Paula asked me to do it today. And the ashes of these mistakes shredded bits of paper like confetti at a funeral. Someone has to burn between the lines like crisscrossed lies. Do you ask the light if it's good? A murdered messenger sent us a message but how easily though it got lost in the din because didn't he sin? They'll say he's an arrogant ass, a pig, don't give him a pass. And yet here he is, a hostage of holy Rome, a rattler of thrones. Either way, his fate we do own and this leaking truth staining a future unknown. If you feel like you're drowning, wake up. The arguments shallow the precedent deep and the road to perdition is steep and slick. Will you follow their lead? The leaks can't be damned but the man so easily damned because secrets can't be kept and lies have shelf lives far too long. Here is the empire's swan song, a failing and flailing hegemony, a Machiavellian tragedy, a grotesque dark comedy and idiocracy. We are the players and the play does this fucking show. I have to go on. I don't know this man but I don't want his blood on my hands. As a child of empire, I'm already soaked. Then you can buy me a beer and we can talk about sin but here and now come tear down these gallows because the ashes of these mistakes are choking out the light. Priyassan. Goldfield. Eleanor Goldfield, never get over that. My grandfather called Emma Goldman, Emma Goldberg and way back, way back in 1910, the Palmer Rates. Now there are the new rates. This is a Mitchell Palmer in this building. All right, everybody's getting farther back. What is that? I'll put the mask on if you guys can get closer. You want some of those fumes on the street to keep you warm. So we have the 15, what is it? Do you see that? So we have a few more speakers but tonight one of our speakers, it's don't waste everything on this crowd. I want them to come in. All right, but I want you to talk about what's going on Monday. He's an expert on the Espionage Act and he had a podcast on it recently and he's here right now. He runs a group called Defending Rights and Descent. Mr. Chip Gibbons. This time I did one of these events. I was also erroneously described as running Defending Rights and Descent. My boss was in the audience so I had to correct him. She's in the warm today, so yes, I do run Defending Rights at 90 cents. As Randy mentioned by name is Chip Gibbons. Defending Rights and Descent is an organization that defends your right to know and your freedom to act and as a result, the trial of the indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information about U.S. war crimes is a great threat to both our right to know and our freedom to act. And the law he is charged under the Espionage Act has for 103 years passed a dark shadow over our First Amendment. This is the law they used to put Eugene Debs in jail. What was Eugene Debs's great crime? He gave a speech in Canton, Ohio where he said, if war be right, then let the people decide. And I think there is a clear through line between jailing Eugene Debs, I once called him Julian Assange, jailing Eugene Debs for saying, let the people decide if this country is going to go to war and Julian Assange saying, if wars can be started by lies, then peace can be started by truth. The Espionage Act is about taking away our right to know information about U.S. foreign policy and the crimes that our government commits in our name. I don't know how to realize this, but we almost had in a couple of months ago a once in 103 year vote to reform the Espionage Act in Congress. Representative Tullid introduced an amendment to another bill, the Protect Our Democracy Act, that would have amended the Espionage Act to create a public interest defense because if you're charged under, you have no public interest defense and require the government actually prove specific intent to harm national security. The rules committee rejected that amendment as being incomplete. They wanted to totally scrap the Espionage Act, because the completeness are looking for, I'll go along with that, but we came closer than ever before to actually forcing the vote on the Espionage Act. On Monday, the UK High Court will decide whether or not Julian Assange can appeal their ruling to the Supreme Court that allowed for him to be extradited to the U.S. Assurances that the UK and the U.S. has given the UK are not worth the paper they're printed on. And more importantly, even if those assurances are appalled, they still constitute torture or cruel and degrading treatment under international law. If the High Court denies Julian the right to appeal to the Supreme Court, the decision will go to the Home Secretary. So this is one of our last chances to halt the extradition before it happens. We are fighting not only to save the life of Julian Assange, because many people do not think he will survive that trip to the U.S. We are fighting to save our First Amendment and we are fighting to save press freedom globally. What's happening is a superpower is asserting the right to try anyone, anywhere in the world. Remember, Julian Assange is not a U.S. citizen. Under his Espionage Act, bring them to this country, put them on trial and lock them away in a dungeon for exposing their war crimes. So this isn't just the U.S. First Amendment, this is press freedom globally and this is our right to resist militarism and war crimes and imperialism. That is at stake right now. Thank you very much. For a little bit, I'll go back in two minutes. I don't hear it, man, I'll go back in two minutes. I've never spoke so far before you leave. Want to get a picture with everybody that spoke? No, thank you. I'm going to get a group photo before. Leo, Codepin, my favorite group. Everybody, the whole, everybody get out of here. I don't have a mask, I feel like I should. Marty who came all the way down from DC for the day. Marty, Goldman, Gold, no, I mean from New York. Marty Goldfeld. Let's get this so you can see everybody. Harry Gold, when that was in Hall of the Rosenberg. All right, everybody come up here. We're going to get a group picture. Lucien, we'll all say Lucien instead of, we'll all say Lucien. Also here, I see Nathan Fuller from the Courage Foundation. She took a picture at the same time, round of applause. Nathan came in, taking a bunch. Everybody smile. Okay, if you want to look at it before everybody moves. I took like 10 of them, 20 of them. I respectfully. You got it? All right, everybody get real close. Respectfully not participating in the picture because I don't have a mask. I'm going to silence for a minute. Oh, I'm going to ask someone to take a picture. It's fine. Yeah, it's okay. I don't mind. We'll get a real good one at seven o'clock at the Tavern Inn, all right? Get it up there. It's free. You get to see some great comedians that are connected to Redacted tonight. GafferCon and Yoki Danoff. You see that? Tonight at seven o'clock in John Kiryoki. Maybe he's there now waiting. I'm going to show up here. Thanks. You can send me that one later. We thought this company show was two, instead of seven, this was seven, so it's two. So we got to bring Brian back here. Get another one? Where are we getting in front of it? We're taking more pictures, that's it. We're still taking some photos. All right, we actually have 300 people here, but they have cold. Yeah. All right. Maybe like 50 to 100. We got the pictures. I'm going to bring up Marty. Because Marty, he organizes rallies and vigils up in New York. And he came all the way down there for the day and is going right back up. Because he can't stand my comedy. I don't blame him. But he did show up at the one in New York. Marty Goldman came all the way up. He's a unit organizer in New York, and he's been really strong in support of the song. So he's got a few words he'd like to say. I can't get it to zoom in. I can't get my lips through.