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Chelsea Manning Jailed for Protecting Press Freedom
Tune in to "Out-FM": Tues., Mar. 12 from 9:10-9:40 PM EST
On WBAI/Pacifica, 99.5 FM, streaming live at http://wbai.org/playernew.html
Archived 10 min. after the show at http://wbai.org/archive.php (scroll down to 9 PM Tues.)

This is part of our Queerly Defiant series. On March 8, trans activist, former Army intelligence officer, and whistleblower Chelsea Manning refused to answer questions before a federal grand jury in Alexandria, VA investigating Wikileaks' publishing of the files she provided them in 2010. She was immediately held in contempt of court and jailed for the life of the grand jury, whose end date remains secret. 

In the first segment of this edition of Out-FM, co-producer Bob Lederer interviewed two guests about both Manning's current detention and her time in the military brig from 2010-17. In a statement last week before her incarceration, Manning said, “I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.” 

Her support committee wrote: "By resisting this grand jury, Chelsea has made the same sacrifice as dozens of activists before her, who have opposed the grand jury system at the expense of their own freedom. Chelsea has already served prison time for standing up against government secrecy and revealing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know, and so does the government, that she will not turn tail and allow this shadowy grand jury to eclipse her legacy of speaking truth to power.”

First we interviewed Kevin Gosztola, Editor of Shadowproof (https://shadowproof.com/author/kgosztola/ ), who's covered her case for years.

Our second guest was Richard Saenz. Richard is a Senior Attorney and the Criminal Justice and Police Misconduct Strategist at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those living with HIV. Richard coordinates litigation and policy work on behalf of incarcerated people. Currently, he’s leading Lambda Legal’s response to the Trump Administration’s changes to the federal Bureau of Prisons Transgender Offender Manual. In addition, Richard was a lead member of the litigation team in a successful challenge to Missouri’s Department of Corrections policy denying appropriate health care to transgender people in its custody, in one of the first court decisions to rule specifically that such policies are unconstitutional. He also helped secure a settlement with the City of New York on behalf of a gay man attacked by Rikers Island jail officials while visiting his partner.

This is a fascinating book about a young lesbian growing up in revolutionary Nigeria. In the wake of Nigeria's civil war, Ijeoma falls in love. Under Nigeria's draconian laws, same-sex relationships can be punished by death. The book follows Ijeoma from her youth through adulthood, as she tries to reconcile her identity as a woman who loves women with a society that proscribes her relationships. The only respectable path in Ijeoma's Nigeria is to marry a man, and she does this, while the book delves in to the internal struggle that follows.

Nigerian-born writer Chinelo Okparanta is author of "Happiness, Like Water" and "Under the Udala Trees". She has won many literary awards and is currently a professor at Bucknell University.

Author Okparanta Chinelo

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