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| Photo: Ted Andersen Daniel Ellsberg, the U.S. intelligence analyst who blew the whistle on Nixon's administration by releasing thousands of classified government documents now known as "The Pentagon Papers," speaks at a rally in front of the SF Pride offices on Market Street on April 29, 2013 to condemn the actions of Pride President Lisa Williams, who revoked jailed army whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning's name as a Grand Marshal in June 30's parade. |
By Ted Andersen
“I was Bradley Manning,” the dignified
octogenarian tells a large sidewalk crowd gathered with bated breath.
It’s Monday, April 29 at 5 p.m. and cars are
whizzing by, honking occasionally, on the 1800 block of Market Street.
Famed “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel
Ellsberg is speaking in front of the offices of SF Pride to protest the removal
of the Army Private First Class as an honorary Grand Marshal in the parade. The
position would have been largely symbolic as to include a proxy for the
currently incarcerated Manning.
The 25-year-old Manning was a military analyst who
has admitted to leaking hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government
documents to the website WikiLeaks, in fact the biggest leak in U.S. government
history, and is in solitary confinement awaiting his June trial.
In late April, Pride’s Electoral College, which is
made up of former Grand Marshals, selected Manning as one of its 10 choices.
This drew the ire of both the American Military
Partners Association, which advocates for same-sex military families, and the
Log Cabin Republicans, who both threatened to pull out of the event.
On April 26, Pride President Lisa Williams issued a
statement revoking Manning’s name from the parade, claiming that his nomination
“was a mistake and should have never been allowed to happen.” She added, “Even
the hint of support for actions which placed in harms [sic] way the lives of
our men and women in uniform — and countless others, military and civilian
alike — will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride. It is,
and would be, an insult to every one, gay and straight, who has ever served in
the military.”
Williams’ decision is what unleashed the quick call
to action by local LGBT activists and veterans alike and is what brought
Ellsberg to speak in front of a Manning banner as 5 p.m. traffic whizzed by on
upper Market.
“He showed us that there were crimes that our
government had denied,” said Ellsberg, who was also a military analyst when he
revealed that the U.S. government had been misleading the public about the
Vietnam War. “The Gay Pride Board made a big mistake by undoing one of the most
honorable things they have ever done.”
The crowd was stirred when Michael Petrelis, a
co-organizer of the event led them in a chant of: “They say court marshal; we
say Grand Marshal!”
The local veterans also got involved. Commander
John Caldera called an emergency meeting on April 28 among the officers of the
Bob Basker Post 315 of the American Legion where they unanimously voted to call
for Williams to step down.
“The call for resignation is not a personal
attack against Ms. Williams but rather a swift and appropriate response to the
disappointing and discrediting actions of the President of San Francisco Pride
against the LGBT community,” Caldera said.
Veterans for Peace member Paul Cox said Manning
should be lauded. “He’s really a hero in the civil rights movement not only
because he is gay, but because he did what any hero would do by giving the American
people the right to know what our government was secretly doing in our name and
with our taxes.”
Rainey Reitman, co-founder of Bradley Manning
Support Network, said that he had campaigned against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
before he leaked the documents.
“Most people don’t know that Bradley was a gay
rights activist,” she said. She added that his presence would be represented at
the parade in the form of a flash mob.
Speaking at the rally, Joey Cain, a past president
and a member of the Pride Electoral College who chose Manning, emphasized
Manning’s connection to the LGBT community.
“I want to address the comment from some
people that Bradley Manning has not done anything for the gay community. Well I
have news for you: The gay community is part of the larger community,” he said.
“And if Pride is going to say that you have to do this narrow thing that is
specifically gay-focused, we’re going to end up with nobody to be grand
marshal.”
The story went international when Glenn Greenwald
from the U.K.’s The Guardian posted an op-ed entitled, “Bradley Manning
is off limits at SF Gay Pride but corporate sleaze is embraced,” in which he
argued the trivial controversy actually shows a lot about pervasive political
values in the LGBT community.
Ellsberg criticized the corporate sponsorship of
Pride in so far as the event had further distanced itself from its original
values of social justice. “I’m here to blow the whistle on the corporatization
of SF Pride.”
SF Pride is now sponsored by Bank of America (now
being sued by the U.S. government for $1 billion for allegedly perpetrating a
scheme of mortgage fraud), Wells Fargo (being sued for hundreds of millions
over reckless mortgage claims that cost the FDIC), Clear Channel (Rush
Limbaugh’s network) and AT&T and Verizon (telecom giants that enabled the
Bush Administration’s policy of illegal eavesdropping and wiretapping).
Originally invited to represent Manning in
absentia, the 82-year-old Ellsberg will now voluntarily walk in his first Pride
parade despite a recent hip replacement. “With zero tolerance, everybody should
come out and support him.”
Manning has been in solitary confinement for more
than 1000 days, reportedly in conditions of sensor deprivation, often stripped
naked, sleep deprived, and put in an animal cage while in detention in Kuwait,
amounting to what his supporters call government-sponsored torture. His leaks
exposed savage murders by U.S. soldiers on innocent Iraqi civilians, the
Afghanistan war logs, and embarrassing State Department cables.
New York’s Pride committee now has a petition for
Manning to be a Grand Marshal.
Williams did not return calls for
comment by press time.
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