Before President Obama granted clemency, Manning was serving 35 years in prison, the longest sentence for a leak in U.S. history
Guest Name
Evan Greer
Guest Website
Guest Category
Guest Occupation
Activist/Singer/Songwriter/Organizer
Guest Biography
Evan Greer is a trans/genderqueer activist singer/songwriter, parent, and organizer based in Boston. She writes and performs high-energy acoustic songs that inspire hope, build community, and incite resistance! Evan tours internationally as a musician and speaker, and facilitates interactive workshops to support movements for justice and liberation. Wielding an arsenal of fiercely radical songs that vary in style from pop-punk poetry to foot-stompin’ bluegrass singalongs, Evan has been honored to collaborate, tour, and share stages with artists as musically diverse as Pete Seeger, Talib Kweli, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Immortal Technique, Hari Kondabolu, Billy Bragg, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Pamela Means, Anti-Flag, Downtown Boys, Against Me!, The Coup, Anne Feeney, Oi Polloi, Dispatch, Dirty Projectors, Holly Near, and Chumbawamba. She's currently the campaign director for Fight for the Future, the viral digital rights nonprofit. Evan writes regularly for The Guardian and Huffington Post, has been a guest on All Things Considered, and has been interviewed about her activism by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Democracy Now!, The Atlantic, CNN, Mother Jones, and even Fox News.
Evan is Campaign Director of Fight For the Future...
Fight for the Future is a non-profit organization founded in 2011 whose mission is to ensure that the web continues to hold freedom of expression and creativity at its core. We seek to expand the internet's transformative power for good, to preserve and enhance its capacity to enrich and empower. We envision a world where everyone can access the internet affordably, free of interference or censorship and with full privacy.
Our goal—always—is to build tech-enhanced campaigns that resonate with millions of people, enabling them to consolidate their power and win historic changes thought to be impossible. In 2012 we organized the largest online protest in history, an internet-wide strike against web censorship which defeated the SOPA and PIPA bills. More recently, our Battle for the Net campaign drove nearly four million people to contact the FCC resulting in the game-changing passage of net neutrality rules (a “First Amendment” for the Internet). Here’s exactly how we did it. Our Reset the Net campaign organized around protecting the privacy of hundreds of million of internet users.
Our accomplishments are testament to the notion that with the right approach and creative activism, the public interest can prevail—even over some of the most entrenched political forces in the world. For more details on these and other accomplishments, check out a timeline of the events leading up to and immediately after the SOPA strike.
Evan has been also been at the forefront of supporting the humane treatment and release of Chelsea Manning who had her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama.
Why I Fought for Chelsea Manning
by Evan Greer
Chelsea Manning is my friend, but I’ve never seen her face to face, or given her a hug.That’s because Chelsea has been in prison for the last seven years, sometimes held in conditions that the United Nations considers to be torture. She has been serving what was meant to be a 35-year sentence — all for helping to expose some of the U.S. government’s worst abuses by making public thousands of military documents. This week, Chelsea will be released. I have to type those words again to believe them.
This week, Chelsea Manning will walk out of an all-male, maximum-security military facility in Leavenworth, Kansas, and begin the rest of her life.This moment may never have come. Chelsea attempted to take her own life twice over the last year of her incarceration, after years of abuse and harassment at the hands of the U.S. government. She was first locked up as a whistleblower, but as a transgender woman behind bars she was systematically denied medically recommended health care, and routinely subjected to degrading treatment even as the Obama administration trumpeted its support for LGBTQ rights.
Chelsea’s release is a victory for human rights and the future of freedom of expression. And it’s a testament to the power of grassroots organizing. If not for the hundreds of thousands of people from across the political spectrum who spoke up, rose up, and fought for Chelsea’s freedom, I firmly believe that she would not be with us today.Well before I met Chelsea, a strong network of activists, lawyers, journalists, nerds, veterans, free speech advocates and LGBTQ folks were rallying around her, drawing public attention to her case and ensuring that the U.S. government’s persecution of this brave woman did not go unnoticed.
"By refusing to remain silent Chelsea Manning has shifted the world in ways that will benefit so many."
Through my work at Fight for the Future, I connected with Chelsea and began to speak with her regularly on the phone. She is one of the most compassionate and humble people I have ever met. Whenever we would speak, in spite of the inhumane conditions of her incarceration, she would always ask me how I was doing — what could she do to help?
Chelsea has always been motivated by a driving desire to help others and make the world a better place. And by refusing to remain silent she has shifted the world in ways that will benefit so many, from other trans people living in America’s prisons to those in the crosshairs of our foreign policy.
Chelsea is a great connector. From behind bars, without access to the Internet and prevented from speaking directly with the press, Chelsea still managed to share herself with the world. She ran a Twitter account, and wrote a column for The Guardian. She even drafted a piece of cyber security legislation, which Fight for the Future delivered to lawmakers’ desks.
When prison officials targeted Chelsea and threatened her with solitary confinement, a broad coalition of organizations worked together to defend her. We gathered hundreds of thousands of petition signatures, and flooded officials with phone calls, tweets and messages demanding basic dignity and humane treatment.
We protested in the streets, at the Pentagon, at the prison, at pride parades. We rallied artists, technologists, libertarians, queer folk and rock stars.
The U.S. government wanted to erase Chelsea Manning along with the crimes that she exposed. We helped keep her in the spotlight, and ensured that she was never forgotten.
When Chelsea walks through those prison doors on Wednesday, everything will change. She’ll have the chance to make her own choices and define her own destiny for the first time in her adult life. She’ll be a prominent and outspoken transgender woman — one who has already inspired so many of us.
It was an honour to fight for Chelsea’s freedom. After all, she has dedicated her life to fighting for mine.
Tom Morello, Thurston Moore Contribute to Chelsea Manning Benefit Compilation
Graham Nash, Against Me!, Downtown Boys, more lend songs to raise money for whistleblower
Tom Morello, Thurston Moore, Graham Nash and more have contributed songs to a new compilation benefiting whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Chiaki Nozu/WireImage/Getty
Tom Morello, Thurston Moore, Graham Nash, Against Me! and more contributed songs to a new benefit compilation, Hugs for Chelsea, celebrating Chelsea Manning's release from prison. Manning's friend and activist Evan Greer organized the compilation, with proceeds going directly to Manning to help her cover basic living expenses as she returns to the free world Wednesday after seven years of incarceration.
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Hugs for Chelsea also includes contributions from Amanda Palmer, Anti-Flag, Downtown Boys, Priests, Kimya Dawson and Sammus. While the majority of the comp comprises previously released material, it also includes unreleased tracks from Ted Leo, Screaming Females and Mirah. Greer also plans to keep adding songs to Hugs for Chelsea.
Several songs on Hugs for Chelsea are specifically about Manning, who, in 2013, was sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to providing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks (former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in January). Thurston Moore's "Chelsea's Kiss" is a benefit track the former Sonic Youth rocker released in 2016, while Graham Nash shared "Almost Gone" – a collaboration with James Raymond – in 2013 to protest the particularly harsh conditions of Manning's incarceration.
"Chelsea Manning is one of my heroes," Nash said. "Anyone that has the courage to disturb the 'status quo,' to 'rock the boat' as she did is very brave and what she did was show some truth to the American people about what the government was doing in our name."
"As a transgender artist who fights for my community, it's hard to overstate the impact that Chelsea has had by sharing herself with the world," Greer tells Rolling Stone. "From her legal battles for access to hormones and appropriate clothing items to her highly publicized hunger strike, Chelsea fought for all trans people and secured victories that will benefit so many of us."
"She's been through so much and she needs our support," Michael Stipe added in a video promoting the project. "[Proceeds from the album will] help cover her basic needs as she transitions our of seven years of incarceration."
Along with Hugs for Chelsea, Greer and Manning's attorney, Chase Strangio, have set up a GoFundMe page to help raise additional funds for Manning.
