Laser-focused in the midst of shaggy older boomers

As the trial began, the courtroom was filled with press; older activists with shaggy beards and tie-dyed shirts; groups like Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Occupy Wall Street; and the Chelsea Manning Support Network, a nonprofit organization that helped raise funds for my legal defense and subsequent appeals. Many of the activists in attendance were older—boomers with a lifelong, Vietnam-related commitment to pacifism. They gathered outside Fort Meade, in groups of fifteen or twenty, holding up signs with messages such as i support manning, and cars going by would occasionally honk at them in support. I appreciated the sentiment, but inside the court­room, they were loud in their civil disobedience, sometimes interrupting and slowing down the proceedings. I watched Judge Lind get more and more irritated, and worried it would turn her against me. At that moment, I was laser-focused on trying to win the court-martial: for me, this wasn’t a great symbolic action, it was my life.

—Chelsea Manning, README.txt, (London: The Bodley Head, 2022), 203.

Photograph: Camila Falquez/The Guardian. Dress: Balenciaga

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