Due to family commitments, I was able to attend only one of the many Welcome events for the family of Chelsea Manning over the weekend.
It was a great privilege to share a hug with her lovely mother Susan and to have a little chat with her about the brave child hero she had mothered and reared.
Susan told me that she has no difficulty at all now with my referring to her as Chelsea.
In a short comment from the stage I had offered my own 100% support to Chelsea and later asked her mother to pass it on.
It was also a pleasure and honour to meet Chelsea's uncle Kevin and aunts Sharon and Mary.
It was great to meet old anti-war and human rights friends in the Edmund Burke theatre after the event. Caoimhe Butterly, Carmen Trotta, Ciaron O'Reilly, Gearóid Kilgannon, Harry Brown, Joe Murray among others as well as new friends Catherine (Caoimhe's mother) and Gerry Conlon who had spoken passionately about the false imprisonment and conviction of himself, his father and aunt in England and how it would not have happened had there been whistleblowers such as Chelsea, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange around at the time.
Thanks to Ciaron O'Reilly for his long and faithful witness to all good causes, for the immense effort he has put into his support for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and in particular for organising events such as the weekends in Wales and Ireland. Thanks also to Joe Murray and his team at Afri for organising a mammoth weekend on the Dublin side that saw the Chelsea Manning family feted in Dublin, and honoured by their Irish friends.
We owe them the solidarity they were promised.
It was a great privilege to share a hug with her lovely mother Susan and to have a little chat with her about the brave child hero she had mothered and reared.
Susan told me that she has no difficulty at all now with my referring to her as Chelsea.
In a short comment from the stage I had offered my own 100% support to Chelsea and later asked her mother to pass it on.
It was also a pleasure and honour to meet Chelsea's uncle Kevin and aunts Sharon and Mary.
It was great to meet old anti-war and human rights friends in the Edmund Burke theatre after the event. Caoimhe Butterly, Carmen Trotta, Ciaron O'Reilly, Gearóid Kilgannon, Harry Brown, Joe Murray among others as well as new friends Catherine (Caoimhe's mother) and Gerry Conlon who had spoken passionately about the false imprisonment and conviction of himself, his father and aunt in England and how it would not have happened had there been whistleblowers such as Chelsea, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange around at the time.
Thanks to Ciaron O'Reilly for his long and faithful witness to all good causes, for the immense effort he has put into his support for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and in particular for organising events such as the weekends in Wales and Ireland. Thanks also to Joe Murray and his team at Afri for organising a mammoth weekend on the Dublin side that saw the Chelsea Manning family feted in Dublin, and honoured by their Irish friends.
We owe them the solidarity they were promised.
