For International Women’s Day, some human rights and technology groups threw a benefit party for Chelsea Manning in Valencia, Spain as part of the annual Internet Freedom Festival. Chelsea Manning is an important activist in internet freedom for using the online platform Wikileaks to inform the world about classified US documents revealing corruption and civilian casualties. She was recently pardoned for blowing the whistle in 2010 on the Iraq War, which then ended in 2011. “We had been thinking about doing a benefit party at the IFF and when news broke of Chelsea’s pardon by Obama, we knew she had to be the beneficiary,” said co-organiser Gillo Cutrupi.
The party’s hosts are organisations who contributed to organising and supporting the party: Amnesty International, eQualit.ie, Derechos Digitales, Courage Found, Aspiration Tech, and APC. United by our stance that Chelsea, and all whistleblowers and truth tellers, are critical in this digital age of hyper-secrecy and disinformation. IFF attendees agreed. The party gathered more than 200 people, who donated what they could for Chelsea’s cause.
Read the full article in GenderIT.org .