Friend,
Julian Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. on Monday and flown out of the country after nearly 15 years of pursuit and persecution by the U.S. government for publishing troves of internal documents and other top secret material which included, among other things, evidence of war crimes.
These were revelations that the U.S. government but didn’t want its citizens or the world to know or see. But because of Assange, Chelsea Manning, and others, those things became known and changed the course of history.
Not since Daniel Ellsberg’s efforts to release the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War had the courageousness of a whistleblower and the fearlessness of journalism dovetailed so powerfully as when WikiLeaks released the Afghan and Iraq War Logs, including the Collateral Murder video, in 2010.
Through it all — and since — Common Dreams covered those revelations in great detail, and the subsequent targeting of Julian Assange became an area of our coverage precisely because the fight for press freedom, journalistic integrity, and whistleblower protections are so central to our mission and purpose.
Ellsberg, a longtime reader and supporter of Common Dreams who died last year at the age of 92, had said one of his final wishes was to see Assange go free, and he warned people for years, like so many rights groups worldwide, that the U.S. effort to prosecute him under the Espionage Act was a threat to journalism everywhere.
We agreed and covered the issue with that spirit for well over a decade — even when it was unpopular in some circles to do so — recognizing the stakes, upholding core principles, and doing our best to stand on the right side of history.
Crucially, the independent spirit that flows through our work at Common Dreams is only possible for one reason: readers like you. You don’t even have to agree with us on everything to know that we wake up every day trying to do what we can to make the world a better place and tracking stories precisely because the stakes are high, the principles matter, and that history will judge.
If you believe in that spirit — and want to see Common Dreams not only survive, but thrive — please support our Mid-Year Campaign today.
Julian Assange is now free, but the threat this sad episode represents remains and our long struggle for a better and more just world continues. Thanks for standing with us.
