Dear Bradley Manning,
I am not as brave as you; I know that for a fact. In all my efforts to make a difference for the greater, common good, I have never risked nearly what you have; I have never paid anything like the price now being exacted from you.
Years ago, in another context, I wrote: “If you ain’t caught shit, you ain’t done shit”— which is to say: There is honor and integrity in conscientious resistance to unjust, abusive authority, and if for doing so one meets punitive retaliation, then that is a measure of the force and the power of the deed one has done.
As I mail you this letter of gratitude in hopes that it will reach you, I am sharing the text through social media with others who also admire and thank you. They who take heart from your courage—and your love of country as it should and could be—are standing up in solidarity and declaring one by one, “I am Bradley Manning.” I humbly join them.
John Stoltenberg
Author
Washington, DC
July 13, 2013