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If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.
Chelsea Manning -
As the late Howard Zinn once said, 'There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.'
Chelsea Manning
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I knew that I was different. I gravitated more toward playing house, but the teachers were always pushing me toward playing the more competitive games with the boys. I spent so much time wondering, 'What's wrong with me? Why can't I fit in?'
Chelsea Manning -
The fight for justice for the transgender community is largely invisible to our fellow citizens, despite the rampant systematic discrimination of trans people - those whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.
Chelsea Manning -
Privacy is not a luxury in America: it is a right - one that we need to defend in the digital realm as much as in the physical realm.
Chelsea Manning -
The evidence is overwhelming that it should be deemed as such: solitary confinement in the U.S. is arbitrary, abused, and unnecessary in many situations. It is cruel, degrading, and inhumane and is effectively a 'no touch' torture.
Chelsea Manning -
There are very few distinctions between el bueno and el malo en la prision militar. Instead of the good and the bad, there is the boring and la repeticion - the repetitive. The routine is as endless as it is numbing.
Chelsea Manning -
The U.S. intelligence community is in a very poor position to be trusted with protecting civil liberties while engaging in intelligence work.
Chelsea Manning
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Joy, confidence, and security can't begin until we are able to just be ourselves.
Chelsea Manning -
Having a birthday around the holidays was never easy and, with every successive year, it felt more and more as if celebrating my birthday got thrown into the December holiday mix as an afterthought.
Chelsea Manning -
We need to stop hoping that our systems will right themselves. We need to actually take the reins of government and fix our institutions. We need to save lives by making change at every level.
Chelsea Manning -
Being closeted often put me in situations where I couldn't concentrate or even think straight.
Chelsea Manning -
Our society's dependence on imagery says a lot about our values.
Chelsea Manning -
Shortly after arriving at a makeshift military jail at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, in May 2010, I was placed into the black hole of solitary confinement for the first time.
Chelsea Manning
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Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Chelsea Manning -
When I wanted to serve my country, I was forced to hide the most basic and human aspect of my life and my identity from the people to whom I was supposed to be the closest - and with whom I had to trust my life. I also had to hide from myself.
Chelsea Manning -
I came out publicly as transgender and began hormone replacement therapy while in prison. When I was released, however, there was no quantifiable history of me existing as a transwoman. Credit and background checks automatically assumed I was committing fraud.
Chelsea Manning -
By the time I enrolled in the military at 20, I had spent years in denial about who I really was. I was openly gay and would go through periods of cross-dressing, and had even thought about transitioning, but I was in such complete denial.
Chelsea Manning -
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy - the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps - to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
Chelsea Manning -
Freedom used to be something that I dreamed of but never allowed myself to fully imagine.
Chelsea Manning
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I loved being in my sister's room. I really admired her and wore her clothes to play in, played with her dolls, played with her makeup. She had a mirror with settings to see what you would look like in different lighting. I thought that was amazing.
Chelsea Manning -
There's this idea out there that, had I not been trans, the leaks and stuff would never have happened. But to my mind, those are two completely separate things. Had I been out, I think I still would have been attracted to the military, but I would have been more comfortable and gotten along with people better.
Chelsea Manning -
From my perspective, the world's shaped me more than anything else. It's a feedback loop.
Chelsea Manning -
Health care is something that prisoners have a right to, you know? They don't get to pick and choose whether or not you get this health care plan and this health care plan. It's provided to you by the prison. The prison has a responsibility to provide you with necessary health care, and trans health care is necessary.
Chelsea Manning