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.Collection: Birthday
Unfortunately, it seems to me that when it comes to issues affecting the trans community, most people who are cisgender - a word describing those people whose gender identity is in alignment with the sex they were assigned at birth - focus too much on the administrative, legal, and medical aspects of trans identity.Collection: Medical
In the years preceding my imprisonment, I worked as a software programmer, designing and developing web interfaces, secure databases, and communication software; later, I was employed as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army. Throughout each of these jobs, we used different kinds of encryption to keep prying eyes out of information we handled.Collection: Communication
Through every struggle that I have been confronted with and have been subjected to - solitary confinement, long legal battles, and physically transitioning to the woman I have always been - I manage not only to survive, but to grow, learn, mature, and thrive as a better, more confident person.Collection: Legal
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.Collection: Patriotism
Transgender folks have been part of the push for LGBT equality from the beginning, and we've spoken with loud and intelligent voices and have found political and personal success and advancement all over the world.Collection: Equality
Many queer and trans people live - and lived - in our prison and jails, in our homeless shelters, in run-down houses and apartment buildings, and on the corners of every major city. Marriage equality doesn't help them; and the potential loss of momentum for trans/queer rights after this win could well hurt them.Collection: Equality
I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.Collection: Military
I prefer a painful truth over any blissful fantasy.Collection: Fantasy
I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.Collection: Country
Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free SocietyCollection: Pay
I think we can achieve meaningful change, but only if we demand that the institutions themselves change their behavior.Collection: Meaningful
I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.Collection: Support
I think that the next two generations of Americans will be grappling with the very real specter of finding themselves living in a new and bizarre kind of digital totalitarian state - one that looks and feels democratic on the surface, but has a fierce undercurrent of fear and technologically enforced fascism any time you step out of line. I really hope this isn't the case, but it looks really bad right now, doesn't it?Collection: Real
Visibility is not equality.Collection: Visibility
There are just too many opportunities - and an increasing number of them - to hide systemic, institutional wrongdoing behind legal veils, legal theories, and arbitrary exemptions. I hope that we can start to chip away at this, but it sure looks like society is still sliding in the opposite direction.Collection: Opportunity
Even if I didn't have the support that I have, I would still be fighting the same fights, and I would still be the same person that I am today.Collection: Fighting
The press and free speech landscape has totally changed. There is far less news reporting today. Instead, we have this endless stream of - largely meaningless and speculative - analysis by sideline commentators and self-proclaimed "experts."Collection: Self
As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.Collection: Military
I want people to see the truth.Collection: People
Anxiety, depression, and suicide don't discriminate based on how much money you have - though it might make it easier for you to get help.Collection: Suicide
I think that some of today's focus on freedom of information and trans rights have a tendency to focus on the actions of individuals and how they should be regulated by governments. However, I think it's important to remember that it is the institutions themselves - schools, tax collection services, banks, human resources decisions, health departments, police departments, prosecutors, courts, and prisons - where the most devastating and systemic problems occur today. The scale of these problems is simply unimaginable.Collection: School
It can be so difficult to get people to think about systemic institutional problems. It is easier just to see the actions of one or two people and say, "That's wrong!"Collection: Thinking
Disturbingly, the First Amendment, along with the Fourth Amendment - protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures, and requiring warrants - have been the major casualties of the shift in government policy in the last two decades. Unfortunately, I think that the biggest consequences of this tragedy won't be clear until it is far, far too late.Collection: Thinking
There are still many homeless trans folk wandering the streets. They are still harassed on the street by bystanders and police officers. We still face many administrative hurdles in every aspect of our lives. If anything, things are actually getting harder for us, because now there are people who are using our visibility as an excuse to say that we are already receiving fair and honest treatment, when the reality is that we are still in bad shape as a community.Collection: Reality
I think it's actually kind of sweet how there is a reciprocal effect that our stories can have on each other.Collection: Sweet
I don't believe that Freedom of Information laws, which have arbitrary time periods or broad blanket exemptions, meet the level of transparency that society needs today.Collection: Believe
I think the increased ubiquity of the internet and networked computing in general allowed me to have some tether no matter where I was geographically. I could log in to a computer from anywhere in the world and access the same information and the same people. It allowed me to transcend the physical differences.Collection: Thinking
I believe that the trans movement is at a crossroads. We have achieved an unprecedented level of visibility in the last couple of years. However, that's not the same thing as equality.Collection: Couple
It's not my goal to be a leader or spokesperson, or anything like that.Collection: Goal
If an organization produces a document, it should be made public as soon as possible.Collection: Organization
I didn't really have anyone in particular who inspired me or that I found fascinating as a kid. It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I began to find people - and they were all historic figures - that I began to relate to and find some inspiration in.Collection: Inspiration
I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).Collection: Names
The sole relief I am asking for is to be released from military prison after serving six years of confinement as a person who did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members.Collection: Military
I really don't care how I am perceived by people on the outside.Collection: People
Investigative journalism and reporting has become much more dangerous. This is especially true for journalists and sources in National Security - but it has been getting pretty bad for beat reporters and small outlets doing local reporting, too.Collection: Journalism
I can only ask of those who care about me and the issues in my case to support me and spread the word about what is going on.Collection: Issues
Day-to-day life is as simple as it is routine - though my days are often long and very busy.Collection: Simple
There is an awful lot of work to do to protect trans folks. We are still disproportionally poor and administratively and institutionally discriminated against at all levels of society.Collection: Levels
I have served a sufficiently long sentence. I am not asking for a pardon of my conviction.Collection: Long
There are very few distinctions between el bueno and el malo en la prisión militar. Instead of the good and the bad, there is the boring and la repetición - the repetitive. The routine is as endless as it is numbing.Collection: Routine
I don't think that I'm embracing any kind of leadership for transparency or trans advocacy.Collection: Thinking
I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the [U.S. Disciplinary Barracks] as the person I was born to be.Collection: Asking
As a young kid, I spent a lot of time exploring the world around me.Collection: Kids
While being tossed around the world from place to place as a teenager, I wasn't really tethered to any place or anyone.Collection: Teenager
I think the embryonic digital world had the same affect on me as the openness of the old American frontier.Collection: Thinking
I lived a few miles outside of a tiny town in central Oklahoma. I would often run amok though the fields of wheat, the patches of trees, along the railroad tracks, and on red dirt roads. This had a profound effect on my view of the world - vast, open-ended, full of opportunity, and ready for exploration.Collection: Running
Donations to my legal defense fund really help, and I think keeping me motivated and spreading the message are also very important.Collection: Thinking
On a transparency front, I would say that I certainly dream of a world in which our local, state, and national and international governments and other organizations have a 21st century, digital-era transparency built into them by default.Collection: Dream