Rallies are being held nationwide today in support of the alleged military whistleblower Bradley Manning. An Army intelligence analyst, Manning is being held on charges he leaked classified documents, including a video of a US military helicopter killing a group of innocent Iraqis, as well as thousands of Afghan war logs. The website WikiLeaks published both the video and the war records earlier this year. The Bradley Manning Support Network says it will hold rallies in nineteen cities today as part of a three-day series of events to urge the US government to drop all of Manning’s charges. On Thursday, dozens of people gathered in Oakland, California, to launch the International Days of Action for Bradley Manning. The Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg addressed the crowd.

Daniel Ellsberg: “He is disloyal to the empire and to the emperor, as I have become. And without more Bradley Mannings and people like you who will support him with money in a concrete way and with your support by being here tonight — with more Bradley Mannings, there’s a chance that we will have the democratic constitutional republic we were meant to have, and may sometime be.”