My Son's Story by Juliette Colangelo, resident of Sedona and member of DORR My son, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, is coming to Arizona from New York to speak with us about Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Josh is an attorney representing detainees at Guantanamo (GTMO) who are citizens of Bahrain. He decided to become involved and do this work at GTMO because of his shock and concern about the abuses of detainees, human rights, and the Rule of Law that is so evidenced at GTMO. His experience representing six Bahraini detainees (some are thankfully now former detainees) has only corroborated his perception of these abuses. Josh has been to GTMO many times. He has traveled several times to Bahrain to speak with the Parliament and Foreign Ministry there. He has held joint press conferences on Bahraini television with Bahraini officials. He and other GTMO attorneys have taken the Bush Administration to court repeatedly in an attempt to return to American values of fair and humane treatment of the incarcerated, and to the Rule of Law. Josh has been accompanied on trips to Bahrain by Jackie Northam, of National Public Radio. She has interviewed him on All Things Considered. Ira Glass had Josh and former detainees on his NPR show, This American Life. Amy Goodman has interviewed him at length on her show, Democracy Now. Josh has been in The NY Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, The New Yorker Magazine and New York Magazine, always attempting to inform the public about the travesty of justice and human rights that is Guantanamo. Prior to representing detainees at GTMO, Josh worked as an attorney for the United Nations in Kosovo. This was shortly after the American bombing that ended the fighting between Serbian and Albanian Kosovars. At that time, the UN was the only law in Kosovo. Josh spoke with Milosovic's defense attorneys, informing them as to Kosovar law. He met with the Serbian Senate and high-ranking Serbian officials as part of the UN's attempt to bring justice to bear on the atrocities that had been committed by the Kosovar Serbs on the Kosovar Albanians. After two years, he returned to the US and took up residence in New York. When GTMO surfaced as the devastating violation of human rights that it is, he asked his law firm, Dorsey & Whitney, to take on representing some detainees on a pro bono basis. The firm agreed. Since that time, he has worked on legal briefs, written articles for the press, organized and attended symposia on GTMO, traveled to Bahrain, GTMO and to various locations in the US; in short, he has done everything in his power to expose and change the situation at Guantanamo Bay. In this process, Josh has got to know his clients and their families very well. When he travels to Bahrain, he visits the detainees' families, and is welcomed and fed in their homes. The detainees have shared their acute suffering with Josh. They have shown him their despair, panic, despondency and sorrow. Their journey coming to GTMO and their time on the island have ruined their lives. These men have never been charged with anything. They were captured, shackled, short-shackled, mistreated and dumped into tiny cells, most often in isolation, with no ability to know why they were being held. They have had no communication with their families. They have no hope of knowing that they will some day be charged with a crime so that they may defend themselves, and they certainly have no ability to question the legality of their incarceration. The writ of habeas corpus was enacted as part of the Magna Carta. It basically declares that, no matter who you are, you have the right to question the legality of your incarceration. Last year, our United States Senate passed legislation that takes that fundamental right away from the detainees at Guantanamo. Our Senator, John McCain, supported that legislation. A serf in feudal England had the right to petition the King regarding his incarceration. The right to do the same as a detainee at Guantanamo has been stripped by our own Senate. Josh and other lawyers representing GTMO detainees went to the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of this new law. Just a few weeks ago, our Supreme Court upheld the law stripping habeas rights from detainees. Now is the time for all of us who believe in a different America, an America based on justice and the Rule of Law, to speak out, and to make our voices loud and consistent. Please come to hear Josh speak. Bring your friends with you. Learn more, ask questions, and get a personal understanding of this awful situation. Then help us to close Guantanamo and release the detainees who have not been charged with any crime. Together, we can write letters, get articles in the papers, call Senators and Congressional Representatives, petition the White House, truly, we are only limited by our imaginations. We must speak out now or we forfeit our democracy. Josh will give us an inside understanding of what is actually happening at GTMO. We will then join together to use that knowledge and understanding to stop this travesty and take back our democracy. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you at Josh's Arizona talks. Juliette Colangelo Sedona