Chelsea (aka Bradley) Manning, the former US Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years for passing information to WikiLeaks but whose sentence was commuted after 7 years and who is now a transgender woman has filed a request to run for the US Senate seat in Maryland. As a Democrat, she will challenge the state’s senior senator, two-term incumbent Ben Cardin, in the June 26th primary election this year.
This is her political campaign ad, definitely unlike any ad that anyone has ever seen! When I attended some of the pre-trial hearings for Bradley Manning’s Espionage case at Fort Meade back in 2012, I never in a million years would have imagined that this same person would be running as a woman for US Senator of that state six years later!
This is a transcript of the ad:
“We live in trying times.
Times of Fear — of suppression — of hate.
We don’t need more — or better leaders.
We need someone willing to fight.
We need to stop asking them to give us our rights.
They won’t support us. They won’t compromise.
We need to stop expecting that our systems will somehow fix themselves.
We need to actually take the reins of power from them.
We need to challenge them at every level.
We need to fix this.
We don’t need them anymore.
We can do better.
You’re damn right #WeGotThis.”
