HerbBlock Freedom Award Speech

*At the request of Heather who made a comment on my last post, I have posted the draft of my acceptance speech for the HerbBlock Freedom Award which was given to me by the National Newspapers Guild. The actual speech I delivered was significantly different from the text that follows and was essentially ad-libbed. I will see if I can get a video of the speech to post here.* Thank you for giving me the tremendous honor of receiving this award. It’s been a long journey and when I first found out I was the recipient of the Herbert Block Freedom Award, I didn’t know if I’d be able to be here to accept it, in fact it seemed likely I would not. However, as a result of the hard work of many people I’ve been spared the irony of having to accept the Freedom Award by proxy from my prison cell. I’d like to take a minute to thank everyone who helped me get through this long ordeal and helped ensure that word of my incarceration didn’t go unnoticed: I’d like to thank my mother for traveling all over the country to act as my advocate and my father for visiting me almost every weekend and helping to keep my blog updated with my semi-regular communiques from behind the wall. Everyone involved with the Free Josh Wolf coalition did a fantastic job as well, and I am eternally grateful for the pro-bono legal assistance that I received from Mr. Martin Garbus in New York as well as Jim Wheaton, David Greene, and Pondra Perkins at the First Amendment Project in Oakland. Without their help and insights I’d still be locked up in Dublin today. My attorneys and my parents have been an invaluable help, but I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the thousands of people who’ve supported me along the way, not only financially but also to those who wrote me during the time I was inside and the journalists and others who helped to keep my story alive throughout the ordeal. I’m still awestruck by the amount of support my case generated and I only hope that I can make as strong an impact through my work as I have through my resistance. Today is International Press Freedom’s day, and while I may be free today many of my colleagues around the world are not. Here in this country, the free press guaranteed by our constitution is under heavy attack and it seems likely that things will get worse before they get better. When I first began documenting the world around me, much of my energy was spent on fanning the flames between us – the independent alterna-media, and them – the establishment or mainstream media, and while I still have concerns about the state of the media landscape, it has become quite clear to me that both sides of the spectrum serve a vital role in the marketplace of ideas and that neither avenue will survive unless we build alliances and bridge our differences. At the end of the day, the journalist’s first priority is to unearth the truth and to get this information out as far and wide as possible. This is true for all of us, from the blogger in her pajamas to the media heavy-weights, but without freedom of the press this cannot happen. Not for me, not for you, and most importantly not for the public who depends on this information. So today, on International Press Freedom day I’d like to thank all of you that have fought for the these freedoms and especially for Herbert Block whose legacy has allowed me to receive this award tonight. Thank You.