Today, the country lost one of its fiercest champions for peace, disarmament, and press freedom. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg risked his personal freedom to alert the public that its government had continuously lied to them about the Vietnam War. Dan had come to view the war as not merely as a policy mistake, but a crime that people of conscience had to resist. This led him to copy and distribute the Pentagon Papers.

Dan’s passing is particularly difficult for us at Defending Rights & Dissent. Ellsberg served on the advisory board of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, an organization which became Defending Rights & Dissent and led grassroots champions challenging post-9/11 surveillance powers. We reconnected with Dan as we campaigned together for legislative reforms to the Espionage Act, a halt to the Julian Assange extradition, and freedom for Daniel Hale. Throughout all of these campaigns, what struck as the most was Dan’s personal level of commitment and his deep empathy for those facing the full brunt of the national security state. 

Our policy director, Chip Gibbons wrote an obituary for Daniel Ellsberg for Jacobin, which covers Dan’s lifetime of fighting for a better world. He wrote:

When I interviewed him for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pentagon Papers’ release, it was clear that he was far less interested in reminiscing about the past than carrying forward his urgent work to avert nuclear war and reform the Espionage Act. Honoring Ellsberg requires not just recalling him as a historic figure, but carrying on his work and legacy to dismantle the machinery of war that has claimed far too many lives and end its accompanying regime of secrecy that crushes truth-tellers while granting impunity to war criminals.

You can read the entire obituary here.