On Reddit today: “Hey, it’s John Cusack. I’m here talk to about Freedom of the Press Foundation, among other things. Ask me anything.”
More from his intro:
Hey Reddit, I’m John Cusack. I make films and we can talk about that if you like, but I’m also on the board of directors of a new organization called Freedom of the Press Foundation. My fellow board members include legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, writers Glenn Greenwald and Xeni Jardin, award-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow.
We all came together in December to try to start a broad movement to help protect and defend the First Amendment, given secrecy is at an all time high and whistleblowers have never been under greater attack. I wrote about it for Huffington Post here. You can also read the two talks I did with leading free speech law professor Jonathan Turley and Kevin McCabe here and here.
Back in 2010, WikiLeaks was cut-off from payment processors despite committing no crime, after unofficial pressure from a couple Congressman. We wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen to another journalism organization again, but we also wanted to help other organizations bring transparency to government.
So, we’re taking donations to WikiLeaks, but also supporting three other innovative organizations, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Truthout, and Public Integrity.
They each have a specific secrecy-busting projects on US drone strikes, the Guantanamo trials, and US defense spending your money will fund. And every two months, we're going to support a new bundle of organizations similar to these. You can go to our website and donate to any or all of these organizations here: https://pressfreedomfoundation.org
So hopefully you donate. But whether or not you do, spread the word around and read and support these organizations that are doing such important work. Obviously everyone can't afford to donate, but awareness and knowledge is just as important.
Ask me anything though.
You can follow me on Twitter here and Freedom of the Press Foundation's Twitter account is here.