Cynthia Papermaster

Cynthia Papermaster is a community, peace, and justice activist in Berkeley, California, and is Director of Berkeley No More Guantanamos and a member of Codepink Women for Peace, Golden Gate Chapter. She holds BA and Masters degrees from UC Berkeley and is a law librarian, gardener, cook, reader, traveler, explorer of new energy technologies, dancer and companion to a shih-tzu/poodle mix called Jimminywinks, also a Codepink Woman for Peace [and the same kind of dog Kurt Vonnegut had]. She founded the National Accountability Action Network, which works for the prosecution of U.S. officials for complicity in torture and murder, and has a special interest in holding U.S. torture policy makers accountable for crimes against humanity, especially Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, John Yoo, and Jay Bybee, as well as the many others complicit in crimes of inhumane treatment, torture, and murder of people whom John Yoo labeled 'enemy combatants', which included children and innocent detainees turned over to the U.S. for bounty. Cynthia is a former Berkeley PTA Council President, candidate for both Berkeley School Board and U.S. Congress, formerly on the National Steering Committee of the Justice Party USA, a major new U.S. political party aiming to replace Democrats and Republicans with a President and Congress who work for the people and not their corporate-military-fossil fuel campaign funders. She is one of the "Vandenberg 15", arrested, along with Dan Ellsberg, for trying to stop an Inter Continental Ballistic Missile launch. She received a bronze "Peace Warrior" medal, and in 2012 she was awarded the first Annual Tom Paine Courageous Spirit Award by the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee. Cynthia is not sitting on her laurels. She works daily for peace and justice, and is, as the award states, "truly a renaissance woman in the brilliant spirit of Tom Paine."

Statement of reasons for Open-Ended Fast in Solidarity with Cleared-for-Release Guantanamo Prisoners

"I am one of several U.S. citizens fasting indefinitely in solidarity with the Guantanamo prisoners on a hunger strike. My open-ended fast will begin on June 15 and will continue until President Obama begins to free the 86 prisoners cleared for release."