an extraordinary rendition

Hear Ye, Hear Ye----Something extraordinary is going to happen in a matter of days...

On Thursday, April 6th, at 5 p.m. (EST), in in the Rayburn Foyer, the Rayburn House Office Building of Congress, in the nation's capitol, Washington, D.C. , the Center for Constitutional Rights will present a 90 minute updated production of "Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," a play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, which first premiered in Great Britain, on May 24, 2004, taken from spoken evidence presented to the English houses of Parliament in February of this year. The congressional rendition of the play has been sponsored by Representatives John Conyers and Jan Schakowsky.

Notably, the same British cast associated with the original Tricycle Theatre production will appear before the American Congress on Thursday evening, and be joined by actor, and activist, Mike Farrell who has said, in a CCR press release, that he hopes by "bringing this play to Capitol Hill we can snap Congress out of its trance and bring them to realize that the prisoners at Guantanamo are human beings who deserve to have their cases heard in a court of law. Americans demand integrity and it is time Congress lived up to its responsibility to oversee the Executive Branch." Amen to that!

Put on your running shoes, and go to the Rayburn Foyer for what promises to be a precedent-setting, consciousness-raising event on Thursday, if you can. If, like me, you find yourself 3,000 miles away, then phone your representatives in Congress, friends, colleagues, family, and everyone you know back east, and tell them daylight savings time begins on April 6th this year, at 5 p.m. when, in our nation's capitol, the lights stay on an extra 90 minutes so, in the halls of the House, we may yet hear the story of some British citizens wrongly detained, and deprived of due process in the ongoing, egregious effront to an international sense of justice known simply as Guantanamo.