Bradley Manning’s ‘article 32′ pretrial hearing began Dec. 16th, just a day before his birthday.   About 300 of Bradley’s supporters held a vigil, rally and march at Fort Meade.  Special guest speakers at the Fort Meade demonstration included Lt. Dan Choi, Jeff Paterson, and Ann Wright, Ray McGovern and Kevin Zeese  – among others. Supporters came from all over, and a bus brought Occupy Wall Street protesters from New York City.

Here is footage of Lt. Dan Choi’s inspiring speech along with interviews with Bradley’s supporters at Ft. Meade,

Bradley Manning Support Network writer, Nathan Fuller (@nathanlfuller) live tweeted the Fort Meade event, and shared these great photos,

John Grant has a write up the event (with photos). (Also available here.) The rally made it onto the front page of the Washington Post.

With the pretrial hearing beginning,

Bradley’s supporters made their voices heard. Here are just a few pictures and videos from Bradley Manning demonstrations held around the country.

In San Francisco, Occupy SF and other Bradley Manning supporters marched in support with big thank yous and happy birthdays for Bradley,

In Philadelphia, passerbys signed birthday cards for Bradley at an informational picket setup by supporters,

In Ashland,, approximately 50 people came out to support Bradley. A Veterans for Peace supporter describes the event, “with candles in their hands and empathy for the plight of Pvt. Bradley Manning in their hearts a group of citizens, young & older, gathered at the Ashland Plaza to mark the first day of the pre-trial hearing in the court martial of young Bradley, charged with aiding and abetting the enemy by allegedly released classified documents and videos about the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks while stationed in Iraq.”

They shared these pictures.

In Los Angeles, over freeway 101, sometime during rush hour – Iraq and Afganistan veterans from March Forward hung an enormous banner, “It was dropped over the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles during rush hour traffic (the busiest stretch of freeway in the country!) for 2 hours so thousands of people saw it.” Check out some of the photos.

Protesters also marched in L.A., and unfortunately 2 members of Occupy were arrested – (link)

From Nashville, protesters from Occupy took to the streets!

(more photos)

From Oaklahoma City, we have this photo of a rally held on a busy corner near a mall. Also one of the participants went to Bradley’s hometown of Crescent, OK, in the morning to take photo of himself in front of the “Welcome To” sign.

And from around the world,

In Adelaide, Australia, Michele Ambrose corresponds from a vigil for Bradley, “I hope that all the support that Bradley is getting from his defense team, the Bradley Manning Support Network / Courage to Resist and all his supporters around the world will positively influence the outcome of his pretrial hearing so that all the charges against him are dropped and he is released from custody. Wouldn’t that be a great birthday present!”

She shared this video,

In Wrexham, Whales, WISE Up for Bradley Manning supporters “put up two banners at the busy Plas Coch roundabout in Wrexham, Wales, during the morning rush hour: ‘FREE BRADLEY MANNING’ and ‘END THE WARS!’ along with a rainbow peace flag. Bradley Manning’s mother is from Pembrokeshire and still lives in Wales along with other of his relatives.”

Read more and see pictures here.

In Athens supporters from the Antinationalistic Antimilitaristic Initiative held an event outside the U.S. embassy

In London, speeches were made by Ben Griffin from “Veterans for Peace”, Naomi Colvin from “UK Friends of Bradley Manning” and Ciaron O’Reilly from the “London Catholic Worker”.  An open platform followed which included speeches by folks from Occupy London SX, “Pay Day”, “Global Women’s Strike”, a British Iraq War veteran, “Pirate Party”, “Queer Friends of Bradley Manning”, “Oxford Catholic Worker”, an Iraqi exile among others”. Supporters shared this footage of the London protest,

Here are  more pictures from the London event, (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (flickr) (7)

These events show how much public support there is to free Bradley Manning! More coverage of these and others to come. Find more photos on the SaveBradley photostream on flickr.