John Kiriaku shouldered the burden of being America’s conscience within the CIA, and was sent to prison for blowing the whistle on CIA torture.

To such a person, I have a sense of indebtedness. Not simply gratitude, but indebtedness, as though I owe him something. After thinking on it, I realized there might be some truth to that.

I think it goes like this:

Ergo, if I want to be consistent with my stance on torture, I owe John money.

I can’t financially support a thing and then say I don’t support it, there’s a word for that.

The good news is that I can repay a debt and take meaningful action against torture at the same time!

Calculating How Much I Owe John

John was imprisoned for 705 days, or 484 business days. Assuming his time is worth $100/hr and he works 5 hours per business day, that’s $484,000 in compensation for time lost.

However, that doesn’t cover his legal fees and other costs associated with imprisonment. We can round up to ~$1 million in damages to John.

$1 million divided by 86 million people brings us to about $0.01 per person.

Thankfully, John’s campaign—a bargain considering the calculation above—gave me a chance to settle this debt and prove to myself that I mean it when I say, “I do not support torture.”

A chance to take real action against torture

Consider: behavior like John’s should be rewarded, and the behavior of those behind the torture programs should be punished.

How else are we going to stop torture?

There is something to be said for doing good for goodness sake, but wouldn’t it be great if people knew that honorable behavior could also be rewarding in both senses of the word?

By asking for money, John is giving us a chance to send that message.

Can’t pay? Offer your time.

If you feel the same, but can’t afford to pay John with money, consider compensating him for his time with yours.

I’m sure he will be grateful for a tweet, an email, a blog post, an article in the NYT, etc. While you might not be able to afford even $1, you can reach someone that can.

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