Majid Khan pleads guilty-Guantanamo sketches

What a day in court it was. I was sent here to sketch at the arraignment of Majid Khan, a Pakistani who went to school and graduated from high school in Baltimore. Khan pled guilty. Now, i've been going to Guantanamo since 2006, and have never run into what I did today. After I'd finished sketching, the Pentagon official who signs off on my work took the close-ups to Majid Khan's lawyers so they could look them over. Fine. The official then returned empty-handed, and asked for the other two. He came back to me sans sketches, saying that Majid Khan did not want the sketches to be released because of some concerns, so they were not giving them back to me(!) I was able to reach our PAO who then came up and worked the phones to find someone to authorize the sketches' release... were detainees allowed to censor? No one seemed to know. The Pentagon official thought so, and unless we could prove otherwise, was not going to give them back to me. In his defense, he did eventually offer to release two, as long as I was willing to smudge Khan's face completely out. But we chose to wait and chase down an answer before I erased the only images of Khan the media would have. After nearly 4 hours, the right people were found, and approval to move the sketches was given. Talk about stress.


You just can't make this up.

Camp 4-From the inside out

I'm here to sketch the Majid Khan arraignment tomorrow, Feb. 29th. Today
we took a tour of the camps where the detainees are held, and were allowed inside
a recently vacated camp. It was really interesting to be on the other side of the
fence for the first time- we've usually been behind that fence to the right.


Several media outlets will be covering this arraignment: Miami Herald, Reuters, Al Arabiya, Fox, AP, etc.. so keep posted for tomorrow's news. I'll be updating this blog tomorrow.

Ossie Davis

In continuing to hone Black History, I've decided to do some daily posts of work that reflects Black History. My daughter is currently reading a book entitled 'Just Like Martin' by none other than the multi-talented actor/writer Ossie Davis. Read a synopsis about this
very good fictional tale:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/818097.Just_Like_Martin
Ossie passed in 2005 and in his memory, an endowment has been created. It reflects this great man's life beautifully:
http://www.ossiedavisendowment.com/

The Komen/Planned Parenthood social media frenzy

Here's a very recent illustration I did about the Susan G. Komen Foundation's decision to withdraw from aiding Planned Parenthood, and how social media reacted immediately to the announcement. In the midst of the job, Komen did an about-face and rescinded the decision so I adjusted my illustration to reflect the buzz only.