The prominent anti-war activist Ann Wright says that, after being arrested for protesting at a U.S. drone base, she stopped receiving her monthly social security checks, in what she believes was a deliberate attempt “to curtail dissent of seniors.”
According to an op-ed she wrote about the ordeal, Wright says she was arrested in March, along with members of Veterans for Peace and the Granny Peace Brigade, for participating in an annual protest against “assassin drones” at Creech drone base in Nevada. “We spent five hours in the Clark County Jail as our arrests were processed and then were released,” she wrote. “Our cases of being charged with ‘failure to disperse’ were eventually dropped by the Clark County court.”
However, that would not be the end of Wright’s punishment. According to her account, “someone submitted my name and social security number to SSA as a person who has been confined in a jail since September 2016”—a claim she says amounts to falsification. It was not immediately clear who she suspects is behind the alleged maneuver.
“Without any notification to me of this allegation that would disrupt for months my Social Security benefits, SSA ordered that for my ‘criminal conviction and confinement in a correctional institution for more than 30 days, we cannot pay your monthly Social Security payment,’” Wright continued.
