Chelsea Manning Celebrates Freedom With Pizza, Champagne

Chelsea Manning was released from prison on Wednesday, May 17, and one of the first things she did as a free woman was enjoy a slice of greasy pepperoni pizza.

 

In 2013 Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, but most of her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama near the end of his second term in office. Not long after she was freed from prison, Manning started a brand-new Instagram account and posted a photo of her feet in a pair of Converse sneakers.

 

"First steps of freedom!!" she wrote.

 

Her second photo, posted a few hours later, was of a slice of pepperoni pizza.

 

"So, im already enjoying my first hot, greasy pizza," she wrote, adding a smiling emoji with its tongue sticking out.

 

Manning had been in prison for seven years, so that was probably the first slice of good pizza she had seen in a long time. The photo was posted shortly after her release, and it could well have been her first meal as a free woman in seven years.

 

A greasy slice of pepperoni pizza is a familiar type of comfort food, but Manning and her friends also appear to have celebrated her release with a fancy Champagne toast. The third photo on her Instagram feed is four hands holding Champagne flutes over a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne.

 

"Here's to freedom and a new beginning," she wrote. ".. #ChelseaIsFree."

 

Manning has not announced the rest of her plans for the future, but she says she intends to move to Maryland and set up residence there shortly.