Michael Prysner

Michael D. Prysner (born June 15, 1983) is an American socialist activist. He is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and Syria as a specialist. His duties in Iraq included ground surveillance, home raids, and interrogation of prisoners. According to Prysner, these experiences led him to take an anti-war stance.

Education and military career Prysner is a graduate of Sickles High School in Tampa, Florida, and Florida Atlantic University.

Prysner joined the U.S. Army in 2001 under the Delayed Entry Program when he was 17 and left the military in 2005. He had basic training at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma and was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in New York. Prysner's company participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he served there for 12 months. While in the Army Prysner attained the rank of Specialist. and the co-founder of March Forward!, an organization of active-duty members of the U.S. military and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that encourages active-duty service personnel to resist deployment and seek an honorable discharge by being a conscientious objector.

In March 2008, Prysner was a member of a panel discussing the topic Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan in Maryland. Prysner spoke about his time in Iraq as a soldier and his personal views about the two wars. In 2008, he ran a write-in campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives for Florida's 22nd congressional district.

In November 2011, Prysner was arrested in Occupy Los Angeles. He was released after posting bail.

On September 19, 2021, Prysner interrupted former U.S. President George W. Bush's speech in Beverly Hills, California. Prysner demanded an apology for lying about weapons of mass destruction, connections to 9/11, and causing the deaths of a million Iraqis. He stated "you sent me to Iraq" and "my friends are dead because you lied." He cited the Minab school attack as the most popular reason provided by service members for filing their applications. Just before being arrested, he termed the war "deeply unpopular" and "a crisis" for Trump's administration while encouraging conscientious objection among service members. and it later moved to a web publishing model. Prysner, Martin, and other Telesur contract journalists had their funding blocked by the application of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Academic Stuart Davis cites the cancellation as an example of how United States sanctions hamper public funding of media production in Venezuela.

, he hosted the Eyes Left podcast with former US Army Cadet and Afghanistan War veteran Spenser Rapone.

Personal life Prysner is married to journalist Abby Martin; they have two children together.