Today, Chelsea Manning walked out of the military prison that held her for seven years, and into a world largely remade by her actions. “Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now—which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me,” she said in a statement through her ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio. Manning marked the occasion with a photo of her first steps of freedom on Instagram, an app that launched in 2010.

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