Guards.

 

           More poetry from His Majesty's Prisons. Taken from the book Chains of Hate, The Prison Poetry of Sammy Ralston, published by Random Factor, Edinburgh and distributed by Edinburgh Black Cross, 

 

 Who Guards The Guards.

Enquiries were held, everyone agreed
The prisoner was murdered - a terrible deed.
Three prison guards charged into his cell
A vicious onslaught, a defenceless man fell,
Kicked him and punched him, broke flesh and bone,
Left him there to die all alone.

Who Guards the guards? The question was cried.
Who guards the guards? But no-one replied.
Who guards the guards? His last dying breath.
Who guards the guards that beat him to death?

Court was assembled, culprits brought to book
Statements were given, the oath it was took -
But killers went free - no retribution,
'Not Guilty' verdicts - a legal execution.
They say justices is blind, that much is plain,
She would have wept to see what was done in her name.

Who guards the guards? the question was cried.
Who guards the guards? But no-one replied
Who guards the guards? His last dying breath.
Who guards the guards that beat him to death?

Hey mister screw! Help us understand
How your conscience justifies blood on your hands.
Do you still sleep at night, do your kids fear your touch?
Can you look into your wife's eyes, does it bother you much
That a prisoner's been murdered and no-one's to blame......?
Just clean up his blood......and score out his name.

Who guards the guards? his last dying breath.
 Who guards the guards the beat him to death? 

 

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Bulldozer.

 

          Spirit of Revolt for its April “Read of The Month” gives three for one, three copies of prison reform magazine Bulldozer. It is from our Bratach Dubh Collection, T SOR 5-1-20. The Copies are NO.s 2 & 4 & 5 from 1981-1983. Some wonderful images, excellent articles and lots of useful information. If you have any copies of Bulldozer and would like them placed in a safe archive, why not send them to Spirit of Revolt, details on our contact page. While there, delve into our Aladdin’s cave of anarchist and libertarian socialist history, history from below, your history.

READ ON LINE.

 

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Prison Strike.

 

           There are widespread strikes in this country and across the world, and rightly so, as the living conditions of the ordinary people are savagely decimated in the name of profit and growth. Organising a strike is always difficult, but organising a strike in a prison is fraught with a multitude of problems and dangers. You're enmeshed in the state's incarceration system, under constant surveillance. So we owe it to the prisoners in Alabama's  draconian prison system to give them all the support and solidarity that we can muster. The have achieved a massive success in organising a state wide prisoners' strike across the state of Alabama. We need to keep this in the public domain as the authorities  will do their utmost to break the strike with the usual savage brutality that is all to common in prisons. We must not let this happen shielded from public view, to appear in the press as the authorities putting down riotous prisoners. This is a legitimate strike to improve conditions that even by a judicial review said they were breaking the law. Since that review, things have deteriorated. 

The following extract from It's Going Down.

    Thousands of prisoners have launched a historic work strike across what even the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is admitting is “most major male facilities,” throwing the system into a form of modified lockdown, as prison authorities attempt to break the strike by bringing in prisoners from other facilities. “This is a huge thing, this is a statewide initiative,” said abolitionist organizer, journalist, and podcast co-host of Millennials are Killing Capitalism, Jared Ware, who sat down with It’s Going Down to talk about the strike.

The strikes, which kicked off on Monday, took place alongside protests on the other side of the prison walls in Montgomery, Alabama, which delivered a set of the prisoners’ demands, centered around “broad criminal justice reforms and changes to the state’s prison conditions.” Also central to the prisoners’ demands is the issue of parole. As WAFF-48 reported:

More than four years ago, Alabama prisons were overcrowded to the point of being unconstitutional, according to federal court judges. Now, new data shows fewer paroles may be compounding that problem. In just four years, parole denials in Alabama nearly doubled.

That’s according to data from the Alabama Bureau of Pardons & Paroles compiled by the ACLU. That data shows the parole board denied 46% of applications in 2017. In 2021, 84% of parole applications were denied.

This crisis also has a racial dynamic, as the ACLU argued in a recent report:

The rate of parole denial is even more severe for black people in Alabama prisons. The current parole board has granted relief to white candidates at more than double the rate of black candidates. So far in FY 2022, 93 percent of black parole candidates have been denied, while 84 percent of white candidates have been denied. Black candidates saw a grant rate of just 7 percent compared to white candidates at 16 percent. The board has provided no explanation for this disparity.

For years, prisoners have been arguing that incarcerated workers could make changes by bringing the prison system to its knees through coordinated strikes. In the text, Let the Crops Rot in the Field, the Free Alabama Movement wrote:

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Prisons.

 

        Prison reform is the usual paracetamol, an attempt to make you feel better without attacking your real problem. Somehow there are those who call for better conditions for prisoners, better medical facilities, more education and recreational facilities, more family visits, etc.. What they seem to miss is that prisons, even if all these demands were met, would still be inhumane, institutions of repression and a form of cheap forced labour, abolition is the only humane answer. Forced incarceration of humans, as with other animals, is unacceptable in any civilised society. Those outside the prison system continually fight for justice and equality, it is only natural that those incarcerated with less justice and more inequality, will enter into struggle to relieve them from this inhumanity that swamps their lives.
     No matter how you dress them up, prisons are not "rehabilitation centres", "correction centres", or any other nice sounding name with which you wish to label them. The prime and only purpose of the judicial and prison system is to protect the status-quo of this unequal society. They are state institution to quell any dissent from the population, to turn the rebellious into the submissive, to intimidate and deter others from joining any organised attempt at changing the power, privilege and wealth structure of this unjust unequal society.
     The struggle for justice inside prisons is often is met with more savagery and brutality than those struggles outside those anonymous looking hellholes. So I believe they should always receive as much publicity as we can muster, their struggle is our struggle, there can be no justice and civilised society while the prison walls still stand.

      Bearing in mind that the prison system in the U$A is 100%, nothing more or less, than outright modern slavery, creating millions of dollars for the corporate world.

The following from AMW, English:

 

       Hundreds of prison rebels in the Cook Unit of the Eyman prison in Florence, Arizona surrounded prison staff and destroyed prison infrastructure during an uprising Wednesday afternoon. According to one prisoner, windows were broken during the uprising and the unit looked like it had “exploded.”
        Prisoners at the facility and their family members said that prisoners were moved to the recreation yard with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while officers searched their cells. “They came in with tear gas, flash bangs, pepper spray, and started shooting them at everyone,” one prisoner wrote in an email. “It was basically a war zone.”
      In response to the uprising, the facility has cancelled Thanksgiving video visitation.
       Over 400 prisoners at the facility have tested positive for COVID-19 during the pandemic and one has died, according to data maintained by the prison. Several family members of prisoners expressed concerns about conditions at the facility.
       The Arizona State Prison Complex at Eyman is Arizona’s single largest prison, imprisoning over 5,400 people.
      With prison pigs spreading the COVID-19 pandemic inside prisons, imprisoned comrades are taking action to defend themselves and rise up aginst the brutality of the prison enslavement system.

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Vindictive Cruelty.

 

    To lots of people, the state of Canada has managed to create around it the illusion of a civilised country, possibly because of comparisons with it nearest neighbour America. However, like all developed capitalist countries it has within its institution the savage claws of authoritarianism, and has no qualms about useing them. Ask its indigenous population, they will be able to reel off a catalogue of cruel and savage injustices perpetrated on them by the state for centuries.  

        Another section of the population of Canada, that continually feel the effect of those claws of authoritarianism is the prison population. This report from Quebec tells its own story. Across the world during this Covid19 pandemic, prisons have been one of the places where their populations have been left to rot. Callous, vindictive actions resulting in unnecessary deaths.

This from Act For Freedom Now: 

 

     Noise Demos Outside Montreal-Area Prisons Following Death of Prisoner and a Hunger Strike ,Canada.

Read also : Bordeaux Hunger Strike
Manifesto of Bordeaux Prisoners
Family Members and Advocates Call for Action after the Death of a Prisoner at Bordeaux

       10 May, Montreal – At 2pm today, a caravan of over 30 vehicles visited the Federal Training Centre prison in Laval and the Bordeaux jail in Montreal, demanding the immediate release of all prisoners in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vehicles, decorated with slogans such as, ‘Prison Should Not Be A Death Sentence,’ & ‘Free All Prisoners,’ honked their horns, made noise, and held banners in solidarity with those inside.
      “We’re here today to show people inside these prisons that they’re not forgotten and that we’re out here working for their release,” said Ellie Santon, a participant in the demonstration. “What’s happening in these prisons is a crisis created by the government. If they wanted to, they could solve all this tomorrow. For some reason they seem intent on letting people die.”

      On May 5th, Correctional Services Canada (CSC) announced that a prisoner held inside Laval’s Federal Training Centre had died from COVID-19, the second death inside a federal prison due to the pandemic. 138 prisoners have now tested positive for COVID-19 in the Federal Training Centre, making it the largest outbreak in a Quebec federal prison.
      “The government has spent months refusing to act and now the virus has exploded inside prisons and people are dying,” said Virginia Boucher of the Prison Support Committee. “There is no justifiable reason for this. People should be released from prison, now. People in halfway houses should be allowed to live at their own homes full time. Everyone released should have access to safe housing and healthcare.”
      On May 5th, prisoners in Quebec’s Bordeaux jail also began a hunger strike that has since spread to multiple sectors of the institution. There are over 60 cases of COVID-19 associated with the Bordeaux jail, where 75 percent of prisoners are being held pre-trial, making it the 2nd largest outbreak in a provincial prison.
      “I’m worried about my partner, who is in one of the infected sectors,” said Jean-Louis Nguyen, a participant in the demonstration. “He finally got tested on Friday, but we don’t know the results, and his parole hearing just got postponed by two weeks. Quebec needs to provide public information about what’s happening in its prisons and expedite bail and parole hearings to get as many people as possible out of prison and back with their communities.”
      “Quebec’s jails now have the highest infection rate of any province, but they’ve refused to act,” said Ted Rutland of the Anti-Carceral Group. “Provinces like Ontario and Nova Scotia have released thousands of prisoners by speeding up bail hearings and releasing people close to the end of their sentence, but Quebec refuses to follow their example.”
       Social distancing is impossible inside prisons and prisoners are at high risk of contracting COVID-19. Health care in prison is abysmal. Guards have employed pepper spray and force against prisoners across the country who have taken action to protest their situation. There are now over 500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to prisons across Canada.
#liberezlestou.te.s
#grevedefaimbordeaux
#bordeauxhungerstrike
#FreeThemAll
#FreeThemAllCaravan
#FreeThemAll4PublicHealth

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Coronavirus And Prisons.

        While all of us try to take what precautions we can in protecting ourselves, friends, family and neighbours from this Coronavirus attack, perhaps we should also be thinking of those who can do nothing to protect themselves from this pandemic.
      I am of course talking about those individuals locked up in the state's cages of repression, the prisons. Most prisons are overcrowded, conditions are far from perfect hygiene, due to lack of facilities, ideal conditions for the spread of infections, with the individual having no control over their conditions. Prison guards live in the outside society and make constant contact with the prisoners. They could be carriers of the infection into an environment that has no way of protecting itself.
      What is being done to protect these individuals? Absolutely nothing, and the prisoners and their families are well aware of this lack of assistance for this section of society in our community.
      In certain cases the prisoners themselves are trying to draw attention to their precarious, and yet avoidable situation, and are rebelling against this gross injustice. We owe them our full support and solidarity, they are being treated worse than animals. They are being contained in unacceptable conditions no matter the dangers to their health and well-being. Prisons in normal times are an abomination, in times such as this, they are a callous, vindictive gross injustice and totally inhuman and unacceptable institutions.

This from Anarchists Worldwide:

For the spread of the revolt!
     About the mutinies in Italian prisons against the state’s measures against Coronavirus       For several weeks now the Italian government has been testing increasingly radical measures to restrict freedom in order to manage the Coronavirus pandemic.
       While isolation and control are becoming increasingly harsh on the outside, the situation is becoming unbearable on the inside. For two weeks now, the visits, work and recreational activities have been restricted. In recent days, people who were on day-release are no longer allowed to go out and special permissions are no longer allowed. This also means the deprivation of access to basic necessities and goods (food, clean clothing, money…).
      Following these decisions, the first mutinies broke out on Saturday the 7th of March, spreading to around thirty prisons in the space of two days throughout Italy.
       The methods of revolt are simple and effective. From the north to the south of Italy, fire spread from one prison to another, prisoners climbed to the rooftops shouting “freedom and amnesty!”, prison guards were taken hostage, bars were twisted, official documents were reduced to ashes. There are no more traces of law enforcement officers in some wings of the buildings. In Modena, the entire prison closed down because the revolts made it unusable.
The figures that are beginning to circulate speak of more than a hundred escaped prisoners. We wish them good luck!      As the smoke rises high in the sky, relatives and people in solidarity gather at the bottom of the prisons, either to shout their support or to organize street blockades, thus blocking the arrival of the police, the GOM (prison police) and the military.
     The revolt is intense, the repression is ferocious: water and electricity cuts, helicopters flying over the prison walls, police violence…There are at least 12 dead in several prisons. The bourgeois press and the prison administration speak of overdoses following the looting of infirmaries, however relatives of the prisoners [gathered in solidarity outside the prisons] have heard gunshots. And several prisoners are hospitalized in intensive care.
     At the same time, politicians of all kinds are trying to pacify by offering access to telephones or Skype, while asking families to calm their loved ones…but it hasn’t been enough to break their determination.
We send them all our solidarity!
     We don’t need to make analyses of the current revolts, they speak for themselves of the attack on a system that locks up and controls through fear and threats.
       By relying on an urgency and a generalized fear that they have helped to create, the different states place themselves as saviours in the face of the catastrophe and impose their logic and their measures on us. They compete in inventiveness to deepen control and surveillance and experiment with different tools for population management.
       Moreover, France is talking about setting up a specific system for prisons in the coming days.
       Apart from these situations, the reality of prisons is always disgusting.
Faced with imprisonment, there are always good reasons to revolt!

Coronavirus or not, in Italy or elsewhere, fire to all prisons!

March 11th, 2020.
[Originally published on Nantes Indymedia on 12.03.2020]

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Cages To Protect The Rich And Powerful.

          Contrary to the vomit that the babbling brook of bullshit spews out, prisons are not places where bad, bad people are sent. Prisons are cages where the state locks up those it sees as a threat to its power and control of the system. They always have been, and always will be, there for that purpose. The vast majority of people take umbrage at scraping a living while a band of greedy power mongers wallows in opulence, produced from the sweat of the ordinary people. No doubt they would take action to sort out that injustice. Hence the conditioning, by means of propaganda and a skewed education system, to a set of rules and regulations that will perpetuate the status quo, backed up with a phoney judicial system that will punish those who dare to undermine the glaring injustice on which the system is based. Prisons are one of the state’s tools in its armoury to protect the rich and powerful. They are also now part of the vast corporate slave labour industrial complex. If you call for justice, if you respect freedom, if you believe in humanity, then you must stand against the prison system and stand with the prisoners. 

 Support for US prison strike September 9th. 2016. 

 

This from Radio Fragmata:

          It’s been years now that the various state agencies of repression order the conduct of investigation under the sole criterion the suspects’ political status. This is the status of the anarchist, mainly of the one who turns his/her ideas into actions, of the one that arms his/her desires and attacks state authority. So each investigation has to do with the possible prosecution of comrades according to the laws of their “democracy.” Police prosecution that starts off with texts and extends to all possible actions is not new amongst the anarchist circles. On the contrary, there is a past record on relative prosecutions in countries such as Italy, Chile etc. where there is a strong comrade presence promoting direct action and intervention. The common goal of contemporary international police is the prevention of anarchist propaganda, anarchist action and the spreading of our ideas. For this reason, in many cases they don’t even hesitate to put aside the refined mask of “democracy” that supposedly allows “freedom of speech and ideas.” And thus, any illusion that anyone may still hold is withdrawn. Things are now clear: “anarchist action or speech is either illegal or nothing at all!”

Read the full article HERE:

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