Freedom.

 

         In conjunction with Call for International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners 2023 // 23 – 30 August.

From Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross

[PDF for printing]

         Fire Ant is a quarterly publication focused on spreading the words of anarchist prisoners and generating material solidarity for our imprisoned friends. Begun as a collaboration between anarchist prisoners and anarchists in Maine, Fire Ant seeks to raise material aid for anarchist prisoners while fostering communication between anarchists on both sides of the walls.

        Issue #16 features art, poetry, letters, and essays by Sean Swain, Marius Mason, Michael Kimble, and Eric King; and an update on Thomas Meyer-Falk.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Fire Ant.

             I love anarchist serials, and papers that can be spread around the community, workplace and on the street. It is a wonderful simple way of spreading our ideas and it can reach outside the social media bubble. All such literature is important, but one that I think should always get a little extra push from us by spreading it around is those serials, periodicals papers that support anarchist prisoners. Locked in state cages for their beliefs, we mustn't forget them. Fire ant is one and it is available for free download and printing, so why not do a few and spread them around.

The following from Enough is Enough:

          Fire Ant is a quarterly publication focused on spreading the words of anarchist prisoners and generating material solidarity for our imprisoned friends.

Originally published by Fire Ant.

PDF for printing (Fire Ant #13)

          Begun as a collaboration between anarchist prisoners and anarchists in Maine, Fire Ant seeks to raise material aid for anarchist prisoners while fostering communication between anarchists on both sides of the walls.
           Issue #13 is a special June 11th edition of Fire Ant, featuring Sean Swain’s June 11th statement, thoughts on prisoner support from Lauren Swain, an interview with Jennifer Rose, a text by Comrade Z, an autobiographical piece by Thomas Meyer-Falk, Toby Shone’s June 11th statement, Michael Kimble on Afrikan anarchism, updates on Eric King, and the 2022 June 11th call.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Alternatives.

 

          How much longer will it take for humanity to permeate its way through our society. We have legislation making it virtually impossible for refugees to seek refuge when fleeing torture/deprivation/persecution/war and all its violent array of consequences. We have prisons that treat those enmeshed in its tentacles as less than human. We have poverty/homelessness/deprivation in the midst of unimaginable wealth, and still we hear the mantra from those with all the wealth, privileges and power, that this is the only way to run our society. Sooner or later we will all have to stand up and say loud and clear, this is a load of bullshit, there are alternatives that can see to the needs of all our people. No prisons, no persecution, no exploitation.

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

 

         On 24/12, comrade Haris Mantzouridis was discharged from the psychiatric hospital in Dafni and transferred to the Prisoners’ Psychiatric Hospital in Korydallos prison. He was immediately placed in “quarantine”, where he will remain from 4 to 7 days (it is not certain exactly how many).
The conditions there are deplorable, which reflects the general conditions of detention in the prison in the midst of a pandemic. He is kept in a very small room with three other prisoners, and new ones are added every day, which increases the actual chances of catching covid. The window is broken, so it is very cold, the mattresses are ripped, broken glass, blood and excrement on the floor, food is thrown away by all the prisoners, the possibility of communication with his own people is minimal.
         It is obvious that these conditions of detention further aggravate the already shaken mental and physical health of the comrade. We will be back for any further developments.
        No one alone – let there be no one alone in the hands of the State!
Immediate release of comrade Harry Mantzouridis!
Prisoners’ lives matter!
Assembly of Solidarity to the imprisoned, fugitives and persecuted militants
via: athens.indymedia

See also Toby Shone:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

Solidarity.

          To all those who see the prison system for what it is, the state's main line of defence against dissent, a weapon to attempt induce submissiveness among the population. Within its mind destroying cages is an army of those who faced off the state and its brutal authoritarian apparatus. They all deserve our full support and solidarity and our never ending struggle to see that entire prison system and the society that requires them smouldering in ashes. June 11th. marks International Day of Solidarity with all long term anarchists prisoners, Let the world reverberate with the strength of our solidarity. We cannot forget them. 

The following from Act for Freedom Now:

 [PDF for printing] [PDF for reading]

         Against another year of state encroachment, against the restriction of free movement under the auspices of “safety,” against the continued brutalization of our friends in prison, we call for a renewal of solidarity on June 11, 2021: International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. For 17 years, June 11th has been an occasion for celebration, mourning, and revolt. It has been a moment to breathe, to remember those fallen and those in cages, to remind ourselves of why we remain committed to the Beautiful Idea of anarchism. Through our letters, demonstrations, fundraising, and solidarity attacks we keep the beacon lit for those who have given years of their lives for their conviction that the State is a horror against which we must wager our lives.
MEMORY REMAINS A WEAPON
         June 11th is, in the words of Christos Tsakalos, a day against oblivion. The architects of prison society would have prison function as a memory hole, casting our dear rebels into the void and producing in free souls a stifling amnesia. They want us to forget those who took action against the state and economy and those who continue their rebellion behind bars. Our work of solidarity with imprisoned anarchists is a hammer blow against forgetting: against the prison walls and the narcotizing technological society that shatters all meaning.

Continue reading HERE:

 

Visit ann arky's home at

 http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page  

Solidarity.

         All prisons are hell-holes, edifices to state repression and savagery, essential part of the states apparatus for creating a submissive population, of course they fail miserably. While they still stand, those enmeshed in its vile tentacles deserve our support and solidarity.
       The following is an opportunity to go all arty and at the same time support comrades caught up in the states loaded judicial system.

Image from Act For Freedom Now.

 From "Unoffensive Animal"

 

             As you all know, one of the main jobs we do is supporting comrades in prison and folks who have to cover fines after taking action. The reality of it is that we never make enough money in order to cover everything we would like to cover, even counting PayPal donations, patreon donations and merch.
         Luckily, many of you are super generous and want to help in any way possible. These time, we bring you something just a tad different thanks to @goaskforde, who has donated artwork to raise funds to support prisoners.
          We are going to run a little raffle for a couple of weeks. The tickets can be bought through our website for 7.50 GBP and you can get as many tickets as you want. If you win, @goaskforde will send:
– “Now” Framed original 10×12″ ink drawing of a wolf
– “Light a Match, Burn a Prison” signed 8×10″ fine art giclee print
– Large vinyl “Boltcuttter Birdie” sticker
– Large vinyl “Praying mantis” sticker
         In addition, we will send a hoodie of your choice (stock dependent!) and a bunch of stickers.
         So if you like art, or simply if you’d like to support us and help us keep helping folks, please grab yourself a ticket or two down below:
We will announce the winners on the 3rd of May, so you have 14 days to get as many tickets as you can and to share this around as much as possible!
         Also, please follow @goaskforde on instagram and support artists as much as possible. You can also find the artwork on www.goaskforde.com
Solidarity

 Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Cages Are Cruelty.

      There can be no rationale for prisons in a civilised society, locking animals in cages is considered cruel, but we tolerate humans being lock up in cages.  Locking large numbers of people up in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions with poor or nonexistent medical facilities, more so during this coronavirus pandemic, must be considered a crime against humanity. Across the world we are talking about millions of individuals, a vast amount of them suffering from physical and/or psychological problems that should treated by the medical profession, but instead are lock up in what can only be described as state institutions of repression and torture. Recently the Turkish state stood callously by and watched two prisoners die, a week or so apart, from the results of a hunger strike, that is the way of states and prisons. Now the states across the world have turned society in to what it has always desired, a totally controlled environment a large open prison, where obedience and submission are seen as a duty. This is the true nature of any state. All those unfortunate enough to be enmeshed in the state's institutions of torture and repression deserve our fullest solidarity and support. 

    Freedom and justice cannot co-exist with prisons, such a situation is a contradiction, freedom and justice will only grow from the ashes of all prisons.

The following from ATHENS Indymedia:

SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS ALL OVER THE WORLD

CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION
         The existing health crisis and its management from governments until now, globally, has unmasked the real character of authority, which was hiding itself behind the democratic mask. This oppressive system imposed an ultimate control of life, forbidding everything. Now, all civil liberties have become senseless words. This extreme condition that we live in, reveals that the prison-model is the true capitalistic model of society.
       Prison is the most extreme form of bio-politics and extermination. Prisoners are under constant surveillance and control, something that, nowadays is happening to the whole society.
      In this period of time, prisoners in greek prisons are dying, one after another, from minor causes such as rotten teeth etc. Selim Zerolari and Azizel Demiroglou were two prisoners that we were informed about their deaths, this month. Mass media, of course, managed to conceal or distort these news. Furthermore, the state has grabbed the opportunity, due to the curfew, to move the most active prisoners, anarchists and others, into other prisons. Silence in the streets gives more power to the state to repress the voices of the imprisoned people.
      Incarceration has always been, and remains, a form of torture and a tool of submission for authority. If we don't resist to this modern totalitarianism, we will live in this prison-society, which states systematically impose.
     Throughout the planet, in the face of the corona virus threat, prisoners stacked in prisons and migrant concentration camps are shouting: We are prisoners, not death row convicts!

Korinthos migrant concentration camp, Greece: 1,200 migrants go on hunger strike, March ‘20

Italy, March ‘20: 27 prisons in revolt due to the corona virus, many prisoners killed in the clashes

Argentina, April ‘20: revolt in Concordia prison, guards respond with shootings

Palmasola, Bolivia, May ‘20: 2 prisoners left to die from the corona virus, prisoners revolt

Chile: stirke mobilization at high security prison in Santiago, May ‘20

Thebes prison, Greece: prisoners revolt after prisoner dies beause she was not taken to hospital, April ‘20

MEET ALL PRISONERS DEMANDS
FREEDOM TO ALL WHO ARE IN THE CELLS
PUBLIC HEALTH CARE FOR ALL – PRISONERS AND MIGRANTS
OPEN ALL CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR MIGRANTS
AS LONG AS BORDERS AND PRISONS EXIST NOBODY IS FREE
CALL TO INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS

29-30-31 MAY 2020

comrades, solidarians with prisoners’ struggles

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The State's Brain Washing Factories.

 

      A large section of the public believe that prison is just a place where they lock-up "the bad people". A place where they are given meals, exercise, and access to books and TV, so they don't give it much thought. However, the truth is far removed from that naive illusion. Prisons are one tool in the state's armoury to create a submissive population. Once enmeshed in the judicial/prison system your every action will be dictated, rules and regulations will be used in an arbitrary manner to enforce your submission. The snake that is the judiciary system will slither hither and thither in a web of legislation to crush who you are, and attempt to create who they want you to be, a subservient digit in the general population, easily controlled and no threat to the establishment's power, wealth and privileges.The prison system is a series of brain washing factories, whose only function is to protect the established power structure, a structure of power and privilege for the few at the expense of the many. 

 This from Act For Freedom Now:

       21st of December we call to let the imagination flow and to express solidarity in its multiple forms. Once again we will show that our imprisoned comrades are not alone but present and on the streets with us.
        They want to raise even higher walls, not only of concrete and iron, but also of loneliness and isolation. And these walls we want to break down, with love, affection, rage and solidarity for our comrade Lisa.

You can send pictures and audiovisuals to solidaritatrebel@riseup.net

         Having received a sentence does not imply that the imprisoned person is “only” at the mercy of the prison system. The political and judicial machine of the State continues to investigate, observe, analyse, and decide over the fate of the imprisoned. Especially when the prisoner has not fallen to her knees asking for mercy in front of the court, has not humiliated herself by some kind of gesture seen by the enemy as “reconciliation”, the ways in which the justice system can demonstrate that they are not through with her yet are numerous. The refusal to cooperate with the police is considered proof of guilt and can be used to maintain the investigation open for an indefinite period of time. The silence and dignity in the face of the executioners and their accusations is considered concealment of the crime, and can generate new investigations.
       Furthermore, being socialised as a woman and not reproducing the assigned roles, in this case for example having a rebellious attitude or a non-submissive position towards the institution, generates multiple sentences which go beyond a conviction at a juridical level, since there is also the intervention of moral and social condemnations, inherent to the patriarchal framework, which ist framing prisoner to the circumstances of the imprisonment.
To continue expressing your political convictions and ideas from within the walls and not denying who you are is considered a lack of repentance and an argument for why a prison sentence does not suffice.
         And when the legal arsenal is exhausted in a “reasonable” sentence, that is, sufficiently heavy to accommodate the accusation, but the ethic of the imprisoned person stays intact, the justice system does not hesitate to attack the relations with the outside world, the family ties, sentimental bonds and friendships. Besides the concrete, the iron bars, the artificial lights and security cameras which not only cut off life but also suffocate it, they add mountains of paper which need to be traversed in order to obtain simple human contact with the people close to you. Requests, permissions, authorisations, postponements, which put the will to not feel defeated to the test.
         On the 7th of June Lisa, our anarchist comrade, was sentenced by the court of Aachen (Germany) to seven and a half years in prison for robbing a bank. At this moment we are awaiting the outcome of an appeal written by the lawyers which, if accepted, will involve a revision of the sentence and imply that the case will be brought to court again. Therefore our comrade is still held in preventive arrest in the prison of Cologne. Due to an illness which lasted various months, her mother died in the beginning of November. During this time, the prosecutor as well as the judge, alleging “flight risk”, have denied her the possibility to visit her mother in hospital and also the permission to be present at her funeral.
        The enemy does not only use juridical argumentation, but employs many more insidious mechanisms. Like in so many other cases, when the thirst for revenge of the justice system is not satisfied with a simple – however large it may be – prison sentence, the enemy continues to be hawk-eyed, searching for every supposed weakness of the prisoner in order to submit her. It is clear that this is a purely vengeful means, an answer to the comrade’s firm and non-collaborationist attitude. An additional punishment, invented to aggravate the already tough sentence of confinement; yet another attempt to make her bow down, this time aiming at her private life and personal circumstances. A logic, nothing new, of judicial blackmail with the aim of undermining her coherence and political convictions.
        They want to raise even higher walls, not only of concrete and iron, but also of loneliness and isolation. And these walls we want to break down, with love, affection, rage and solidarity for our comrade Lisa.

With hate for the enemy.
We do not forget. We do not forgive.

Some anarchist comrades

solidaritatrebel.noblogs.org

Prisons, The Anthithesis Of Justice.

          It is difficult for people on the "outside" to grasp the full extent of the harsh brutality within the prison system. It is not just the removal of your freedom to move about, but the total surveillance, the arbitrary and vindictive rules in an attempt to have total control over you, to keep you in a state of submissiveness, the violence it breeds, and the isolation from friends and family. Despite these inhuman conditions, because humans are what they are, the desire to be free still burns within, and manifests itself in many ways. Not a new article, but still well worth reading again. Michael Kimble has spent 31 years in prison, and is still fighting against the savage oppression that is the state's way of handling those it deems unmanageable and/or a threat, the prison system. All prisoners are suffering an injustice, prisons are the antithesis of justice, freedom and justice will only blossom when the last prison has been bulldozed and given birth to a meadow of wild flowers.

        The following is an extract from an interview with Michael Kimble in 2015:

Could you talk a bit about why you got locked up in the late ’80s?

          I got locked up in 1986 for the murder of a white guy that wanted to do harm to me and a friend who was out one night walking. We had our arms around each other and this guy started fucking with us, calling us fags, niggers, and all kinds of disrespectful, homophobic and racist shit. When he attacked after confronting him, I pulled a pistol I had on me and shot him. The media tried to turn it into a racially motivated murder and all kinds of things. I really didn’t know any of this until I had a chance to view my Pre-sentence Investigation Report (PSI) and this was after I had already been in prison awhile. I took the case to trial and received a life sentence and here I am 29 years later, still in prison because of a homophobic racist. I have no regrets about it.

You’ve talked before about your political development while in prison – from communism to anarchy. Could you tell us about how that happened? Were there experiences, events, relationships, or writings that pushed you in the direction of anti-authoritarian action?

         Yeah, I became a communist in my early years as I’ve said before, because it spoke to the oppression of Black, gay, poor people and of course prisoners, and espoused the idea of creating a world free of these oppressions. I became a part of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) which was very vocal at the time and it seemed that all the warriors from the Black Liberation Movement was part of the NAIM. And they were active in the prisons as far as legal (lawsuits, letter, phone campaigns, education) support and visiting prisoners. And of course, they participated in cultural programs as well in the prisons here in Alabama. Also around this time the ABCs had begun to be visible through their support of “political prisoners/prisoners of war” from the previous decades’ movements (BLA, BPP, UFF, anti-imperialists, WUO, etc)1 , so I started receiving literature and newspapers (The Blast, Love & Rage, Bulldozer, Fifth Estate, etc.) and started to learn about anarchism and it resonated with me. Shit, I was against authority, against oppression and started to see the contradictions between statehood (government) and freedom. Anarchism was/is talking about doing away with all this, and putting into practice now and not waiting on the future. And I’ve been a staunch anarchist since.

Read the full interview HERE: 

From Anarchy Live, an extract from the latest writings of Michael Kimble:

        A new year, same shit! I’m not really a writer and don’t really like writing, and don’t have anything in particular to write about, so I’ll just put things down as it pops in my head.
          Lately, my mind has been troubled about a lot of things and I do feel compelled to write something. One is how we keep going for the same old stuff that power be putting down. It’s really depressing when I see that even some anarchists, who should know better, decry the election/selection of Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. Don’t we realize that Clinton is just another piece in the power matrix and that she would only continue that status quo of power’s domination?
Right now as I write I’m sitting in a single person cell freezing. It’s in the low 30s tonight and there is no heat. I’ve been doing exercise to stay warm. Now I’m tired and decided to attempt to write something coherent and meaningful. I’ve been in this cell since January 4, 2017, allegedly for discussing actions planned for January 20, 2017 with a comrade on the east coast in a letter. They are calling it a conspiracy. Then, a cell phone was found in my property by the riot squad, who has been deployed here at Holman for the last couple of months in an attempt to regain control and restore order to a population that has proven to be tired of order. But since I’m an outlaw, I’m not tripping.

Read the full article HERE

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk