This experience is the starter of the development on both a political and a personal level. Imprisonment is an almost inevitable experience for anyone who has decided to join the armed struggle. But the question, as in every experience, is whether and how to take advantage of it.
The birth of the prison has always been built upon cultivation and perpetuation of validation of submission of those who do not conform to the predefined standards of society. However, there are some people whose desire for freedom burns their hearts in a way that does not allow them to accept the role imposed on them as part of the prison automation, even for a single moment during their imprisonment. When it comes to these people, prison fails miserably in its purpose, and despite the walls and bars that stand around them capturing their bodies, they themselves remain rebellious and actually free. Neither souls nor spirits fit in cages.
Let’s start at the very beginning. First of all, as anarchists that have declared war on all aspects of the modern civilized world, we know well that in order to become dangerous, it is necessary to use all kinds of means. Armed propaganda was, is and will remain an integral part of the diverse anarchist struggle. Theory is undoubtedly a very useful tool yet it validates its original meaning only when reflected in the respective action. It is essential to establish a clear dividing line between the enemy and us, since liberation from the system requires its practical rejection. Resistance cannot stop where the penal code begins.
Unfortunately self-assurance and ideologized fear, widespread in the largest part of the broader anarchist community, is the foundation of modern political theory. This ceaseless chatter and the harmless so-called revolutionary rhetoric that espouses communist spearheads leads gradually to alternativism and reformism and it just manages to produce and reproduce a couch potato criticism which, on the one hand, constantly diverges away from anarchist ideas and values, and on the other one, it is clearly and completely unable to contribute to the fertilizing of a ground that would promote the evolution of each one individually and collectively. It is really oxymoron and yet tragic that while repression is at its peak point nowadays, at the same time, we observe a pacification of the official anarchist community.
Certainly the current situation can’t be an excuse for anyone, since we, as individuals who come from the ranks of this community, are facing a dilemma. Either we remain still, preserving the status quo, or we choose to overpass it. As long as people who come in touch with anarchy do not assume that by their actions, not to actively and decisively define how they want to achieve their goals but to be left to an undoubtedly convenient slumber , they will always be silent subjects who know deep inside them the extent of them not acting and consequently their thinking will be assimilated by the thinking of those who have more “experience” or recognition. This kind of thinking cannot apparently be subversive if it aims at maintaining the existing informal hierarchy we all know that is stagnated within the “community”.
Furthermore, one thing especially striking is the persistence of most “anarchists” to find a “revolutionary subject”. It is often society that is considered a “revolutionary subject”. In other words, a mass of people unable to wake up from their peaceful sleep of fixed certainties provided by a regularity of habit, routine and self-assurance. Personally, I refuse to allow the compromises and the immobility of the masses to prevent my moving towards action. Besides, the structure of modern society by institutions, roles and values which dictate every kind of human relationship and regulate how to think and what to feel by raising mediocrity to the highest virtue, is itself poisoning every moment of every single day of my existence. Everyday life is filled with mechanical movements continuously repeated in a boring background, waiting at some point is permanently interrupted by death and then, all that is left is the endless void of the unfulfilled. This is how reality is structured and it is formed by itself so rigidly that makes it completely unbearable for me.
In this decision to actively and directly threaten the status quo of this reality, the release of imprisoned comrades is also included. The decision to escape strengthens the everlasting choice of not raising a white flag, as the physical limitation imposed by the prison is not capable to reduce the intensity of the passion for freedom burning in the heart of every rebel, nor is it able to block the desire to continue attacking authority and its mechanisms as well as the servile mass whose submissiveness and inaction creates a quiet environment of uniformity, lawfulness and political correctness that wiped out every individuality and eliminates the slightest possibility of liberation from the chains that have been imposed on us.
What could therefore be a deeper, more effective and more sincere move of solidarity with these comrades, who refused justice of authority without remorse by choosing to reclaim their freedom in order to continue fighting against authority, than to share the guilt involved in conspiring with them by helping to end their captivity?
Every choice has certainly it’s cost, especially when this choice is deeply hurting the prestige of the state, as it puts under serious doubt its seemingly unbeatable strength. This time the state demonstrating all its vengeful fury, went a step further by prosecuting, arresting and imprisoning relatives of the Conspiracy comrades Christos and Gerasimos Tsakalos and George Polydoros (Athena Tsakalou, Evi Statiri, Christos Polydoros), with the grotesque charges of belonging and participating in the organization. This is a desperate, yet extremely challenging way trying to demoralize those within whose faces the state recognizes its enemy; the unrepentant anarchists of action who -against all odds and no matter how many years are being added to their penalties- will not stop attacking the essence of democracy. Along with this greater repression, domination aims at dissemination of fear in order to make it clear that any kind of relationship with those who refuse to surrender their weapons is punished hard, therefore aims at the greatest possible isolation of political prisoners. But, no matter how deep they believe that such practices would be likely to make us denounce our anarchist values or direct action, they are simply fooling themselves. Once again all they are going to get is our absolute contempt and our most powerful rage.
Finally, regarding the parody that will be set up in the courtroom of Korydallos prison, I have no desire to pose as the system’s victim because at first I am honored that I participated in the escape attempt of CCF comrades and apart from that, something like that would at least mean a psychological subjugation of me before law and order. The review of my penal code is coldly irrelevant to me. If I turned back the time a thousand times, I would make the same life choices over and over again because I feel alive only by breathing free.
Angeliki Spyropoulou
women’s prison of Korydallos
14.02.16.
