Reportbacks (2016)
Please email us if you hear of an event or action for this years' June 11th. We will be putting out our annual reportback in a couple of weeks!
June 11, 2016
For June 11th, 2015, we emphasized transition in the struggle and in the lives of the prisoners we support. This year we’re focusing on a different kind of transition: the restructuring of the prison system and thus doubling down on opposition to Maximum Security, isolation, and Communications Management Units. High-security facilities are not new: for example, Communications Management Units isolated Daniel McGowan and Andy Stepanian for years. But now we are at a new juncture: there is both a fresh focus on the part of the authorities reorganizing prisons to maximize repression against long-term and combative prisoners, while simultaneously cutting costs. In response there has been a wave of resistance and revolt--in the streets and in the prisons. As this wave spreads organically, we feel impelled to contribute in support of our imprisoned friends and comrades.
Around the world, repression intensifies against anarchists, their comrades, and their families. The left-wing SYRIZA government in Greece continues the isolation of rebellious prisoners in the C-type maximum security prisons. The Spanish state attempts to criminalize anarchist solidarity through an “anti-terrorist” spectacle of raids, arrests, and show trials. Anarchists from Santiago to Kansas City face decades in prison for choosing the path of revolt and for their refusal to bow before pressure from the state. Everywhere we look: the state's jaws clamp down on rebellion.
But all this cannot break our comrades or the spirit of our struggle. As Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar are sentenced to twelve years in prison, anarchists respond to their persecution with smoke and shattered glass. As the Greek state levels its force against the families of the imprisoned comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and condemns Nikos Maziotis to life in prison, fugitive comrade Pola Roupa attempts to hijack a helicopter to free the imprisoned fighters. As Osman Evcan and Eric King both fight the state's attempts to starve them for their refusal to consume flesh, comrades mobilize to ensure that their demands are backed with acts of solidarity. As the Chilean state continues to arrest and imprison anarchists, an intransigent minority strikes back in vengeance. As the State of Ohio continues to restrict Sean Swain's communications, those holding the controls find their names and addresses spread online. As the state constructs an “anti-terrorism” roundup in Belgium, the multiform struggle against prison society there continues, unflinching and defiant. As the United States prison system continues its brutal enforcement of white supremacy and the social liquidation of undesirables, prisons from Alabama to Nebraska face the flames of rebellion. Everywhere we look, the revolt against prison society deepens and spreads.
Increased Control Within Prison...
The movement towards absolute control within prisons is the state’s movement towards complete “security”: maximum and supermax security prisons, secure housing, isolation, control, and communication management units. In Spain, FIES; in Greece, C-type. Though they go by many names, they serve the same function. These institutions are an exaggeration of the tools and logic of prisons: complete isolation in small, windowless cells for 22-23 hours per day; restricted phone access; few, if any, write-outs. Non-contact visits means one might not touch another person for months or years. Guards, cameras, and mail censoring maintain constant surveillance. Erratic administrations and useless grievance procedures means pervasive uncertainty, indefinite punishment, and no recourse for one’s placement. Anarchist prisoner Sean Swain explains, “What you are experiencing is designed to be painful...to cause debility, dependence, and dread.” Greek prisoner Angeliki Spyropoulou wrote that “prison has always been built upon...submission of those who do not conform to the predefined standards of society and...domination aims at dissemination of fear.” This illuminates who these prisons are designed for.
Control units in the US are primarily populated by Muslim “extremists” (mostly young men entrapped by the FBI) and black and brown people labeled as gang members. There are also politically outspoken prisoners and rebellious “troublemakers.” What they have in common is that these are the people the state does not want communicating: with each other, or with the outside. Subversive communication and real relationships would be a threat to security. While in the US these control units are often justified by the threat of terrorist bogeyman, in other cases the motivations are more explicit. It is clear C-type prisons in Greece were created in response to combative anarchists, guerrillas, and other rebels.
While these facilities are intended to isolate and control rebellious populations, the inverse often results: instead of dampening the fires of rebellion, high security facilities spark powerful resistance. In 2013 30,000 California prisoners started an indefinite hunger strike followed by years of ongoing struggle, initiated by some prisoners confined to isolation in the maximum security Pelican Bay facility. They focused their demands on the intolerable conditions of the control unit, and their struggle contributed to minor but meaningful reforms to California’s procedures for solitary confinement. Isolation is now banned from federal juvenile facilities. Last year Greek prisoners engaged in a hunger strike for 48 days against the creation of the C-type prisons, anti-terrorism laws, and forced DNA sampling, ending in renewed indications of government capitulation. And earlier this year Fabio Dusco chose to reject the State's attempt at neutralization and to fight against the conditions of his detention. Sean Swain has seen some of the deepest and darkest parts of the ODRC, yet still he continues to fight, laughing in the face of his censors. In defiance of the state’s attempt to silence and punish him, Marius continues to write and fight in defense of the earth, animals, and trans prisoners. In March at Holman prison, Alabama DOC’s notorious high security facility, an uprising took place in which a guard and the warden were injured, prisoners temporarily took control of some spaces, and one participant declared, “We’re tired of this shit, there’s only one way to deal with it: tear the prison down."
...Increased control without prison
Even as governments around the world institute harsher forms of control within prisons, they spread glib platitudes about prison reform, community accountability, and the unmanageable size of prison populations. Prison reform has been in the air for several years now, due both to pressure from rebels and the resulting bad press, as well as an economic imperative: prisons are expensive and unwieldy, unfit for the lean, flexible new governmental and productive regime. Conservatives want to cut back spending, and the president has decided that prison is a human-interest issue. However, we know that the controlled shrinking of the prison system will not look like the liberation that some prison abolitionists dream of. Rather, it will advance a rationalization of control – cheaper, smaller prisons targeting the incorrigible, non-adaptive, and rebellious prisoners, alongside expanded surveillance and “smart” state intervention on the outside of the prison walls. Razor wire and guards are being replaced by GPS monitoring, strict probation requirements, "soft" policing, and privatized community security forces.
While we can't deny our tenuous relief when daily conditions improve for those in prison, we remain deeply suspicious of these improvements. We know that the goal remains increasingly sinister social control, even if the techniques are softened or made more palatable. We know that these measures, while improving conditions for some, simply serve to justify the heaviest repression against others. The state separates the sheep from the goats, while the reformists look on silently. This world relies on imprisonment and social control, and it is only by fighting against this world and against control in all of its forms that we might grasp moments of freedom.
Long-term Imprisonment
We are opposed to prison in all of its forms, and we remain skeptical of dividing prisoners into "political" and others. June 11, however, is a specific day of solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners. By focusing on long-term imprisonment, we want to ensure that none of our comrades are forgotten, even if they've already been behind bars for decades. But when we speak about long-term imprisonment, we aren't making reference to a specific criteria, a length of sentence or extended limbo (for us, any day that anyone spends in prison is already too long). Rather, we want to bring light to those who've been identified by the state as the most guilty and intransigent, the ones who won't be first in line for a pardon as certain aspects of prison are phased out. Marius Mason, Marco Camenisch, Monica and Francisco, among others, act as reagents, by which we can test various proposals for addressing the prison system. Will such-and-such proposal lead to their release? The reformist proposals will leave the eco-arsonists, the anti-nuclear saboteurs, and the desecrators of cathedrals inside the prison walls, condemned to expanded maximum-security units.
Solidarity, local and networked
We have worked to spread information, inspiration, and decentralized solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners. The existence of a diffuse network of support is vital to both durable aid to our imprisoned comrades and the growth of a subversive movement. It's deeply exciting that this network is not only diffuse but multiform, with solidarity expressing itself in many forms – from widespread efforts to fundraise and support prisoners, to efforts to link them with ongoing struggles, to combative actions that continue the fight against domination and ecological destruction.
But this network can't only express itself in local forms without risking either isolation or a reliance on digital “communication.” We want to experiment with new and flexible modes of convergence and conversation in order to revitalize the struggle and enrich our discussions. As Avalanche magazine puts it in their argument for a new anti-prison coordination:
“This international proposal doesn’t aim at the creation of some organisation, but at the opening of spaces of exchange, of mutual knowledge and debate. We won’t doubt this will permit a better knowledge of what is going on elsewhere, creating the conditions for interventions considered in the perspective of international solidarity and common struggle, to give birth to temporary coordination between different struggles and fights, to deepen the informality out of which, according to affinities and projects, create initiatives. In this way, through the mutual knowledge of the projects of struggle, this international proposal aims at stimulating “organisational occasions”, not with the aim of a growth in quantity but of the quality of revolutionary intervention.”
For these reasons among many others, we welcome the call for a convergence in Washington DC this June 11th, combining a demonstration against the Bureau of Prisons with an occasion for discussion and sharing of ideas. We hope this will create new combinations of diffuse, local action with coordinated, regional and international activity. Against the attempted greenwashing of prison initiatives initiatives, we know that prisons are fundamentally toxic to human life: both the social conditions that they sustain and create, and the literal toxins that litter the site of a newly proposed maximum security prison in Letcher County, KY. Once Capital finished stripping coal from mountaintops, the State moved in to build a prison on the ravaged landscape.
June 11: Every year, everywhere, until the prisons burn and our comrades walk free.
We hope that June 11 revitalizes solidarity for those comrades facing the longest sentences and builds momentum against the cages they're locked in. Recent struggles against the expansion of these cages continue to demonstrate the expansive possibilities of solidarity. In situations of prison construction, by weaving together locals, residents, and prisoners who would both be harmed by a new prison. Or, in the case of the hunger strikes against the new C-Type maximum security wings in Greece, by knitting together prisoners from different groups, outside radicals, and family members. The potential of subverting the state's plans for restructuring prisons opens another front in the struggle, beyond supporting individual comrades and organizing to help prison rebellions. These struggles are currently proliferating in the US, from the opposition to the new youth jail in Seattle or the construction of the ICE facility in Gary, Indiana, to the community fight against the maximum security facility in eastern Kentucky. Let's link these experiences together in order to strengthen ourselves, whether we're inside or outside the existing prisons. Successfully challenging the restructuring of the prisons and the existence of the Maximum Security and Communications Management Units, particularly through the combined power of organizing inside and outside of the walls, is a clear step towards the power to destroy prisons and the society that requires them.
The struggle against prisons must take many forms. It must be both slow and steady and fast and unpredictable. Supporting imprisoned comrades requires diligence, patience, and time to grow real relationships. Our imprisoned comrades remain in the struggle, and we will continue to support them and conspire with them in whatever ways we can. But we also want to relentlessly attack the infrastructure and logic of prisons, to become complicit with struggles inside and against prisons. June 11 can be many things: a fundraiser; an opportunity to spread tbe word and raise awareness; a chance to connect personally with longterm anarchist prisoners via letter or phone; an intervention to begin struggling determinedly against a prison construction project; an attack; a chance to find a crack in the structure of prison society and exploit it.
Whether by yourself or with a hundred comrades, we hope that you take action this June 11: against prisons, and in solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners. Thank you for all the solidarity you show, on June 11th or any day. It means everything.
Pot-luck and Letter Writing in solidarity with the international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners
LOCATION: Morningside Park, Albuquerque, NM 87108
TIME: 11 AM June 11th, 2016
https://www.facebook.com/events/1009603522427359
We will be hosting a June 11th vegan ice cream and letter writing event at 7PM.
Heiwa Annex
522 Miller Ave
Postcards and vegan ice cream provided
Film showing and discussion on US prisons at Firestorm Cafe.
Details TBA
Demo & outreach at Travis County Jail
June 9, 9am
3614 Bill Price Rd, Del Valle, TX 78617
https://www.facebook.com/events/1535181800122890/
All events at Boxcar Books (408 E. 6th St.) unless noted
June 4: 10 am – 9 pm
Pages to Prisoners Packathon
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June 7: 7:30 pm
Call-in with Bomani Shakur and the Free Alabama Movement
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June 9: 7 pm – 9 pm
Cage Flight: Prison news info event
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June 10: 7pm
Movie showing: G.A.R.I.
(A film on an action group that kidnapped a banker, demanding freedom for anarchist prisoners)
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June 11
Microphone demo and picnic: 1 pm – 4 pm
The Square (Walnut & Kirkwood)
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June 12
A Walk in the Woods
(A walk in Yellowwood State Forest in honor of Marius Mason. Learn to identify plants, and discuss past and current efforts to save Indiana’s forests)
Meet @ Seminary Square Kroger: 3 pm
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More info: rififibloomington.wordpress.com
Letter writing for anarchist prisoners, Potluck, Film showings about recent uprisings across the world, Discussions about prisoner support, Fundraising for anarchist prisoners, Zines!
Come out and help show our comrades they are not alone!
June 11: 6pm -9pm
3084 S Lock St, Chicago, IL 60608
https://www.facebook.com/events/808607182605007/
Cincinnati HxC punx Fest in Solidarity with Longterm Anarchist Prisoners
Saturday June 11th at Mockbee 2260 Central Pkwy.
5pm (til midnight?)
All Ages $5-10 pay-what-ya-can
https://www.facebook.com/events/1014145222005748
BLEAECK \ BlackDiamondPrisonerSupport will host an open mic & fireside get together
Global Gallery (Address: 3535 N High St, Columbus, OH 43214)
6/11/16 from 4-8pm
Information about prisoner support, draft beers, & free snacks
Monthly Letter Writing – Solidarity with Eco and Anarchist Prisoners
Saturday, June 11
4 PM – 6 PM
Beet Box Bakery & Cafe
1030 E 22nd Ave, Denver, Colorado 80205
Join us in supporting the Eco and Longterm Anarchist Prisoners
Presentation followed by letter writing, we will supply all materials needed: paper, pens, stamped envelopes and love ♥
June 11 Noise Demo for Prisoner Solidarity: South Florida
8 pm to 10pm
Broward County Jail, 555 SE 1st Ave, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1603897763256567/
June 11: 1-4pm
Anarchist Black Cross Houston Chapter and Solidarity Houston are screening Herman's House, followed by a discussion on solitary confinement in prisons.
Solidarity Houston, 6733 Harrisburg Blvd, Houston, Texas 77011
Please bring food to share and/or some extra dollars to donate for longterm political prisoners. ___
June 11: 5pm
Houston IWOC is organizing a solidarity demonstration at Harris County Jail to bring the fight home and to reach out to local prisoners and their friends and family.
Harris County Jail, 701 N San Jacinto St, Houston, TX 77002
June 10th
Prisoner Letter Writing Night
Political Prisoner Letter Writing Night
Sunday, June 12
7-9pm
The Avenue Cafe
2021 E Michigan Ave, Lansing, MI
https://www.facebook.com/events/1622431158083429
LGBT Books to Prisoners book packing for prisoners
TIME: June 11, 10am – 1pm
LOCATION: Rainbow Bookstore Co-operative (426 West Gilman Street, Madison, WI, USA)
ABC Melbourne are hosting a j11 banner drop
Meet at Collingwood Townhall
140 Hoddle St., Collingwood, Melbourne, Australia
2pm
We also acknowledge that this event is on stolen land and the custodians of the land are the Wurundjeri peoples
we will be bring the koorie flag of the first nations people.
There will be a solidarity rally at noon at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, followed by a noise demo outside the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility.
Multiple prisoners in the Administrative Confinement (solitary) unit at Waupun Correctional Institution, Wisconsin's oldest, most toxic prison will be on hunger strike starting June 10th, demanding an end to the torture of long term solitary confinement in Wisconsin.
More info: http://solitarytorture.blogspot.fr/
Vegan Ice-Cream Social!
Saturday June 11th at 1pm
2301 Portland Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Suggested Donation: $10 - Infinity
Come celebrate June 11th with us, the International Day Of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. Join us as we raise money for our friends and comrades that have been stolen from us, by eating ice cream and writing letters to them.
We will have many types of vegan ice cream to partake in, in many flavors, along with all the toppings and extras to make floats and such.
We will also have an order form so that people can get the new support shirts for Marius Mason and then pick them up when they arrive from the printers.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1603031086675070
WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, June 7th, 2016
WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221
More details: https://nycabc.wordpress.com/ ___
What: Film showing: Sacco & Vanzetti
When: June 11th, 8pm
Where: The Base (1302 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY)
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1566142297013330/
Oklahoma Anarchist Book Fair
June 11 – June 12
10am - 5pm
AutoSociety - 1432 E 5th Ct, Tulsa Oklahoma
https://www.facebook.com/events/492380640954769/
A Benefit Feast for Marius Mason
Grindcore House (1515 S 4th St.)
June 11th from 5pm-7pm
An all-you-care-to-eat vegan smorgasbord with items from Blackbird Pizzeria, Crust Bakery, Dotties Donuts and Grindcore House for $5-$15 sliding scale
All proceeds benefit long-term anarchist prisoner Marius Mason
June 11: 8pm-11pm
Benefit show for long-term anarchist prisoners
2526 S Americus St, Seattle, WA 98108
Art for Abolition:
June 10th, 6PM – 11PM
2448 N. Estrella Ave.
Performers TBA
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June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners
June 11th, 6PM – 9PM
2448 N. Estrella Ave.
Speakers and Tablers TBA
https://www.facebook.com/events/1044485265595237
Convergence In Support of Eco-Prisoners & Against Toxic Prisons
June 11 – 13, 2016 in Washington D.C.
More info: https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/
Check back throughout the year for resources and updates! We'll begin listing events early next year. As always, email us at june11th at riseup dot net.
Marius Mason: supportmariusmason.org
Eric McDavid: supporteric.org
EF June 11th: earthfirstjournal.org
june11th at riseup dot net
email us info about upcoming events, news, communiques, whatever! (We lost access to our old email.)
These are, of course, not all of the longterm anarchist prisoners, only all of those we have been in touch with, either directly or via their support crews. If you support a longterm anarchist prisoner who would like to have their situation or words featured on this page, please email us at june11th at riseup dot net.
Translated to Greek! and Portuguese
Michael Kimble is a 49-year-old, black, gay anarchist serving a life sentence in Alabama for the murder of a white, homophobic, racist bigot.
During his first years of imprisonment, Michael embraced communism, but soon moved away from it and toward anarchy because, as he describes it "anarchism is not about building a hierarchical structure for liberation somewhere in the distant future, but about living your life, now, in a fashion that's liberating."
Michael has a long history of both individual and collective struggle against prison authority, and continues to engage in the fight against prison slave labor as part of the Free Alabama Movement.
To read Michael's writings:
http://anarchylive.noblogs.org
Address:
Michael Kimble
#138017
3700 Holman Unit
Atmore, AL 36503
A former member of the hacking network Anonymous who has become a cause celebre for hacktivists, civil libertarians and those concerned about the rights of whistleblowers, is a gifted young computer programmer who is currently spending a decade in prison. His crime? Leaking information from the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, information which revealed that Stratfor had been spying on human rights activists at the behest of corporations and the U.S. government.
In March 2012 Jeremy was arrested in his Chicago home and charged with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same legislation used to prosecute Aaron Swartz. This outdated law, written before the Internet was even created, gives absurdly broad powers to corporations and prosecutors to criminalize an array of online activity and pursue extreme and disproportionate sentences. By contrast, Jeremy's co-defendants in Ireland will not be prosecuted and in the U.K. none will spend more than 16 months in prison.
In a non-cooperating plea deal, Jeremy pled guilty to one count of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Despite lodging nearly 265 letters of support calling on judge Loretta Preska to show leniency, Jeremy was sentenced to the maximum allowed under his plea agreement.
Since his arrest, Jeremy has been denied bail, cut off from his family, and held in solitary confinement- treatment normally reserved for the most egregious offenses. He did nothing for personal gain and everything in hopes of making the world a better place and he needs our support now more than ever.
Please visit his website to learn more:
http://freejeremy.net
Abdul Haqq (Walter Bond) is an imprisoned Animal Liberation Front activist who was arrested in the summer of 2010 for the “ALF Lone Wolf” arsons of a sheepskin factory in Denver, Colorado, a leather factory in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Tiburon restaurant in Sandy, Utah which sold the incredibly cruel product foie gras. He pled guilty to all three arsons as well as one count of AETA (the infamous Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act). Walter received a total prison sentence of 12 years and 3 months and is scheduled for release on April 14, 2021.
In addition to Walter’s struggle for Animal Liberation he is also vehemently Straight Edge and opposes drug culture in all its various forms. In the winter of 1997 Walter destroyed one of the largest meth operations in north Iowa, an act of vigilante justice that earned him 4 years in state prison and became the subject of the song and music video “To Ashes” by the band “Earth Crisis”. Walter is also the author of the book “Always Looking Forward” , a collection of essays and interviews that he wrote while in county jails in Utah and Colorado for his underground resistance against Animal exploitation.
From January 2012 to March 11, 2015, Walter was imprisoned in a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. (CMU’s are specialized, secretive and restricted prison units set up originally to house Muslim Political Prisoners.) While there, Walter took Shahada (the declaration of faith in Islam) on August 5th of 2014 and accepted the name “Abdul Haqq” which means “Servant of The Truth.” In March 2015, the Bureau of Prisons granted his request for transfer to the general population at USP Marion. On September 21, 2015, Abdul Haqq was transferred to FCI Greenville.
Abdul Haqq (Walter) remains defiant in the face of adversity and has written numerous articles, essays, and interviews that have traversed the globe through the internet and have been published in a number of periodicals and books and have been translated into several different languages.
Walter Bond's entire philosophy and program of action is centered on these six words: "Animal liberation, whatever it may take!"
Donation information is here:
http://supportwalter.org/SW/index.php/donate/
Mail correspondence to:
Walter Bond
37096-013
FCI Greenville
PO Box 5000
Greenville IL 62246
Jennifer Gann is an anti-authoritarian trans woman and insurrectionist amazon held captive for over 25 years for armed robberies and a 1995 attack on a district attorney and associate prison warden. She took part in the 1991 Folsom Prison hunger strike, after which she was beaten and tortured, convicted for armed resistance, and sentenced to multiple 25-to-life sentences under the Three Strikes Law. She has spent over ten years in solitary confinement at Folsom and the Pelican Bay Secure Housing Unit. Despite all of this, Jennifer continues to struggle for freedom, remaining a committed anti-authoritarian, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-capitalist.
For more information: http://babygirlgann.noblogs.org
Address:
J. Gann #E-23852
Kern Valley State Prison
PO Box 5103
Delano, CA 93216
Address envelope to J. Gann, letter to Jennifer
Rebecca is serving 5 years (until 04/07/2017) for arson and conspiracy charges stemming from Earth Liberation Front actions that occurred between 1996 and 2001. She accepted a non-cooperating plea agreement. She was released to a halfway house on April 11, 2016.
Address:
Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center
6000 NE 80th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97218
Birthday: April 18
Marius Mason is an anarchist, environmental, and animal rights prisoner. In March 2008, he was arrested by federal authorities for charges related to two acts of property destruction that occurred in 1999 and 2000 - damaging an office connected to GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) research, and destroying a piece of logging equipment. No one was injured in either act. He faced a life sentence before accepting a plea bargain in September 2008.
Mason was sentenced on February 5, 2009 in federal court in Lansing, Michigan. He received almost 22 years - the longest sentence of any Green Scare prisoner. An appeal for a reduction in his sentence was denied in 2010.
The Green Scare is the name given to the arrests of animal rights and environmental activists who have been charged with acts of economic sabotage. Federal authorities have sought outrageous sentences (often life in prison) and have publicly and legally labeled the activists as "terrorists" - despite the fact that no one has been killed or injured in any of the acts. For an intro to the Green Scare, see here.
Supporting Marius Mason does not mean agreeing with his acts. It does mean opposing the fear-mongering tactics of the federal government, and the outrageous sentences they have imposed.
For more information:
https://supportmariusmason.org/
We encourage everyone to write to Marius Mason in prison:
Marie (Marius) Mason #04672-061
FMC Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127
address outer envelope to Marie (Marius) Mason, inside to Marius
Sean Swain is a hostage held by a lawless rogue-state calling itself “The State of Ohio.”1 He has been held without legal conviction or sentence since 1991 for the self-defense killing of a court official’s relative who broke into Sean’s home and threatened his life. In fall of 2012, prisoners calling themselves the Army of the 12 Monkeys (A12M) got rowdy at Mansfield Correctional, and the prison authorities assumed “that anarchist” Sean Swain must have been behind it and threw him in supermax isolation. Sean denies any involvement or affiliation with the A12M and is in the process of suing the ODRC for targetting him based exclusively on his ideology and political speech.
Sean is the only son of a retired auto worker and stay-home mom. He has renounced his high school diploma, his college degree, and his honorable discharge from the U.S. military. Before being taken hostage, Sean worked as a newspaper columnist and as a union organizer.
Sean is mounting his third run for Governor of Ohio in 2014. If elected, he promises to decommission the Ohio National Guard, empty Ohio’s prisons and turn them into squats, recognize Native American land rights as set forth by the Treaty of Greenville, arm the tribes with national guard weaponry, to include tanks and attack helicopters, refuse to sign any budget causing the government to shut down, and sign an Executive Order making it legal to assassinate him if he remains in office longer than 90 days.
Though innocent of any crime, and though he is held without legal conviction or sentence, Sean will only be liberated when the illegitimate power of the lawless rogue state holding him hostage is abolished once and for all.
The State started the war. Sean Swain intends to finish it.
To get up to date info about Sean, send an email to seanswain-subscribe@lists.riseup.net and you’ll be added to his email notification list. Thank you!
site:
http://seanswain.org/about-sean-swain/
Check out Sean's new music project!
Burning Down: The Songs of Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain
Some translated information:
Spanish
Italian
Portuguese
1.The Treaty of Greeneville in 1795 established most of Ohio as unceded “Indian Territory.” The so-called “State of Ohio” has no legal claim whatsoever to exercising authority over this territory.
2. See, Sean Paul Swain v. William Fullenkamp, et. al., U.S. District Court Case No. 3:09-CV-2659, Judge Jack Zouhary, Decision, 19MAY10, p. 2. Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Malcolm X, Emma Goldman, Huey Newton, Frantz Fanon, Abbie Hoffman, Ward Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr., were all accused in their own times of “promoting anarchy and rebellion against authority.” It would seem Sean is in much greater company than is Judge Jack Zouhary.
Address:
Sean Swain #243-205
Warren CI
P.O. Box 120
Lebanon, Ohio 45036
Imprisoned since 1996 for a bank robbery done to fund political projects, he was sentenced to almost sixteen years. His sentence is now completed, but he is kept imprisoned indefinitely by a "preventative detention" law. He hopes to be released by 2023.
For more about Thomas and to read his writings:
http://freedom-for-thomas.de/thomas/index2.shtml
Address:
Thomas Meyer-Falk
c/o jva freiburg
Hermann-Herder-Str. 8
d 79104 Freiburg
germany
Alfredo Cospito (ten years and 8 months) and Nicola Gai (9 years and 4 months), from Turin, Italy, imprisoned for their shooting of Ansaldo Nuclear chief Roberto Adinolfi
sentencing statements:
"We'll get out of here branded as terrorists, the amusing thing is that
you can say that without seeming ridiculous: it is what the law states.
One thing sure is that words have lost all their meaning; if we are
terrorists, what would you call those who produce weapons, tracking
systems for missiles, drones, fighter-bombers, equipment to hunt people
trying to cross borders, nuclear power stations, those who do deals with
assassins in uniform and famous dictators, in other words, how would you
define Finmeccanica?"
Nicola Gai
"We saw Adinolfi smiling slyly and playing the victim from television
screens. We saw him lecturing against 'terrorism' in schools. But I
wonder: what is terrorism? A gunshot, a searing pain, an open wound or the
incessant, continuous threat of a slow death devouring you from inside?
The continuous incessant terror that one of their nuclear plants can vomit
death and desolation upon us all of a sudden?
Ansaldo Nucleare and Finmeccanica bear huge responsibilities. Their
projects continue to sow death everywhere. Recently the rumour has spread
of probable investments in the enlargement of the nuclear plant of Kryko,
Slovenia, a high seismic risk area very close to Italy. In Cernadova,
Romania, several incidents have occurred since 2000, caused by Ansaldo's
stupidity during the construction of one of their plants. How many lives
have been lost? How much blood shed? Technocrats of Anslado and
Finmeccanica, all facile smiles and a 'clean' conscience: your 'progress'
stinks of death, and the death you sow all over the world is shouting for
revenge."
Alfredo Cospito
For more information:
http://anarchistnews.org/content/alfredo-cospito-and-nicola-gai-sentenced-nuclear-boss-shooting
Address: (not sure if it's current):
Nicola Gai
Alfredo Cospito
C.C Via Argione 327
44122 Ferrara
Italy
Bill Dunne is an anti-authoritarian sentenced to 90 years for the attempted liberation of comrades from Seattle’s King County Jail in 1979 and for attempting to break himself out of Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1983. Dunne was charged with possession of an automatic weapon, auto theft, and with aiding & abetting the escape. Charges further alleged the operation was financed by bank expropriations and facilitated by illegal acquisition of weapons and explosives. Bill and his codefendant, Larry Giddings, were accused by police of being “members of a small, heavily armed group of revolutionaries,” associated with the Wellspring Communion.
Dunne has made the rounds of the federal prison system with stints at the infamous Control Unit in Marion, Illinois; Atwater; and Big Sandy where he has assisted prisoners with political & academic education. Bill also organizes solidarity runs in conjunction with the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s “Running Down the Walls” 5K runs and has edited and written for 4 Struggle magazine.
Larry Giddings was paroled from federal prison in 2004. Bill went before the parole board in the winter of 2014, was rejected and given a 15 year ‘hit’ (meaning he cannot go back to the board for that time period).
Address:
Bill Dunne #10916-086
USP Lompoc
U.S. Penitentiary
3901 Klein Blvd
Lompoc, CA 93436
Birthday: August 3
Eric G. King, a 29-year-old vegan anarchist, was arrested and charged with an attempted firebombing of a government official’s office in Kansas City, MO in September 2014. Eric was being charged with throwing a hammer through a window of the building, followed by two lit Molotov cocktails. The criminal complaint states that both incendiary devices failed to ignite.
On March 3, 2016, he accepted a non-cooperating plea agreement to one count of using “explosive materials to commit arson of property used in or affecting interstate commerce.” The statutory minimum and maximum for this charge is 10 years. He will likely be sentenced in summer 2016 (check back often for the actual sentencing date once we have it). He will remained locked inside the private prison that he has been held hostage in since his arrest until he is sentenced, at which point he will be transferred into the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for the remainder of his sentence.
Eric was identified as a suspect by local police because he had previously come under suspicion for anti-government and anti-police graffiti. He is currently being held in the Corrections Corporation of America’s Leavenworth Detention Center.
Since his arrest and subsequent incarceration, he has been extremely isolated from his loved ones and has repeatedly been targeted by the guards, who have regularly put his safety in jeopardy. Eric was held in segregation for six months at one point and is often subjected to stints in “the hole” after the guards target him. Despite these struggles, he continues to maintain his good spirits and resolve to see this situation through to the end. He is also maintaining his dedication to struggling for a world free of domination and oppression.
Address:
Eric King #27090045
CCA Leavenworth
100 Highway Terrace
Leavenworth, KS 66048