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Recently we published an emergency call-out concerning the situation of our fresh, small but active forest occupation standing against the nuclear monster Andra and its CIGEO plan. On 24th of November, our eviction threat got concrete. The environmental authority decided to free Andra from carrying out an environmental impact study, opening its way towards the final destruction permit.
That very morning the blue team opened the game.
After the é’th decision, they are attempting to penetrate their way into the forest by any possible means. Sometimes they use excuses like «replanting trees», or civilian cops coming for a walk with their «families» on Sunday afternoons. Today they paid us three consecutive visit at the entrance barricade between 6:30 and 8 AM. Finally, they even tried to take that barricade* with a comical attempt to appear credible in our eyes. Obviously they are testing our reactions and trying to wear us down so they can plan how to come next.
As the blue team opened the game, come and play with us! We are urgently asking reinforcements to come. The first official squatter of the Lejuc woods, Sven Lindstrom, decided to do his bit in making eviction matters more difficult for Andra by changing his home address in to the woods and throwing a themed birthday party on 13.12. As the first party crashers have now rattled at the gates, we urge our friends to come bounce them out of the forest next time they show up.
« Come in, bring your own beer and plenty of friends!» Sven wishes to add.
While we are taking our stand against the destruction of the living planet in the name of short-term profit, other good people are taking their stand elsewhere. With love, rage and solidarity we wish to encourage those facing the full force of repression in Standing Rock, North Dakota – one struggle!
Route plans and directions for visitors to come at: en.vmc.camp
* Luckily, we have many. All over the place. Defend them with us!
“From Standing Rock to Greece: throw back the tear gas, choke the police – Against the pipeline in Dakota”
In the afternoon of November 24th 2016, we dropped a banner in Exarchia Square against the Dakota Access Pipeline, currently under construction in the US. This oil pipeline runs a distance of nearly 1,172 miles, from North Dakota to Illinois, and its cost is estimated to be around 3.7 billion dollars. In its destructive path, this mega-project is causing irreversible damage to territories, rivers and surrounding communities.
Among the affected areas is also Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, where residents alongside people in solidarity resist the police, forces of the US army, and security guards of the groups assigned to construct the pipeline (Energy Transfer Partners being the main contractor). Repression has been so harsh over the last days, that among the hundreds who were injured there’s also an activist whose hand was amputated because of a concussion grenade fired by cops.
At the same time, there have been many actions of resistance in various cities across the US and beyond, with rail-track and train blockades, direct actions and symbolic gestures of solidarity.
We send strength to anarchist comrades and all others who fight in an anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical manner and without mediators against the construction of the pipeline, showing what it really is: one among the tentacles of domination draining the Earth.
Our opposition to this and any other mega-project of the techno-industrial civilization stems from the conviction that the Earth belongs to no one; from our need to defend by all means necessary everything that has remained untamed and wild in this artificialized world. Beyond any rhetoric of “ancestral” or “sacred” lands, we support the particular struggle until the liberation of the entire planet.
AGAINST THE OIL PIPELINE IN DAKOTA
ANATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST STATES, CAPITAL AND DOMINATION
In the night from the 23rd to the 24th of November the self-service shop of the Sparkasse bank in Magdeburg Buckau had its whole interior repainted in order to express our solidarity with the accused comrades and our rage against this repressive system.
On the 1st of August, the nuclear monster Andra was ruled by the court to cease the clear cuts and fencing off the forest without legal permits. Today, 24th of November, the environmental authority ruled that Andra is freed from having to carry out an environmental impact study concerning its plans, but can instead simply apply for that final clearing cut permit. The alarming part is that this permit will, besides the clear cuts, also cover the whole of the works in preparation for CIGEO, the gigantic underground repository for highly radioactive nuke waste. So when they come in the next time with their cops and bulldozers: they’re coming to destroy. Big time.
There will be yet one more court hearing about the forest matter on 15th of December. If they play things by the book, they will wait until then, maybe even January. If they decide to do what they want, they can come evicting on any morning from this moment on. So yes: this is an emergency call out, to join, help prepare and face it !
The banner reads: “Freedom for Kara Wild, anarchist incarcerated in France”
On May 18th 2016 in Paris, in the context of combative protests against the new labor law, a patrol car of the French police was smashed and burned down. A week later, on May 26th, Kara Wild, an anarchist trans woman from the US who participated in the mobilizations, was arrested at a separate demonstration near La Place de la Nation. The prosecuting authorities accused her of participating in the smashing of the police car; since then, she is imprisoned in France and has been denied bond because she is considered a flight risk.
In the morning of November 25th 2016, we hung a banner at the Athens Polytechnic, on Stournari St., as a token of solidarity with Kara. We don’t care if she committed the “offense” she is accused of. For us, smashing and burning cop vehicles, in France and everywhere, is not only right but of utmost necessity.
Below is a statement that longterm anarchist prisoner Sean Swain sent for the presentation by comrades from Bloomington ABC on November 23rd 2016 at Gini building of the Athens Polytechnic School in Exarchia, Athens. The comrade’s words were read out loud in English and Greek, and printouts of his text were shared during the discussion against prison society, organized by Themistokleous 58 Squat and Contra Info.
“Complicity with Prison Rebels in the US & the World” (banner hung in the auditorium where the event took place)
Greece and the Dignity of Rebellion
Before I give you the wrong impression that I’m placing undeserved blame on you, I think I should probably begin by revealing that I am a big fan of Greek anarchists. It seems like every single photographic image I see of rebels with bandanas covering their faces or donning black ski masks, every snapshot of police cars tipped onto their tops and blazing away, all come from Greece. In fact, I am such a fan that I consider it the biggest achievement of my life that I wrote a statement in support of Black December posted on 8 December last year, and 5 days later Greek rebels burned down a military building and quoted me. That is a benchmark in my life. I brag about it. I’m impossible to be around. I tell everyone who will listen to me that I wrote a statement and Greek anarchists quoted me after torching a military building.
It makes me want to write a thousand more statements in hopes that you will burn a thousand more buildings.
So, I say all that as context so what I say next won’t hurt your feelings…
Greece brought about swivilization. It all started in Greece. You Greeks refined this hierarchy program, developed democracy as its most appealing form, fashioned great works of art to decorate it—mostly depicting naked people, which really attracted the attention of the rest of the world—and you exported the program on great fleets of sailing vessels.
Fastforward, we now have a global slavery system where we all drag stones up the side of some rich asshole’s pyramid and the vast majority of us do not have the imagination to think that there could be anything better than democracy. We live in a world run by banksters and industrial sociopaths engaged in the mass destruction of everything living, including us.
We’re fucked.
So, it seems more than appropriate to me that, in the birthplace of swivilization, we now witness its assassination. In Greece, out of all the geographic spaces of the world, we now find the most determined, the most energized, the most radical resistance to swivilization, to this program that distorts and murders us in installments.
It started in Greece. It’s ending in Greece.
Please don’t think I say this in an effort to flatter you. I’m terrible at flattery. I’m great at talking myself into trouble. So, this isn’t flattery, but, I think, a fairly objective observation: The experiments in resistance that you have pushed forward, the strategies and tactics, the theories you have explored, all of this has become communal property for the rest of the world. Even now, as we just begin to find our own way, stumbling along, anarchists in the United States and other places in the world, divided as it is into artificial nation-states, we look to you. We see what you have done.
Not to make excuses for us in the United States, but part of our inaction, I think, is as a consequence of seeing what you have accomplished, how far you have pushed, and we think, whether correctly or otherwise, that such resistance isn’t possible here. We are paralyzed, I think, by a sense that we cannot do what you have done, that somehow the situation or the “conditions” in the United States are different, that the surveillance is too pervasive, the potential sanctions too overwhelming, the social climate too pacified. And so, we sit in front of our computers and log on to watch the footage of Greeks wild-eyed and screaming, chasing the bewildered pigs who run for their lives, the hierarch order trembling at the knees, and we dream.
You must be wondering, Where are the Americans?
We’re coming. I’m certain that we are.
Just this month, millions of Americans voted against the established order that has failed them for their lifetimes. By the millions, they cast ballots, ostensibly for the candidate who will “change” everything, who will “shake things up,” because that candidate seemed to be talking for them, expressing their frustrations.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt that most of them are stupid rather than evil, they unknowingly voted in the most virulent fascist sociopath since Hitler and Mussolini, a fascist of the highest order whose lip service to the forgotten majority will yield to policies of war-mongering and corporate give-aways and “austerity” for the people. Those voters will soon have “buyer’s remorse,” when the fascist in whom they pinned their hopes betrays them thoroughly.
And where will the Americans turn? Will they turn back to the corporate parties that they rejected by the tens of millions, the same parties with the same failed ideas? Will they find a new hero with promises of glory and greatness, speaking much like the hero who drove the knife into their back?
No. They will turn to the example set elsewhere, the example of rejecting the imposed order, the images and ideas exported not on fleets of sea vessels but transmitted electronically via satellite, demonstrating the true dignity of rebellion.
The Americans are coming.
In just a matter of months, this docile and pacified population will be transformed by rage and fury, and will find voice in flames and blood. They will follow into a battle against this common enemy, going where many of you have already gone, and you will see faces covered in bandanas, concealed under ski masks, and you will see the police cars turned and burning, maybe even see the pillars of smoke rising as you look to the western horizon.
The Americans are coming. And when we do, we will be walking in the footprints left by Greek rebels who went before us.
On that day, the day of victory over our common enemy, we will all be Greek.
And we will all be free.
This is Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain from Warren Correctional in Lebanon, Ohio, in the Fascist States of America. If you’re listening, you ARE the resistance.
Constantly inspired by Sean’s words and his stance against prisoncrats, constantly feeling the warmth of his rebellion, on November 21st 2016 we pasted posters in the neighborhood of Exarchia (downtown Athens) that read:
“And we attack, wherever we are, whatever our situation, until we get the world we deserve. We’re not going to vote them out or petition them out or protest them out or sue them out.”
Uncompromising complicity with indomitable anarchist Sean Swain, still held captive in Ohio prisons in the US
We understand occupation (squatting) as a tool of fight whose main purpose is far from the idea of shaping recreational places. It is an strategy to fight, theoretically and practically, against property as a key pillar of capitalist democracy. Occupation (squatting) is beyond merely logistic.
It brings partnership among comrades, builds affinity networks and solidarity, as well as create meeting points to discuss, share experiences or to make out some self criticism. Okupation is not and end but a mean that allows us to organize ourselves and conspire. It is a tangible expression of the notion of “Do it yourself”.
The power has done everything to erase any self-management projects since they prove our capacity to organize ourselves outside the system. For that purpose, many strategies have been deployed. From harsh repression; raids, arrests, police farce, to “kinder” strategies based on negotiation. Despite superficial differences, the final end of these strategies is the control and domestication (of our ideas and practices) of social movements.
For some time now, Madrid City Council, a so-called council “of change”, has deployed a warfare of harassment, threat and burnout against squatted social centres. They disguise their real purposes through a deceiver maneuver of fake dialogue, using blackmail to achieve the assimilation of these collectives. What is been sold as an exercise of tolerance and understanding, as an effort to strengthen social networks, is nevertheless an attempt of demobilization and devitalize those who don´t accept their imperatives.
Throughout bureaucratic mechanisms such as buildings maintenance checkups or inspections of the developed activities, the City Council offers two options: regularisation or eviction. They offer to allow keeping on with the activities in social centres as long as they are supervised by a competent authority. It could be done in the actual location provided that they are establish as legally constituted associations or making a request for a ceded public place. Administrative sanctions, seals, identifications and city police regular visits are used as a tool of pressure. City´s regulatory framework whereby the guidelines concerning the transfer of public places to collectives, approved by the city council in February 2016, provides the basis to polarize once again the squatting movement between legal or illegal projects.
As anarchists, we believe squatting can´t be legalize since it´s purpose is precisely transgress every rule imposed by the political, social economical structure. To accept their rules would legitimate their tutelage. We place ourselves against the creation of squatted places under the cover of any governmental institution and we reject any negotiation, agreement or dialogue that could mean to surrender completely or partially to our perspectives of action and direct confrontation. We believe in conflict. We believe the State cannot be defeated from inside. That is why, we call to solidarity with the squatted social centres threatened by eviction in Madrid, and by extension, all occupations that defy power standing up to its threats.
The way to express support depends on the means and possibilities that each one of us has, but we encourage, this month or further, to undertake actions and activities that bring attention to our positioning and our determination not to give in to either the State or its threats.
Let us multiply the anti-authoritarian ideas and practices of solidarity and fight. 10, 100, 1000 squatted social centres.
In the last weeks, some efforts were made for expressing the solidarity and rage we feel with regard to the repression against those anarchists currently accused of bank expropriations in Germany.
More than ten thousand flyers were scattered in the metropolitan area, slogans were painted on walls, and we visited some of our favourite bank branches to rage a bit.
The trial against our comrades began recently in Aachen (Germany), and we want to show to those who are responsible that we won’t simply accept it if they make our comrades stand trial.
Whether they are “innocent” or “guilty” in the sense of charges, we don’t fucking care – these are categories made by the State and the Capital, not ours. We are pleased about every damaged bank, about every poster, about every bank expropriation!
Solidarity and attack against the world of banks and prisons!
On 16th of October a banner was dropped on a house at Hermannplatz in Berlin: „Let us destroy the Prison System – inside or outside – until all are free!”1000 fliers were spread at Hermannplatz and the metro-entrances.
On the fliers was written:
The rebellious prisoners need our solidarity. In a call of US-prisoners we can read: „If we fight against the power, they will fight back and the only protection we have, is the solidarity from outside.”
Against the prison slavery! Solidarity with the resistance of the imprisoned in the USA and everywhere!
Freedom for the imprisoned people who where arrested, because of bank robberies in Aachen.
Every act of expropriation of the rich and the banks is desirable.
Solidarity with the people from Switzerland who are hit by repression! Blamed for crippling of the metropolis traffic and angry demonstrations through the city of the rich.
No security for the rich and the rulers, until all are free.
Freedom for Aaron and Balu! Caught because they shall have demonstrated for a solidarity life, against the destruction of the neighbourhood and the police state.
Peace to the hovels, war to the palaces – against all institutions and prisons!
School – Clinic – Prison – Factory
Disciplined at school, brainwashed at university, exploited at the job, broken in the prison – against the Prison Society!
Hello Neighbour! In the prison of Plötzensee in Berlin in Germany nearly every third prisoner is imprisoned because of fare-dodge.
Prisons to empty sits!
Burn all prisons – until all are free!
Freedom for all!
Do you still believe in law and order? It works also without!
For a society without prisons!
Our passion for freedom is stronger than every authority!
Autumn has arrived – and as nights grow longer, we keep on struggling against the planned underground disposal facility for highly radioactive nuke waste (CIGEO) and the nuclear company Andra out and off from destroying these woodlands of Mandres in Bure, France. After nearly 5 months of demonstrations, (re)occupations, forest walks, evictions, legal actions, (wall) sabotages and new constructions from tree-houses to watch towers rising in the forest – we continue to settle in. Our forest family is small, but active and growing, welcoming new residents and visitors to walk the woods with us.
Since the 1st of August 2016, Andra, a state-financed nuclear company considering highly radioactive nuke waste as a *resource* instead of a danger, was ruled by the court of Bar-le-Duc to cease the clear cuts and fencing off the forest with the leftovers of the late Berlin wall it had started without legal permissions. The company was ruled into the process of either getting the authorization or, in the best scenario, be ruled to re-cultivate the destruction it had caused.
To encourage the court system for once to do the right thing and the forest to keep on standing strong, 500 of us seized the moment on 14th August and took down the 1,2km long concrete wall surrounding the forest. After this action, the new forest occupation built itself up without call-outs, in-a-matter-of-factly: when you know what’s the right thing to do, it’s easy to get going.
Unfortunately, we still haven’t defeated Andra. They appealed the 1st August court decision, and the matter was scheduled to go to court on 3rd of November. Unsurprisingly enough, the session was postponed, giving Andra yet more time to find legal loopholes for its needs. Thus, the procedure to authorize the clear cuts is advancing. Since October, the bailiff’s and security guards have tried to have their own forest walks with varying success, police controls taken place in nearby villages and helicopters buzzed up the air space. Some artistic comrades were given a 2 month suspended prison sentence for a graffiti on a ruined Andra building, another one got a ban from the area of Meuse for two years and free auditions are piling up for the fall of the Andra wall. A new prefect took the office in Meuse and CIGEO has a brand new director. Andra has also recruited a new public law expert to avoid its past mistakes.
To put it short: they are reorganizing, and threat of a forest eviction and resumption of the drilling works are growing on an alarming rate. And since the forest cannot stand up and fight for itself: it’s up to us to stand up for it.
With this new call we’re not only giving an update to old friends and supporters. First and foremost, we’re inviting all of you to come or take a stand of solidarity elsewhere. From Calais to Notre-Dame-des-Landes active people are not giving in for repression, but finding hope from action. We respect the diversity of tactics: whether your thing is to summon up the clown army, get creative with your friends or arrange a Sunday fiesta of roasted chestnuts for local supporters, you’re welcomed here.
The fresh forest occupation has built its infrastructure just for a couple of months. We offer the usual setting: kitchen, toilets, material to build your own nest: but as the warmable communal hut with a spacious sleeping floor is still a work in progress, we recommend that you take enough warm clothes and personal sleeping gear with you.
You can reach us via sauvonslaforet[at]protonmail.com or +33(0)7 5387 8161. More info on en.vmc.camp
*every sunday afternoon, starting at 14:00, we offer forest walks, climbing workshops, hut constructions and discussions in the forest – come and bring your friends and neighbours!
*to support us financially and materially, feel free to donate what you can: food, finances, tools – and especially pellets and planks are always treasured.
On November 4th 2016, the first trial session took place against the anarchist arrested in Amsterdam accused by the prosecution of Aachen of a bank robbery (from 2013).
Although there was an abundant presence of cops of all functions and uniforms at the courthouse (riot police in the courtyard and inside the building, an ID check of anyone attending the court case, cops controlling some people on the streets), over 30 friends and comrades were present in support.
There was a banner outside the court building which demanded the comrade’s immediate release.
The session lasted no longer than one hour – just a few formalities, the reading of the charges and the arranging of the trial schedule.
The next date is Thursday 17th November at 10:30. We remind everyone who wants to be present that they should arrive to the courtroom no later than 09:45, as getting through security takes quite some time.
“Concrete and wires prevail everywhere.
Looking out from the window of my cell, behind the bar,
I see a piece of sky decorated with some barbed wire.” Tasos Theofilou
Join us on Friday 18th of November for our info night event in solidarity with the anarchist communist Tasos Theofilou who is currently in prison, after being sentenced on the basis of forged and non existent evidence. He was convicted just because he is an anarchist. He was convicted because he didn’t lose his smile even when the court of first instance announced his sentence.
Projections, case updates, phone call interventions and presentation of Tasos’ inspiring writings…
Bring your insurrectionary poetry for our open mic!
Starting at 18:00 sharp at L.A.R.C. (62 Fieldgate Street E1 1ES London)
18:30 Phone call intervention with comrades in Athens, Greece
20:00 Phone call intervention with imprisoned comrade Tasos Theofilou.
Live music will follow, starting at 21:00. Bar will run throughout the evening. Entry on free donation.
Feel free to spread the word!!! See you all there!
P.S. Please respect the fact that we do not wish this event to be republished on social media such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
In the early morning of November 15th, in the light of the full moon, an autonomous group welcomed forest workers with a heartwarming fire.
Flaming barricades were set up on the main road to the Hambach Forest to prevent the RWE-hired forest-killers from reaching their working-site.
The barricade attracted the attention of several security workers, cops, as well as a bomb-squad, and blocked the road for several hours.
During this year’s cutting season (which lasts from October to February) RWE has already been responsible for the killing of hundreds of trees, in order to make way for their all-devouring open-pit coal mine.
We cannot rely on liberal democracy or industrial capitalism to protect natural habitats and the environment. Only through direct action do we have a chance to ensure a world free of exploitation.
FIRE TO THE DIGGERS!
HAMBACHER FORST STAYS!
Solidarity with the #NoDAPL Water-protectors, the ZAD (Notre-Dames-des-Landes), and all the comrades behind bars!
On Wednesday noon November 9th 2016, at the junction of Tositsa and Bouboulinas St. in Exarchia, a white Volkswagen with the liscense plate IZY 5183 was spotted having on display the nazi newspaper Empros on the inside of the front windshield. A group of comrades mobilized fast and smashed up the vehicle.
We send isurrectionary signals to those who fuck up the streets in the US against the democratic election of fascist Trump.
Poster & flyer in Greek, spread in Athens & Patras.
SOLIDARITY
with the anarchists accused of bank robberies in Germany
In July 2015 a Dutch comrade was arrested at the Greek-Bulgarian border. There was an international warrant against her coming from Germany, where she is suspected to have participated in a bank robbery in Aachen in 2013. After a short preventive release she finds herself now in the prison of Köln awaiting trial. In April 2016 another comrade got arrested in Barcelona, on the order of the same German investigation judge, on the suspicion of participation in another bank robbery in the city of Aachen in 2014. In June yet another comrade got arrested in Barcelona on suspicion of participation in this same bank robbery. Shortly after their arrest the two comrades were deported to Germany, a date for their trial is not yet set. The trial in which the Dutch comrade is accused will start on the 4th of November. The main ‘incriminating evidence’ in both robbery cases would consist of DNA samples found on movable objects in or near the targeted banks.
This trial, and the trials to come, will be but masquerades. Because we already know, and always have known, the judgment of the state concerning all those who actively oppose it and the kind of society it defends so eagerly. They will be called criminals, or if it suits better the times, terrorists… But it’s the state and its courts which are the terrorists. Terrorizing people always more and more in a reality which is becoming a true dictatorship of money and control. Continuously inventing more laws, pushing more technologies, gathering more tools to oppress anyone who revolts conscientiously against the daily misery, or those who are simply of no value to the system. Backed up by the indifference of many, they prosecute in the courts, bury alive in the prisons, kill at the borders or in the streets of the cities those who hold dear their dignity and decide to not be a slave of the daily routine.
We are in solidarity with the anarchists facing trials in Germany, and all those choosing paths of freedom instead of the submission and boredom which are forced upon us by this existent, its courts and its cops, its infrastructures of control, its moral and its perspectives.
Let’s put this solidarity in practice by attacking what makes it possible that history repeats itself over and over again. From the politicians, the judges and the media who maintain the prison we are living in today, to the architects which are designing the prisons of tomorrow from behind their desks, to the laboratories of technological ‘progress’ in which a control is being developed that goes beyond imagination for decades to come…
On Monday October 31st 2016, a group of comrades from Themistokleous 58 Squat were also present at the Squatted Prosfygika to assist the neighborhood’s defense in the face of coordinated attacks by cops and Nazis. We took a stand in the ongoing social war with stones, body-to-body skirmishes and our antipatriotic convictions resounding during clashes with the cops.
Factual solidarity with the Squatted Prosfygika.
Strength to everyone who clashed with the uniformed scum of Greek democracy.
Immediate release of all captives.
And tomorrow, November 1st, let’s be prepared for everything.
Translators’ note: The Squatted Prosfygika are located on Alexandras Av., within close proximity to the Athens police headquarters and the courthouse on Degleri St., where the mega-trial against the Golden Dawn currently takes place. Early in the morning of October 31st, antiriot police forces stormed the Prosfygika jointly with a large group of Nazis. Later on, comrades managed to repel the cops (in uniform and plainclothes), and strong clashes ensued. Several persons were detained throughout the day (at least two of the arrestees, who face charges, have been badly beaten). Various collectives and individuals in solidarity with the Prosfygika call for a morning gathering on November 1st in defense of the neighborhood.
Life in the modern civilized world comprises false representations, false patterns, and false formalities. Formalities that determine our upbringing within a family, our education, our professional career, our relationships, our emotions, our smiles or tears. Patterns that castrate the scope of our perception so that our thoughts are directed onto a moving walkway going only one direction. Representations that disguise the system’s functions and pathogenies so that we see life unfold only on stage, and never wonder what’s hidden backstage. So, the thousands of suicides of desperate debtors is just another statistic among the unpleasant consequences of the economic crisis, the impoverishment of the so-called third world is just an unfortunate fact, and its wounds will heal by charity organizations, the countless dead of modern crusades, the unfortunate victims of the absurdity of war, and the convict slaves in American prisons are simply antisocial elements that provide social services to Democracy.
Prison itself is exile from life; a non-place and non-time behind the screen of a decent society, to make the ugliness that bothers the eyes of reputable citizens unseeable. Prisons are a proof of the perverse intelligence of authoritarian minds. They’re built onto walls echoing the screaming and weeping of thousands of people who’ve learned to sleep with anguish and despair. Prison is the country of captivity, the country where one learns to kneel before the “Forbidden”, a landfill for the disposal of human waste, an industrial dump where the social machine’s hazardous waste ends up. For most people, however, for all those who never learned to doubt, to question, to look beyond the obvious, prison is a security wall necessary to protect their peaceful and quiet life.
It’s certainly hypocritical on the part of a society to display the supremacy of its democratic civilization, its humanitarian values and social sensitivities so vulgarly, when those deemed unfit to exist within the same society are piled up in souls’ warehouses. But it’s infinitely more hypocritical, and infuriating at the same time, to turn these imprisoned existences, these living dead, into a marketable value through a modern and sophisticated slave trade.
Yet this is the reality for nearly 2.5 million inmates in US prisons, whom the modern Empire has turned into slaves. These prisoners-slaves are the lowest caste of social margins. They don’t only experience the cruelty of captivity, but are condemned to lose their human beingness altogether; to become slaves in the modern galleys of American hellholes to the financial benefit of privatized prisons and multinationals that, using part of this dirty money, support election campaigns of various politicians who promise order and security to their voters. In turn, the voters—predefined coefficients in a rigged equation—fulfill their role, and the solution is always obedience. That’s exactly why the happiest slaves are the greatest enemies of freedom.
But there are other slaves who aren’t so happy. They are the “fallen angels” in a society whose authoritarian perversion treats humans as cogs. But these human cogs are slowly turning against this very society. Throughout the US and the prisons in that territory, an increasingly growing whisper starts to spread. On September 9th, this whisper is transformed into an angry cry of freedom, screaming in the face of the almighty corrections system the ancient cry of rebellion: “Non serviam – I will not serve.”
September 9th is a landmark day for inmates in American prisons because 45 years ago, on September 9th 1971, the fire of Attica prison was lit. Nearly 1,500 prisoners rioted, took jailers hostage, and put forward a series of radical demands. Power replied with zero tolerance: four days later, on September 13th 1971, New York state troops stormed and retook the prison. The crackdown took a heavy toll, killing almost 40 (about 30 inmates and 10 hostages) and wounding 89 others. Because of this exact symbolic character, September 9th is a landmark day for the new coordinated prisoner mobilization, too.
Struggles as this one, despite their intermediary nature, are qualitatively upgraded—compared, for example, to strictly personal claims or unionist demands. Because this particular struggle concerns the total abolition of an institution that’s a pillar of repression and economy, social control and the security doctrine policy. Moreover, prisoners are waging a struggle under extreme and multifaceted oppression, so even calling it an intermediate struggle is something that may not eventually apply to the situation. Because forced labor in prisons is an institution that serves the system in many parallel ways. This is precisely the institution that defines a gray-zone status of millions of slaves for a limited or lifetime tenure. The fact that these are humans designated criminals one way or another, legitimizes this gray zone in the eyes of the rest of society, that don’t care to express some moral or values-related objection and, worse still, benefit from its existence. A struggle for the abolition and the denial of such an institution, a fight which also includes a form of sabotage against the interests served by this very institution, is nothing but a barricade of the most basic dignity against the cruelest face of Power. Certainly, this struggle alone will not determine the entirety of the repression policies that domination may adopt. Regardless of its outcome though, this struggle can be a civil disobedience beacon against the system, and the fact that this beacon will owe its strength to all the damned, the outcast, the socially disinherited—who nowadays receive “revolutionary” anathemas on some occasions—has its own special meaning.
Of course, we don’t seek to make any idealization or embellishment of the entirety of prisoners. Being exiled in the country of captivity for several years already, we’ve seen the composition of a prison population up close, and we don’t harbor any illusion whatsoever that they’re deterministically some kind of revolutionary subjects. In most cases, in fact, an abyss of values separates us from other inmates because of their choices or contradictions over the course of their lives. However, being captives ourselves, we cannot but feel the agony of all those prisoners in the US.
Beyond all this, it’s also a lucid political composure that allows us to put aside any differences we feel we may have with the subject of detainees, as these differences are not enough to make us stand indifferent and unmoved in front of the size, the moral implications, the stakes, the historical and political legacy of such a struggle. In other words, our solidarity reflexes haven’t been activated by emotional and experiential criteria only, but also originate in a political consistency. For all these reasons, we feel the need to express our support to the concerted campaign that began inside the US prisons from September 9th onwards, during which prisoners deny the role of the slave imposed upon them by the democratic society, and factually demonstrate defiance and disobedience. And, as has been said: “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”
The internationalization of this struggle through callouts of prisoners themselves, who ask support from every solidarity initiative, enhances the dynamics of international solidarity in total, making it, even coincidentally, another piece in the mosaic of international solidarity calls such as June 11th or the International Solidarity Week every August. But, for us, it’s not about limiting solidarity to dates marked on the calendar; instead, it’s about highlighting the beauty and authenticity of an informal anarchist coordination. That’s why we’ve endorsed the proposal of ABC Anarchist Solidarity Cell, to coordinate solidarity gestures on an International Solidarity Day (October 1st), as we believe their callout contributes to this direction.
Finally, we want to send our warm greetings to all anarchists and all politicized prisoners willing to be part of this struggle, regardless of their reasons for doing so.
PS: Words are sometimes not enough to capture all the intensity of one’s emotions in certain circumstances. The truth is we were struck at the news that the filth of the Italian counterterrorism unit (DIGOS) launched yet another anti-anarchist attack against comrades in Italy, under the imaginative name “Scripta Manent” (written words remain). Raids, house searches, persecutions, suspect lists, arrests, pretrial detentions…
Once again the target of repression is the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), but now they remembered to dig up cases concerning the placement of explosive devices back in 2006 and 2007. Anna Beniamino, Marco Bisesti, Emiliano Danilo Cremonese, Valentina Speziale and Alessandro Mercogliano passed the prison threshold, while a new detention order was issued against our incarcerated brothers Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai, members of FAI’s Olga Cell (that claimed responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare). In a separate investigation, during a house search where police found an electrician’s manual and some batteries, another comrade, Daniele Cortelli, who’s active in Croce Nera Anarchica (Italian Anarchist Black Cross), was charged with possessing materials for potential manufacture of explosive devices, and then sent to custody, too. We may be familiar with the notion of captivity, but we will never be able to accept the bad news of comrades’ arrest, no matter how far they are, without feeling tightness in our heart. Our thoughts are with them and everyone else who’ve abruptly entered into a new chapter in their life—the prison chapter.
Finally, we send our warmest salute to our brother Alfredo Cospito. On August 30th 2016, with complete disregard for any consequences, he smashed the glass partition window of the visitations room in the security wing of Ferrara prison in solidarity with the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire in Greece, after the 115-year prison sentence that was recently imposed on all of its imprisoned members.
Comrade, your act brightened our hearts and filled us with emotion. Such fraternal gestures prove the real beauty of authentic anarchist solidarity. We wish you strength to go through whatever might come next.
The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire members: Haris Hadjimihelakis
Theofilos Mavropoulos
Damiano Bolano
Panagiotis Argirou
Giorgos Nikolopoulos
Michalis Nikolopoulos
September 12th 2016
Koridallos prison (Athens, Greece)
On Saturday October 22nd 2016, the Golden Dawn inaugurated their new offices in Kavala in presence of Artemis Matthaiopoulos (one of the many Nazis accused in the trial concerning the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and other cases).
Around 40 antifascists held a counter-demonstration and approached the location of the new offices as much as possible. Four antiriot police squads were protecting the fascists (some 30 scumbags) by blocking the street, and prevented the comrades from moving closer. The antifascists remained near the Nazi offices for about 20 minutes, shouting antifascist and anticop slogans as well as chants in solidarity with migrants and imprisoned fighters. They were carrying a banner reading: “The indifferent petty bourgeoisie arms the hand of every Nazi – September 17th 2013; farewell to Killah P – Let’s crush the fascists and the system that nurtures them.” During the counter-demo there was a strong police presence in the area, and more cops were deployed close to the Vyronos 3 squat.
Let’s isolate the killers before it’s too late!
Neither in Kavala nor elsewhere; crush the fascists in very hood!
Cops, TV, neo-Nazis, all the scumbags work together!
Anarchist prisoner Lukáš Borl, currently held in a remand prison in the Czech Republic, has expressed his solidarity with all oppressed and exploited people around the world regardless their origin, sexual orientation or gender. From this perspective, he decided to send a few words of solidarity to every striking person in prisons across the US.
“I wish for you and for myself also that the strike will grow and resist the repression. I wish for you and for myself also to be able to connect it with other important struggles in prisons and outside of them. I wish for you and for myself also that the strike is not misled to fall into the mud of social-democratic politics and the social peace with the exploiters. Because the way to freedom is not through reforming exploitation but only through abolishing it. I wish for you and for myself also that the strike will go further than reformist demands for changing the prison regime and for better working conditions. All the prisons of the world, and all the paid and unpaid work in those prisons and outside them, are all part of the dictatorship of capital. Let’s struggle to abolish it, not to reform these prisons and forms of exploitation. Let’s not ask for anything. Let’s take what belongs to us. Our lives and human dignity. Prisons, states, and capitalism—all must fall.”
You may read his open letter in English on ANTIFÉNIX.cz.
Soledad Brothers (from left to right): John Clutchette, George L. Jackson (September 23, 1941 — August 21, 1971) and Fleeta Drumgo
“Gentlemen, the Dragon Will Fly Out” In Support of September 9th Mobilization in US Prisons
“Gentlemen, the dragon will fly out” is a saying attributed to prisoner George Jackson. On August 21st 1971, holding a pistol, he opened all the cells in an adjustment unit, taking jailers hostage. George Jackson was killed in his attempt to escape…
Since September 9th, prisoners in the United States have called for action against slavery.
A multitude of “invisible” slaves (there are about 2.5 million prisoners in the United States) are condemned to forced labor, or as jailers of their own selves (internal work in prisons, cleaning, repairs, technical operations), or as cheap meat in the service of corporate behemoths (Honda, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, and many others). Besides, the 13th amendment to the US constitution clearly states: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” To put it simply, detainees are considered slaves as part of their punishment.
Prisons in America—and not just there–aren’t only bars, walls, surveillance cameras or lockdowns. They’re also an enormous lucrative business. Prisons are a dirty dealing for continuously supplied shackled labor force without name and without voice. They represent a modern slave trade, making billion-dollar profit, that not only supplies the companies-caretakers but also the industry of lawyers, judges, cops, corrections officers, private prisons.
Not long ago yet another judicial scandal, the “kids for cash” case, was revealed. President Judge Mark Ciavarella convicted juveniles (from 10 to 18 years of age) for the slightest offense, taking million-dollar kickbacks from the owners of private prisons Powell and Mericle with the purpose of supplying them with thousands of children prison slaves.
In Greece, incarceration is much more “velvet”, but it doesn’t cease to be incarceration. Greek prisons may not supply multinational companies with slaves, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a well-staged business operation. Not only do prisons fund an army of leeches (lawyers, cops, corrections officers, judges), but they make big business with construction companies (through overpriced contracts), pharmaceutical companies (after Greek hospitals, Greek prisons are the second best customer of the pharmaceutical industry, since handfuls of psychiatric drugs are administered to prisoners to keep them asleep), and large supermarket chains (always making sure to overprice items sold to prisoners).
Throughout America, massive arrests of suspects—that include humiliations, beatings, and shootings in the back—do not just serve “the restoration of the law”, but are a modern slave hunt for exploitation.
“Let the crops rot in the plantation fields,” write the prisoners in their callout against slavery, recalling the history of slaves in America; because sometimes, to move forward, you must go back to the roots, into the past. For every story of slaves there’s a story of a Spartacus.
Prisoners didn’t randomly choose the date of September 9th to begin their struggle. Forty five years ago, on September 9th 1971, a unique day was written in the calendar of dignity and struggle. It was on the fourth day of Attica riots that 1,000 cops stormed the prison, leaving behind 43 dead, including 33 inmates and 10 hostages (corrections officers and civilian employees), and 250 wounded. Back then, prisoners demanded amnesty, the release of political prisoners, and an end to torture. Now, they want to stop being slaves.
The Attica prison rebellion wasn’t a firework but the culmination of a decision taken by prisoners, expressed through slogans like: “If we cannot live as human beings, we will at least try to die as humans.” With so much blood already shed in a tide of events and acts, they had ruled out any possibility of making a return to prison normalcy.
Prisoners George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette, known as the “Soledad Brothers”, were accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad prison on January 16th 1970, in retaliation for the murder of three fellow prisoners by a corrections officer during a fight between inmates three days prior.
On August 7th 1970, George Jackson’s brother, Jonathan, stormed the Marin County courthouse armed with a shotgun and revolvers and alongside three prisoners, who attended a trial inside, took the Judge, the District Attorney and three jurors hostage. Jonathan and the prisoners demanded the release of the “Soledad Brothers”. The court was surrounded, and a shootout with cops and jailers ensued. Two of the prisoners, Jonathan Jackson and the judge held hostage were gunned down.
On August 21st 1971, George Jackson was shot to death by a guard at San Quentin prison. Jackson was carrying a gun and intended to escape. A disturbance in the prison occurred just before the killing, when three guards and two inmates-snitches were executed.
All these individual acts of rebellion were not detached from the collective power that the prisoners had begun to develop. These actions exceeded the prison walls and nurtured, and were nurtured by, the rebellions of blacks against racism and the movement against the Vietnam War at the time. Nowadays, the struggle of prisoners in the US against slavery is also tied to the movement in protest of police violence and shootings against black people.
Naturally, such struggles are closer to civil rights movements rather than total liberation movements. However, the prisoners themselves state: “We are not making demands or requests of our captors.”
Oftentimes in these struggles, such as we’ve experienced in Greek prisons, there’s a large portion of the prison population who insist on non-violence and “negotiating unionism” logic that leads to wire-pulling and emergence of representatives with personal ambitions. We therefore don’t want to falsify the characteristics of an intermediate struggle to make it appear as anarchic.
Anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble, apparently designated as a “ringleader” of rebellions, has criticized the pacifism that lurks in such mobilizations, stating: “I struggle within F.A.M. (Free Alabama Movement) not because I believe in the system, but because it causes pain to the state, but in no way do I think F.A.M. or any of the Freedom movements are going to topple the state.”
Intermediate struggles, when restricted in sectional demands, maim any total liberation perspective. The interest of an anarchist towards intermediate struggles is, through their intervention, to turn them into the accelerator of insurgency and revolution. There were plenty of moments when instances of prison struggle and armed urban guerrilla experiences mutually fed into one another. In the US, the Weather Underground organization attacked courts (Marin County courthouse, Long Island courthouse, and corrections offices) in solidarity with rebellious prisoners. In Germany, the RAF attacked several judicial officers and prosecutors in retaliation for the isolation of their imprisoned comrades, while in 1993 they literally blew up the Weiterstadt prison. In Italy, the Red Brigades, NAP (organization originating within prison walls), Prima Linea and many more armed cells organized escapes and kidnappings to release their comrades, and executed judges. On October 2nd 1979, political prisoners revolted and set fire to the Asinara maximum security prison. In Spain, GRAPO targeted prison governors and prison doctors.
In Greece, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire blew up the Thessaloniki courthouse and the Athens administrative court of first instance, placed a bomb outside Koridallos prison in 2010, and in cooperation with the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) attacked interrogating judges, prison directors and corrections officers.
In every part of the Earth, prisons are a monument of people’s enslavement. Prisons are the most concentrated form of tyranny; the face of Power, without any makeup; the punitive nature of democracy; the vengeful sense of its justice. Every attack, every act of rebellion, every mobilization that disturbs the operation of prisons is a kick in the guts of oppression. It challenges its omnipotence, within its own walls. Certainly, the September 9th mobilization against slavery in US prisons may not be the anarchic utopia of freedom we wish for, but it can be a pebble in the pond that creates small ripples in the water. And oftentimes these ripples precede the outbreak of an enormous tide…
The Return
For nine months before the state police came
and opened fire at Attica penitentiary
prison doctors said to sick Puerto Ricans
who understood only Spanish
“First learn English, then you can come back.”
It’s difficult to learn English when you’re dead
but they will come back for sure… (Erich Fried, “The Return: Attica State Prison”)
Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / Urban Guerrilla Cell
FAI/FRI Gerasimos Tsakalos Christos Tsakalos Giorgos Polidoros Olga Ekonomidou
September 9th 2016
Koridallos prisons (Athens, Greece)
During the night of Wednesday October 19th we took part, alongside many other groups and individualities, in the street clashes around the Polytechnic in Exarchia, that lasted for several hours with constant attacks with molotovs, stones and fireworks against antiriot police squads.
Street clashes, in any of their forms (exiting university premises through incendiary means, rioting in demonstrations, etc.), are part of the multiform anarchic attack against Power and the imposed normality. Because of their characteristics, this is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate the conflict between anarchy and the world of Power. This is why we support the diffusion of this and other forms of struggle that aim to destabilize and spread chaos until the collapse of the existent.
But we don’t want to limit ourselves in a routine of anticop hate; along with the attacks against the cops, we promote the practice of attack against the structures and symbols of domination, from the most obvious like banks and ministries, to those urban elements that serve the normal function of the metropolis: road signs, traffic lights, cameras, bus stops… as well the representations, symbols and idols of Power in the form of icons, monuments, statues…
At the same time, barricades and attacks on public transportation (buses, trolleybuses, metro… without passengers inside) are forms of interruption of the normal flow of people and commodities, and sabotage against the state and private companies that manage this flow.
All those symbols and structures represent or serve a function of the authoritarian civilization we want to destroy, so they’ll always be a target for us.
We don’t see anarchic violence as a sacrifice or as a revolutionary obligation; instead, we demystify it, we turn it into a banality, we use it in a ludic way, making it obtainable for everybody, without professionalisms or restrictions.
