We are writing to you from the threatened houseproject Rigaer 94
in one of Berlins once notorious squatting neighbourhoods.
Our contexts might be worlds apart or really close but the reality we lived last year
bears the prints of the same systematically oppressive system.
In solidarity with all threatened projects, individuals and emancipatory struggles, we would like to better connect our structures and work on a closer link based on support, in our struggles.
Let’s keep walking this path together, but first a short summary of the recent past and our situation.
Last year saw us, the neighbourhood and people around, on the receiving end of much police repression, starting with the declaration by the state that our street and neighbourhood was a danger zone (Gefahrengebiet), giving the police extra search and detain powers and a green light for constant street harassment of anyone fitting their vision of a ‘leftist’, not white or somehow not normative person (this evolved into almost anyone being controlled, no matter how they presented).
This saw a massive rise in police riot vans cruising the streets, meaning constant conflicts for the neighbourhood, and in our efforts to fight for a autonomous and cop free area.
Rigaer 94 was at the centre of these conflicts, as the state and its cops declared it the crux of militant struggle.
This tactic can be seen in the wider context of reactionary imposed controls and intimidation, such as states of emergency and curfews, employed as constant stress factors (and datamining) to those against the aggressive progression of gentrification and public control. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday the 1st of February there was a solidarity vigil for Umut Firat in Dublin, Ireland. Anarchists and supporters of Umut’s hunger strike gather outside the Turkish Embassy. Turkish embassy staff came out to mock the protesters. Embassy staff called the police to have get the protesters to remove a banner that was tied to the fence of the embassy. The banner said FREE UMUT FIRAT! SOLIDARITY FROM IRELAND. The police stayed on till the vigil was over.
Umut has been on hunger strike for 53 days now. He has been locked up in prison for the last 23 years. He is on hunger strike because of the statues of emergency the Turkish state has imposed since the attempted coup d’etat in July, and against the harsh prison conditions imposed by the state because it.
Since the statues of emergency Umut as well as all political prisoners held in Turkey have had prison conditioned worsened some have been put into isolation, others have been forced into cramped cells, there are forced strip searches, visiting times have been reduced and some prisoners not allowed visits at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Words. Mere Words. The pages that follow are in part transcriptions of the spoken word—‘the wonder worker that is no more’, as Emma Goldman wrote wistfully over one hundred years ago when referring to the inadequacy of the spoken word to awaken thought and shake people out of their lethargy. Here in the twenty-first century anarchists no longer talk about spoken propaganda to awaken the masses, bemoaning the absence of orators such as Johann Most or Luigi Galleani. In rare encounters organized by comrades today ‘the masses’ are noticeably absent, they don’t even enter the equation. Organized meetings or ‘talks’ as they are dully referred to are well-attended if there are 50–100 comrades. But there is no need for panic. Now all but the most disconnected fossilized anarchists have moved beyond aims of a quantitative growth in a hypothetical anarchist movement—where discourses addressed ‘to the masses’ have degenerated into an insulting populism—to the elaboration of ideas and methods addressed towards immediate action and attack on power in all its forms. Numbers have ceased to be important for anarchists as a prerequisite for attack. The illusion of ‘Le Grand Soir’ was a wonderful dream, it kept the flame flickering and thousands of militants waiting in the wings.
No, lack of numbers is no cause for alarm. They are there, the exploited, all around us—are also ‘us’—and could take us by surprise again at any moment (as could we ourselves). In the realm of the quantitative our task is to experiment and spread an insurrectional method for the self-organization of the necessary destruction of power and subjugation. Small groups with intermediate destructive aims based on affinity that can multiply, spread horizontally and coordinate, without limit. The apparent rift between anarchist theory and practice thus disappears along with the false conflict between individual and mass, and not least the conviction that the tenets of anarchism must be espoused by the exploited before they can fight for their own freedom along with that of others. An informal practice of attack leads to freedom revealing itself qualitatively, in leaps and bounds, far from the straight line of quantity, education, progress and waiting. Read the rest of this entry »
When words mingle with the passion to deepen our understanding of reality they become indispensable weapons for the self-organisation of the struggle against all that oppresses us. They don’t remain on paper – or the screen – but penetrate rebel hearts and spirits, giving courage and decision – for if many of us don’t act against what offends our dignity it is often not courage that is lacking, but that we simply don’t know where to start.
We need to liberate reality from the fictitious dimension created by the media into one that is tangible and exposed to attack. In order to carry this out we require knowledge of the enemy in all its forms, including those that lie concealed within us, crouching, waiting to pounce to push us back into the fold of consensus or manageable dissent. Reading certain texts becomes an encounter, tensions we feel burning inside us become clearer, making it easier to assimilate them in order to act. Read the rest of this entry »
Note from Insurrection News: The following text by imprisoned compañeros Fabián Durán, Enrique Guzmán, Nicolás Rojas and Joaquín García was written in response to the cowardly attacks by prison guards against the imprisoned compañeras Tamara Sol, Tato and Claudia that took place at the San Joaquin women’s prison on January 11th and 12th. In response to these brutal and cowardly attacks friends and relatives of the compañeras quickly mobilized and held a demonstration outside the prison on January 13th. Banners were displayed outside the prison, slogans were shouted and also painted on the prison walls. Riot police eventually attacked the demonstration with water cannons and arrested 5 compas. Although the demonstration was suppressed it sent a clear message to the prison authorities that attacks against imprisoned revolutionary compas will be immediately responded to. You can see some photos from the demonstration here.
Chilean Prisons: Words in solidarity with Tamara Sol, Tato and Claudia
From the modules of the maximum security section we salute each of the compas kidnapped by the state, who day by day, with dignity and pride, face the prison reality in each of its expressions and forms.
A few days ago we learned in a more or less partial form of the cowardly attack by the prison guards against the compañeras Tamara Sol, Tato and Claudia. We are fully aware of how repetitive these actions have become, whether as punishment, isolation or an eternal package but the recurrence prevents normalization, this gives us more strength, to ourselves and to our convictions. Each day we become more acutely eager for revenge against the prison society and those who defend it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday, 24 January, on the outskirts of Vigo (Mos), a deployment of about 60 armed men between the Guardia Civil and secret agents, searched (and almost destroyed) the house where Gabriel Pombo da Silva had lived for a few months with his partner Elisa Bernardo. At dawn the two were violently awakened, handcuffed and separated … aim: to find firearms and explosives! The search lasted about eight hours and in spite of the means employed (dogs and high technology radar tools), gave no results … among the things seized there is the usual “interesting” anarchist material, cameras, maps of various cities, some cable and old malfunctioning cell phones.
While Elisa, despite the repeated threat of being placed under arrest unless she revealed the much desired hiding place, remained free, Gabriel was arrested on charges of “illegal possession and trafficking of weapons and explosives and armed group”. During the 24 hours’ detention (the release of the comrade happened, in fact, the next day) the facts were bitterly reconstructed. Read the rest of this entry »
The state through repressive mechanisms (cops, jail guards) and judicial power (prosecutors, judges) aims at the physical and psychological extermination of our political prisoners.
Prisoners and comrades however, are in a daily struggle between “special” conditions of detention, vindictive transfers, visiting denials, intimidation and persecution of relatives and friendly contacts and relatives, isolations, deprivation of rights like exit permit from prison, intent proceedings and indictments for statements of regret, self-censorship and capitulation. The ideas however are not imprisoned and solidarity is not penalized by any terror law. We build bridges to continue our common struggle by whatever means available. We support the imprisoned comrades both politically and morally through the promotion of their speech and the practical questioning of state power. Read the rest of this entry »
From Freedom of Information requests I have managed to gain some details of another Governor of Her Majesty’s Prison Service and this information yet again presents the question of how the tax paying public could reasonably trust this man to be responsible for the safety and rehabilitation of vulnerable people in custody.
Governor Gary McNair formerly of HMP Manchester, HMP Hindley and HMP Liverpool was concluded in a public record document by a Judge of Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service from 2014 to have seriously questionable credibility and that the entirety of his evidence given that day was ‘was a patently wild exaggeration on the part of that unreliable witness’Read the rest of this entry »
Today we have returned to the same streets where we have experienced harassment, teasing, assaults. With our heads on high and the confidence that gives us the support from the people next to us, we forget about the fear for a while, and focus in the pleasure of communicating through action, claiming the territories where we have been banned from.
The whisper of the spray can indicates that there is no way back, the darkness harbors us, and we are covered with a mantle of indecipherable stars in a contaminated sky, unmistakable gift from the industrial capitalism.
We want to say a lot, and is so complicated that our words arrive where they are destined, but we appeal to these streets as another tool to break the incommunication that the confinement wants to impose, although we know that is not enough.
We join the January’s 22nd initiative (trans prisoner day of action and solidarity) originated in the US, acknowledging the transphobia and a number of practices that exclude specially trans prisoners, in Colombia too. Read the rest of this entry »
Faced with an apparatus of repression that is developing ever more suffocating forms within a context of on-going technocratic and scientific mania, it is easy to fall into a state of inertia.
The aim of this repression, achieved through permanent technological armament, the development of research and studies in the field of DNA and video analysis, and the accumulation and evaluation of data of any sort, is to impose itself on us as undefeatable and inevitable.
We are led to believe it is impossible to avoid the total surveillance, acquisition, and storage of data. To counter and overcome this fallacy of total control, we must approach the situations in which we struggle with continued analysis and reflection. We have to seek and share ways to meet these developments on battlegrounds of attack, solidarity and self-organization. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE: 07.45 AM The two remaining anti-nuclear activists have now been removed from the road leading to the south gate of HMNB Clyde and arrested by the MoD police. As far as we know, all three arrested activists are being taken to Clydebank and expected to be released later.
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This morning at 06.45 AM, four anti-nuclear activists blocked the ongoing morning traffic at the south gate of HMBB Clyde in Faslane. Action was recorded by activists from the nearby Faslane Peace Camp, a protest site dedicated to campaigning against nuclear weapons since 1982. The protesters interrupted the morning routines by walking into the line of traffic and pulling a banderol over the road.
Three activists formed a sit-in blockade, shutting the entry and soon causing a traffic jam of estimated 300 cars. The undercover MoD police car and a regular police vehicle arrived to the scene soon. The protesters are being cleared from the road. Three arrests are to be expected. Read the rest of this entry »
