darknights

Greece: Giannis Michaildis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release

Posted on 2022/05/23 - 2022/05/23 by darknights

After 8.5 years in prison, after all these arbitrary actions against me, I decided to put an end to my 11 years of suffering, by putting a stop to the practice of pre-trial detention, or the additional punishment of escape through legal loopholes. After 5 more months of pre-trial detention, I start a hunger strike for my release. This choice, with the deep motivation of the much desired freedom, I intend to support it with the same consistency that I have supported my choices so far and for which I am being persecuted.

“Woe to those who will accept prison as a condition of life, and from the brightest sunlight, the smallest ray” – The rallying cry of the Alikarnassos prison uprising

For 11 years I have experienced state vengeance against choices in line with my values and ideas. The difficult journey, from which I choose to share some blatant vengeful acts of arbitrariness against me, began in the distant 2011, when an arrest warrant was issued against me for the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case, for which I was eventually acquitted as there was not the slightest connection between me and the charge against me. It was the incrimination of a relationship of solidarity with wanted anarchists that put me in their place when they were arrested.

After 2 years of being on the run, I too am now walking through the heavy doors of prison, as the existence of a warrant that entails a decade of incarceration has led to certain choices and consequent mistakes. The comrades who were arrested at the time in the bank robbery in Velvento, Kozani, were tortured by the police, which is common, and then the Ministry of Public Order published photos of our swollen faces, provoking a public reaction. Of course, no police officer was accused of this by the blind Greek justice system. Continue reading “Greece: Giannis Michaildis – Announcement of a hunger strike for my release” →

Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos

Posted on 2022/05/23 - 2022/05/23 by darknights

Political text by Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos.

We are in a daily war, a war with the status quo, with every form of power that eats away at our lives, and in this war I realized where I belong. In a world where patriarchy rapes and kills us, where capitalism crushes us, impoverishing what we call life, in this world where humanity itself dominates nature and animals, perpetuating anthropocentric thinking and speciesism. So I chose sides. For the power complex will not destroy itself, no social change will come about unless our action transcends reformist logics, having a will to believe and a commitment to our ideas, putting theory into practice.

I proudly declare myself anarchist, proud that in this rotten society, the society of submission and spectacle, I did not bow my head before exploitation and power and chose to stand next to comrades who, by supporting the multiform struggle, also wrote their own page in the revolutionary historical memory. So far, living my new life next to them, in squats, through their common struggles for freedom, I learned what solidarity and comradeship is, what it means to give everything for what you believe in even if you are going to lose your freedom. I take the political responsibility that is due to me for my complicity in the incendiary attack that took place on 8/2 at the Foundation for National and Religious Reflection. A fragmentary action, which was not carried out by an organisation, namely the Anarchist Action organisation of which I am accused as a member, but was motivated by the desires and anger of two people against religious obscurantism, patriarchy and state power. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos” →

June 11, 2022: International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

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As time moves on and the seasons change, we approach once again the June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. Another year has passed, and many of our dear comrades remain captives of the state, subject to its daily subjugation, isolation, and brutality. June 11th is a time to stop the ever-quickening rush of our lives and remember.

Remember our imprisoned comrades. Remember our own histories of revolt. Remember the flame – sometimes flickering, sometimes blazing – of anarchism.

WE ARE ALL POTENTIAL PRISONERS

With June 11th, we desire to deepen a critique of prison that challenges the distinction between prisoner and supporter. For us, these differences are conditional: we, as anarchists, see ourselves as potential prisoners. Some of us have been, some of us will be. This is the basis of our solidarity – a recognition of ourselves in the plight of those in prison.

The continuum of prisoner and supporter can only be seen as tenuous if one looks to the examples of imprisoned and formerly-imprisoned comrades: Marius Mason’s activity with the Anarchist Black Cross, Bill Dunne’s liberation of an anarchist prisoner, Pola Roupa’s attempted helicopter rescue of anarchist prisoners, Claudio Lavazza‘s actions to liberate prisoners. The connections deepen when one considers that numerous anarchist prisoners are locked up for attacks on prison, judicial, and police institutions; and that others connect us to prisoner uprisings from California and Alabama to Greece and Italy. Continue reading “June 11, 2022: International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners” →

UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

This statement from Toby Shone on prison abolition was recorded and transcribed from HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, Wales, UK. It was his contribution to a prison abolition event due to be hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign on 8 May 2022 but which was postponed until a later date yet to be decided.

Hello Everyone

This is Toby Shone. I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in G4S Parc. It’s a slave labour camp holding 1,800 men in South Wales run by the security multinational on a government contract providing dirt cheap labour for private companies.

I was captured by the anti-terrorist unit during Operation Adream in November 2020. First I want to thank you for listening and also the opportunity provided by Bristol Anti-Repression Coalition. Moments like this break the isolation we feel as prisoners and they also give us a chance to participate and to speak out. There are many reasons to oppose prisons and the current judicial system and as an anarchist I can’t separate the anti-prison struggle from the struggle against the State and civilisation and I’m going to return to this later. But now I’ll briefly give an account of some of the joint struggles inside prison.

I’ve never sought to hide my perspectives while I’ve been here and I’ve been subject to a lot of State intimidation and scrutiny because of that and I’ve never backed down. The prisons in the UK are mostly filthy and overcrowded, lacking basic resources, degrading and decaying.

In London I was held in the prison within the prison alongside Jihadis, Russian-Italian-Ukrainian mafia, postcode war gang members, high level money launderers and so on. Overall we all got on well with each other, even with high levels of violence and on average one death or suicide each month. There we had a laundry room where we could meet, play cards, and talk. We’d exchange books and ideas as well as our hopes and fears. And because of this social area, the administration moved to shut down our laundry and move it off wing. So we had a small struggle to keep it open, spreading a unity between all the groups, collecting 200 signatures for our petition and also it was almost every man that signed it there on H block. It might seem a minor struggle but in prison everything small becomes of a huge significance because you have almost nothing but your dignity and only you can give that away. And it’s important for our decency to have clean clothes and bedsheets, pillowcases and so on. And if the laundry was moved off wing this couldn’t be guaranteed and nobody wanted to have their clothes stolen or damaged and it’s almost impossible to get any more. And it would also mean that we would have to suffer the inability to wash our clothes more than once a week and that’s even if the scheme ran correctly. In practice, in prison, nothing works as it should and it’s intended to be that way, to make life as difficult as possible. Suffice to say, our petition was completely ignored by the authorities and the imprisoned fellow in charge of running the laundry lost his job and was moved prison as a kind of punishment because he was blamed for stirring up trouble. In prisons, the administrations are very scared of anything even slightly challenging to their power. We have to consider these intermediate struggles very well, but we must never give up our stances. Continue reading “UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign” →

Berlin, Germany: Discussion about the perspectives of revolutionary anarchy

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/23 by darknights

Discussion about the perspectives of revolutionary anarchy Starting from the call „International Campaign for Revolutionary Anarchism and Solidarity with Revolutionary Prisoners“, which was published last winter, we want to discuss common perspectives with you. This call was written from solidarians in Athens to the case of Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis and his conviction to sixteen years in prison for participation in the Organization of Revolutionary Self-Defense. 30.05.2022 at 19.00, New Yorck at Bethanien Mariannenplatz 2A, 10997 Berlin

Discussion about the perspectives of revolutionary anarchy

Starting from the call „International Campaign for Revolutionary Anarchism and Solidarity with Revolutionary Prisoners“, which was published last winter, we want to discuss common perspectives with you. This call was written from solidarians in Athens to the case of Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis and his conviction to sixteen years in prison for participation in the Organization of Revolutionary Self-Defense.

Revolutionary Self-Defense was a revolutionary anarchist organization active from 2014-2017. During it’s years, the organization took responsibility for five armed attacks: against the headquarters of the greek political party PASOK, the Mexican Embassy in Athens, the French Embassy in Athens and two attacks against the greek riot police (MAT) in front of PASOK offices in the neighborhood of Exarchia. The group claimed to „put all its strength into the construction of the broad armed social resistance and is struggling to construct a mass internationalist revolutionary movement, by strengthening militant resistance on the entire spectrum of class antagonism.“

After the robbery of a betting office in Ocrober 2019, in which he was injured, Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis was on the run for almost two years. With his arrest in Thessaloniki last year, the period of armed resistance in Greece seems to have been interrupted for the time being. That not only the armed struggle can have a revolutionary potential is obvious and so the above call poses some questions, the answers to which are one of the aims of our event.

Where do our movements stand faced with the immense challenges and demands of our epoch?

Can we retrace our revolutionary roots?

Can we become the creative force that can effectively abolish the cannibalistic authority of the rich few over the many?

In the event, the positions of Dimitris from jail will exchange with ours and hopefully with yours to develop a common ground for the creation of a revolutionary practice. We do not intend to organize an information event about anarchy in Greece, but we want to find out with you the necessities and possibilities in our region. The framework are further questions about the effects of repression and the meaning of solidarity, the meaning of social tensions and the question of the legitimization of self-defense by society. What can be the trigger for a revolutionary movement and do we need a ground like Exarchia or squats? Is the anarchist movement missing a theoretical base or agenda like Maoism or Marxism offers?

Source: de.indymedia

Spain: Information and update on the detainees for the burning of a police vehicle

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

Yesterday evening Ermann was released and today Emanuele will be released.

The boys have decided to pay the bails together with the help of the solidarity funds, the comrades, friends and relatives.

Only the bails of Danilo, Albo and Beppe (the last imprisoned) remain to be paid.

Danilo has decided to leave after June 3, because he doesn’t want to miss his university exams, Albo stays with him waiting for him in the same module.

We hope that solidarity will fill the boxes with the money needed to free them.

See you in the streets!

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for arson attack on BRINKS security vehicle

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

Our lives are daily subjected to the devaluation and the all-out attack of the state in all areas of socio-political reality. Understaffed hospitals where people are dying without even having the possibility of a decent hospitalization, labor sweatshops where workers are murdered as security measures are non-existent, uniformed scumbags chasing and shooting unarmed minors because they are Roma in the name of property and security, arrests with inflated charges linking people to organizations because of friendly relations. These are all examples that display the dystopia that the rulers want to establish.

In this effort, therefore, we feel the need to set up mounds of resistance and to fight back by all means and in various ways against the enemy, while giving the answer that nothing will end with arrests and detention of militants. One of the ways we use and consider an important tool in the overall struggle against the state and capital is direct action. In various places in the urban fabric there are targets waiting to be visited in order to break in practice the sense of security that the rulers try to maintain.

We take responsibility for the arson of a BRINKS security company vehicle in the Triandrias area on the evening of 16 April.

OUR IDEAS ARE NOT IMPRISONED

SOLIDARITY TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

Anarchists

Source: athens.indymedia

Chile: (Publicación) “Hermosamente Violento. Reflexiones-Tensiones In Memoriam” en recuerdo de Mauricio Morales

Posted on 2022/05/21 by darknights

“Hermosamente Violento. Reflexiones-Tensiones In Memoriam” en recuerdo de Mauricio Morales

Esta breve revista salió de imprenta el 2019, a 10 años de la muerte del compañero anarquista Mauricio Morales. Hoy en una nueva conmemoración el recuerdo, las reflexiones, la decisión de sacar del olvido a nuestrxs muertxs y expandir su memoria en todxs sigue siendo el objetivo plenamente vigente.

Hoy como ayer nuestra memoria es negra, nuestro corazón también.

*Un 22 de Mayo….

*Un instante en la Guerra Social

*Los estruendos siguen resonando en la Memoria

*Nuestra Memoria Negra sabe traspasar los años y las fronteras

*Algunas divagaciones sobre Memoria Iconoclasta

PDF: Hermosamente violento para imprenta

+ portada para imprimir

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Chile: 13 years after the fall in combat of comrade Mauricio Morales + ‘Sharpening ideas against prison. Reflections by Mauricio Morales’ (in Spanish)

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

On May 22, 2009 the anarchist comrade Mauricio Morales dies after the accidental detonation of the explosive device he was carrying to the Gendarmerie School. A comrade fled and the police unleashed a repressive hunt against his circle, seeking to put an end to the almost one hundred explosive attacks perpetrated by anti-authoritarian groups.
The recollection and memory of Mauri joins with that of the rest of the anarchists killed in struggle and confrontation with the State, in this way every year May is transformed into new impulses to sharpen the confrontation with power and strengthen the community of negation.

Another May, another 22nd, again the recollections, again the memory in offensive… it is already impossible to imprison his memory in those who knew him or were close to him, his memory has the forms and slogans of those who bring him to the present in each conspiracy, without leaders or representatives, there are no official voices. The insurrectionary memory can simply be everywhere. Continue reading “Chile: 13 years after the fall in combat of comrade Mauricio Morales + ‘Sharpening ideas against prison. Reflections by Mauricio Morales’ (in Spanish)” →

Solidarity Poster: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, anarchist imprisoned in 41 bis. (Italy)

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

On May 5, imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito was notified of his transfer from “High Security 2” to 41 bis. The decree was ordered by Justice Minister Marta Cartabia. The 41 bis is an afflictive penitentiary regime that provides for: isolation and silence, the absence of sociability and any internal activity, censorship of correspondence and the blocking of a good part of it, one hour of monthly interview with the dividing glass, recording of the interview itself, ten minutes of phone calls per month with an authorized and forced family member from a barracks, the prohibition to receive and buy newspapers and books, and the limitation in the availability of objects inside the cell.

This transfer is an attack on a comrade anarchist who never lowered his head: who, after his arrest and in the trial that followed, claimed head-on to have shot in the legs the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, Engineer Adinolfi, one of the top nuclear executives in Europe. In recent years, Alfredo has been a thorn in the side for investigators because of his constant contribution to the revolutionary movement, a contribution they would now like to silence. Continue reading “Solidarity Poster: Solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, anarchist imprisoned in 41 bis. (Italy)” →