Prison Struggle – Page 39

Chile: Text of anarchist comrade Mónica Caballero from San Miguel prison

Posted on 2021/10/12 - 2021/10/12 by darknights

This week marks 8 years since various groups of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) and different individuals around the world raised the initiative to maintain a week of international solidarity with imprisoned anarchists, and that this week coincides with the day on which the anniversary of the legal murder of anarchists Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco by the U.S. government in 1927 is commemorated.

The official history written by the powerful plus the progressive democratic left and a part of anarchism have been especially concerned with creating a victimized image of Sacco and Vanzetti and far from any illegalist practice. All this based on the recognition by the American judicial apparatus that within the criminal process that condemned Sacco and Vanzetti there were many irregularities and that they would be legally “innocent” (information that became known many years after the murder of the comrades). Probably the comrades had no relation with the expropriation of South Braintree, which is important to know and make visible, as it is also important to emphasize that Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists of action, who propagated anti-authoritarian ideas and exercised different illegalist practices.

In the territory we call the USA in the early 1900s there were several informal anarchist groups dedicated to expropriations and to the spread of ideas antagonistic to domination. Nicola and Bartolomeo actively participated in one of these groups, specifically in the one surrounding the newspaper “Cronaca Sovversiva”. These last elements “the official history” has omitted them as in the same way they have taken special care not to remember the international solidarity that the comrades had during the year 1927. There were many demonstrations of repudiation in different localities of the political/legal/police process, as well as explosions in the name of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of the best known being the action that destroyed the Italian consulate in Buenos Aires.

It is not by chance that those who sustain the Power and its false critics use and make up the history related to Sacco and Vanzetti, certainly it is not the first time and it will not be the last.

The repressive apparatuses of the State break with their own legality constantly: they create montages, rape, torture and a long etc… These practices, for those of us who position ourselves as enemies of the hegemony of Power, should not surprise us… Trusting in the democratic legality of the State is not part of my political construction. This does not mean that I intend to naturalize the abuses exercised by the powers of the State on a daily basis; making visible is not the same as being a victim.

I see a week of solidarity specifically with anarchist prisoners as one more occasion to make visible what happens behind the high walls. Prison for me is yet another scenario of confrontation, which is felt in the smallest and most everyday things.

The first step I took in a prison was a long time ago, since then I have never stopped feeling the solidarity of my comrades, that solidarity I have had in a fraternal embrace or in a beautiful seditious light in some icon of Power.

94 years after the legal assassination of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, nothing and nobody is forgotten.

Those who fight against Power do not cease to be remembered.

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Chile: Text of Mónica, Marcelo, Juan, Joaquin, Francisco and Juan before the trial against comrade Pablo Bahamondes: Let’s multiply the gestures of solidarity and insurrectionary complicity

Posted on 2021/10/12 - 2021/10/12 by darknights

Our comrade Pablo Bahamones Ortiz was arrested along with Herny Mendez (today imprisoned in the former penitentiary of stgo) and Hugo Moraga (in the street after an abbreviated trial that sentenced him to 3 years) while they were being transported in a vehicle on September 8, 2018 under an investigation regarding an explosive attack occurred in April 2017 in the Corporation of Judicial Assistance of Melipilla for which the prosecution asks him 13 years in prison. In addition in said vehicle are found various handmade weapons for which Pablo is accused of manufacturing, transporting and carrying weapons and ammunition, specifically 6 shotguns, 1 box of cartridges, 1 revolver and 12 shots, asking the prosecution 23 years, totaling a total of 36 years of prosecutorial request.

His option and positioning for the permanent confrontation that led him to prison has been maintained and deepened inside the prison being an undeniable contribution both in the intra-prison struggles and in those that take place outside these walls uninterruptedly and without pause. This way of understanding and carrying out life in prison breaks with the passive figure of the victim prisoner that places him as a mere recipient of solidarity aid, positioning the comrade as an active subject in the uprising of varied and confrontational initiatives such as the hunger strike that we carried out together for 50 days demanding the repeal of the amendment to Law 321 and for the release of our comrade Marcelo Villarroel.

It is from this combative stance that as anarchist and subversive prisoners we call for solidarity with Pablo during the trial that will begin on September 27th using all the means at our disposal and all our imagination that allows us to generate constant complicit initiatives as well as to strike hard blows to power. Continue reading “Chile: Text of Mónica, Marcelo, Juan, Joaquin, Francisco and Juan before the trial against comrade Pablo Bahamondes: Let’s multiply the gestures of solidarity and insurrectionary complicity” →

Chile: URGENT! On the recent illness detected in the anarchist comrade Francisco Solar and his delicate health situation

Posted on 2021/10/10 - 2021/10/10 by darknights

In the first months of 2021, Francisco together with other anarchist and subversive prisoners carried out a hunger strike that lasted more than 50 days against the modification of Decree Law 321 and for the immediate release of Marcelo Villarroel.

In 2010 Francisco had already put his body as a barricade of combat in another strike of more than 60 days in the framework of the Bombs Case.

It is during the last mobilization that several blood tests were taken from Francisco by the prison administration, including a suspicious situation, where Francisco was urgently admitted to the prison hospital due to the bad result in the blood tests, but a few minutes later the jailers recanted and alluded to a mistake, returning him to prison.

After a slow recovery, continuous cramps, excessive thirst, weight loss, Francisco requested medical examinations after being transferred to the prison of Rancagua. It was not until September 22nd that these examinations were carried out and he was hospitalized urgently. The diagnosis: advanced diabetes with 700 mg/dl of glucose, that is, on the verge of a diabetic coma.

After achieving a minimum stabilization, he was returned to Module 2, where, despite the two doses of insulin administered daily by the doctors-prisoners in a restrictive manner, he still did not achieve normal glucose parameters. Continue reading “Chile: URGENT! On the recent illness detected in the anarchist comrade Francisco Solar and his delicate health situation” →

Italy: Censorship applied to anarchist Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2021/10/02 - 2021/10/02 by darknights

We inform that just over a week ago comrade Alfredo was subjected to a three-month censorship of correspondence.

Updates will follow.

The address of the comrade:

Alfredo Cospito
C. C. di Terni
strada delle Campore 32
05100 Terni
Italia – Italy

[September 30, 2021].

Source: Malacoda

Genoa, Italy: News of the special surveillance against a comrade

Posted on 2021/09/20 - 2021/09/21 by darknights

The decision of the court regarding the appeal against the special surveillance measure against a comrade from Genoa was made in August; the request that this measure, applied with all possible restrictions, be removed from her was rejected and it was clear that, although the accusation of terrorism, the pillar of the accusatory hypothesis, was dropped, the special surveillance measure was maintained in its entirety for the same reasons, that is, her “adherence to anarchist ideology”, her “manifest expressions of solidarity with the militants of the Informal Anarchist Federation”, her “support for the detained anarchists”, her “incitement to direct action”, and her dissemination of counter-information material.

Still in August, always on the initiative of the Prosecutor’s Office of Genoa, other measures were arranged, as a corollary of the surveillance, aiming to limit even more her freedom, affecting her in the sphere of her affective relationships, since they add new constraints and new difficulties to the authorization, finally obtained after 7 months of waiting, to go and visit her family, which is domiciled outside the city of Genoa, that the companion has no right to leave. Moreover, her driving license was seized, with the absurd pretext that its possession could help her to commit crimes.
It is always the same refrain that continues to impose itself, a statement as monotonous as a broken record: the companion is an anarchist, therefore she is dangerous and this is confirmed by the fact that she is under investigation as an anarchist. In this way one could go on and on.

In this time of experimentation with instruments of social control extended to large parts of the population, anarchists have already gained a lot of experience in this matter and, for a long time, they have unmasked the lies of the narrative about the rights and freedom that one could have access to in civil and democratic society, if one gives in exchange obedience, delegation and legitimacy: it is quite obvious that the consequences of adhering to the social contract are mainly in favor of a few and to the detriment of the many.
The context may change, but the authoritarian drift of this time is not something new, it is the perfection of those instruments of social control that we already know, that is why the basic principles of the anarchist idea are still valid and they show the way: to preserve the value of the individual choice, to keep alive the spark of the criticism, to refuse the concertation with public institutions, of any level, to refuse the political representation of the movements and of the conflict, not to bend to the needs of the political realism.
We do not reaffirm them for sterile sectarianism, but because they are instruments of struggle that have supported thought and action, in the streets or elsewhere, en masse or in small numbers, facing, through theory and practice, the many, detestable scum that this dirty era throws back in our faces: the commodification of our lives, the plundering of the natural environment, the increasingly invasive authority and social control, the discriminations, the state violence, the surge of the logic of profit, which ravages humanity in a spiral of war, misery and slavery. Continue reading “Genoa, Italy: News of the special surveillance against a comrade” →

$hile: Facing a new September 11. Words from comrades Luis and Ignacio from the Rancagua Prison

Posted on 2021/09/20 - 2021/09/20 by darknights

Luis and Ignacio Avaca Mansilla, are comrades arrested in May 2021 accused of sending a parcel bomb to the police station in Talca, an action claimed by “faceless entities, nothing and nobody that you know”.

Facing a new commemoration of September 11:

Let the best commemoration be actions!!!

(I): Memory and action.

This date is loaded with a historical meaning that many share, and, even if it is mainly the democratic left that seems to feel more appealed by this event, the anti-authoritarians and anti-capitalists who dissociate ourselves from that position have been able to commemorate it as well.

We ourselves remember it by ” mobilizing ourselves ” on the occasion. And it is undeniable that, for the current development of the confrontation, we have to take into account, critically, the previous experiences of struggle.

September 11 evokes this. Apart from what exactly happened on that day, it reminds us of the difficult times that were inaugurated, of the diverse expressions and experiences of resistance to the dictatorship, of those who came before us: guerrillas, prisoners, the fallen, the tortured ….. And of the irreducible struggle that continued during the democracy, of which we are participants together with all the prisoners at war.

Against the complicit oblivion and indifference with this social order, we exercise our memory, an offensive memory that does not drown in labels, but gathers all the historical tradition of conflict exercised in this territory, in dictatorship or in democracy.

We do not forget, much less forgive, and that is what is manifested in each attack against authority, its accomplices and its executioners. Continue reading “$hile: Facing a new September 11. Words from comrades Luis and Ignacio from the Rancagua Prison” →

Montevideo, Uruguay: Presentation of the Grupo Anarquista Anticarcelario website

Posted on 2021/09/11 by darknights

The destruction of prisons is the destruction of the values of this authoritarian world.

We know that the road to a world without prisons, without authority, requires much reflection and action.

Reflecting on how to solve our problems of today and tomorrow from an anarchic perspective, without falling into authoritarian logics and turning them into action in the different environments we inhabit is a challenge.

We find ourselves in a moment where the narrative of fear, hatred and segregation are usually the keys to solve conflicts, and we have to face all this with clarity and firmness. Questioning the prison, its objectives, those who support and implement it seems to us an important first step to move away from its punitivist logic and thus think of other forms of care in community.

That is why we invite all those who are interested in reflecting, contributing and acting towards a world without authority to read, disseminate and exchange in our blog in gestation. Along this path we will be publishing and exchanging all kinds of anti-prison material, whether informative, readings and reflections for debate as well as material related to different struggles that happen inside and outside of prisons.

//anarquistasanticarcelarixs.wordpress.com/

Source: Contra Info

Spain: Elisa Di Bernardo – “We are winning battles for Gabriel Pombo’s freedom”.

Posted on 2021/09/11 - 2021/09/12 by darknights

“Never having approached drugs, being very clear about his ideas, and his physical and mental strength have helped him to survive in prison, despite the FIES. Almost all of his comrades have died. He survived a genocide” explains in Oviedo the companion of the anarchist prisoner.

Elisa di Bernardo went to Oviedo yesterday to tell the situation of her colleague Gabriel Pombo da Silva. Invited by the group Higinio Carrocera, in collaboration with the local Cambalache, taking advantage of her visit to Pombo to the prison of Mansilla de las Mulas in León, Elisa gave a very complete account of both the legal situation of the anarchist prisoner and his life and struggle in his more than 30 years in the prisons of the State. It was a talk that not only served to have information about Pombo but also to show how, inside the prison walls, “democracy” disappears and one enters a dark world, subjected to physical and psychological torture, to personal revenge by judges and jailers, to prisons inside the prison (FIES). In addition, Elisa gave us perspective and context on how inequality, misery, injustice and poverty consubstantial to the capitalist and statist system manufactures criminals.

Elisa began the talk by taking out of her backpack three important books to know the situation of prisoners and the world of the anti-prison struggle: “Extrema Indigencia, extrema violencia”, “Para que no me olvides” by Madres Unidas contra la Droga and the Informe sobre la Tortura en el Estado español that Elisa explained was censored by the police, as it tells the saddest time of the FIES regime (files of inmates of special monitoring).

After this bibliographical introduction Elisa di Bernardo spoke about Gabriel Pombo’s life trajectory. “They lived in Vigo in a shack until they emigrated to Germany to earn a living. There he discovers a new world and also begins to know the instinctive solidarity among the poor. The first political question Gabriel asked himself was: “If my father builds houses, why don’t we have a house? Continue reading “Spain: Elisa Di Bernardo – “We are winning battles for Gabriel Pombo’s freedom”.” →

Italy: Intervention of Alfredo Cospito to the initiative “Land of Love and Freedom” in Grisolia (24.08.2021)

Posted on 2021/09/06 - 2021/09/06 by darknights

The following text is the intervention of fellow anarchist Alfredo Cospito, currently imprisoned in Terni, for the debate on the book What International?, held in the context of the second edition of the initiative “Land of Love and Freedom”, two days of anarchist publishing in Calabria focused on internationalism and revolutionary continuity, in Grisolia 23-24 August 2021.

Lately I have been wondering with what nerve an anarchist prisoner for ten years as I claim to express an analysis “realistic” about the present, the real movement outside these four walls. The interview with “Vetriolo” caught me still relatively soaked in reality, out of the fray of the struggle, still convinced of having a “realistic” and objective view of the world. What international? is the result of thirty years of practiced struggle, of blows inflicted and received, of affinities and friendships born and then traumatically severed by the wall of a prison. Summing up, today I can say with a certain conviction that the only moments in which I was certain of having contributed to changing things were those moments in which I clashed with the system, in which I risked my freedom and my skin. In those moments I lived, I felt more alive than ever. And the pleasure I felt was incomparable, comparable only to the love for one’s own or one’s partner in the most intense moments of passion. I remember when, as a young boy, it seemed impossible for me to intervene concretely, the level of deepening always seemed insufficient, the practical skills I had didn’t seem up to the task, I didn’t know where to start, at the beginning one feels inept, incapable… I was waiting for a suggestion, a start from my more experienced companions. Often, in exchange for my enthusiasm, I received a good dose of “realism” that dampened or risked dampening any revolutionary “ambition”, any drive to action. Incredible as it may seem, “realism” sometimes makes any action, any impetus, impossible. I came out of this sort of “dead end” only when I decided in an impish, reckless, crazy, provocative way to arm my hands. Then everything became “easy”, failure after failure, step by step, things started to work. I looked for my companions and I found them, we recognized each other by making the refusal of delegation and wait-and-see our compass. Many (perhaps too many) years have passed since that time and today I find myself on the other side, “navigated” anarchist with more “experience”. And what I feel like saying is simply to follow your instincts and not to pay too much attention to the prudence of those who from the height of their lives “lived” push for moderation. Because that popular saying “you are born an arsonist and you die a fireman” is not so far-fetched. Every day in here I fight with myself to remain what I was, and I don’t always succeed. In my words I sometimes glimpse what I’ve always fought, opportunism, paternalism, realism… “politics”. Dynamics that risk making me forget how beautiful it was to communicate only through gestures of destruction and the words that followed them. When I wasn’t in danger of becoming a “point of reference”, when I was a complete stranger. And the stupid things I happened to say remained limited, no one rightly spun them. The tragicomic thing is that the “metamorphosis” is almost painless and does not only affect us prisoners but perhaps even more those who outside these walls every day relate to a reality that tends to normalize. The “realism” drags you to a continuous decline that leads you to judge those who remain “themselves” as naive, provocative, childish, deluded. Continue reading “Italy: Intervention of Alfredo Cospito to the initiative “Land of Love and Freedom” in Grisolia (24.08.2021)” →

Bristol: Write to the Kill the Bill prisoners

Posted on 2021/09/06 by darknights

Source: Bristol ABC