Prison Struggle – Page 5

$hile: Communique by Mapuche Political Prisoners in Temuco Prison on Raids, Beatings and Transfers

Posted on 2025/04/07 - 2025/04/07 by darknights

In the face of raids, brutal beatings and unjustified transfers, Mapuche Political Prisoners in the Temuco prison charge that these events are part of a broader strategy that seeks to dismantle the existing community modules in Chilean prisons.

“PUBLIC STATEMENT BY MAPUCHE POLITICAL PRISONERS, CCP TEMUCO COMMUNITY MODULE
The Mapuche political prisoners held in the Temuco prison salute our traditional authorities, Pu Lonko, Pu Werken and Pu Machi, as well as the communities in resistance, and declare the following:
On Monday, March 31, at approximately 10:30 a.m., we were violently raided in the first instance by officials of this penal facility, who were later reinforced by personnel of the U.S.E.P.
As a result of this act, innumerable damages were caused, such as the destruction of furniture, the theft of sporting goods, the arbitrary and excessive use of tear gas, and various physical and verbal aggressions (verbatim words of Lieutenant Martínez and Sergeant Ramírez: “Indios Culiaos, Indios Perkines”).
The most affected peñi was Rodrigo Cáseres Salamanca, who underwent surgery on his right arm less than six months ago and is still in the process of rehabilitation. However, this was not an impediment for the Gendarmerie officials, who continued with the beating without any consideration.
Despite their state of health, the Peñi Rodrigo Cáseres Salamanca, Patricio Queipul and Anthu Llanca were transferred to three different prisons: Angol, Valdivia and Concepción. Where they were sent to maximum security modules, without the right to TV or radio, with a regime of 22 hours of solitary confinement, and 2 hours of courtyard.
It should be noted that the latter two were recently acquitted of a set-up orchestrated by the Gendarmerie of the Angol prison.
We see with this as a first conclusion that the orchestrators of the raid were: the recently transferred Lieutenant Hernández from the concessioned prison of Concepción, who on Monday, March 31, occupied the position of deputy warden, the operational chief of the OSI Mijail Morales, the non-commissioned officer Martínez and Sergeant Ramírez, directed and protected by Néstor Flores, regional director of the gendarmerie.
It is evident that what happened is part of a provocative maneuver directed against the Mapuche political prisoners, and we know that this is only one piece of a broader strategy that seeks to dismantle the existing modules of community members in the Chilean prisons located in our Wallmapu.
This intention is clearly demonstrated by the modifications in the internal regime that will be implemented arbitrarily, without prior notice and under the direction of Lieutenant Hernández. Added to this is the daily harassment to which we are subjected, which is manifested through sanctions that are not officially recorded, which rather respond to racist attributions on the part of Gendarmerie officials.
This strategy is also supported by the entire political class, which acts at the service of business interests, the gendarmerie is nothing more than a puppet institution of political interests and the business community.
We demand that our status as Mapuche political prisoners be respected, as well as our culture, social practices and worldview. Ratified by ILO Convention 169.
From the political prisoners module of the Temuco prison, we call for solidarity with the peñi transferred to the prisons of Angol, Valdivia and Concepción.
In addition, we urge to be alert to the repressive and offensive maneuvers directed against the Mapuche political prisoners modules and the eventual mobilizations that may arise.
Immediate transfers of Rodrigo Caseres Salamanca, Patricio Queipul Millanao and Anthu Llanca Quidel to the CCP Temuko community module.
Freedom for All Mapuche Political Prisoners.
For unity in the Weichan
Presos Políticos Mapuche CCP Temuko.»

Source: https://radiokurruf.org/2025/04/02/comunicado-presos-politicos-mapuche-carcel-de-temuco-ante-allanamiento-golpiza-y-traslados/

Via & translated by Abolition Media

Greece: ‘THAT WHICH GIVES MEANING TO LIFE GIVES MEANING TO DEATH’ – Marianna M. [Updated Translation]

Posted on 2025/03/31 - 2025/04/07 by darknights

On 31.10 on the third floor of an apartment in Arkadias Street (Athens), during the processing of explosives by my comrade and guerrilla Kyriakos Xymitiris, an explosion took place with the tragic consequence of his death. For a few moments, with me in the next room, time froze, everything went black and I was unable to move. The condition was incomprehensible, the development inconceivable. Buried in the wreckage trying to figure out what had happened;asking for help, searching for my partner with my eyes. Slowly realizing that while the thread of my comrade’s action would be abruptly cut short, his life and his choices in struggle would be a historic flash of determined resistance, consistency and dedication; a springboard and inspiration for further struggle. Two figures appeared offering help while I showed them the spot where I last saw my comrade, the spot where our guilty gazes met, gazes full of anger at the world we live in, full of faith and appetite for moments of true freedom.

Within a few minutes I was in the hospital “Evangelismos”. I was immediately subjected to examinations and operations. I had a hematoma on my head and countless stitches on the upper part of my body. I remained intubated and completely unconscious for the next three days. Enough time for the “anti-“terror scumbags to come to the hospital demanding a blood sample. On the Monday, I regained consciousness and was transferred to the ICU where I was confined for the next three days. The conditions there were decent with medical staff eager to assist in my recovery. However the room was surrounded by police forces who entered the ICU room during the 5-minute visits from my family.

After two days I was transferred – for no apparent reason – to an isolation ward guarded by several static and as many mobile cops in the hallways and on the floors. The door to my room was constantly open leaving zero privacy even during medical examinations. Under the “watchful” gaze of every single cop I had to eat, be examined, and have my body cleaned. Following instructions, the majority of medical and nursing staff maintained a distant attitude, showing zero empathy even in the most basic things, for example when they carried out an examination with the presence of a male police officer.

The insistence of the 22nd investigator of the Athens District Court on conducting the interrogation procedure despite my physical and mental weakness also contributed to the vindictive atmosphere. After asking for a certificate of my sufficient ‘functionality’, which she read at her discretion, she finally gave me the sham extension of 30 hours. She thus confirmed the fact that her priority was my predetermined pre-trial detention and prosecution under 187A.

On Friday 15.11, and just one day after the second operation I underwent, I was transferred to the women’s prison in Korydallos. My daily life, under these circumstances, was difficult. Under deplorable sanitary conditions and with unhealed wounds on my body and head, the repressive mechanism was playing with my health. I was without the necessary medical care and without access to the necessary medication, a condition that all prisoners face as they are perceived as second-class citizens with no right to medical care, with superficial to non-existent medical examinations by prison doctors, with prohibition of necessary medical procedures, with discontinuation of medication taken before incarceration, with long waits for months for emergency examinations in outpatient hospitals.

THE GEOMETRY OF THE ANTI-TERROR UNIT

While I am still unconscious, only a few hours after the explosion, the judicial apparatus follows the instructions of the anti-terror squad and constructs an indictment of an abomination. The processing of (small amounts of) explosive materials and devices with only comrade Kyriakos and myself present and aware, was baptized an organization. The apartment, to which we had only had access to for a few days, was christened a yafka (illegal bunker). The legitimate objects found in the apartment where I lived with comrade Kyriakos and which were presented on the daily news were dubbed suspicious. With these facts, the anti-terror police prosecuted me on the charge of “terrorism”. At this point, however, I will not focus on the legal aspect, nor will I speak in the context of innocence and guilt. I refuse to accept an indictment based on 187A, especially when it instrumentalizes the death of my comrade in the most vulgar fashion. And I intend to deconstruct whichever repressive scenario they construct. But I will defend until the end my choice to be in this apartment, I will defend the necessity of struggle by means not limited to the framework of civil law, I will defend my comrade’s choices, his memory and our relationship.

By carving concentric circles, the anti-terror police weave their own repressive web. It places me and my comrade Kyriakos at the centre and, with shaky geometry, it adds friends, comrades and strangers. In the first cycle it places the arrest of the anarchist comrade Dimitra, who presented herself voluntarily in a Hollywood-style operation at the Athens airport where – in contrast to the femicide of Kyriaki Griva – the police car in the role of a taxi picks her up and takes her to the GADA (Athens central police station). The only “clue” was that she had given the keys to the apartment in Arkadia Street to me and Kyriakos under the pretext of hosting our acquaintances from abroad, without her knowledge of the true purpose of the flat’s use. It is worth noting that on the day of the explosion she was abroad, where she had been living for the last few years. She too is being prosecuted under 187A. In the second circle they place the comrade Dimitris, who also presented himself voluntarily at GADA, because he had handed over the pair of keys of the apartment in Arcadia Street to the flat’s owner, something which had been requested of him by Dimitra. With the only involvement being the delivery of the keys, without having known anything more and having been at work at the time of the explosion, he also faces the aforementioned charges. Twenty days later the”anti-“terrorists secure the next cycle, with the arrest of the anarchist comrade N. Romanos. In his case, the repressive mechanism unleashed its vindictiveness by using as proof a faint fingerprint on a transportable object – a bag – found in the apartment in Arcadia. Two days later A.K becomes part of the last cycle when he is arrested due to the ridiculous “clue” of the fingerprint on the same bag. Apparently within 20 days the “efficiency” of the ELAS (greek police) laboratories managed to implicate two people with whom I have no connection, by unearthing a fingerprint, while the tons of xylene in the Tempi massacre have not been found for two years now. The last two arrested also face the same flimsy charge.

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Chile: Anarchist Comrade Francisco Solar Comes Out of Isolation After 5 years

Posted on 2025/03/31 - 2025/03/31 by darknights

The anarchist comrade Francisco Solar comes out of isolation after 5 years in punishment.

After spending almost 5 years in solitary confinement, touring different maximum security modules and facing the recent hardening of the prison regime that kept him with 21 hours of confinement in the cell, without TV or radio and with restrictions on visits, today we have news regarding his situation in prison.

After successive hearings and technical advice, the gendarmerie has run out of excuses to keep the comrade in this punishment regime, being forced to transfer him.

Today the anarchist comrade manages to get out of the circuit and labyrinth of isolation and maximum security modules, being transferred to module 33 inside La Gonzalina Prison, where other anarchist and subversive prisoners are held.

Solidarity and complicity with the anarchist comrade Francisco Solar!

Solidarity and complicity with those who attack power and repression!

Via & translated by Abolition Media

Source: Informativo Anarquista

Italy: Anarchist Salvatore Vespertino (Ghespe) has been transferred from the Rebibbia prison to the Spoleto prison (March 20, 2025)

Posted on 2025/03/24 - 2025/03/28 by darknights

ANARCHIST SALVATORE VESPERTINO TRANSFERRED TO SPOLETO PRISON (ITALY)

Arrested in Spain on February 15th on an international arrest warrant, and extradited to Italy on March 4th, anarchist comrade Salvatore Vespertino, “Ghespe”, was first brought to Rome’s Rebibbia prison, and then transferred to Spoleto prison on March 20th.

We remind that Ghespe faces an eight-year sentence for manufacturing, possessing and carrying an explosive device, causing grievous bodily harm, and causing damage, related to the 2017 “Panico” repressive operation in Florence on charges of making the homemade explosive device found in front of the entrance of “Il Bargello” bookstore in Florence, home of CasaPound fascists.

In the early days of his detention in Spain, Ghespe was subjected to pressure and harassment by guards. At Rebibbia, the correspondence wasn’t delivered to him; visits and phone calls were not allowed until shortly before his transfer to the prison of Spoleto.

If guards and servants of the state think they can use such tricks to break our closeness, they are sorely mistaken.

NO PRISON WILL STOP OUR SOLIDARITY
FREEDOM FOR GHESPE
FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE

The address to continue writing to the comrade:

Salvatore Vespertino
Casa di Reclusione di Spoleto
Località Maiano 10
06049 Spoleto (PG)
Italy – Italia

Source: La Nemesi

$hile: Update on anarchist comrades Aldo and Lucas Hernández

Posted on 2025/03/22 by darknights

It has been more than two years since December 22, 2022, the day of several raids orchestrated by the South Metropolitan High Complexity Prosecutor’s Office, where six homes were raided, five of them in the Metropolitan Region and one in the Valparaiso Region, all searched by police groups OS9, GOPE and LABOCAR, resulting in six detainees, four of whom were remanded in custody. Two correspond to the brothers and comrades Aldo and Lucas Hernandez, in the course of the months the comrades will remain under investigation for the explosive attack on the National Directorate of Gendarmerie of Chile, Aldo is indicated as the alleged bomber of the device, he is also charged with crimes under the Law of Arms Control, as well as Lucas charged with various offenses under the Law of Arms and Explosives Control.

Months later, the comrades were asked for a re-formalization hearing, adding for both of them the case of manufacture of weapons and manufacture of explosive devices for various items found in the home raided in Pedro Aguirre Cerda.

In this process we have seen how the prosecution through trickery and dirty games have tried to harm and intimidate this environment with jail, seeking information and even informations in order to complete the investigation and to prove what the prosecution accuses, having a negative result to the harassment, since all the detainees after the raids have remained dignified and integrated to the mediocre attempts of the Prosecutor Claudio Orellana, demonstrating in practice complicity and loyalty to the principles of anti-authoritarian comradeship.

In the course of the months the comrades have lived diverse and different prison realities, since from the beginning the comrades have been separated trying to break their family ties without having contact and sharing the same physical space for more than two
years.

At this moment the comrades are waiting for the oral trial preparation hearing, which has already been postponed twice due to different legal situations.
While waiting for the trial, which has taken more than two years, the comrades are still unable to meet due to security issues, violating their rights to preserve the family ties that unite them.

In that trial they risk exemplary sentences, for comrade Aldo the prosecution requests a sentence of 90 years and for Lucas a sentence of 26 years, we point out that exemplary since this excessive amount of years only seeks to intimidate the environment and those who decide to return blow after blow without turning the cheek or waiting for illusory and idealized opportune moments to go after our enemies. The comrades remain intact and with the impetus intact to continue contributing to strengthen the anarchic walk outside and inside the prisons, clinging fiercely to their ideas and their values, contributing to various comrades who have been deprived of freedom like them, making their ideas a real threat to the range of harmful behaviors inside the prison and practicing prison solidarity, continuing to position themselves against the prison and their jailers inside their own homes (prisons).

The power continues to strike, reprisals are part of the daily life of our brothers. The last event was the transfer of Aldo to the maximum security module 2 in the prison of “La Gonzalina”, on December 24 last year, changing his prison regime. He is currently under a schedule of 21 hours of confinement and 3 hours of yard time, this added to restrictions such as the prohibition of electronic devices (TV, kettle and radios). This transfer was the result of a raid carried out in module 12 (module in which Aldo had been for two years) on December 18, in which the personal information of the 16 gendarmerie officers injured on the day of the attack to the national directorate on December 27 2021 was found inside Aldo’s cell. This information was contained in the respective investigative files of the case, which is why the high command of La Gonzalina decided to isolate him.

The practice of violence continues more than ever, and it is blood to pump the hearts of our brothers in prison. Each accurate action, propagandistic gesture reveals the vulnerability of a predatory system that is sustained by a false security that is nothing more than a breakable mask and within reach of our hands full of conviction and courage.

Actions such as attacks with weapons-bombs to institutions-police-apparatuses that protect the interests of power and the rich are just a sample of that, that the fear is felt by those who imprison us, that the bullets have names and surnames, that our energies are capable of creating what our imagination once thought, that every idea overflows in the minds of those who see that the violent struggle is possible.

Fire and death to the spectator, the scavenger, the martyr and the vulture.

Freedom for the convinced, certain and courageous who go against domination!

Anarchists, subversives and Mapuche prisoners to the streets!

Let’s dare to create the forbidden!

Make ideas a real threat!

Aldo and Lucas Hernandez to the streets!

February, 2025.

Source: Informativo Anarquista

Chile: Update on the isolation situation of anarchist comrade Francisco Solar

Posted on 2025/03/22 by darknights

Francisco has remained in Maximum Security modules for almost 5 years, since he was arrested in 2020 accused of attacks against repressors and the powerful.

Once sentenced, the isolation regime became even harsher, remaining for more than 6 months with a regime of strict isolation, restrictions on visits, 21 hours of confinement, no TV or radio.

By March the administrative authorities will decide whether or not the comrade will remain in solitary confinement. We call to remain attentive to the next information.

Facing the hardening of the prison regime: Solidarity and action!

Source: Informativo Anarquista

GRECIA: COMUNICADO DE NIKOS MAZIOTIS – LXS REVOLUCIONARIXS NO SE «CORRIGEN» NI « SE MEJORAN MORALMENTE»

Posted on 2025/03/22 by darknights

EN:Text by anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis (Greece)
Ελ: ΟΙ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΕΣ ΔΕΝ «ΣΩΦΡΟΝΙΖΟΝΤΑΙ» ΚΑΙ ΔΕΝ «ΒΕΛΤΙΩΝΟΝΤΑΙ ΗΘΙΚΑ»

LXS REVOLUCIONARIXS NO SE «CORRIGEN» NI « SE MEJORAN MORALMENTE»

Una vez más, por sexta vez consecutiva, el tribunal plenario de delitos menores de Lamia me honra con su decisión de rechazar mi solicitud de libertad condicional, con el argumento de que ¡no me he «corregido» y que no he mostrado «mejora moral»! ¡No puedo sino admitir que tienen razón!

En efecto, un militante consecuente, un revolucionario, un anarquista como yo, no podría ser «corregido» y «mejorado moralmente» por la cárcel, no importa cuántos años esté encarcelado. Un militante consecuente, un revolucionario, un anarquista, puede dar su vida por la lucha, como el compañero de la Lucha Revolucionaria Lambros Fountas, puede arriesgar su vida por la lucha, puede arriesgarse a ser asesinado por los pretorianos del estado, como casi ocurrió en mi caso, puede pasar muchos años en la cárcel -yo ya he cumplido 12 años por la Lucha Revolucionaria y otros 4 antes de eso- pero no se le permite dar un paso atrás, mostrar arrepentimiento o revisión, o en otras palabras y en el lenguaje del tribunal, una mejora «correccional» y «moral». Así que, desde este punto de vista, todas las decisiones de los tribunales y juntas judiciales, las seis del tribunal plenario y la una de la junta de apelaciones, me honran y me demuestran que sigo en el camino correcto. Si dijera lo contrario, empezaría a preguntarme si me he equivocado y he violado mis principios y valores morales. Mi única objeción es la referencia del tribunal sobre un “pretencioso” buen comportamiento por mi parte. Esto realmente me hace injusticia. Si tal cosa fuera cierta, en las audiencias del tribunal, en manera completamente «pretenciosa», contraria a lo que creo por lo que he sido condenado y por las faltas disciplinarias que he cometido, estaría murmurando disculpas y lamentos como hacen la mayoría de los presos penales para lograr su puesta en libertad. Pero tal cosa es impensable para mí.

La última decisión negativa del tribunal plenario de Lamia me excluye efectivamente de la posibilidad de la libertad condicional, a pesar de que ya he cumplido más de 4/5 de mi condena.

Dentro del endurecimiento general en los últimos años, de la legislación penal y «correccional», en cuyo marco se han aumentado los límites de las penas, y los límites para la concesión de la libertad condicional y de los permisos; basicamente el derecho a la libertad condicional y a los permisos estan bajo abolicion. Se han introducido carceles de maxima seguridad (algo parecido a las antiguas prisiones de tipo C para peor), probablemente seré la primera persona con una condena de 20 años que cumplira la condena completa -las 5/5 partes de la misma- sin posibilidad de libertad condicional, acercándose a una cadena perpetua, es decir, 16 años según el antiguo código penal.

Este endurecimiento de la represión penal y «penitenciaria» es una consecuencia y un eslabón de una larga cadena de curso evolutivo sociopolítico, que parte de la derrota de la insurrecction social y popular contra los memorandos de 2010-2012, el retroceso de las luchas sociales y desemboca en el totalitarismo estatal y de régimen que vivimos hoy.

Nikos Maziotis, condenado por la Lucha Revolucionaria

4º modulo de la carcel de Domokos

Genoa, Italy: Solidarity in the square for Ghespe and the anarchist prisoners

Posted on 2025/03/18 - 2025/03/18 by darknights

Saturday 22nd March from 18.00

Solidarity in the square for Ghespe and for all the anarchist prisoners.

Distro, music, foods and drinks in Piazza Cinque Lampadi, in the historic centre of Genoa.

Two contributions by Juan Sorroche: “The Mutual Agreement of Non-Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism or the Myth of Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism” and “A Misinterpretation of the Concept of Anarchist Individualism”

Posted on 2025/03/14 by darknights

Two contributions by Juan Sorroche: “The Mutual Agreement of Non-Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism or the Myth of Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism” and “A Misinterpretation of the Concept of Anarchist Individualism”

– THE MUTUAL AGREEMENT OF NON-SYSTEMIC REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM –
OR
– THE MYTH OF SYSTEMIC REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM –

Should ideological principles, concepts if not deepened nor confronted nor recognized in anarchism be assumed, assumed and accepted?

Once again, workers’ organization, strike, general strike, direct action, boycott, sabotage and armed insurrection itself are but means. Anarchy is the end.
Errico Malatesta, Syndicalism and insurrectionist organization, Monte Bove Editions, 2023

This is the second response in continuation of the critical-dialectic to certain evaluations and analyses regarding the article in “Vetriolo,” No. 7, “Revolutionary Anarchism versus Desistance.” I will use the text of “Vetriolo” as a compass for my reflections and to set forth conclusions. I don’t think they are anything groundbreaking, just a mixture of old and “new” ideas and concepts remixed. However to be honest it is also because of my little ability to write and follow with linearity certain discursive concepts that are very complex for me. And that the article touches, and they are different notions such as ideological principles, even historical, the organizational methods: the economic question in anarchism, as written in the first text, and different and very different tactics and strategies of struggle in anarchism. It also touches on what we call the more “visceral” subjective-objective conceptions of individual anarchist sensibilities. It also touches on anarchy-utopia if we want to deal in depth with the concept of revolutionary anarchism and thus the individual-collective notion of organizing.
These different notions as we see in reality are very complicated and complex of much of action anarchism. So please don’t blame me if I will be long-winded and use the writing of “Vetriolo” as a crutch and to thus develop my ideas with more linearity of analysis and criticism, more complex. But I want to try to write and take advantage to deepen the theories of the experiences of my individual vision of anarchism and anarchism-utopian. Without delegating to others.
And finally, for convenience, I will come out with separate and specific chapters as I go along. But as I said in the previous paper, which came out in the journal “Days and Nights [I giorni e le notti]” No. 15, it will be part of a whole, of a fuller pamphlet that I will title: “The Anarchist Organization of Change” “The Middle Way Planning” and “The Individual-Anarchist-Action.”
To begin to question the comparison of a complex range of concepts for me it is essential first, to understand each other, to have a conceptualization of mutual agreement. And, mind you, in common in sharing does not mean to flatten it into the all the same, but rather to be recognized in diversity in order to understand each other a little more deeply.

The article begins with this big question, “Revolutionary Anarchism?”

To begin to clarify. In part, only in part, I agree with the article by “Vetriolo,” who writes that “the revolutionary principle is inseparable from the anarchist idea.” So yes, anarchists and the whole anarchist movement and anarchism historically to date is in its majority revolutionary. So I could follow the same logic and say that even in the great majority it has been ideologically of anarchist-communist principles.
But, be careful, because to say that “the revolutionary principle is inseparable from the anarchist idea” to me is not really correct, either personally or historically.
Because in anarchism from the late 1800s until today there are anarchist individualities who do not believe, and have not been willing to take on, consciously denying it, the revolutionary principle.
Of course can I, can we, say that these anarchist comrades can be counted on the fingers of my hand? Yes. But they have been there and this cannot be erased by a majority criterion.
I believe that in anarchism, and in anarchism in general, one should not, by force of majorities or minorities, attach reasons or principles, and all the more so if they come from principles of revolutionary anarchism. Because I sincerely believe that so principles become absolute single idea, with their perfect method that everyone must adopt, they become myths, beliefs.
I believe that we must accept of the past and present the various diversities as such in anarchism, even those that are not in the least for revolutionary social transformations. But moved by other infinite motives and interests that of anarchist individualities have assumed for themselves:
For individual enjoyment? Revenge? Love? Despair? Revolt? Selfish egoism? For the sake of chaos? For the pleasure of destruction?, etc.
And this is beyond whether one likes it or not, or whether these different principles are conflicting. Just as there is no denying that there have been these non-revolutionary anarchist comrades, and that they have made their own contributions to anarchism of attack and not surrender. And I say all this from firsthand experience because I was one of these anarchist comrades who only believed in destruction and chaos and did not think about it, nor was I absolutely and consciously interested in social and revolutionary change. And this I do not want to ignore as if it were nonexistent, but instead as a constant development and part of me as an anarchist and of the contribution to anarchism that, however limited, I was able to make. This is a fact.
I would like to remind that concepts should be usable in both intuitive and logical relationships, and practical! And above all, first thoroughly discussed and shared, then acknowledged and accepted. And then, when they are accepted and enter into our articulation of theoretical-practical notions, then, for me, they are part of an anarchic collective whole. For me collective should be thoughtfully chosen by mutual agreement. Which very often, and systematically, is not done. It is a self-criticism. Continue reading “Two contributions by Juan Sorroche: “The Mutual Agreement of Non-Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism or the Myth of Systemic Revolutionary Anarchism” and “A Misinterpretation of the Concept of Anarchist Individualism”” →

Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)

Posted on 2025/02/07 - 2025/02/07 by darknights

Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)

Article translated and published in Spanish in “Tinta de Fuga,” periódico anárquico contra las prisiones y la sociedad carcelaria, no. 7, segundo semestre 2024.

PHYSIOPATHOLOGY OF THE PRISON MONSTER:
POISONS AND ANTIDOTES

Stories of mice and men

In pharmacology laboratories, antidepressants are tested with an experiment of exquisitely human cruelty: a mouse, drugged or “nature,” is submerged in a glass cylinder half-filled with water and the time of desperate swimming before immobility overtakes is calculated.
Usually the rodent without psychotropic support tries to climb along the cylinder and jump for 5 minutes before giving up; antidepressants lengthen desperate swimming attempts by a few minutes before resignation overtakes.
Stripped of the cynicism it conveys, the Porsolt or “desperate swimming” test is a useful allegory to illustrate the current situation in Italic jails and this summer’s trickle of suicides and riots in the overcrowded, dilapidated communal sections1, a charcoal of forced cohabitation in cramped spaces, in a word humiliating human dignity: drug-induced apathy and depression, the ubiquitous “therapy,” desperate attempts at reaction that often take self-harming forms, backyard hegemonies, desolidarization, childish brawls, where there is a constant pouring of suggestions and models from TV dramas, which is then the lobotomizing diversion that overcomes “therapy” in the pervasive echoing from cell to cell.
To the pathological infantilization of the individual, the prison works methodically, depriving him not only of freedom of movement, but also of that of minimal choice in the course of the day: the idiotic and incomprehensible regulations, the extreme bureaucratization of every minutia of daily survival. Depersonalizing mechanisms that deprive one’s humanity, the application of which essentially serves to establish the pressure of the repressive structure (and the individual’s capacity for resistance or adaptation), are handled aseptically, feeding a meat grinder where reactions can cover the entire range between anesthetized apathy and revolt as an assertion of subsistence in life rather than claim.
This Dantesque bedlam is overlaid and counterbalanced by the fragmentation and consequent isolation of differentiated sections and circuits. In most compas one finds oneself as well as in small numbers, divided from the rest of humanity in chains, locked between high-security sections and, even more isolated, in 41bis2 circuits.
High-security sections have an additional internal separation to avoid contact between those accused of “terrorism,” domestic and international (AS2) and those of “mafia-style criminal conspiracy” (AS3) and related offenses, to avert, in the eyes of the legislature, monstrous criminal chimeras due to cross-species interbreeding3. Or, more prosaically, even if only to prevent the spread of a basic knowledge of one’s rights as a prisoner, a subject on which political prisoners are normally better versed, as they come from more literate backgrounds on the subject and are more prone to the consequent dialectic.
In AS, with the rubber stamp of the “mafia” or “terrorism” formula, an opposite strategy is applied to the overcrowded common sections: separation between prisoners, removal from the place of residence to make contact with family members more difficult, reduced contact with the outside world (fewer interviews, 4 hours monthly, and fewer phone calls, 2 monthly of 10 minutes each), heavier sentences, with less if any possibility of alternative sentences under the aegis of 4bis o.p. 4.
Then there is 41bis, the bottom of the well, the bottleneck of the repressive funnel where it is easier to get in than to get out, in the highest degree5, with a further exacerbation of solitary confinement, intracarceral and extracarceral: a one-hour interview per month with partitioned glass and audio-video recording; almost total postal censorship; limitation of items allowed in the cell, including books and music CDs, the purchase of which is in any case made very difficult, if not impossible; one hour of air time per day in cramped, netted yards and with socializing with up to three other prisoners (in fixed groups selected by management).
This prologue, unpleasant, is to explain a minimum the difficulties and contradictions experienced, as antiauthoritarians, in facing and fighting prison these days in these shores.
The strategy of isolation, sterilization of human contacts and rescission of solidarity networks is obviously not an Italian prerogative but, as our Chilean comrades are well understanding, a practice that is spreading and being perfected there as well, as in the aggravation of Francisco’s conditions of isolation and the restructuring of the Alta Seguridad. Just as everywhere the restructuring of detention facilities combines punitive logics toward the individual refractor with those of a “Fordist” efficiency of preventive repression aimed at creating compartmentalized and incommunicative levels to more effectively and aseptically manage control, inside as well as outside. Continue reading “Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)” →