Letter – Page 2 – Dark Nights

Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2023/09/18 - 2023/09/18 by darknights

From ABC Brighton: Thomas Meyer-Falk has written about his first few days of freedom after serving 26 years in prison, much of the latter part under an old nazi-era preventative detention law.

How the wind rustles and the acorns fall: A few days of freedom!

On 29.08.2023, after almost 27 years of imprisonment, I was released from the high-security area of Freiburg prison with two hours notice. How does a person feel in such a situation? I would like to report on this after the first 14 days.

On 29.08.2023: The release!

At 8 a.m. I was still sitting in the visiting area of the prison with the probation officer, who might be responsible for me in the future, and we puzzled over when and if a release would take place. At 2 p.m. the time had come – I was discharged and on my way to my new place to live.

I should have been overflowing with happiness, but my focus was on the speedy handling of the move and my first official visits. Already around 3 p.m. I was at the job center and then at the health insurance company. The evening became long, ended after midnight. I got to know people in the new living environment, talked to friends on the phone and immediately started texting. The world of the 21st century had integrated me in a short time: thanks to the local group of the Rote Hilfe e.V. from Freiburg, my smartphone and laptop were ready. It felt surreal to sit on the tram and talk on the phone – just hours before I had sat in a cell with a corded phone and was only allowed to call numbers approved by the prison, and the conversations would be monitored and recorded, as it was always said in an announcement text before calls.

At 8 p.m., for the first time in 27 years, I sat together in a circle of people who voluntarily live together, who had voluntarily taken me in, and where I voluntarily went. It felt just as surreal, but really good. Continue reading “Germany: Letter from Thomas Meyer-Falk” →

“A dance with time. Greetings, year seven”

Posted on 2023/07/20 by darknights

Greetings from nowhere.

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”

– Epictetus

My journey into clandestinity began 7 years ago today. It was July 10, 2016, the sun was heating up the city and for most of the people I met that day it was just another Sunday. For me, that day was both an end and a beginning. Giving up my old and beloved reality of life, replaced by the great unknown variable. Leaving the old behind me, welcoming the new. A painful and overwhelming start of the journey… From then on I was confronted with the unknown every day, resembling a person who has lost their sight from one day to the next and now has to focus on their other senses. I wandered around, looking for anchor points, and after long months, with patience and persistence, finally regained my bearings. My life was back on track, or so I thought… What had to come was coming. The next big shock hit me and once again life held its instruction manual in front of my nose; leave the old behind, welcome the new. Clandestinity is a rigorous study full of hardships, but the fruits of it will be a lifetime harvest for me.

A year ago, I stood again in this clearing to call out to you. To let you know that I am well. To let you know that I sincerely love you and carry you in my heart day after day. Today, one year later and 7 years after the beginning of the journey, I am somewhere else, as I will be tomorrow. But the bond between us remains. I had to leave you behind physically. But spiritually and emotionally you have been my silent companionship for 7 years. Thanks to you I always find the strength and courage to welcome new things into my life. To then, when the time comes, leave it behind me again.

Still on the run, mentally ready for the task of securing freedom –

With love and in solidarity

Your friend and comrade from nowhere

Italy: Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6

Posted on 2023/03/16 by darknights

Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6

On Monday, March 6 (the 138th day of his hunger strike) Alfredo Cospito was again transferred from Opera Prison to San Paolo Hospital. Recall that the comrade had been an inmate in the Intensive Assistance Service (SAI) inside the Opera prison since Jan. 30, on Feb. 11 transferred for the first time to San Paolo Hospital, and then transferred again to Opera on the 27th of the same month (following the hearing on the 24th in the court of cassation), remaining there for a week, until this last transfer to San Paolo on March 6.

Following the outcome of the Feb. 24 hearing at the court of cassation (which rejected the petition to revoke his detention in 41 bis, further ratifying what had already been decided by the Rome supervisory court in its Dec. 1 hearing), Alfredo stopped taking the mild supplements he had been taking for some time.

Also in the same days as the latest transfer, on March 6, the opinion requested by the Ministry of Justice from the National Bioethics Committee on the possible medical intervention in Alfredo, that is, on force-feeding in case of loss of consciousness, was released. The CNB stresses that it has “no legal, political, moral or ethical legitimacy to formulate an ‘ad personam’ opinion” (and “consequently, the CNB’s response is of a general nature”), without even issuing an unambiguous opinion, thus dividing itself between the “pro-life” and the “pro-choice” (according to the latter, the Anticipated Treatment Arrangement should be respected in any case).

On March 1, during a press conference, Alfredo’s lawyer disclosed a hitherto undisclosed letter-statement by the comrade, plausibly dating back at least a month. We publish its full transcript here. Recall that to date, due to the systematic censorship inherent in 41 bis, it has not yet been possible to read the comrade’s first statement regarding the beginning of the hunger strike, dating back to October 20. The only statement published to date, other than this letter disclosed on March 1, was the one for the December 5 hearing in Turin as part of the Scripta Manent trial.

The state’s choice to annihilate the comrade poses the need to place, once again, no hope in the outcomes of the courts or in the opinions of the various structures deputed to express their views on the contradictions that have opened up in state bodies as a result of the hunger strike and with the development of the international solidarity movement. These are, especially with regard to the courts of the Italian state, structures and figures directly responsible for the very serious conditions in which Alfredo Cospito finds himself. The state, first with the transfer of the comrade in 41 bis on May 5 and later with the cassation ruling of the Scripta Manent trial on July 6, intended to give a warning to the anarchist and revolutionary movement. A warning that after the outcomes of the hearings of the Rome parole court on Dec. 1 and the court of cassation on Feb. 24 was expressed even more clearly, taking the form of a will to total annihilation against the comrade.

To the attempted annihilation against Alfredo and the constant mass-media campaign of slander the whole anarchist movement we respond with the clarity of our ideas and the tenacity of our practices.

Letter from Alfredo Cospito

My struggle against 41 bis is an individual struggle as an anarchist; I do not do or receive blackmail. I simply cannot live in an inhumane regime like 41 bis, where I cannot freely read what I want, books, newspapers, anarchist periodicals, art, scientific and literature and history magazines.

The only chance I have to get out is to deny my anarchy and sell me someone to put in my place. A regime where I cannot have any human contact, where I can no longer see or stroke a blade of grass or hug a loved one. A regime where photos of your parents are confiscated. Buried alive in a grave, in a place of death. I will carry on my struggle to the bitter end, not because of “blackmail,” but because this is not life. If the goal of the Italian state is to make me “disassociate” myself from the actions of the anarchists outside, know that I do not suffer blackmail. As a good anarchist I believe that everyone is responsible for his own actions, and as a member of the anti-organizational current I have never “associated” with anyone and therefore cannot “disassociate” myself from anyone. Affinity is something else. Continue reading “Italy: Letter from Alfredo Cospito and update on the latest transfer to San Paolo Hospital on March 6” →

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)

Posted on 2023/01/25 - 2023/01/25 by darknights

Note from InformantivoAnarquista

With regard to the hunger strike of the anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, it seems important to us to collect and value our anarchist history, to reread, reflect and sharpen our denials. Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino today face a new labyrinth of the judicial inquisition, trying to impose the article of political massacre to bury stories, experiences, courage, bravery and desire for freedom with life sentences and long sentences.

16 years ago took place the clandestine conversation that we are spreading, we resort to the timelessness of the ideas and reflections that arise in the course of the fraternal dialogue, it also allows us to recognize the comrades as beings close to us, neither heroes nor perfect militants, nor guerrillas coming down from the plain… the revolt is contagious and exponentially reproducible, we can all contribute and recognize our absence.

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006)

Some of the comrades who belong to the original groups of the FAI Informal Anarchist Federation have decided to discuss a few points and to make the transcription of the discussion known. There are some omissions due to security reasons, but in the whole the transcription reflects the direct and informal tone of the conversation, which avoids all formalisms just as we do in our life…

These groups take part in the discussion: ‘Crafts and Fire Cooperative’, ‘July 20 Brigade’, ‘Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers and its Cells’, and ‘International Solidarity’.

QUI: I like Pippo’s idea to record and write down our conversation, Quo and Qua like it too. We think it is worthwhile even if we risk to be caught (touching wood). What counts is that Pippo takes off what doesn’t have to be written and destroys the recording.

PIPPO: My idea was to make some points known, points that normally we have never clarified and that make us angry sometimes…yes, when we hear or read comments about us…in other words we need to show to this fucking movement that we are not ghosts coming from nothing (laughers…’hey, did you see you?’). We need to show to them that we think it very carefully before carrying out an action and that we leave very little to chance. Our actions are not indiscriminate, on the contrary they are so controlled that we haven’t managed to do what we really want yet…(laughers). Then there’s nothing obscure or clandestine in our way of life. Most of us come from the movement. Live inside it and know that reality. Some even come from shit situations. let me tell you that Paperino. I don’t know how you can do…

PAPERINO: Forget it, it’s a long story…

PIPPO: Alright, I explain better. Sometimes it happens that I read or hear very horrible comments on our activity, for example that we are ‘provocateurs’ or ‘secret services’ not to mention their partial and blind general vision of what we do and say. If we write down the content of this encounter we might make some of our dynamics clearer…this is also for the comrades of other FAI groups that we don’t know.

NONNA PAPERA: I’m not sure about writing down this discussion. Maybe a self-interview would be better: each group answers questions decided by everybody. In this way we avoid a transcription that would be incorrect for security reasons.

PAPERINA: I don’t think so. The meeting written on paper is more spontaneous and clarifying. We will make some corrections, pass it to the other groups and then it will be ready to be spread in a couple of weeks.

Paperino and I will print and send it, you know, we’ve got a new PC …

QUI: Let’s see which points we need to discuss. This might help us to understand better and then I’m willing to communicate with the groups that followed us in the FAI. We can reach them in this way and they can communicate with the same method.

ARCHIMEDE: I think that a very good point of this experience is experimentation, that is to say I put in practice things that I only talked about before, yes, to join thought: and action and to avoid that schizophrenic dualism between what is said and what is done. Then there exists another form of schizophrenia. a deeper alienation: the fact that you can’t talk openly to the comrades who surround you and who are not part of our groups, you can’t say what you really think or you risk exposing yourself and putting the comrades in danger. In other words,this caution, the fact that I can’t shout what I would like, is killing me.

QUA: Well, I feel the same but I don’t suffer out of that. To come back to the document….how are we going to spread it? There’s not much anarchist press and those who are willing to publish certain documents are very few…and then it is not fair to turn the comrades into targets for repression, as it often happens. Not to mention those who faint as soon as they read certain things or run to the cops…

Internet is a problem for us. we are not IT experts. And then, after the lndymedia server was searched because they published our claim of the bombs to the EU, it is very difficult that someone wants to publish our writing… Continue reading ““Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)” →

France: Updates on anarchist comrade Ivan Alocco

Posted on 2022/11/25 - 2022/11/25 by darknights

Hello to all and everyone,
I am writing these few lines to give you some news.

I am continuing the hunger strike I started on October 27, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito’s struggle to get out of 41 bis. I am doing well. I feel tired and sometimes dizzy, but my determination remains intact.

This is the first time since June, since I’ve been locked up here, that I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, instead of simply surviving and watching time go by. Two weeks ago, the head warden threatened to transfer me to solitary confinement if I continue with the hunger strike (” for my own good, to be better looked after in case I have a sudden health problem “), but so far he has not put his blackmail into practice.

My mail is blocked again. They gave me letters on October 24, then nothing more. Likewise, the letters I have written to my family since mid-October have still not arrived.

On Thursday, Nov. 24, at 1:30 p.m., I will appear before the investigating judge (Anne Grandjean), at the Bobigny courthouse, for questioning.

Finally, I was able to start reading the files of the inquiry. Right from the beginning, a little surprise: the SDAT explains that they began to tail me and the other comrade (quickly exonerated) starting last January. This was because of ” confidential information ” (one judge writes ” anonymous information “) telling them that we would be the authors of the arson attacks against some diplomatic or big business vehicles, claimed by the anarchists.

All my solidarity to Alfredo, Anna and Juan, on hunger strike.
A thought to the revolutionary prisoners and prisoners across the world.
Freedom for all and everyone !

Ivan

To write to him::
Ivan Alocco
n. d’écrou: 46355
M. A. de Villepinte
40, avenue Vauban
93420 – Villepinte
France

Source: Inferno Urbano

Germany: Letter from anarchist prisoner Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2022/10/01 by darknights

To give space to the nameless, faceless and voiceless!

Horror, sadness, rage, anger and a feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Short-term flaring up of affects and stirring emotions here, long-lasting, persistent feelings there, and all this before what we call mood, it colors our experience background, it is, so to speak, the primordial layer, the ground of feeling.

It is the global warming, what is called “climate crisis”, as if it would be a temporally manageable crisis and not a generation-spreading world change, before whose foil all further conflicts must be read, because a world-spreading cooperation, a togetherness is demanded.

Instead, horrible wars are raging, the one that touches us in Central Europe for very different reasons in the area of Ukraine, but also in Kurdistan, in Syria, in Yemen, in many regions of Africa. Conflicts in South America, in Asia – basically there is no region of the world where military conflicts are not being waged, which in turn lead to even more horror, grief, anger and rage.

Not to forget the economic antagonisms. Just as trivial as existential: Rich against poor! More and more super-rich against more and more super-poor. More and more exploiters against exploited.

The prisons are full also because of this. People are imprisoned if they don’t want to belong to the super poor anymore. Or if people go beyond the very narrow corridor that government systems keep open for protests to articulate their fear, but also their anger about the existing conditions, they are also locked up. When people express dissenting opinions, as is currently the case in Russia, for example, they can end up in camps. People who can no longer endure the brutal present without being stunned, who take various substances to escape into a colorful world of illusion, are also imprisoned. Depending on the country, even the death penalty is imposed. And people who flee from starvation or an otherwise hopeless living situation, they are also locked up in jails, if not killed, or inhumane border regimes are set up, resulting in the death of countless people.

Solidarity Weeks like this one in August 2022 are an encouragement for those held in prisons as well as for those who are threatened with imprisonment. Because it is a work against forgetting. As a rule, interest in people wanes when their criminal trial is over. But Soli Weeks bring the names, the faces and the voices of those concerned back into the focus of attention.

This is a Sisyphean task, because the number of prisoners is increasing rather than decreasing, and all this happens against the background of existential conflicts and disputes, which in turn attract all attention.

All the more beautiful that there are people outside the walls who fill this week of solidarity in August with life and keep it alive.

With heartfelt greetings

Thomas Meyer-Falk
currently JVA(SV)
Hermann-Herder-Str.8
D-79104 Freiburg

http://freedom-for-thomas.de

Source: solidarity.international

France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison

Posted on 2022/09/28 by darknights

Below is a text by anarchist Ivan Alocco, who was arrested on June 11 and is currently imprisoned in Villepinte Prison, France.
Break the isolation! For immediate revolutionary solidarity with Ivan and all imprisoned anarchists!

–

I am writing to share some thoughts and give some news.
I would like to begin with something that illustrates well the methods of the judicial system.
A few days after my arrest, the judge who instructed the investigation, Stéphanie Lahaye, sent two cops from SDAT [the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate of the Judicial Police] (including the judicial police officer “RIO 1237232” – like machines, they have numbers instead of names) to interrogate my daughter and her mother. Obeying his orders, the procedures of state justice, they tried to pressure a 12-year-old girl. After making her wait in the courtyard of the local gendarmerie barracks during her mother’s interrogation, they allegedly wanted to interrogate her alone. Evidently, her mother refused to leave her.
An ordinary, mundane procedure, a necessary act to establish the truth, according to judges and cops. A way, in my opinion, of trying to spread fear. A warning to my loved ones and to everyone, because, in the inquisitive logic of Justice, people who stay or stand by an anarchist accused of direct action are suspect and must be bothered.

This is somewhat the same logic that was used against me. When the same judicial police officer, during interrogations while I was under arrest, asked me, she reproached me for bringing my support to imprisoned anarchists, in France and in other countries. Of writing to them and occasionally sending them some money. Of course, I often wrote to numerous imprisoned compas and did my best to express my solidarity with them. Because they are anarchists and also because I am convinced of the rightness and necessity of the actions some of them are accused of.
I think solidarity, by any means necessary, with compas affected by repression is fundamental. To avoid openly solidarizing with them, for fear that repression will spread, would be to enter the game of Justice, to accept its logic. A logic that would make us retreat further and further, until we abandon, or almost abandon, the imprisoned revolutionaries. Continue reading “France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison” →

From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/09/11 by darknights

I’ve previously written about the need to recreate an Atlantic bridge, based on international revolutionary solidarity and reciprocal knowledge, that moves towards affinity and direct action in support of our imprisoned comrades. Since then, I was recently visited by a comrade from Anarchist Black Cross Philadelphia here at the G4S facility in which I’m held. G4S is originally an American company, Wackenhut, which has pioneered the private prison and security industry all over the world. As part of our discussion between the comrade from ABC Philadelphia and myself, we spoke of the need to prevent our groups and commons becoming inward-looking and closing in on themselves in microscopic scenes and myopia. The anglophone world is particularly susceptible to this trend, although it is not solely confined to English-speaking territories. How can we translate rhetoric into practical activity? Words and deeds must coincide, and that is what?

For too long, a kind of one-way discourse has been in effect, breached by too few valiant individuals and groups. We can speak of a loss of solidarity flowing across the Atlantic between north and south, east and west. Without wanting to advocate any kind of anarcho-tourism or the colonial approach of the wholesale export-import political programs of the activist left, I’m in favor of strengthening our international networks in the face of an increased technocratic authoritarianism. To remain locked up in our local areas without considering the struggles elsewhere is self-defeating, as repressive operations seek to confine us and stem our anarchic contagion specifically to promote sterility. Can we renew an Atlantic bridge that connects our tendencies, that connects the uprisings in the North American metropolises to those in Europe, Latin America and Asia? Can we join together the struggles of the long-term COINTELPRO prisoners with those elsewhere in the global prison industrial complex? Continue reading “From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone” →

France: “I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.” Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested in Paris

Posted on 2022/08/30 - 2022/08/30 by darknights

“I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.”

Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested on June 11 on the outskirts of Paris

15 VI 22

My name is Ivan, I am an anarchist.

I was arrested by the Sous-diréction anti-térrorisme [SDAT] of the French police on Saturday, June 11, around 3:30 a.m., near my home (suburbs of Paris), on my way home.

I am accused of six vehicle fires, in Paris and Montreuil, between January and June, often in solidarity with anarchist prisoners (the last one, an embassy car, was set on fire in the 17th arrondissement of Paris on the night of my arrest).

The cops followed me for months, listened to my phone calls, installed a camera in the entrance of the building where I live, intercepted my mail (especially letters from imprisoned anarchists) and looked at my bank account.

Another person (we know each other only by sight, but to him all my esteem) has been followed, listened to, etc., but has not been challenged. Courage friend!

The SDAT investigation began in late February 2022 on the orders of prosecutor Louise-Anne Belanger of the Bobigny prosecutor’s office. They also pulled from their drawers another archived investigation, which had been done by other cops, into some 50 arson attacks against vehicles, all in and around Paris, between 2017 and 2021. SDAT “merged” the two investigations, but the judge (Stéphanie Labarge [?], of the Bobigny court) retained only the last six attacks. For the others, I am an “assisted witness” [the equivalent of “person informed about the facts”].

In addition to “destruction by dangerous means,” there is also the charge of endangering the lives of others, refusal to give my DNA, refusal to have my photograph taken, refusal to give fingerprints, refusal to give passwords to computers and phones.

Right now, I am in pre-trial detention at Villepinte Prison. I am fit, I am fine, although I miss my loved ones very much.

Normal, it’s prison, and you have to put it on the line when you are an enemy of this society.

Here, the hardest time is when we come back from the walk. The door closes and we stay here until the next day. But I turn to the window and look out. I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.

As soon as I get more information on this story, I will write more (I don’t have much else to do!).

My thoughts go out to the anarchists in prison everywhere in the world: to Damien (in prison in Draguignan), to Alfredo, to Anna, to Juan, to Toby, to Giannis Michailidis on hunger strike… to all/all of you out there!

Solidarity is the attack!

Long live anarchy!

Ivan

Source: Il Rovescio

UK: Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/08/03 - 2022/08/03 by darknights

Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone, UK

“Does this rising generation know that those who inaugurated the 8 hour day were put to death at the command of Capital?”
Lucy Parsons, The Haymarket Martyrs, November 1926

“Although we are not reformists, the struggle to obtain improvements in one’s immediate situation (wages, housing, health, education, occupations etc) sees the anarchists present, but they do not see these struggles as ends in themselves. They push the exploited towards this form of struggle so that they can develop the elements of self-organisation and refusal of the delegate which are indispensable in order to develop direct action at all other levels.”
Alfredo M. Bonanno, What are Anarchists?

Despite being in prison, news occasionally reaches me of the many repressive operations and terrible circumstances that our comrades are confronting. That’s why I am in agreement with the proposal once again put forward by the Anarchist Black Cross for a week of solidarity at the end of August. This date is chosen to mark the State murder of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. We cannot give in to resignation or become complacent in these times. It is more important than ever to explain and make accessible the anarchist analysis and to put it into practice immediately.

Anarchism is internationalism, self-management, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct action: incisive, voracious and alive. That’s why our spaces are raided and evicted, our publications seized, our communities hunted, beaten, imprisoned and killed around the world.

During my interrogations, the Counter-Terror cops at one point focussed on the International Week of Solidarity with anarchist prisoners, accusing this event of supporting terrorism, glorifying terrorism. That’s because part of their strategy is to try to illegalise the Anarchist Black Cross. Their aim is to destroy all solidarity and counter-information structures which spread information about and provide material support for the legal cases of anarchist comrades who are locked up. Continue reading “UK: Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone” →