Urban Guerrilla

(Above) The now closed P4W (Prison for Women) in Kingston, Ontario.

Originally published at Kersplebedeb

Ann Hansen was imprisoned in 1983 for her involvement in the urban guerilla group Direct Action. She is the author of Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla and Taking the Rap: Women Doing Time for Society’s Crimes. She wrote the introduction for Margrit Schiller’s Remembering the Armed Struggle: My Time with the Red Army Faction. This interview was conducted in the summer of 2021.

How would you like to introduce yourself?

I am a 67 year old white cis gender female anarchist on parole for life after being convicted of a number of actions in 1984 along with some members of the urban guerrilla group, Direct Action. Since being released from prison, I have been living for almost 25 years now on a small farm that I own near Odessa just west of Kingston, Ontario. I am active with the Prison for Women (P4W) Memorial Collective which has been fighting for a Memorial Garden at the site of the now closed Prison for Women, and a Gallery where the women’s art and writing can be seen in order to give some context to their lives and deaths.We also agitate to improve prison and parole conditions as a harm reduction tactic in order to alleviate some of the suffering, but always within the context of the abolition of prisons and capitalism as the goal, the light that guides us through the darkness

I should also add that my parole conditions have a direct impact on my political activism. In 2012, my parole was suspended for allegedly not telling my parole officer about a Prisoners Justice Day (PJD) film I screened at the Kingston public library in conjunction with a lawyer who outlined our civil rights in the context of large civil disobedience actions. My parole was reinstated by the Parole Board but only after adding this new parole condition in which I must “notify” my parole officer about any political activity in which I am engaged, such as attending events, public speaking, writing, etc. Even though the word is “notify” as opposed to “approve,” they could revoke me for anything. This seems shocking to activists, but any prisoner who has been on parole knows that you can be revoked for anything, anytime. It is very common to be suspended for obscure things like “deteriorating behavior” or “having a bad attitude,” especially if you are not a politicized prisoner. Politicized prisoners usually have some community support and a radical lawyer, so parole suspensions are more likely in the public eye and thus parole officers and the Parole Board are more accountable. “Social prisoners” on the other hand are usually invisible and are less likely to have legal representation so parole officers feel less constrained in terms of suspending them for ridiculous reasons. Continue reading “Harm Reduction Guided by the Goal of the Abolition of Prisons and Capitalism: An interview with former Direct Action member and ex-prisoner Ann Hansen” →

It may be due to the fact that I will spend a large portion of my remaining life in a prison, that lately I feel inclined to “necrophilia”, to “historicize” what has just been. After all, the last action claimed ‘Federazione Anarchica Informale – Fronte Rivoluzionario Internazionale’ in Italy was “just” a year ago. Usually we historicize the things “dead”, past, but in me the fear that everything that has been deleted or worse, distorted, has taken over. And I say this with the conviction (maybe I’m wrong) that the FAI-FRI has exhausted its vital charge and has passed the “baton” to something more essential, the revolutionary campaigns. Campaigns that, from one continent to another, relaunch revolutionary solidarity, not by an organization but by groups and individual comrades who never need to know each other personally. Dynamic alive, linear process as effective in the world goes by the name of “Black International” and that in fact does not even need the coordination, there is no need to meet, to know each other personally. The anarchists of action usually neglect the historical introspection, the anarchists who postpone the violent action instead tend to exhume distant experiences that are more unlikely to give rise to criminal retaliation and “imitations” in today. “It was a different time …”, this phrase still rattles in my head repeated to me as a boy endless times by anarchists / and more conscientious, anarchists / and other times precisely …

If our history is not written by us anarchists and anarchists will do so others. If the anarchist “historiography” ignores the relevance of anarchist action in time will be the official one to deal with distorting it, showing it. Then there are fortunate cases, as rare, in which to deal with it are revolutionaries of other “schools”, as in the case of the book The work of the mole that is presented in these initiatives. A book the result of the work of revolutionary communists that comes in its last pages to talk about anarchists and in particular of the FAI and then the FAI-FRI. They do it honestly, but they do it with an interpretation that leads to distortions, inaccuracies. It is more than natural that coming from an “other universe” (let’s say so) something escapes, but this does not mean that we cannot but be impressed by their work. Let’s put aside certain statements that are the heavy baggage of a Leninist thought that sees in the organization to conquer and direct the proletarian state its point of no return, indisputable. Statements that support the thesis that “the anarchist approach is often by definition (sic) devoid of strategic depth” or that the basic “contradiction” of anarchism would be the “refusal of organizational and programmatic structuring [which would prevent] the development of unity and high capacity/possibility of confrontation”. Statements that, when they do not distort the reality of things by supporting our lack of “strategic depth”, transform our strengths, “the refusal of organizational structuring”, into “contradictions”, into weaknesses. Not understanding that our innovative and potentially disruptive strength, our strong point, is right there.

The thesis that sees the FAI as “daughter” of the experience of Revolutionary Action is certainly a stretch. The thing that unites the two experiences in addition to the constant use over time of an acronym is the turmoil that both created within the anarchist movement. As for the FAI, the reactions of the movement were far more virulent than those had against AR, the accusations of being infiltrators, provocateurs flocked. The thing finds its explanation in the acronym used, and in the mockery of some claims against the so-called official anarchists. Continue reading “Contribution of Alfredo Cospito from the AS2 section of the Ferrara prison for the cycle of presentations “Guerrilla and Revolution”” →