Running Down The Walls Statements from Hanif Shabazz Bey & Eric King

from Philly ABC

We are just a little under two months away from Philadelphia’s Running Down The Walls 5k for political prisoners! In some cities the run/walk/roll has already taken place. For others it is just around the corner. See complete listing of RDTW events. The registration deadline for Philly is July 22. So if you haven’t already, please register here! Posters and flyers are available for download.

In the mean time, please enjoy these RDTW solidarity statements from Hanif Shabazz Bey of the Virgin Island 3, and anarchist prisoner Eric King!

Philly ABC

Message for Running Down the Walls 2018 from Hanif Bey:

Once again, I am grateful to be able to give back something to the Anarchist Black Cross movement, if only in thought. As I run today, I will reflect on a card sent from Danny Tender, a comrade from the Colorado ABC collective. On the front of the card is a picture of someone’s hand holding a lit match, and at the bottom of the card Danny wrote, “Hanif, hold onto the light!”

The ABC bulletin being sent inside to comrades is part of that light, because it keeps us abreast of what’s going on with comrades in other gulags.

Also the assistance from the ABCF Warchest is also part of that light that works to counter the darkness that attacks inclusion, diversity, and equality.

The light is also symbolic of the “truth,” and the truth is that the “people’s power” can dispel the darkness, and make a better world.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Hanif S. Bey

– –
Write to Hanif at:

Beaumont Gereau #16-001
Tallahatchie Correctional Facility
415 US Highway 49N
Tutwiler, Mississippi 38963

 

Message for Running Down the Walls 2018 from Eric King:

Prisons are not abstract ideas. They are tangible businesses, with real tangible buildings, structures, employees, who have real tangible addresses. The prisons have roads, fences, mail rooms, offices, etc, etc. These are all real targets that should be looked at. No matter where you live, there is most likely a jail, holding center, prison, ICE center, or juvenile prison nearby. Tags and check-ins on instagram, twitter and facebook. That facility most likely has a facebook and its employees most likely have ‘liked;’ that site, or actively post in it. There are groups and forums for prison guards. This means we know WHO is working at these spots, we can find where they life, what they enjoy doing, where they like going. All the power is at the tip of our fingers. Lets find em!!

Let’s spitball some ideas, some realistic ideas, some I dream of seeing come to fruition… bedbugs can be rehomed into offices to infest all of their furniture, lice or fleas, the bug of your choice! Hammers can bust up roads or parking lots leading into facilities and potential potholes to bang up cars. Have fun with google map pages for the facility, yelp etc. All ideas are good ideas! One could find their local police union and creatively display rage, either way make our point. Show up at their houses and let their neighbors know what is up, dance parties in driveways. Or just keep it simple with call in campaigns, just to irritate the workers and jam up the phone system for a bit. If you know a prisoner has specifically shitty mailroom I hear glitter bombs are cool. Wardens and captains always need glitter, they are incredibly bland and basic and need sprucing up.. or if glitter isn’t your ticket I hear animal feces works just as well.

We can make prisons a horrible place to work, we can make prisons a DANGEROUS place to work even on off days. This is a fight against a system that hurts and destroys, it is a real fight. Not everyone is capable of doing everything, but everyone is capable of doing anything, any strike against these fucks is a good thing. There are a thousand ways to fight back, and I stand beside all of them. Solidarity to all who are keeping the struggle alive, fire to all of the prisons, welcome home Herman!!

UNTIL ALL ARE FREE, EK (A) (///)

– –
Eric King #27090-045
FCI Florence
P.O. Box 6000
Florence, CO 81226

June 4th Letter-writing for the Virgin Island 3

from Philly ABC

As a follow-up to our movie showing in April, our June letter-writing event will feature the 3 remaining prisoners in the Virgin Island 3 case – Abdul Azeez, Hanif Bey, and Malik Bey. All 3 were rounded up in their early twenties with approximately 100 other black youths in the Virgin Islands and then framed for a shooting at the Rockefeller-owned golf club. It is appalling anytime people are unjustly persecuted for their political beliefs, but not only are the VI3 persecuted for their anti-imperialist beliefs but they are being held illegally in private prison in the U.S. despite the fact that the U.S. jurisdiction over VI cases was terminated years ago!

This letter-writing will feature a Q&A with Kwasi Seitu, former political prisoner and legal representative for the VI3, so that we can learn more about the case and what steps we can take to help secure their freedom. If anyone missed the film, The Hijacker’s Tale, about Ismael Ali, one of the codefendants who escaped to Cuba we encourage you to view it prior to the event. We will also sign cards for prisoners with June birthdays – Matt DeHart (11th), Jay Chase (12th), and Tom Manning (28th).

As usual, the event will be held at 6:30 pm at LAVA with food courtesy of North Philly FNB!

[June 4 at LAVA 4134 Lancaster Ave]

Running Down the Walls Registration Open

from Instagram

Registration is open for #Philadelphia #RunningDownTheWalls 2018! Visit https://phillyabc.wordpress.com/rdtw/ and sign up now!
#PoliticalPrisoners #EmptyTheCages @themoveorganization

Tips for Getting Sponsors for your run:

J20 & June 11th posters going up

From June 11th

Some anti-repression posters were put up around West Philly.

Technological Progress & The Modern World

from Anathema

In an interview about his new book on precision and the modern world, Simon Winchester questioned whether we had gone too far. When making things to withstand such incredible tolerances, the components have to be incredibly precise, otherwise you have the example he gave of an airplane wing becoming irreparably damaged in flight due to a fraction of a millimeter of an error. He elaborated that we might be “in danger of fetishizing precision,” constructing our lives around it, and losing respect for simple skills and hand-made things.

You might notice that we don’t usually advocate half-measures in these pages. The life of an anti-capitalist under capitalism is often a life of compromise, for fear of imprisonment or death at the hands of the state, but we aspire to be so much more – and those times that appear as compromise may only be a disguise to keep us free as we continue to escalate our conflict. The recent spate of communiques surrounding May Day seems to attest to that.

During one of the May Day speeches beside City Hall, a member of the the Radical Education Department suggested that, “we need to go on the offensive” – and they are more right than they know. But with the continuation of absolute atrocities against the earth and its inhabitants (e.g. poisoned water, poisoned air, massive deforestation, indigenous genocide, racist murders by police), we would have a long way to go before we overcame our defensive position – meaning it is only more necessary that we attack, and do so by every means available.

“By insurrectional practice we mean the revolutionary activity that intends to take the initiative in the struggle and does not limit itself to waiting or to simple defensive responses to attacks by the structures of power.” – For an Antiauthoritarian Insurrectionist International

In a recent report by Counterpunch, it was put forth that environmentalists contribute to deforestation due to their consistent compromises with the state, maintaining the course of removing what very little remains of an already decimated landscape. Similarly, marching in the streets over those aforementioned atrocities, and asking the authorities in charge of those that committed them to address that “injustice,” doesn’t even begin to get to the point. Relying on accrued examples of earth-devastating malfeasance by a drilling company, as some residents are doing in “opposition” to the Mariner East 2 pipeline, again, doesn’t halt the problem – and doesn’t really address the the technological advances that allow for horizontal drilling, which has similarly made new advances in further contaminating our groundwater.

And what do they gain for their sacrifices? “Electronics-recycling innovator is going to prison for trying to extend computers’ lives.” On April 29th, it was reported that “Mahwah, NJ is fining Ramapough [Lenape Indians protesting proposed pipeline] up to $42,500 per day for prayer and sacred altar retroactively since March 29, 2018.” Bureaucracy prevails, as Mumia can’t even get a new trial under progressive DA Larry Krasner, despite lying and tampering by cops involved in testimony and evidence gathering, and overt racism by the judge. Whether or not you believe he did it (which really shouldn’t matter anyway), by the state’s own logic he should get a new trial.

The food and water in prisons, among other conditions in those modern slave plantations, have contributed to riots occurring in recent months – months ahead of a proposed prison strike beginning in August.

Meanwhile, the food and water we consume on the outside is also less nutritious than the wild foods that persisted before agriculture, and incredibly tainted. Industrial food production has recently contributed to E. coli outbreaks in Romaine Lettuce and ready-to-eat salads produced in PA, listeria contamination of milk in Lancaster County, staphylococcal enterotoxin and clostridial toxin contamination of beef, the contamination of sausages and beef in two different states with hard pieces of plastic – and that’s only since our last printing.

“Nearly 70% of Chicago’s tap water tested positive for brain damaging lead,” reads a headline, in the continuing tradition of poisonings that still affect Flint, MI; Chester, PA; and Philadelphia, among so many others.

The New York Times reported last month that a Sperm Whale was killed by 64 pounds of trash that clogged its intestines and stomach, further stating that “as the amount of plastic in the ocean grows every year, some scientists believe that debris might kill more animals than the effects of climate change.” Yes, more than climate change: the human-induced mass-extinction event.

“Today’s ecological crises are a warning sign that capitalism itself is not sustainable. The problem is not that we lack reformist legislation; the problem is that our economic system fundamentally disconnects us from the environment.” Additionally, those technologies developed alongside the growth of that economic system contribute to our alienation from the natural world and to the economic system’s control over our lives.

The potential expiration of “Net Neutrality” on June 11th is not the end of freedom on the internet. Being conceptualized as a “right,” provided by the large corporations that provide the necessary infrastructure for that communication, means that legal use of the internet is already mediated and therefore not free. Freedom means having power – not the power to control other people or their means to communicate (consider how internet service providers already slow down your connection over particular downloads), but the power to control the circumstances of one’s own life. You do not have freedom if anyone else has power over you, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised.

“Facebook harvested 3.5 billion Instagram images without warning their owners” until much later, as they built an Artificial Intelligence photo recognition system. French police were recently revealed to also be using AI to “predict protests and neutralise them,” and “Facebook terms now ban posting photos of undercover agents infiltrating your political group, protest, etc.” – those very same infiltrators that have entrapped activists leading to long prison sentences when no crime had been committed (e.g. Eric McDavid).

“Compromise continues the trajectory and we can’t afford to stay the course.”

“Five journalists arrested while covering Standing Rock still face charges – more than one year later,” reads a headline from two weeks ago, and 59 J20 defendants are still suffering the stresses and costs of fighting decades in prison for attending a protest. It’s a wonder anyone attends protests at all considering the potential costs incurred for so little return. But I guess a student walkout at Temple University in favor of sanctuary status on May Day in a state that “is a free-for-all” for cops that want to arrest undocumented immigrants is really the least you can do.

The two black men being arrested in a local Starbucks minutes after arriving, as they awaited the arrival of another member of their party, is not a new development, but its sensationalism has contributed to this common trend becoming news-worthy. Recent nationwide reports of white people calling the cops on black people having a cookout, on a black Yale student for napping in a common area, on black teenagers for shopping at a Nordstrom, on black folks for checking out of their Airbnb, on five black women for not golfing fast enough at a country club, popularly exhibit the racial profiling that leads to the higher rates of incarceration and murder by police. Take the example of the black man murdered outside of a California Walmart when cops fired 30 rounds into a vehicle after he was suspected of theft, and also wounded one of the passengers. Or the Democracy Now! report that a “black teen [was] sentenced to 30 years in prison for a murder committed by cop.” Then there were the examples of “Native American brothers pulled from campus tour after nervous parent calls police,” and the “young Santee Sioux man shot by police officer while being dragged on the ground.”

This seems an appropriate time to remember that on May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police dropped a bomb in a residential neighborhood that killed five children.

Those old fall backs of modernity that claim we’re better off now, as life is safer and easier than it once was, seem mostly unfounded by this only partial round-up of recent news reports. Even before mentioning that the World Health Organization is now warning that “common infections and minor injuries which have been possible to treat for decades may once again kill millions” due to the overuse of antibiotics. Those complex surgeries and cancers that the developed world has been so triumphant in treating, even though it has been the creator of many of the causes of those illnesses, are suddenly becoming extremely difficult to treat. And to add insult to injury, Business Insider reports that “the average American worker takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant.”

The so-called popular alternatives presented to us and advocated for in order to reach the masses, defer to the same Bernie Sanders who once advocated for the dissolution of the CIA, but now just appeals to have a less overtly offensive head for the organization that notoriously contributed to assassinations and torture as a matter of course. Socialist mouthpiece Jacobin can write a whole article on Brexit without mentioning its racially motivated anti-immigrant policies. Local “independent” news site, the Philadelphia Citizen, can propagate its founder’s opinion that we need Amazon to build its HQ2 in Philly to keep the college transplants here, despite the consequent gentrification that will continue to force out already marginalized residents. These are continuations of the path that have lead to the deadly-serious, alienated reality that we currently suffer.

Compromise continues the trajectory and we can’t afford to stay the course.

May 7th Letter-writing for Anarchist Prisoners

from Philly ABC

Join us for this month’s letter-writing event in honor of May Day. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. Anarchists led the strike in the Chicago area, and the strikers were met with heavy police force. In response, the anarchists called for an open forum on police brutality held in Haymarket Square.  Eight anarchist were arrested as organizers and became known as the Haymarket Martyrs as four were later murdered by the state.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public’s memory by establishing “Law and Order Day” on May 1. In honor of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who have come before and since, we will be writing to anarchist comrades behind bars: Bill Dunne, Jeremy Hammond, Eric King and Cedar.

We will also be sending birthday cards to political prisoners with birthdays in May: Alvaro Luna Hernandez (the 12th), Kojo Bomani Sababu (the 27th), and Doug Wright (the 31st).

The event will be held at 6:30pm at LAVA.  Food will be provided by North Philly Food Not Bombs.

[May 7th at LAVA 4134 Lancaster Ave]

Running Down The Walls!

from Philly ABC

August 5th 2018, 10am
Fairmount Park 5K

Hosted by Philly ABC and sponsored by the MOVE organization, Philadelphia’s first Running Down The Walls (RDTW) event is dedicated to the MOVE 9. On August 8th, the MOVE prisoners will have been locked in Pennsylvania prisons for 40 years. Despite the overwhelmingly obvious, irrefutable evidence of their innocence, and the prosecutorial misconduct used to convict them, the political warfare to keep them imprisoned has lasted decades.

Join us and Move prisoners as we run down the walls together. Philadelphia RDTW 2018, exists to amplify their voices, rectify solidarity, strengthen our forces, and Free the Move 9!  If you cannot make it to the event or would like to make an additional contribution, please sponsor a runner either outside prison or inside or one of each. Contact us for more information.

Proceeds will be split between the Warchest Program and the MOVE 9 Support fund. The ABCF Warchest program sends monthly stipends to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War who have insufficient, little, or no financial support during their imprisonment.

Thanks for your interest in supporting the Move 9 by participating in this 5k!

[Register Here]

Philly ABC Film Screening:The Skyjacker’s Tale

from Facebook

Philly ABC will be hosting a film screening of “The Skyjacker’s Tale” by Jamie Kastner. The film is a documentary and the description of it from the website can be found below. We look forward to seeing y’alls beautiful faces there.

“Ishmael Muslim Ali is the American convicted of murdering eight people on a Rockefeller-owned golf course in the US Virgin Islands. After years of trying to get his conviction overturned, he took matters into his own hands and hijacked an American Airlines plane full of passengers to Cuba on New Years Eve 1984, and got away with it. Until now.” – skyjackerstale.com

Ishmael, as well as Warren (Aziz) Ballantine, Meral (Malik) Smith, Raphael (Kwesi) Joseph, and Hanif Shabazz Bey are known as the Virgin Island 5. On September 6th, 1972, eight American tourists were gunned down at the Rockefeller-owned golf course on the island of St.Croix. Quickly the colonial authorities picked up over one hundred blacks for interrogations, and the U.S. colonial troops carried out a series of repressive acts of violence against the black community. The F.B.I. and the United States Army troops led a 300-man invasion force into the islands and used strong armed tactics to conduct house to house searches of the low income areas.

The five were charged after being subjected to vicious torture, in order to extract confessions. They were beaten, hung from their feet and necks from trees, subject to electric shocks with “cattle prods”, had plastic bags tied over their heads and had water forced up their noses by the “defenders of the law.” The judge (Warren Young) overlooking the case prior to being placed on the federal bench worked as Rockefeller’s private attorney and and even handled legal matters for the Fountain Valley Golf Course.

Their trial was an obvious Kangaroo Court and a mockery of any sense of a fair trial. On August 13, 1973, each of the five men convicted and sentenced to eight(8) consecutive life terms.

Today, Warren (Aziz) Ballantine, Meral (Malik) Smith, and Hanif Shabazz Bey are all confined in federal prisons. Ismail Ali was liberated to Cuba via an airplane hijacking in 1984. Raphael (Kwesi) Joseph was granted a pardon by the V.I. governor in 1992. Six years later Kwesi was mysteriously found dead of poison-laced drug overdose, after it was said that he was about to reveal evidence that would have exonerated at least one or more defendant.

More information on the case can be found here http://www.abcf.net/prisoners/vi5.htm

Philly ABC April Letter Writing to Janet and Janine Africa

from Facebook

On 04/02/18 Philly ABC will be hosting a letter writing event to Janet and Janine Africa, 2 members of the MOVE 9. Please join us in writing letters to these rad folks.

” The August 8, 1978, police attack on MOVE followed years of police brutality against MOVE and was a major military operation carried out by the Philadelphia police department under orders of then-mayor, Frank Rizzo. Mayor Rizzo’s reputation for racism and brutality was and is well known–it followed him up through the ranks of the police department to the police commissioner’s office to the mayor’s office.

During this attack, heavy equipment was used to tear down the fence surrounding our home, and cops filled our home with enough tear gas to kill us and our babies, while SWAT teams covered every possible exit. We were all in the basement of our home, where we had 10 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute directed at us from 4 fire department water cannons (for a total of 40 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute). As the basement filled with nearly six feet of water we had to hold our babies and animals above the rising water so they wouldn’t drown. Suddenly shots rang out (news reporters and others know the shots came from a house at 33rd and Baring Street, not our home, because they actually saw the man shooting) and bullets immediately filled the air as police throughout the area opened fire on us. Officer James Ramp, who was standing above us on street-level and facing our home, was killed by a single bullet that struck him on a downward angle…Nine of us were charged with murder and related charges for the death of James Ramp.” (http://onamove.com/move-9/)

Monday, March 5th: Letter-writing for Cleveland 4 prisoners

from Philly ABC

We’re back on our normal first Monday of the month schedule in March and will be writing letters to Josh Stafford, Connor Stevens and Doug Wright of the Cleveland 4.

They were arrested on April 30th, 2012. They were accused of plotting a series of bombings, including that of an area bridge.  However, the real story is that the FBI, working with an informant, created the scheme, produced the explosives, and coerced these four into participating.

Connor and Doug took non cooperating plea deals and pled guilty to all charges.  The judge applied a “terrorist enhancement” charge to each of them, elongating their sentences as well as subjecting them to harsher prison conditions.  Doug is serving 11.5 years, Brandon 9 years 9 months, and Connor 8 years 1 month.

Skelly took his case to trial. He went pro se and acted as his own lawyer. The FBI offered him a non cooperating plea deal with a 3 year sentence, if he would have plead guilty. Josh refused to plead guilty to something he wasn’t guilty of doing. He was found guilty on all counts by his jury and sentenced to 10 years. Even though Skelly had the most minimal role, he got the second longest sentence because he took his case to trial.

Doug and Connor plead without an agreement while facing the threat of life in prison. On appeal of there sentencing they were primarily fighting against the life long probation that was handed down at sentencing. Doug also fought against being branded the leader. After months of waiting for a verdict on the appeals, we got word back. The appeal have been denied.

They all continue to fight against the government’s attempt to brand them as terrorists and to expose the techniques of entrapment employed by the FBI and their informants.

Dinner will be served by North Philly Food Not Bombs and we will sign birthday cards for Joy Powell (the 5th), Andrew Mickel (the 13th), Cinque Magee (the 16th), and Jaan Laaman (the 21st).

[6:30 pm at LAVA (4134 Lancaster Ave)]

Whammo!: MOVE9 Parole; Addicted to Screens; Anarcho-Syndicalism in Kosovo

from The Final Straw Radio

This episode contains three segments:

Move 9 Parole
“Stare Into The Lights My Pretties”
Anarcho-Syndicalist Organizing in Kosovo

Audio Player

00:00
00:00

MOVE9 Parole

First, there’s the interview that Bursts held with Michael Davis Africa Jr., a member of the MOVE organization.  MOVE is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa in 1972. The group lives communally. During the conversation, Michael Jr. talks about the case of the MOVE9, who were 9 members of that group who were arrested and accused of the killing of a police officer in 1978 in Philadelphia, a charge they each deny.  Officer James Ramp was killed following a year of the Philly PD blockading the house for a year under an eviction order and the police besieged the house on August 8th, 1978.  The MOVE 9 have been incarcerated for almost 40 years now, with Merle & Phil dying behind bars.  Police and white supremacist affiliated groups have successfully gotten parole denied for Eddie, Michael and Delbert Africa over the last 9 months as they do for many Political Prisoners from the 1960’s through 80’s in the U.S.  There are upcoming are parole hearings for Janet, Janine and Debbie Africa and more info on who to petition for their release can be found at http://onamove.com/move-9/. The name of the D.A. who prosecuted the MOVE9 in 1978 and who is still on the paperwork and has a say on the parole of the MOVE9 40 years later is named John Straub.

Coming up this Saturday, February 24th starting at 4pm there’ll be an event called “Framed In America: The Making of Political Prisoners”.  This will take place at The National Black Theater, 2031 5th Ave in Harlem, New York and will include presentations by Ramona Africa, Fred Hampton Jr, Pam Africa, Roger Wareham, Betty Davis, Ralph Poynter and Johanna Fernandez.  More info can be found on the Justice for the Move 9 fedbook group.

Signals of Disorder in West Philly

Submission

Took these photos over the last few weeks.



Monday Feb 12th: Show some love to Debbie & Mike Africa for Valentine’s Day

from Philly ABC

MOVE members and partners Debbie and Mike Africa have been incarcerated since 1978, spending years apart from each other, their children and families and from our community. Right before Valentine’s Day, let’s show them a little love and send them a stack of letters so they know we are still fighting with them from the outside. We will also be sending out birthday cards to all political prisoners with birthdays in February– Veronza Bowers & Norm Lowry (the 4th), Kamau Sadiki (the 19th), Oso Blanco (the 26th), and Ana Belen Montes (the 28th). North Philly Food Not Bombs will provide a vegetarian dinner!

NOTE: AFTER THIS, LETTER-WRITING WILL RETURN TO 1st MONDAY OF EACH MONTH!

[February 12 from 6:30PM to 9PM at LAVA Space 4134 Lancaster Ave]

The Cinema Committee Reflects on 2017 from Belarus to Philadelphia

from It’s Going Down

[Video Here]

We’ve all heard the story before. People still tell it from the moldering dankness of their mom’s basement. It goes like this: George Soros contacts The Anarchist Antifa Supersoldiers and hands over bulging bags thick with gold in exchange for doing his bidding. Interesting story, right? Well, turns out plenty of shitholes on the internet tell it nearly every week. Since we can’t seem to convince anyone that we’re broke a a joke, and since everyone is calling everyone else a Russian spy, we thought it appropriate to celebrate our current predicament by weaving it all together in a simple and clear narrative. Contrary to popular reports, the international anarchist movement is beholden to neither George Soros or Vladimir Putin. All flags look the same to us. Every country is our homeland.

While the techno-overlords continued to blast the San Francisco Bay Area with their continuously stoked housing crisis, several individuals found it wise to begin burning down luxury housing developments in the city of Oakland. These fires began in 2016 and continued into 2017, each of them completely destroying their targets and costing ten of millions of dollars. The latest was in July when a luxury apartment block caught fire in the heart of Downtown Oakland. These arsons have been wisely left unclaimed by their authors. With the housing and homeless crisis plainly visible for all to see, the sight of burning luxury apartments is a simple message difficult to misinterpret.

Across the continent in Philadelphia, the local anarchist movement has grown quite strong in the past years and become popular for organizing and marching against Trump. Since the fall of 2012, local anarchists have printed their paper Anathema and chronicled events in their city and beyond. With housing costs rising and homelessness increasing, some individuals found it wise to sneak into some luxury developments and torch them to the ground. This arson took place in the Point Breeze neighborhood in 2017 and garnered wide attention in the local media. In another act of rebellion, a group of fifty people rampaged through a series of new developments and trashed everything that reeked of luxury. These two events happened within weeks of each other and sent a clear message against this new luxury development most liberals view as normal. Because of the fluid and toxic news cycle of our current era, few people remember these important activities outside of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia IWW Statement in Support of Operation PUSH

from Philly IWW

On January 15, 2018, prisoners across the state of Florida will cease working and participating in the prison economy. The prisoners pledged to make this a non-violent lay-down strike. The demands of the inmates are simple:

1. Payment for their labor

2. A stop to canteen price gouging

3. The reinstatement of parole

The Philadelphia IWW supports the efforts of the prisoners and asks for all fellow workers to stand in solidarity with the strikers. The prison system is predatory and racist; we commend our fellow workers behind bars for their courageous actions in the face of injustice.

Read the striker’s statement here.