Submission
As a small show of solidarity with anarchist prisoners I put up posters in West Philly and South Philly. Along the way I also took down some annoying infowars and right libertarian stickers đ
Fire to the Prisons
For a Dangerous June
Posters for Anarchist Prisoners
Melt ICE: Solidarity With Detainees
from Facebook
Join the Industrial Workers of the World In Philadelphia on International Workers Day, as we will be demonstrating at the Philadelphia Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE office in solidarity with immigrant detainees. Immigrant detainees live and work in poor conditions in some cases making only $1 a day. In April 2017 Tacoma Washington Immigrant detainees went on a labor and hunger strike over bad food and low pay. Read more here: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/04/24/25103735/women-detainees-at-tacoma-immigrant-prison-end-hunger-strike-but-vow-to-keep-fighting
After this we will join the March for a day without immigrants at City Hall at noon
[May 1 from 10am to 12pm at 1600 Callowhill St]
Benefit Show for Let’s Get Free
from Facebook
Eyes on Prison Society in Pennsylvania
From Anathema
2017 begun with the announcement that Pennsylvania will close two yet-to-be-announced state prisons by June 30 to help offset a projected $600 million revenue shortfall in this yearâs budget. The state is also facing a $1.7 billion structural deficit next fiscal year. Governor Tom Wolf, whose efforts to raise taxes have failed since he took office in January 2015, has vowed to close the deficit through cuts and savings. Meanwhile, the originally estimated $400 million SCI Phoenix in nearby Graterford, PA has yet to announce its completion after a couple of years of delays. This is, of course, the same prison that came under scrutiny by the public as its construction was announced concurrently with the closing of 23 Philadelphia public schools and laying off thousands of teachers in 2013. The construction of SCI Phoenix is managed by Hill International, whose world headquarters is located on the 17th floor of 2005 Market here in Philadelphia.
The rest of the country has seen increased discussion on detaining immigrant populations since June 2014, when the Obama Administration announced its detention-as-deterrence plan to send large numbers of families from Central America seeking asylum into immigration detention. Families detained at what used to only be three detention facilities â Dilley, Karnes, and the local Berks Country Family Detention Center â have suffered the detrimental effects on their physical and mental health associated with being detained, lengthy detention stays, and lack of access to legal counsel. Some have suffered further abuse, including a 19-year-old mother who reported being sexually assaulted by a staff member and an eight-year-old girl who witnessed the assault at the Berks facility early in 2015.
After 15 years of operation, the state of Pennsylvania may let the Berks license expire if they continue to hold families, instead of just children, as it has been licensed as a Child Residential Facility. Currently children and adults are imprisoned in these facilities together. Despite relatively low obvious security, those held are threatened with federal charges if they defy the orders of the authorities there as simple as walking off campus, and suffer bed checks every 15 minutes with flashlights shined upon them. Berks is a state-run facility, as opposed to the privately run facilities that have come under fire in Texas for the operational methods and neglectful tendencies that have resulted in a history of questionable deaths and substandard medical care, according to Mother Jones. In fact, these facilities are said to not only be incapable of protecting the lives of the inmates, but also incapable of protecting the lives of the personnel â to say nothing of the multiple new facilities in that region.
Yet business is good for these private facilities, despite last yearâs announcement by the state department that private prisons contracts with the federal Bureau of Prisons would be suspended or reduced in this country. This is apparent in the immediate surge in the two biggest private prison firmsâ stock prices after the announcement of Trumpâs election, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities do not fall under the domain of the BOP.
Resistance is occurring though, from the successful closing of a privately run ICE facility in San Antonio over the needlessly cruel banning of crayons for children to the nationwide prison strike that began on September 9th, last year.
âBy rioting and through other combative tactics, they disrupted normalized routines and operations for even longer. It was the largest action ever taken by prisoners in the United States, and anarchists took part both inside and outside the prison walls.â
During said strike, prisoners took action in 46 prisons. Of those facilities, 31 experienced a lock-down, suspension, or full strike for at least 24 hours, affecting around 57,000 people. By not showing up for work, prisoners shut down the regular operations of prisons like Kinross in Michigan and Holman in Alabama. By rioting and through other combative tactics, they disrupted normalized routines and operations for even longer. It was the largest action ever taken by prisoners in the United States, and anarchists took part both inside and outside the prison walls.
The strike has primarily been framed as a battle against prison slavery, an institution codified into law âas a punishment for crimeâ in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Prisoners are often employed for pennies per hour, performing not only the various tasks that keep the prison running, but also sometimes producing commodities such as Starbucks cups or even putting out wildfires in California. Anarchist and prisoner Joshua âZeroâ Cartrette has articulated a greater breadth of what prison imposes, in addition to writing about the repression he and his affinities have faced for their strike, which has included months of solitary confinement. Local actions also included targeting the diffuse drop-off points for UPS, which benefits from prison labor. Others, like Michael Kimble and the recently hunger-striking Sean Swain, have also made valuable contributions to this dialogue.
Some of those involved in organizing the prison strike will be moving their attention toward prison contractor Aramark beginning January 14th in DC. The $8.65 billion food services company is one of the countryâs largest employers and provides meals for more than 500 correctional facilities across the country. They have been the subject of complaints about maggots and rocks, sexual harassment, drug trafficking and other employee misconduct. If you havenât noticed their distinct impression on the local skyline, Aramarkâs corporate offices are currently located at 1101 Market in Philadelphia, though they have plenty of operations through the city and beyond, easily identifiable by their labeled vehicles parked outside.
Local initiatives against prison society have also included the recurring New Yearâs Eve noise demos and the upcoming January 22nd day of solidarity with trans prisoners (that will manifest this year at LAVA with a letter writing night). From the most recent NYE noise demo:
On new yearâs eve a crowd of people gathered outside the federal prison at 7th St and Arch St to show love for those kidnapped by the state.
âPeople brought banners, drums, a speaker, fireworks, whistles, and airhorns to get it going. Everything turned into a drum; signs, trashcans, walls, and bike racks were all kicked and banged to make sound. Fliers explaining the noise demo were passed to passersby and thrown around. Coffee and snacks were shared, as slogans against police and prisons were shouted through the megaphone. The night was fun and prisoners flashed their lights as we made a racket.
âPolice arrived toward the end as the energy was dying down, but didnât intervene. The demo ended with a short march to a nearby park where everyone was able to disperse without incident.
âPrisoners to the streets! Burn down the plantation!â
In 2015, Decarcerate PA estimated that some 80% of jailed persons in Philadelphia are simply awaiting trial, and that policy change would prevent this. But there are never any guarantees from petitioning politicians, not that we could ever rely on reforms for freedom, and legislation can be reversed through the very same system in which it was introduced. If you want to destroy prison society, stronger inspiration can be found in the likes of the previously mentioned prison strike, frequent prison riots, the Attica uprising, groups like Os Cangaceiros, The George Jackson Brigade, the third generation of the Red Army Faction, and even Jacque Mesrineâs famous armed raid on a penitentiary in Quebec.
Trans prisoner letter writing
from Facebook
January 22, 2017 will be the SECOND annual Trans Prisoner Day of Action: an international day of action in solidarity with trans prisoners.
More info @ International Day of Trans Prisoner Solidarity / www.transprisoners.net
In Philly we will be holding space for a letting writing night/event jawn, centered on trans prisoners in PA. Information about specific prisoners, and their struggles inside, will be provided by Hearts on a Wire. Everyone should totally check out Hearts and read their newsletter, made by and for trans prisoners.
*Art materials and postage will also be provided.*
Please come though and:
– Send a letter/art to someone (it is lonely and any letter/art is appreciated)
– Learn about a specific trans person on the inside.
– Start a new pen pal relationship, checking in with yourself truthfully and honesty on your capacity to commit to that.
– Write another letter to an existing pen pal you have.
– Talk with others about your experience supporting trans people on the inside.
– Meet other people and talk about projects we’re involved in.
Email event organizers to get involved or suggest materials/zines to share:
cass: cass.struggle@gmail.com / Brynn Cassidy West
Letha: l.muthkimball@gmail.com / not on fb
(it’s best to email us both)
[January 22 5pm to 7pm at LAVA Space 4134 Lancaster Ave]
Report from New Year’s Eve Noise Demo
Submission
On new yearâs eve a crowd of people gathered outside the federal prison at 7th St and Arch St to show love for those kidnapped by the state.
People brought banners, drums, a speaker, fireworks, whistles, and airhorns to get it going. Everything turned into a drum; signs, trashcans, walls, and bike racks were all kicked and banged to make sound. Fliers explaining the noise demo were passed to passersby and thrown around. Coffee and snacks were shared, as slogans against police and prisons were shouted through the megaphone. The night was fun and prisoners flashed their lights as we made a racket.
Police arrived toward the end as the energy was dying down, but didnât intervene. The demo ended with a short march to a nearby park where everyone was able to disperse without incident.
Prisoners to the streets!
Burn down the plantation!
New Year’s Eve Noise Demo
Submission
[Make Some Fuckin’ Noise
New Year’s Eve Anti-Prison Demo
7pm at Arch St & 7th St
Bring Noisemakers]
CFRC Radio Interviews Philly Anarchists About Sept 9th Prisoner Strike
Submission
Originally broadcast on December 14th from 7PM to 8PM.
Listen here: https://audio.cfrc.ca/archives/2016-12-14-19.mp3
CFRC Prison Radio:
Prison related news.
Guest Em speaks on anarchist prison support work and general prison things.
Interview with anarchists in Philadelphia who were supporting the September 9th USA Prisoner Strike.
Philadelphia interview starts at 41:30
Documentary Screenings at LAVA Library
from Instagram
this wednesday we watching 2 short documentaries. one about the attica prison uprising and one about anti-fascists in sweden. as usual we’ll have free literature, internet, and music. come thru!
[December 7 from 5PM to 8PM at LAVA Library 4134 Lancaster Ave]
Banner Drop in Solidarity with Prison Strike
Submission
On Wednesday during rush hour a banner was hung over the Vine St Expressway in Philadelphia in solidarity with the prison strike.
Philadelphia: UPS Lockers in Vandalized in Solidarity with Prison Strike
from It’s Going Down
In a gesture of solidarity with the ongoing prison strike, we vandalized some UPS lockers in Queen Village with paint early this morning. UPS uses slave labor from prisons. Long live the strike! For the proliferation of attack against prison society!
Fuck Prisons Graffiti in Center City
from Instagram
Continued solidarity with the #prisonstrike at 21st and Walnut
Call For Renewed Actions In Solidarity With The Prison Strike, October 15-22
Submission
It hardly seems necessary to summarize what has gone down inside U.S. prisons since September 9th. Hunger strikes, work stoppages, and riots have spread throughout the country on a scale that we likely arenât even fully aware of yet. Some uprisings appeared took us by surprise, such as in several Florida prisons, while others presumably grew from recent organizing endeavors on the inside, such as at Kinross in Michigan or Holman in Alabama. By rough estimates, over 20,000 prisoners were involved in some way. Thatâs huge.
On the outside, solidarity burned so brightly all over the world. Banner drops, graffiti slogans, noise demonstrations and more showed that we had the backs of all who would partake in the strike. It is worth noting however that the vast majority of this took place the first weekend of the strike. But this prison strikeâand the struggle against prisons more broadlyâis about more than a day or a week. It didnât start on September 9th and it isnât ending any time soon. Some prisoners may return to work while others decide to stop working for the first time. Itâs easier when there is a definitive date to take action on, to build momentum towards, but thatâs not going to be enough.
Therefore, we would like to offer a call for renewed actions in solidarity with the prison strike and the struggle against prison society. Right now many are organizing anti-repression campaigns for striking prisoners and that is of course very necessary and not nearly as exciting work. But it would be a mistake to conceive of this struggle in a linear fashionâthat is to say, a single wave where we demonstrate as it crests and write letters as it crashes. How many prisoners hadnât heard about the strike until after it had started? How many knew but didnât think people would actually be there to support them? Three weeks after the start of the strike, inmates in Turbeville, South Carolina rebelled against a guard and took over their dorm. How can we stop while inmates are still risking their lives for freedom?
We propose the week of October 15th â 22nd for a concentration of actions to remind everyone locked up by the State that we will always have their back. Once again, it is important to take these dates with a grain of salt. No oneâs going to judge you if you take action on October 23rd, or in November, or even in 2017. Neither should anyone sit on their hands waiting for the 15th to get going. New Yearâs Eve should also be kept in mind, which has traditionally seen noise demonstrations outside of prisons every year, despite being an equally arbitrary date.
“When times seem slow and uneventful we let ourselves stagnate, but imagination and revolt are like muscles: the less we use them the weaker they become. We can push back the boredom of less eventful times and point towards insurrection. Solidarity actions and struggling on our own timelines is a way we can create momentum and tension when there isnât much.”
â âOur Own Timelinesâ Anathema, Vol 2 Issue 6
It is undeniable that many comrades exist outside of realities where organizing a protest or noise demonstration is tenable. Many of us are still searching for a few like-minded comrades, let alone attempting to bring out a crowd. There are still opportunities to act, whether it is a one or two person team dropping a banner or putting up posters, or hosting a letter writing or informational event that can help connect future accomplices. It certainly can never be overstated how important writing letters of support and calling in to prisons is in and of itself, but why pass on an opportunity to build our capacity?
If nothing else, we should all feel ashamed that the most active city in terms of U.S. prison strike solidarity actions is Athens, Greece. They already have such a head start but we can at least give them a bit of challenge, canât we?
â Some Restless Uncontrollables
Poster (11×17) https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/o1522-tabloid-2.pdf
Poster (8.5×11) https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/o1522-letter-1.pdf
Image https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/o1522-sq.jpg
___
from https://itsgoingdown.org/call-renewed-actions-solidarity-prison-strike-october-15-22/
Sept 9th POP!back
Submission
Word of the September 9th noise demonstration at the Juvenile Justice Center (JJC) was spread through social media, flyers handed out at bus stops to people going on prison visits, flyers handed out around the neighborhood where the demonstration took place, as well as to people visiting the youth inside.
The point of the demonstration was to make noise for the youth on the inside and to give them a change to let loose, even if only in a limited way inside their cages.
A meet-up was organized via facebook north of the center at 48th and Aspen St. It became known after the demo that some people had problems finding the meet-up location and that this may have lowered turnout. At this spot a group of people in masks started setting up banners and handing out whistles as well as fireworks.
There was an awkward division between the masked up peeps and those who were not in masks. Although some communication happened between the groups, I would like to see more exchanges between people at demonstrations for a better understanding of why some people choose to wear masks and some do not.
People waited around and some started to set off bottle rockets. About 15 minutes after 8pm, someone with a megaphone said it was time to move (as a cop car had rolled by just earlier). The group moved ahead behind a set of banners down 48th toward the JJC. We took the streets and got generally positive responses from people in cars (unlike most demonstrations in center city where angry yuppies try to run marches down). Flyers about the prison strike and just about hating prisons in general were tossed into the air like confetti all along the march.
Some had decided to meet up at the JJC ahead of time. There was some confusion between the marchers and the people set up at the JJC. The marchers walked past the front of the center near 48th and Haverford about halfway down the block to the side parking-lot. The reason was that the front building is an office building for social workers and on the side of the complex behind the parking lot was where the youth were being held in âdorms.â
There was also some confusion expressed as to who organized the demonstration, framed as concern that the demonstration was a ploy by cops. The reason for this was the fireworks. There was fear that this would agitate the cops into giving people gun charges (which is not unheard of) or take it as an excuse to come smash up the demo. A few people left the demonstration because they felt unsafe, which is a completely reasonable response that deserves support. It is important for everyone to be able to assess their own risk. The remaining people joined the demonstration near the parking-lot.
As the noise demonstration went on we saw some people waving on the inside, but it was hard to see much because of the way the center is built to isolate.
Outside there was a cop with a camera taking video of the whole scene, especially trying to film peopleâs faces. âCivil affairsâ – or protest cops who wear plain clothes and orange armbands to almost every protest â especially use this information. This information also has the potential to be integrated into facial recognition software, as more departments request funds for âupgradesâ (this is the flip side of body-cameras). Eventually some people in masks took exception to this and started putting flags in front of the camera, drumming on the camera, and throwing trash at the cop. Some people shot fireworks at cops and shouted at them to quit their jobs or kill themselves.
Eventually after an hour and a half people started marching back toward Aspen. There was concern expressed that the march was moving too fast for some people. At one point someone shouted to the front to slow down. Making people with needs have to shout to be seen creates an unwelcome dynamic and could potentially lead to the most vulnerable being snagged by the cops. Collectively taking the responsibility to be more mindful of who is around us in the future may address some of these concerns about accessibility.
At this point there was a cop van in front âleadingâ (more like kettling) the march, but eventually someone threw a flagpole at the back of the van and it moved farther ahead. When the march got back to Aspen St, some people loitered (fuck the police, amirite?) around for a bit longer shouting at cops but eventually everyone dispersed into the night with no arrests.
Some concluding observations:
1) People are gonna do what they’re gonna do at these kinds of rackets, like bring fireworks and get rowdy. That’s the point of autonomy. There are no leaders or organizers whose goal is to keep things orderly. Just the opposite â the goal is to get disorderly. That said, we must be aware that our actions may âturn offâ others and split the demo or cause people to leave. Fireworks, flag throwing, and camera blocking are new tactics that are an escalation in the context of demos in the last few years, which has the potential to both expand what people think as well as to demobilize protest state repression or some people avoiding demos that are not specifically designated as âpeaceful.â
2) Safety at demonstrations is an illusion, or at the very least relative, and it is not something that can be guaranteed. Ultimately the cops define what is illegal. However, there are steps we can take, like being aware of where people are in the group and trying to keep people together who want to be in the relative safety of a group.
3) There are practical steps we can all take to lessen the impact of surveillance. Wearing masks and refusing to claim actions with named organizations can avoid repression/surveillance down the line because there is less in the way of social ties that can be tracked and people may feel empowered to organize another demonstration completely apart from the initial group who comes together on one particular night.
So take this as an invitation to keep up these demonstrations and be free in the streets.
-a (seriously) sweaty bitch