Hundreds of Captive Mink Liberated Last Night From Pennsylvania’s Only Remaining Fur Farm

from North American Animal Liberation Press Office

For Immediate Release
October 19, 2024

Stahl Mink Farm Targeted Again After Thousands of Captive Mink Released in September 2023
 
 Although an anonymous communique has yet to be received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, activists appear to have liberated hundreds more captive mink from Stahl Fur Farm in Pennsylvania early this morning, according to local news media. Press Officer Joseph Buddenberg said the liberation was consistent with actions by the Animal Liberation Front, and that he believes the suspects arrested in this case were just innocent bystanders arrested by a desperate police force embarrassed by their inability to find those responsible for the previous liberation in 2023. 

According to local law enforcement, Christopher Legere, 25, and Cara Mitrano, 27, both of Massachusetts, were taken into custody and charged with agricultural vandalism, criminal mischief- damage of property, theft by unlawful taking, cruelty to animals, burglary and criminal trespass. They were picked up in Ralpho Township about 15 miles away.

Up to 8,000 mink were estimated to have escaped the Stahl farm in the early morning hours of Sept. 17, 2023; no arrests have been reported in that incident. The communique from that raid reads:

[dear mink murderer stahl, fur commission secretary:
i saw your mink prison recently and was not impressed. you have dozens of sheds but so many are falling apart. thankfully your operation seems to have gotten smaller over the years. when will you learn that animal abuse isn’t worth it? people like me will continue to visit you at 4130 pennsylvania 890 sunbury, pa 17801, which i found on finalnail.com. a recent communique on animalliberationpressoffice.org inspired me to visit, document what was happening, and liberate as many mink as possible. people need to see the filthy & cramped conditions where these territorial & genetically wild animals are kept up to four in a single cage. and the joy that is possible when they experience freedom. when the cage latches were opened the mink jumped out to experience their first steps in grass and mud. i hope most have escaped to freedom and no more animals are ever imprisoned and slaughtered here again. whatever happened after i left i hope it was expensive. the fur industry is hurting. great. profits are already at record lows and we can make it cost more than ever to continue breeding animals to steal their fur.]

Mink are genetically wild animals that roam up to 5 miles a day but are kept in 10-inch cages on fur farms; their treatment is egregiously cruel and violent. The mink are born in February or March and are killed by gassing, clubbing or anal electrocution in November, before being skinned, sometimes while still alive, for their fur. The animals liberated this weekend have a fighting chance at life; they faced a 100 percent death rate if they stayed on the farm.

The number of fur farms in America has dwindled from more than 300 in the 1990s to less than 50 today, as the fur industry continues its steady decline into oblivion. A listing of all  known fur farms in North America, is available here: https://finalnail.com/

Police Raids at UPenn

from Unity Of Fields

🚨 On Friday, October 18th at 6am, 12 Penn Police officers and one PPD officer raided the home of pro-Palestine student organizers in full tactical gear and pointed rifles and handguns at the students. They refused to provide a warrant or share their names/badge numbers. The escalation of student repression nationwide continues.

The pigs are trying to scare people into obedience to the genocidal US war machine. Do not let them. We must become more bold, more audacious tacticians, more unified amongst revolutionaries…more uncompromising.

We cannot bow our heads and accept this or throw out radicals in an attempt to save our own skins. The hammer of the state can and will come down on any of us. We only get out of this together, as revolutionaries…not fractured, separate, weak, and reformist.

Even if it’s unlikely right now, it’s good practice for *all* of us to prepare for the possibility of raids, detainments, increased surveillance, subpoenas, etc – find educational resources at unityoffields.org

Source: Penn Freedom School for Palestine

Towards Another Uprising

from Act For Freedom Now

At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.

This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.

The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?

 

The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox ) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.

It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.

Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.

From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire
Early October, 2024

Update Message from Hybachi LeMar On His Extradition to Pennsylvania DOC

from It’s Going Down

Update on anarchist prisoner Hybachi LeMar. For more information, check out Free Hybachi LeMar.

We are sad to announce that, although Hybachi LeMar was scheduled to be released on parole from IDOC Jacksonville Correctional Center on October 4, 2024, he was instead picked up by Pennsylvania authorities on a warrant for an alleged parole violation. He was transported overnight from Illinois to Pennsylvania and is now incarcerated at SCI Smithfield.

Update Message from Hybachi LeMar:

Solidarity Greetings.

The following are the events surrounding my October 2024 transfer from Jacksonville, Illinois.

On October 4th, I was exported by U.S. Security Transportation Services van from Jacksonville Correctional Center, first to Connersville, Indiana, where I slept in a hallway of its county jail overnight, en route to Pennsylvania. I arrived the next evening at SCI Smithfield.

And while the other two passengers who were picked up from different parts of the country were given their customary browns, clothing exchange, I was put in a cell in order to place all the clothes I had on into a box. No socks. No shirt. No underwear.

I was handed a smock—a thick, blue, velcro, padded observation garment with no sleeves, too hot to wear, ostensibly under the pretext that the nerve medication prescribed at the previous institution had to be taken and re-prescribed. And with me having to be monitored in such a way in case I would undergo any detox symptoms.

Doing jumping jacks; recalling knowledge I memorized from an almanac that Midwest Books to Prisoners mailed me in Cook County Jail; and planning what to do to assist uplifting communities once I’m released, were resourceful in centering my mind and keeping it balanced on a solid foundation of constructive thoughts, the two days I spent in that particular cell.

Due to my history of clairvoyance and clairaudience, which has been misnomered as schizophrenia, I was moved upstairs on the psychiatric wing for “closer observation” to see how I do.

In spite of it all, I remain cool and collected, and hope you are too.

Before closing this message, it’s important to always remember, whether you find yourself alone in your room, or naked inside of a cell: as we drift 67,000 miles per hour around the sun, no one can take away the fact that you can center your mind on a thought along the way.

The thought you choose is yours to make, yours to keep, one to be appreciated with genuine understanding. And it’s a gift, a primordial power that no one can take away.

Sending you solidarity, love, and strength.

Sincerely Yours,

Hybachi LeMar

You can continue to write Hybachi using this form or by sending a single sided letter to this forwarding address:

Hybachi LeMar
c/o Midwest Books to Prisoners
1321 N Milwaukee Avenue PMB 460
Chicago, IL 60622

Hybachi LeMar has finished his third book – “The Ghetto-bred Anarchist”

“A call to action .. a modern-day George Jackson, with all the pain, anger, determination and soaring prose, but with the loving care of a genuine anarchist.” – Anthony Rayson

“Forged from the front lines of the struggle, “The Ghetto-bred Anarchist” is an incendiary underground classic that burns bright with revolutionary wisdom. Hybachi’s hard-fought reflections and strategies show how we can liberate ourselves from within the cracks of capitalism.”

Accepting orders now! Support Hybachi by buying a copy of his latest book! You can also show support by purchasing his last book, “The Anarchybalion”!

* We are seeking distributors and bookstores to help share Hybachi’s works – please get in contact *

“The Ghetto-bred Anarchist” is also available for purchase from the IWW Store.

Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-jacketing

from North Shore

Read the full text, including visuals, online as a PDF.

Find the full text ready for printing as an imposed PDF.

Since the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that uphold it.

This text was written through the summer and early autumn of 2024 from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory (so-called Southern Ontario, Canada), where people, many new to the left, have been facing intensified violence and harassment from both police and Zionists. Protests are regularly met with arrests and other attacks, which have created a climate of fear among attendees and organisers.

At the same time, that fear, combined with a disconnect from previous generations of struggle and an often-unchallenged fear of militancy, has led to practices that end up putting our comrades in more danger. This text hopes to address one such recurring issue.

 

what is bad-jacketing?

“Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing,” “fed-jacketing,” or “snitch-jacketing”) is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant, fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent evidence.

The term has been used since at least the 1960s, where it primarily described COINTELPRO operations that bad-jacketed legitimate members of the Black Panther Party and other organisations. It was, ironically, rumours from infiltrators consolidating their own positions that led to organisations not only isolating but, in some cases, severely beating or executing innocent individuals.

 

why is bad-jacketing a problem?

A 2015 text titled “No badjacketing: the state wants to kill us; let’s not cooperate” by the Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, says:

  1. At the least, it pushes away people who have, or are willing, to do work and make sacrifices for the movements.
  2. Worse, it silences entire groups by sowing mistrust within them and making discussion of strategy and tactics difficult.
  3. Very commonly, those accused of acting as informants become so alienated from their accusers that they actually become snitches.
  4. Worst-case scenario, people die. That worst-case scenario is all too common and real, and there is a famous regional history to it as well, in the case of Anna Mae Aquash, a Native American woman from Canada who had worked and sacrificed tireless for the American Indian Movement, or AIM.

Southern Ontario in 2024 is, of course, not the US in the 1960s and 1970s. Our contemporary movements do not act on false accusations of snitching by killing the accused. And while we know that the police are trying to infiltrate us and turn people into informants, the vast majority of these accusations are definitely not coming from people on the state’s payroll.

The biggest threat that bad-jacketing poses to us, here and now, is that it singles people out for state repression. Militants are more likely to be on the receiving end of these accusations, but also, anecdotally, people of colour, neurodivergent people, and anyone who “does not belong” (and, of course, people who fall into all of those categories). In doing so, the people who make these accusations in effect carry out the work of the state. They reproduce the oppressive dynamics of the outside world and push people out – often, the very people our movements are supposed to be fighting for. By pushing them out, bad-jacketing then denies support to people who are often already at heightened risk of criminalisation. It makes people into easy targets, signaling to the police that they can get away with brutalising, arresting, and jailing someone without outcry from the community.

During the 2020 Black liberation uprisings in the US, posts flooded our feeds, warning of “agents provocateur.” Decontextualised videos of police unloading bricks spread like wildfire among both far-right and far-left social media networks. Fascist fear-mongering about out-of-town “ANTIFA” inciting riots trickled down into leftist hyper-vigilance against “white outside agitators.” These warnings often ventured into the realm of conspiracy theories, where protests with unknown organisers or cop cars on fire were signs of a police set-up.

All this has had devastating consequences. The normalisation of this paranoid urge to see false flags around every corner has empowered people “on the left” to share images and openly work to identify individuals carrying out illegal actions. Contrary to what they may believe, these people’s efforts to “root out infiltrators” have in many cases now become the actual basis for the state to arrest and jail its opponents.

Beyond that, bad-jacketing leads to feelings of insecurity and distrust that can tear apart a movement – even without any real infiltrators being involved. Both online and on the ground, we can hear breathless accusations that someone at a protest is an undercover Zionist operative, often for no reason beyond that “they make us look bad.” Zionists, constantly on the lookout for ammunition against us, gladly stoke the flames. Projects like the “Shirion Collective,” a Zionist doxing campaign that claimed on social media to be training undercover operatives, see and celebrate when the left eats its own. We must be equally vigilant against these psychological attacks, which are more subtle and yet can do more damage than any one undercover’s testimony.

 

“professionally trained to make us look bad”
– Kristina Beverlin on Isaiah Willoughby

On October 5, 2021, Isaiah Willoughby, a Black man, was sentenced to two years in prison for lighting a fire outside an abandoned police precinct in Seattle in June 2020. Willoughby acted because of the murders of Manuel Ellis, his former roommate, and George Floyd at the hands of the police.

When it happened, Kristina Beverlin, a white woman who now wears a kufiya and a “Free Palestine” hat in her profile picture, immediately blasted out a photo of Willoughby. She tweeted that he “just tried to start a fire at the abandoned precinct” and called on “everyone in Seattle to retweet the photo of this man.”

In subsequent tweets, she stated her belief that “SPD wanted the precinct to catch fire to make the peaceful protesters look bad, after SPD had looked like monsters for days.”

It was her initial tweet that appeared in a court affidavit against Willoughby, and her photo that the police disseminated to identify him. In other words, it was this white woman’s insistence that the police wanted someone to set fire to the precinct, and that anyone who did so could only have been directed by the police, that sent a Black man to prison. Like any other white vigilante, the self-deputised liberal peace police will discipline, with violence if necessary, Black or people of colour who step out of line. Unlike any other, she does it in the name of anti-racism, with an hashtag in the same breath.

Similarly, social media users widely disseminated photos of a white woman suspected to have carried out the arson of the Atlanta Wendy’s where police murdered Rayshard Brooks. That she was white was proof to them that bad actors with no connection to the movement were behind property destruction during the uprisings, and that without those bad actors, the protests would have been peaceful. As it turned out, the woman in question was Natalie White, who Brooks had called his girlfriend on the night of his death. Two Black men, Chisom Kingston and John Wesley Wade, were later charged for the Wendy’s arson as well. As of December 2023, White and Kingston had accepted plea deals for probation, a fine, and community service, while Wade was scheduled to go to trial.

In both these examples, the people who sought to identify state agents “instigating” at protests were ultimately the people who acted as cops. The gravity of these actions cannot be overstated – they, and we, already know that police kill and torture Black people on the streets, and prison guards do the same against their captives on the inside.

Following the May 2022 leak of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Jane’s Revenge shared a communiqué about the fire-bombing of a predatory anti-choice “pregnancy centre” in Madison. The action sparked the usual uproar among the right about “woke ANTIFA terrorists” waging war against Christianity. But rather than defend the action’s righteousness, much of the left instead occupied itself with speculation about whether cursive graffiti and a “too-neat” circle-A meant that it was a false flag. The underlying logic here was that if something looked “too perfect,” if it made the right too angry, it couldn’t possibly be real. We may talk of rioting against the Supreme Court, but no one seriously means it.

In response to the right-wing outrage campaign about Jane’s Revenge, the FBI offered a bounty of up to $25,000 for information. Days later, in January 2023, the US Department of Justice indicted two people for graffiti on anti-abortion centres in Florida, actions that were also broadcast through Jane’s Revenge. The Florida investigation eventually produced in a total of four arrests, all but one of the defendants being women of colour. Worse, the Florida 4 were prosecuted under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion access. Meanwhile, an investigation that involved 11 different state agencies and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force culminated in the March 2023 arrest of Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury for the Madison fire-bombing. Though the right jumped at the opportunity to gloat, widely publicising the defendants’ photos and personal information, charges against Roychowdhury and the Florida 4 received little attention from the left. Roychowdhury pled guilty after being denied pre-trial release and was sentenced to 90 months (7.5 years) in federal prison on April 10, 2024. Three of the Florida 4, after taking felony pleas that avoided convictions under the FACE Act, were also handed down prison time on September 12 of this year, ranging from 30 days to 1 year and 1 day. Popular support may not have prevented those prosecutions, but the significance of solidarity shouldn’t be understated. Instead, much of the left’s message to militants turns out to have been: “we’ll call you feds, and when it turns out we were wrong, we’ll abandon you anyways.”

Though we never had our own Third Precinct moment, left networks in Ontario fell victim to many of the same conspiratorial impulses. Reposted Instagram stories warned of “suspicious piles of bricks” left as bait near march routes and even “black blocs from Montréal” coming into town to start riots.

While, regrettably, no such riot materialised here in 2020, the bad-jacketing of the black bloc has a long history in Southern Ontario, as in other regions. A particularly egregious example came in the wake of the Toronto G20 in 2010, where liberals convinced themselves that the property damage was all an inside job and set out looking for proof. They singled out a muscular white man in combat boots and “cop-like” black pants for looking suspicious, digging up every image of him they could find. All of this crowd-sourced evidence built a convenient case for the police, who arrested and jailed the target of their suspicions.

A pattern emerges: subsequent repression draws only a fraction of the concern that the broad left had earlier put into interrogating the legitimacy of an action. This is one of the most insidious functions of badjacketing and disavowal – it aids the state project of disappearing people. Speculation about false flags, made exponentially worse by social media and algorithms that egg on endless engagement, steals away energy that could be spent preparing for the repression to come. It turns actions into abstractions ripe for every person to project their own arguments. That abstraction removes militants’ humanity from the picture, enjoining us to forget that real people, putting their lives on the line for the movement, must have lit the match or thrown the brick. The collective failure to adequately show up for each defendant and prisoner in this section – and many more not named – goes beyond a culture of disposability. It is a mass forgetting that makes each of us who partakes in it complicit in the work of the police, prisons, and the carceral state to not only extinguish our resistance but also erase our memory of its very possibility – and our memory and connection to the people who’ve sacrificed to keep that possibility alive.

 

when people are occupied, resistance is justified

The movement for Palestine has long been one of the most hyper-surveiled and attacked. Only when it comes to the Palestinian struggle will even the most mild, pacifist expressions of support land someone on McCarthyist blacklists like Canary Mission, extensive repositories of personal information stretching back years. It is no wonder, then, that people are – correctly – concerned about being targeted by our enemies, which include not just the settler colonial state itself but also Zionists who self-organise outside of it.

Unfortunately, this has once again meant a dangerous resurgence of bad-jacketing. In February 2024, social media posts from the “Shirion Collective” sparked mass outrage and panic among supporters of Palestine. Announcing an “Operation Global Insight,” the posts claimed to be launching an “undercover operation” in key locations such as Toronto. “Volunteers willing to wear keffiyehs and walk [masked] in these demonstrations” would “be provided an hour long basic training by one of [their] ex-Mossad team leads.” Further, “individuals with Arabic-sounding names and Middle Eastern appearance may be uniquely positioned for deeper infiltration and will receive cash compensation for their vital role in [the] operation.”

Though the collective is, without a question, real, there is plenty of reason to believe that the reaction to the post was disproportionate to their actual abilities. Sensationalist claims of Mossad ties in an emoji-studded public tweet do not paint a picture of a sophisticated intelligence operation. Neither do their existing “exposés” on social media, which, despite techno-babble buzzwords about AI, are largely limited to reposting other people’s footage and open-source information that anyone with access to Google could easily retrieve. The description of walking around at protests and “law enforcement presence” suggests no actual knowledge of how Palestine solidarity groups organise or bring in new members. A few people with bad intentions joining a march of hundreds or thousands, where every angle is already recorded and streamed live on Instagram, can hardly be characterised as “infiltration.”

If that were not enough on its own, the White Rose Society, an anti-fascist research group, shared internal screenshots from Shirion’s Telegram channel that confirmed the post’s real purpose was to sow fear and distrust. One Shirion volunteer is quoted as saying:

We won’t need to do anything. They will:

  1. Tone down
  2. Police their own
  3. Maybe even beat up their own just because they think those are us

That summary of their goals succinctly re-states the risks that bad-jacketing poses to our movements.

Even before the Shirion scare, claims that someone was secretly a Zionist or cop were already commonplace. People who wear the symbols or fly the flags of the Palestinian resistance have been accused of being “agitators,” sent by Zionist organisations like B’nai Brith to make protestors look bad. Over-the-shoulder glimpses of someone’s phone or poor fashion choices have been presented as evidence that a protestor is actually an undercover. Online, Palestinians have been accused of being Zionist sockpuppets off of little more than bad feelings. And, naturally, even minor disagreements or political critiques will end in allegations that so-and-so is a fed. While, thankfully, conspiratorial crowds here have not at least yet handed over one of our own to the cops, these accusations are sometimes accompanied by calls to act against someone. In one case recently, a queer person of colour known to other attendees was followed, harassed, and filmed aggressively at a protest because someone had decided for no clear reason that they were a Zionist in disguise.

As the police continue to crack down on us, it is all the more crucial that we learn from the mistakes of the recent past. We cannot let our rightful vigilance lead us to attack our own comrades. Nor should we water down our political lines, our demands, or our tactics for fear that the media and the right will smear us – they do that regardless. It may not be possible to eliminate some, faint chance that an infiltrator is behind a resistance flag, a punch thrown at a Zionist, a brick through a window, but far more likely is that some brave person, who has chosen to more boldly and unabashedly confront this genocidal system and its supporters, is responsible. For that, they deserve our support and our solidarity against whatever repression may come, not our condemnation.

 

knowing our enemies

An over-emphasis on undercovers may lead to an under-emphasis on other security vulnerabilities. Rather than acting according to a one-size-fits-all checklist or, worse, reacting to threats only as they appear, it’s important to proactively identify and individually study threats in order to understand how to address them. That is to say, what – specifically – is your enemy trying to do? How do they do it? The process of answering these questions is known as threat modeling.

Accounts like Shirion, Leviathan, or StopAntisemitism are real threats, as any of their victims know all too well. But OSINT, as well as everyday acquaintances, are much likelier to be the source of their information.

Your personal Instagram or TikTok page might already give away your identity, the protests you attend, your work or school, and the identities of your friends and family members. Your employer might publicly share profiles, including photos, of all of their staff on their website. Tools like PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID allow anyone willing to pay for them to run facial recognition technology and search the Internet for a given face.

If you’re a student, a Zionist classmate could easily recognise you from criticising racism in class and look up your personal information in a school database. A right-wing former colleague could remember you for being politically outspoken at your shared workplace. Knowing the true identities of everyone at a march will do nothing to prevent doxing if, for example, that march is being streamed online, your face is exposed, and your social media is public.

 

what about the real infiltrators and provocateurs?

Infiltration – actual infiltration, where someone comes into our organisations and our lives, pretending to be our friend, only to hand information over to the state – should not be taken lightly. But our baseline understanding of it often takes the form of a few convenient tropes, reinforcing existing biases against militancy and justifying dismissiveness towards criticism. These tropes prevent us from truly knowing our enemies.

The late Matt Cicero wrote that:

[there is a] misconception that all infiltrators act as agents provocateurs who try to manipulate activists into taking illegal, violent, unpopular, and ineffective actions. But as Gary T. Marx points out in his theory of social movement infiltration, social movements are damaged by “opposing organizational, tactical, and resource mobilization tasks.” In other words, infiltrators suppress social movements by fomenting divisions and internal conflicts, diverting energies toward defending the movement rather than pursuing broader social goals, sowing misinformation or damaging reputations, obstructing the supply of resources (money, transport, meeting spaces), or sabotaging planned actions. Many infiltrators are thus better described as agents suppressants, who are there to gather intelligence and channel groups away from militant action. 

[…]Incidents of provocation can be high-profile and sensational, such as undercover police posing as members of the black bloc at Montebello. This can lead activists to paint all militant action as the work of agents provocateurs, even if there is no evidence that this is true. Conversely, because of the low-profile of most agents suppressants, activists are often unaware of their role and impact in pacifying and controlling social movements.

The spectre of the provocateur itself, then, carries out the suppressant role of “put[ting] a damper on evolving movement militancy.”

The single-minded focus on the agent provocateur often goes hand-in-hand with a short-term view of state repression as having only two main goals:

  1. Criminalising individuals in order to take them off the board while making an example out of them; and
  2. Smearing the movement in the media, stigmatising it to the public, by associating it with criminality.

But as Cicero describes, the state is additionally engaged in a long-term project of suppression and counter-insurgency. The police cannot arrest every dissident – but they don’t need to jail us all to successfully maintain the colonial order. The central goal of counter-insurgency is to preserve legitimacy and control.

To that end, some further goals of state repression include, but are not limited to:

  1. Exploiting existing tensions in the movement in order to sow discord and distrust;
  2. Defanging the movement by discouraging forms of action that exceed accepted norms of protest; and
  3. Collecting intelligence to inform repressive operations, for the purposes of criminalisation and suppression.

We should examine the issue of infiltration with all of these goals in mind. David Gilbert says, “[t]here is no simple litmus test to differentiate sincere militancy from provocation or honest caution from suppression.” The same extends to the search for infiltrators more broadly. Most of the time, the only truly conclusive proof that someone is a police infiltrator comes from seeing the evidence against you that they’ve handed over to the state after you’ve been charged. That isn’t of much help – by the time you have those court documents in your possession, the damage will already have been done. That is assuming that the information they collect ever goes to court at all. RCMP documents from the G20 suggest that there may have been as many as 12 undercover officers. Far fewer than that were ever exposed by name, and the remainders’ identities may never be known.

People who’ve experienced the profound betrayal of finding out that someone they knew was an undercover or informant often end up drawing conclusions that are diametrically opposed from one another. But a common thread persists through most of their takeaways: there are few ways to prove for certain that someone is a cop, and many ways that the hunt for infiltrators itself instead undermines our work and furthers the state’s goals.

Accordingly, we should turn our energies to proactively building a security culture that protects us from both infiltration and other security threats. Much has been written on this subject already. In short: solid security practices should mean that an undercover cop is prevented from gathering meaningful information even if we do not know who they are, and that security risks are dealt with regardless of whether an individual is specifically acting on behalf of the state. If you do everything right, a plainclothes still won’t know who among the bloc smashed that ATM, even if they saw it happen with their own eyes.

As the ever-green “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” reminds us, many of the greatest threats to our movements may not officially collaborate with the police either. In the Toronto anti-fascist scene alone, multiple people accused of misogyny and sexual violence/gender-based violence later went on to renounce the left, consort with their former opponents, and attack (verbally, physically, and with legal threats) their former comrades. None of those people, to our knowledge, were undercover cops, nor were they secretly fascists all along. Looking for a non-existent smoking gun to show that someone was lying about their identity would – and did – only delay people from taking necessary action against them when the myriad of other red flags should have been more than enough.

 

naming our enemies

The epidemic of bad-jacketing is inseparable from the problem of peace policing. Many organisers advocate for a policy of de-escalation at all costs, even in the face of potentially deadly violence from police and Zionists. They speak of “agitators” who disrupt and “escalate” “peaceful protests” – a nebulous euphemism that they apply to both the Zionist who shows up with a knife and the militant who comes prepared to fight back.

We should be clear: our enemies are not “agitators.”

Our enemies are the police, who brutalise us and lock us away to enforce settler colonial order. Our enemies are Zionists and other white supremacists, who assault and harass us in the streets, and stalk and threaten us in our everyday lives. Our enemies are politicians and other establishment liberals, who carry out colonial and imperialist genocides, here, in Palestine, and around the world, all the while crying crocodile tears about a so-called humanitarian crisis that they created. Our enemies are legacy media institutions, who smear resistance as terrorism and mobilise support for each of these attacks.

We must take care to differentiate between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and to distinguish between enemies and potential friends. Too often, we see organisers reject co-strugglers in order to appeal to liberal institutions that will never be on our side. They may frame the conservative path as the only strategic option, rejecting open support for armed struggle, militant direct action, and anything else that would create “bad optics.” Disagreements from co-strugglers are treated as threats worse than that of liberal media, who we must appeal to for sympathy, or Zionists and cops, who we must appease for our safety.

When our enemies attack us anyways, these organisers pin the blame not on the perpetrators but on the co-strugglers who deviate from their line. They forget that to be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good thing. Our enemies do not strive for unity with us, knowing that ours is an antagonistic contradiction, knowing that our collective liberation requires their annihilation. It is better that we, too, abandon any notions of conciliation and recognise our enemies as enemies.

For all these reasons, we urge people to draw a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. Abandon the euphemisms and name our enemies. When we struggle through our differences, let us do so with a shared understanding of what we are for and what we are against.

 

by every means necessary

Not only is bad-jacketing dangerous, it is disempowering and demobilising. It forecloses entire realms of possibility, insisting that we limit ourselves to the same set of legal, non-violent tactics. It threatens state violence against people who do not comply with those limitations being imposed upon their actions. Many people cannot take the risk of arrest. But something being risky does not make it impossible. Just because some of us cannot act does not mean that no one should.

While its meaning is sometimes lost, respecting a “diversity of tactics” means refusing to impose non-violence upon our co-strugglers and declining to condemn those that destroy property or take up arms. As a group of autonomous UCLA students writes in the wake of vicious assaults on their encampment:

We have noticed a trend of the desire to appear peaceful for the media taking precedent over the right of protestors to self defense, mirroring the world’s response to Palestinians’ right to self defense in the face of blatant fascist attacks and eliminationist violence.

We cannot allow our resistance movement to demand obedience over safety in the same way as western imperialist forces against the colonized.

Without drawing false equivalence with a people living under active bombardment and military invasion, the liberal urge that leads people to denounce burning precincts or fake clinics as “giving police an excuse to crack down” is the same that denounces the Palestinian resistance for “giving Israel an excuse to destroy Gaza.” We must refuse any invitation to distance ourselves as the “good,” “peaceful,” “innocent” ones. Instead, we affirm the right of Palestinians and all people to resist colonial domination by any means necessary.

We would remind our co-strugglers, too, that our enemies do not care about the truth, and they have no conscience. We see this in the viciousness with which the police enforce an unprecedented ban on overpass protests in Toronto, where people rallied on the sidewalk to wave flags and chant. We see it in the eagerness with which a long list of electeds, including the Prime Minister himself, leapt to denounce a protest of a Jewish hospital that never happened. We see it in the adamance with which Zionists call the very existence of Palestinians a terrorist threat against them, no matter how young, no matter how innocent, no matter how non-violent. Right-wing propagandists will fabricate scandals out of thin air, and the establishment will happily take up their version of the story. Even if each and every one of us swears to turn the other cheek to our assailants, as long as we challenge the colonial status quo, in our enemies’ eyes, we will never be peaceful.

Another path is possible, and the movement to Stop Cop City sets a powerful example. In February, a journalist asked spokesperson Mary Hooks of Vote to Stop Cop City whether organisers condemned arsons of police vehicles. She answered:

Hell no. No. Not at all, And to be honest with you, Atlanta deserves more than that. Real talk, they’re lucky, this city is lucky, this country is lucky. Atlanta has its hands in literally murdering Palestinians right now. You think we give a damn about some equipment? Not at all. Not at all.

But some of us, we cannot take that risk. And those who can, bless them. Bless them. I cannot take that risk. But Lord knows, I’ll sit with my lighter and be like, damn.

[…]We need every, every means necessary to deal in the police state we are dealing with. So I don’t care, no, and I would imagine my comrades would say the same. No, not gonna condemn nobody for doing righteously what they need to do when our city has silenced every quote-unquote proper, democratic process.

The movement’s aboveground and clandestine elements are two parts of a whole. Both are necessary for our victory.

 

Listen to Isaiah Willoughby speak in his own words on Kite Line Radio:

kitelineradio.org/tag/isaiah-willoughby/

 

Support defendants and prisoners from the George Floyd Uprisings:

uprisingsupport.org

 

Contribute to the Florida 4’s commissary and find other ways to support through the Anti-Repression Committee of South Florida:

linktr.ee/sfl_arc

 

more on peace policing

“ACAB Includes Peace Police: Three Report Backs from Palestinian Solidarity Actions” (November 2023) on Archive.org, online at archive.org/details/acab-includes-peace-police-en-print-8/page/2/mode/2up

“Peace Police are Police: How Protest Marshals Sabotage Liberation and Protect the State” (December 2023) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2024/03/11/peace-police-are-police-new-zine-classic-image/

 

more on security

“Confidence. Courage. Connect. Trust. A proposal for security culture” (November 5, 2019) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2019/11/05/confidence-courage-connection-trust-a-proposal-for-security-culture/

“Doxcare: Prevention and Aftercare for Those Targeted by Doxxing and Political Harassment” (August 26, 2020) on CrimethInc., online at crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for-those-targeted-by-doxxing-and-political-harassment

The Threat Library by the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/threat-library/

“Threat Modeling Fundamentals” by Håkan Geijer on Riot Medicine, online at opsec.riotmedicine.net

 

more on infiltration

Fuck the (Hamilton) Police, online at fuckhps.noblogs.org

“Infiltrated! How to prevent political police from undermining grassroots solidarity” (May 1, 2017) in Briarpatch Magazine, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/infiltrated

“Living among us: Activists speak out on police infiltration” (July 1, 2011) by Tim Groves, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/living-among-us

“Stop Hunting Sheep: A Guide to Creating Safer Networks” (2011) on Sprout Distro, online at sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/stop-hunting-sheep/

“The G20 Main Conspiracy Group: The Charges and How They Came to Be” (2012) on the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/resources/#toronto-g20-main-conspiracy-group

“Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” (Spring/Summer 2010) by Courtney Desiree Morris on Incite! National, online at incite-national.org/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/

8th Annual Prisoners’ Families Brunch in West Philly

from Unicorn Riot

West Philadelphia, PA – Over 100 people came out early Sunday afternoon for a banquet celebrating political prisoners and their loved ones and other supporters.

The 8th annual ‘Prisoners’ Families Brunch’ was held at the OneArt Community Center on 52nd Street, with this year’s event honoring the late Russell Maroon Shoatz (whose autobiography ‘I Am Maroon’ was just released) and Anthony ‘Ant’ Smith, a Philly community organizer and teacher who recently got out of prison after being locked up on federal charges stemming from George Floyd protests in Philadelphia in 2020. Speeches included a few readings from the book and remarks from people Shoatz inspired over the years including other former prisoners incarcerated alongside him.

Organizations endorsing the event included The Care Space Project, Philly Anarchist Black Cross, The Abolitionist Law Center, Ubuntu Freedom, Building Fearless Futures, Landing Freedom and Black Lives Matter Philly.

Watch Unicorn Riot’s full coverage of the event below:


On October 30, 2020 Unicorn Riot streamed a press conference after Smith was arrested by federal authorities for events during the 2020 uprising:


 

Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross 2024 ‘Running Down the Walls’ 5K Run/Walk/Roll Benefits Prisoners

from Unicorn Riot

An annual 5K run/walk/roll benefit organized called “Running Down the Walls” aims to amplify the voices of political prisoners and provide support – different “Running Down the Walls” are organized by chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) network are held yearly both inside and outside prisons. Over 300 people attended this year’s event in Philadelphia, the largest local turnout yet, according to Philly ABC (phillyabc.org).

In Contempt #44: Prison Rebellion in Idaho, Running Down the Walls, Antifascist Targeted in Indiana

from It’s Going Down

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!

Running Down the Walls, Curbfest, and other Upcoming Events

There’s a number of important prisoner support events coming up. September 15th sees the 25th anniversary of the annual Running Down the Walls ABC fundraiser event, with events currently planned for Portland and Eugene, OR, Los Angeles and Huntington Park, CA, Chicago, IL, Philadelphia, PA, Bloomington, IN, Lowell, MA, and Brooklyn, NY.

Curbfest events in support of political prisoners are planned for New York on September 7th, Philly on October 5th and Houston on October 26th

Running Down the Walls, Curbfest, and other Upcoming Events

There’s a number of important prisoner support events coming up. September 15th sees the 25th anniversary of the annual Running Down the Walls ABC fundraiser event, with events currently planned for Portland and Eugene, OR, Los Angeles and Huntington Park, CA, Chicago, IL, Philadelphia, PA, Bloomington, IN, Lowell, MA, and Brooklyn, NY. The Huntington Park event will be on September 28th.

Curbfest events in support of political prisoners are planned for New York on September 7th, Philly on October 5th and Houston on October 26th.

December 6th-13th will see a week of “Shut ‘Em Down” demonstrations and actions organized by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak.

Political Prisoner News

Philly ABC have shared an update about the upcoming release of the book, I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner. Book launch events will be held in NYC on September 6th and Philadelphia on September 22nd, and you can find more links related to the book here.

Uprising Defendants and Other Ongoing Cases

Pennsylvania uprising defendant Khalif Miller has been added to the Uprising Support site, while Arkansas defendant Rene Goddard is due to be released soon. South Carolina uprising defendant Brittany Martin has just had an appeal against her four-year sentence denied, while Philadelphia uprising prisoner Ant Smith has just been freed.

Phone Zaps, Hunger Strikes, and Prisoner Rebellion in Idaho

Incarcerated workers at SCI Fayette in Pennsylvania launched a hunger strike at the start of August, in protest at the prison continuing to impose lockdown-era isolation policies. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee have been encouraging people to call the SCI Fayette Superintendent on 724-364-2200 and the PADOC central office on 717-728-2573 in support of the strikers’ demands.

General Prison News and Abolitionist Media Updates

Supporters of the Vaughn 17 have shared a new recording of a call with Dwayne “BIM” Staats, discussing his current legal situation.

Uprising Defendants

See Uprising Support for more info, and check out the Antirepression PDX site for updates from Portland cases. To the best of our knowledge they currently include:

David Elmakayes 77782-066
FCI McKean
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

Khalif Miller #70042-066
USP Big Sandy
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

Upcoming Birthdays

John Bramble

A former Vaughn 17 defendant and contributor to the Vaughn uprising zines Live from the Trenches and United We Stood and other publications. Johnny has continued to organize and agitate against the prison system from within. As a result, he is still being held in solitary confinement.

Johnny is looking for anarchists, autonomists, and other radicals to regularly correspond with. Delaware uses Getting Out for email messaging, so you can also send him a message by going to gettingout.com, setting up an account, and then adding him as a contact using his inmate number .

Birthday: September 1

Address:

John Bramble
Delaware DOC – 1101
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193

 

In Contempt #43: Deadly Heat Wave Hits Prisons, Multiple Hunger Strikes Kick Off, July 25th Roundup

from It’s Going Down

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.

There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!

Black August, Week of Solidarity, and Running Down the Walls

Further ahead, mid-September will see Running/Pushing Down the Walls events in various cities, with Philadelphia, Bloomington, Lowell, Chicago, and Huntington Park confirmed so far. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak are also calling for “Shut Em’ Down” demonstrations on December 6th – 13th.

Uprising Defendants, Stop Cop City and Other Ongoing Cases

A rave is being held in Philadelphia on August 2nd to raise funds for Ellie and John, two Georgia uprising defendants who are being released soon. You can donate directly to their post-release funds here.

Philadelphia uprising defendant Khalif Miller has been given a 1-10 year state sentence on top of his existing 5 year federal sentence. You can write to him at:

Khalif Miller -066
USP Big Sandy
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

Amber Kim Hunger Strike and Other Calls to Action

Separately, a call has gone out for a phone zap in support of prisoners at Vaughn prison in Delaware, who are reporting torture and beatings at the hands of prison officers.

Uprising Defendants

See Uprising Support for more info, and check out the Antirepression PDX site for updates from Portland cases. To the best of our knowledge they currently include:

David Elmakayes 77782-066
FCI McKean
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

Anthony Smith
14813-509
FCI Fort Dix
Federal Correctional Institution
Satellite Camp
P.O. Box 2000
Joint Base MDL, NJ 08640

Khalif Miller #70042-066
USP Big Sandy
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

 

Statement of solidarity with casey goonan by stevie wilson

from In The Belly

Many years ago, while imprisoned at SCI-Smithfield, and struggling to keep our study groups afloat, I received an e-mesage from Casey Goonan. I had no clue whom he was. He said he reached out because he heard about the work I was doing inside and wanted to offer any assistance he could. He did, and he continued to do so. Casey has been one of the most consistent and ready allies/accomplices of imprisoned people. Whether producing zines that center imprisoned voices, mailing zines to imprisoned people at no cost, coordinating phone zaps to combat repression by prison officials, raising funds for mutual aid, building social media presence for imprisoned folx or just lending an attentive ear to the concerns of imprisoned people, Casey has been unstinting in his support of anyone, anywhere, who is being oppressed.

My friend, my comrade, my brother, is currently being held in a county jail in CA. I wish I were out there to do more for him, to manifest by love and solidarity for him. What I want everyone to know is that Casey Goonan is an amazing ally/accomplice of oppressed people everyone. In this, his time of need, he should be supported and cared for. I ask people to keep close tabs on the situation, show up for Casey and make sure that while he is inside, jail officials do not harm him or exacerbate his condition. I don’t ever claim to speak for all imprisoned people, but I feel confident in saying that thousands of imprisoned people across this land have benefited from Casey’s efforts. We ask you support our comrade and care for him.

Always,

Stevie

Monday July 29th: Letter-writing for Stop Cop City Defendants

from Philly ABC

stop-cop-city-letter-writing.jpg

 

Join us on Monday July 29th, 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we send letters to comrades incarcerated for their support of the movement to Stop Cop City. In 2017, the Atlanta Police Foundation proposed the destruction hundreds of acres of Weelaunee forest to build a massive compound that would train cops from around the world in militarized tactics, urban warfare, and putting down social movements. The full Cop City proposal came in 2020 after national uprisings around the police murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks.

In 2021, forest defenders and community members established a long-term encampment in the Weelaunee forest. Shortly thereafter, a multi-agency task force began arresting and charging them with domestic terrorism. January 18th, 2023 brought more raids, arrests, and the murder of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. This was the first police killing of an environmental activist during a protest in modern U.S. history. Autopsy results indicated that the police shot Tortuguita 57 times while their hands were up. On April 19th, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Tortuguita’s death a homicide. On October 6th, a Georgia prosecutor announced that there would be no charges for any of the troopers involved in the murder.

Opponents of Cop City, however, have increasingly faced charges of unprecedented severity. On September 5th, 2023, Georgia’s Attorney General filed an indictment against over 60 individuals under the Rackateer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. On May 31st, 2023, a heavily-armed SWAT team raided the house of three bail fund organizers, arrested them, and charged them with money laundering and charity fraud. The intensifying repression has also extended to the general population of Atlanta, with police targeting four neighborhoods for purposefully invasive, round-the-clock surveillance.

The resistance to Cop City has also escalated, resulting in numerous delays and, according to Atlanta city officials, almost $20 million in damages. Communities across the country rallied against the targeting of activists and the killing of Tortuguita, and have supported activists held without trial, sometimes for upwards of a year.

Even before its completion, Atlanta Cop City’s militarized approach to social movements has already become a model for how to train police across the U.S.; between the George Floyd Uprisings and today, planning or construction has begun on 66 new Cop Cities around the United States. Similarly, the unprecedently fierce legal and extralegal measures taken against those resisting Cop City in Atlanta—domestic terrorism charges for civil disobedience, RICO charges for bail fund organizers, generalized harassment, and murder—can be understood as a localized experiment for broader application. These tactics of repression are being auditioned in Atlanta; if successful, you can bet they’ll be generalized across the U.S. For these reasons, it’s incumbent on all of us support those on the front lines of stopping Cop City, and especially those who’ve already paid the price of their freedom for this struggle.

We’ll also be sending birthday cards to U.S.-held political prisoners with birthdays in August: Bill Dunne (August 2nd), Hanif Shabazz Bey (August 15th), Ronald Reed (August 31st).

We Keep Us Safe: Building A Culture of Solidarity In the Face of Repression – Part of the Philly WAWOG Summer Movement School

from Making Worlds

REGISTER HERE (RECOMMENDED)

As our movement gains strength, it will inevitably encounter state repression. How do we respond collectively to this repression? This workshop will discuss some of the tactics most commonly used by police and federal agents to target our movements, and offer suggestions on how to respond. Topics covered will include: what to expect when being arrested in Philadelphia; the role of the FBI in movement repression and how to deal with federal agents; social media “best practices”; and how to support arrestees and political prisoners.

In the past year, the movement for Palestinian liberation has attained unprecedented levels of mobilization. But strategic reflection and study is necessary to keep the movement moving. Writers Against the War on Gaza offers a series of workshops this summer to deepen the knowledge of five elements of the struggle for Palestine: “PACBI,” “Anti-repression,” “Black and Palestinian Solidarity” and “History of Palestinian Resistance.” All are free to attend.

Laura Martin is a labor historian and a member of the Bay Area Anti-Repression Committee, a bail fund and political education collective.

Tori is a legal worker at Up Against the Law Legal Collective, a Philadelphia-based group that supports local activists.

Zine on Resisting Mask Bans

Submission

A zine was made on resisting mask bans. It calls for a different set of strategies than the public health model, advocating for a diversity of tactics. The model proposed in this piece is inspired by the prisoner revolts against neglectful COVID practices in 2020.

[PDF for reading]
[PDF for printing]

In Contempt #42: Hunger Strikes and Phone Zaps, June 11th Roundup, Mexican Anarchists in Trouble

from It’s Going Down

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
In this column, we present our monthly roundup of political prisoner, prison rebel, and repression news, happenings, announcements, action and analysis. Packed in as always are updates, fundraisers, and birthdays.

There’s a lot happening, so let’s dive right in!

Hunger Strikes and Calls to Action

A phone zap has been organized for Alejandro “Capo” Rodriguez-Ortiz of the Vaughn 17, who is facing retaliation after being moved back to Vaughn. DC IWOC write:

He’s been back at James T Vaughn for 4 months and they continue to deny him a job, education, vocational training, or any programming!! Then recently security denied him an honor visit, even tho he qualifies. We’re asking for support in calling the wardens office and Dover (central office) for him to have access to a job/education/programs.

JTVCC wardens office: 302-653-9261
Dover commissioners office: 3027395601
Name: Alejandro Rodriguez-Ortiz SBI 515700

Script: Hello, I am calling on behalf of Alejandro Rodriguez-Ortiz, SBI 515700. I hear that security is denying him an honor visit even though he qualifies, and he is also being denied a job and programming. He has been back at Smyrna for 4 months and has not had any write ups and is trying to live in peace. Why are they denying him a job and honor visit? This type of vindictive behavior from security is corrupt. Please reconsider and let him have the honor visit and give him job opportunities to succeed.

According to an update: “[They] will try to get you to contact family services about the visit. However this does not remedy the fact that the prison is withholding opportunities for a job, which he would need to apply again in the future for an honor visit.”

After 16 years of incarceration and many years of DOC torture, Beans (Abednego Baynes) of the Vaughn 17 is finally coming home this fall. Beans was one of 18 prisoners indicted for the uprising at James T Vaughn Correctional Center in 2017. Beans is asking for donations so his family can get down to Delaware to see him when he lands, and to cover rent and other expenses for several months while he gets work and more permanent housing figured out. Please donate and spread widely! Donations can be sent to phillyantirepression through venmo or $MachaelRobinson on cashapp

Write to Beans at the following address:

Smart Communications/PA DOC
Abędnego Baynes –
SCI Mahanoy
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, Florida 33733

General Prison News and Abolitionist Media Updates

The Rebellious Hearts account continues to post new material from Vaughn 17 defendants such as Dwayne “BIM” Staats on a regular basis.

Uprising Defendants

See Uprising Support for more info, and check out the Antirepression PDX site for updates from Portland cases. To the best of our knowledge they currently include:

David Elmakayes 77782-066
FCI McKean
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

 

This Week in Fascism #137: Antifascists Sentenced in San Diego, Pushing Back Against Far-Right Attacks on Palestine Solidarity

from It’s Going Down

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]

Welcome back fellow antifascists!

As always, we have a lot to cover in this column, especially important analysis and lots of roundups of antifascist research and action. With lots to talk about, let’s dive right in!

Research Roundup

Other reports from Idavox you may have missed include write-ups on “prominent [Pennsylvania] neo-Nazi Mark Kauffman,” who was arrested by law enforcement at his own wedding on weapons and methamphetamine charges, Nicholas G. Mucci, a neo-Nazi involved in White Lives Matter plead guilty to attacking an antifascist benefit show in New Jersey, and Ebrahim and Mathew Yehounatan, far-Right Zionists in New York who are harassing pro-Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

Lastly, Idavox also noted that a small group of neo-Nazis held a tiny demonstration in Philadelphia that included Benjamin Franklin Ryder, a “registered sex offender with a long criminal history as well as a history of neo-Nazi activism,” and Stephen Thomas Farrea, a member of the Nationalist Social Club 131, became the second member of the group to be arrested “for possessing child pornography.” Faith, family, and folk!

July 25th and Antifascist Prisoners

Currently there is a call to rally support for antifascist prisoners across the world on July 25th. From the call:

Across the world, fascist and far-Right movements are trying to advance their agendas of bigotry, ultra-nationalism and authoritarian control. The establishment–no matter who is in power–does not and cannot offer solutions for deepening economic inequality or any of the numerous crises we are living through. Instead, those in power continue to advance the militarization of police and the hardening of borders as the rich have become richer than they have ever been before. As the world burns and our lives become harder and harder, the fascist and far-right menace offers only lies and scapegoats–demonizing and attacking migrants, refugees, LGBTQ+ people, as well as racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.

The July 25th International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners originated in 2014 as a Day of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian man who served 13-years in prison in Bulgaria for defending two Romani men from an attack by fascist football hooligans. In 2015, J25 expanded into a global day of solidarity with all antifascists facing State repression. The friends and comrades we are celebrating on J25 were on the frontlines of this fight against fascism and the far-Right, and we will not forget them behind prison walls as we continue the struggle for liberation.

As revolutionary antifascists, we believe that building movements of defense and solidarity with those locked behind the prison walls is fundamental in the three-way fight against both the far-right and the State. This July 25th, we call on antifascists worldwide to take part in the International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners!

Find out more info on how to support, places to donate, and materials for printing, go here.

Cover Photo: Alissa Azar