This issue of Fire Ant is dedicated to the memory of our sister and comrade Marsha Burnett. This is issue #5, Fall 2019. Fire Ant is a collaboration between anarchist prisoners and free roaming anarchists. Fire Ant seeks to raise material aid for anarchist prisoners while fostering communication between anarchists on both sides of the walls.
To support the anarchist prisoner war fund, please email bloomingtonanarchistblackcross@riseup.net. All money will go directly to prisoners. The fund currently supports Michael Kimble, Jennifer Rose, Eric King, Sean Swain, and Marius Mason.
To download this publication, please go to bloomingtonabc.noblogs.org.
Letter from Jennifer Rose
8/22/2019
Damn! We’re already on issue number 5? Wow!
So, to update you on my situation. I’ve recently enrolled at Hartnell College as a student and am taking two courses in Ethnic Studies: Chicano Cinema and Latina Studies. This counts as elective credits toward a sociology degree. I already have 22 credits from other schools toward an A.A. degree. I also just received a certificate for completing an alternatives to violence program (basic course).
I have a Board of Parole Hearings consultation on 9/5/19 and my resentencing hearing in Sacramento Superior Court on 9⁄6 or 9⁄9 (there’s some confusion on the exact date between my attorney and online). A member of Sacramento prisoner support contacted me about rallying supporters locally to attend my hearing, and others are writing support letters to the judge, or for my attorney, supervising public defender Alice Michel. Call her at: 916-874-6411. Support letters can be used for both my court hearing and BPH consultation.
I will be 50 years old on October 6th. We are the same age!
Additionally, I’ve been building a working relationship with comrades at RAM-NYC on a project called the Kuwasi Balagoon Liberation School. They are impressed by Fire Ant and offered to post an endorsement online for our fund. They also issued an online solidarity statement to rally support for my hearings! These are great comrades with a similar focus as ours. They produced a great book titled “Burn Down the American Plantation: Call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement.” They and I are also working with another collective called No New Jails.
Three antifascist comrades are facing charges stemming from the 2016 counter demo against the nazi rally in Sacramento. They have a trial later in September at the same courthouse as me.
Meanwhile, trump and the fascists are labeling antifascists as a “terrorist” group. The majority of mass shootings and domestic terrorist incidents have been by white nationalists and trump supporters! When will our side fight back?! Antifascists are the only people confronting these idiots in the streets.
Well that about wraps up my personal update, which you can feel free to edit and use for FA5. Keep your head up! Fist up!
Solidarity! Jennifer
A Letter From Michael Kimble
9/19/19
Dear Fire Ant,
First, I’d like to give gratitude to all those who have shown me solidarity in the last few years. I’ve been able to exist in this human tomb in better fashion than most. You have clothed me, fed me and inspired me. I don’t know how I would have continued without your solidarity and support.
Second, I was convicted and sold out by a court appointed attorney, and sentenced to life for protecting myself. And since that time I’ve refused to participate in the judicial system as a form of protest. Now I’ve decided to reenter the courts in a post-conviction motion for sentence reduction.
During my initial trial I was represented by a court appointed attorney. I will never again allow a court appointed attorney to sell me out!
I need funds to hire an attorney of my own choosing. I don’t know the exact amount, but I need help raising funds. The goal of reentering the courts is my immediate freedom from prison. You can find info at anarchylive.noblogs.org as we move forward.
Until All Are Free!
Michael Kimble
Ghosts in the Wind by Michael Kimble
There is a people who walks this mighty land with dignity and strength, goes they. In their collective struggle they never stands alone. For look at their company.
Harriet Tubman is at their side, “good cheer children” cries she. “The slavers also wanted my head, but our brave people still fought free of the slavers chains
Gabriel Prosser is with them wherever they go and his voice rings clear as a bell: “I died to uphold the spirit of equality. Defend it til the freezing of hell.” And the martyred Nat Turner is here with them too. Staunch Nat with never a doubt. “I staggered the slavers in my day, children. Defeat yours and knock them out.” And gaunt and tall against the wall, Denmark Vessey speaks out his mind: “Insurrection people! Insurrection!”
FREE MICHAEL KIMBLE
“The path to liberation is dependent on the building of new relationships, the destruction of prison society and those that uphold it through their silent complicity.”
Letter from Sean Swain
September 30, 2019
Show me an “apolitical prisoner”. Show me someone who got locked in a cage by a government where it was not a political act.
All imprisonment undertaken by the state is done in preservation of the state and state power. Therefore, all prisoners are political.
When we create a special designation of “political prisoner” we are making a distinction between the prisoners we like and want released and prisoners we don’t like or simply don’t know.
I believe imprisonment is a crime. I don’t want to be on the other side of the fence; I want an absence of the fence altogether.
Stay dangerous.
Freedom, Sean
An Open Letter to Eric King from Sean Swain
Dear Eric,
Not sure how current this information is, but I heard you were tossed in the hole on a disciplinary frame-up, that one of the fartgoblins provoked you with violence and then blamed the confrontation on you. I have heard that this is likely a response to your anti-state political orientation, and maybe even directed from beyond just the local prison fuckweasels.
I’m writing this to you (and to anyone else subjected to the same targeting) to share something of my own experiences, hoping this will encourage and empower you throughout this ordeal.
Some context for anyone who doesn’t already know: beginning in 2012, Ohio prison officials, under supervision of the FBI, tossed me into the Special Management Unit and tortured me for a year. A regime straight out of the CIA Kubark manuals: sleep deprivation, freezing cold, starvation, lack of soap or laundry, interception of mail, etc.
They have control over every aspect of our lives and can use everything as a weapon in a full spectrum 360 degree mind-fuck.
I resolved to survive, no matter what. And I developed a strategy, an approach to the situation. First, an observation: fascist fuckweasels subject us to all of the torments that they know would break them if they had to endure those torments. They assume that we are built like they are. They assume that we are as weak, that we are as fragile, that we are as addicted to creature comforts and meaningless amenities, that we will easily crumble and will sell our very souls to regain those comforts and amenities.
They have no idea how dedicated we are to freedom, to a future we all deserve, and what we will endure, motivated as we are to bringing about that future.
A future without oppressors.
A future without them.
They really have no idea how their terrors and torments, their petty attacks on us, fail to bring us to our knees but, rather, fuel our burning rage.
I sometimes paced for days, shivering, sleepless, kept warm only by my hatred, a hatred that burned like a bonfire in my heart.
I survived. I’m not special. If I did it, anyone can. You can, and you will.
Start here: I will survive this.
Say it again and again. Saying the words makes it real. “I will survive this.” Whatever “this” is, you will survive. Remind yourself: “this is temporary”. The fuckweasels impose this on you to make it feel permanent. When it feels permanent, it feels hopeless. It feels like there is no help, that you are isolated, alone. That no one knows, no one cares. None of this is true. Breathe deeply when it feels overwhelming. Close your eyes. Remember all of the people who care about you. Picture their faces. Try to remember their voices. Open your eyes and gather those people around you, everyone who wants happiness and success for you, and make them present in the cell with you. Speak to them. Share with them, the good and the bad.
Optimize your time and resources. What can you accomplish from where you are?
I was once held two weeks in a suicide cell. Nothing in the cell with me. A shrink came by and asked, “What are you doing in there?”
I said, “I’m writing a screenplay.”
He asked, “They gave you pencil and paper?”
“No”, I answered. I pointed at my temple. “In my head.”
I spent two weeks plotting out the whole thing for when I got out of the suicide cell.
All of this is temporary.
We can maximize and optimize our time and resources. We can live these moments with meaning and purpose. Whatever happens, make sure the eyes of the world are watching. Develop the means to get information to the other side of the fence so that you can bare witness to the atrocities and expose everyone participating in them.
Remember, the enemy finds their way to that prisons parking lot every single day. If they can find it everyday, it can’t be that hard to find.
They make it home daily too. Their homes can’t be that hard to find either.
My point is, never forget that this is not the war- this is just one battle. The war continues beyond this battle.
When things are really dark, consider your circumstances. Really think about them. How much pain do you feel right now? If it is not the worst pain you have ever felt, then you know it is tolerable. You endured worse and survived. Consider all that you do have- food, water, shelter, clothing. What is it that you lack right now that you need for your survival?
When approached this way, you find that it really isn’t that bad. It sucks, but it will pass. This is the worst they can do to you.
Imagine what you will someday be able to do to them.
They have created us.
They can’t win from here.
We own the future. And we know it.
Freedom, Sean
A Message from Eric King
October 8th, 2019
Here are the things I hear most:
What are you doing, we heard this, I don’t think so, we’ll see, maybe, Chow!, Count!, who’s mess is this, who’s shaking the bars, lights out, mail call, rec call, you want a shower, clean this mess, nope not today, not happening, I’ll check on it, put in a cop-out request, doubt it, quit trashing my tier, cuff up…
Sometimes I spend hours pondering revenge fantasies, most time I think of my wife and kiddos. Fourteen months in segregation minus 4 days at Grady County, plus 6 at McCreary. We haven’t been in the same room since August 11th, 2018. Now these bastards drag me back to Colorado to force more time, and have the audacity to block our family visits, due to a bad check from 15 years ago. Maybe people who read this will be disgusted by this news.
That said, I’m hurting friends. Being attacked sucks. Being charged with new federal charges for that attack is sickening. Never forget how horrible these people are. This system exists from the top to the bottom which is why reform is such a joke. You don’t reform cancer, you destroy it. We must destroy this system.
Until all are free,
RIP Tom Manning & Willem, never forgotten -EK
perspective on the matter. This information, which is now public, has changed considerably because of circumstances that prevented the general transfer to other units from happening, so the transfer has been postponed indefinitely.
