Category Archives: Anarchist Media

Selections from Issue 5 of Fire Ant: Anarchist Prisoner Solidarity

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 96 or 99 (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

From: https://bloomingtonabc.noblogs.org/fire-ant/

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UK: Bang Up and Smash: Women’s Prisons, Probation and Bail Hostels , by Asbo

Bang-up and Smash is an overview of women’s prisons in the UK, and a political analysis of their physical and ideological construction.
From the moment of arrest, to coming home, Bang-up and Smash uses first hand experiences to critically engage with the procedures, concepts and apparatus the state relies on, and the economics behind the expansion of the prison industrial complex.
Bang-up and Smash  is a practical guide to women’s prisons in the UK, and a rallying call to attack. Solidarity is a weapon, and abolition is not enough…
See Active Distribution for free pdf download or order print version
http://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/books/4325-bang-up-and-smash-by-asbo.html
Also download pdf from Empty Cages website http://www.prisonabolition.org/bang-smash-womens-prisons-probation-bail-hostels/
For more information email  asbo.hmp@riseup.net
Copy left. Share, discuss, dismiss…. comments welcome. Please circulate.
ASBO

Germany: “With A Free Heart And Resolute Hands” – Solidarity Poster for the Park Bench 3

A3 PDF poster link

WITH A FREE HEART AND RESOLUTE HANDS

On the night of July 7, 2019, three anarchists were arrested in a park in Hamburg. They are accused of carrying incendiary devices. Two of them are in pre-trial detention, while the third is released on conditions. (more info: parkbanksolidarity.blackblogs.org

Why would the State freak out so much about a few unused litres of benzine and a lighter?

Why would the State feel threatened to the point that these basic, simple and widely accessible materials, could cause such a mass operation: one of the highest prosecution offices handling the case, months of preventive detention, a media spectacle of slander that sings victory about the arrest of three “extremists”?

Why would the State be worried about some matches tied around a fire-starter, when it has an ever growing and innovative arsenal at its disposal, which it uses without scruples, composed of technology, infrastructure, weapons, armies, a propaganda machine to create consensus and confusion, a population dependent and numbed by the compulsive consumption of uselessness?

Perhaps these simple tools, widely available and within everyone’s reach, are often accompanied by something much more powerful, that no statesman, soldier or scientist will ever grasp: what a free heart and resolute hands can accomplish. Continue reading


Ireland: Poster for International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23-30

To act in solidarity is completely up to the interpretation of an individual or collective. One could write a letter or visit a prisoner. Others could hold an event for prisoner awareness or a benefit gig. But then there are also the lone wolves who creep around in the darkness of night, lighting up the night sky with flames of rage and solidarity. No matter what act of solidarity is done, it’s completely up to the expression of the rebel individual or collective. The point is to show the anarchist fighters encaged in the belly of the beast that they are not alone, we haven’t forgotten them.
THE SOCIAL WAR AGAINST TECHNO-INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION CONTINUES
SOLIDARITY WITH ALL IMPRISONED ANARCHISTS
SOLIDARITY WITH ALL ANARCHIST FIGHTERS

Green Anarchy Ireland


Announcement and Call for Submissions! Oak: A Journal Against Civilization

A call to participate in a new anarchist journal, entitled, Oak, from an anti-civilization perspective.
There is no food that means more to me than the acorn, for the acorn fulfills both a promise and a fantasy: that the forest will provide for me.
Samuel Thayer
Issue 1: Perpetual Apocalypse – Spring 2020
Few things are as breathtaking as a forest of oak and its many expressions. The incredible symphony of falling acorns — a harbinger of bounty and community. For millennia the acorn has provided food for humanity and countless other species. The promise and resilience of the oak stands as a reminder of possibility. It’s likely that for thousands of years fires were set, not just to create areas for game, but to preferentially seed oak trees. It seems fitting that we should show homage to the ubiquitous oak by celebrating it in our title.
Since I can remember there’s been unceasing division within the anarchist and anti-civilization milieus, both at large and in my immediate experience. It seems we’re always knives first, taking aim at the comfortable targets a few degrees away from us. While I’m all for good sparring practice, I believe the connections must remain if we are to survive and thrive.
The possibility of maintaining an intimate and dynamic meshwork of communication is real. In the wake of civilized life, finding someone — anyone — who also chooses to reject the dominant paradigm of perpetual nightmare should be exhilarating. There will always be lines to draw, many of them are already drawn for us by the active overlords and domesticators. But many other lines are blurry at best and, given our context, meaningless at worst. Too many disagreements in the digital age end in snarky division articulated via electronic communication, a pathetic reality not worthy of our once-wild selves.

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New Booklet: The Future is a Scam

Booklet PDF
The future is a scam PDF
This text is the result of a reflection and doesn’t aim to be
exhaustive. We are aware that the topic to which we come
up is delicate and that this text will probably trigger strong
reactions. Nevertheless, we think that it’s important to talk
about it given the hegemony of the pro-natalist thought and
the consequences it generates.
Our reflection starts from an anarchist thought and so from a will to get over with a world which is authoritarian, industrialized, speciesist, etc
FIRST PUBLICATION IN FRANCE, IN APRIL 2019

New Anarchist Book ‘Total Liberation’ Now Available Free Online

Download: Total Liberation PDF

Introduction
Things have never been spinning so decisively out of control. Not once in the history of humanity, nor even in that of life in general. Extreme weather is no longer an abnormality; the fish are disappearing from the oceans; the threat of nuclear holocaust is back. Poverty ensnares us as much as ever, whilst the bodies pile up at the borders. To say this order is choking us is nowadays more than a metaphor: in most cities, you can no longer even breathe the air. Which is to say, in short, that the very atmosphere of the existent has become toxic. Within the confines of the system, there’s nowhere left to go. But that isn’t to say such confines are impenetrable – not in the slightest. A million roots of inquiry, each one as unique as you could imagine, begin to converge on exactly the same conclusion: the need for revolution has never been so pressing.
Perhaps it’s a little predictable to point out the hopelessness of this world – almost everyone knows. What’s more remarkable is that, even in spite of it, normality somehow finds the strength to grind on. The defendants of the existent hold dear to their claim that, for all its obvious flaws, liberal democracy remains the least bad form of human community currently available. Which is such a meagre justification, and yet it tends to work. Even avowed rebels, so convinced they’re outrunning this sacred assumption, merely reintroduce it in another form – the latest leftist political party, or even some grim fascist resurgence. And how successful have we revolutionaries been in demonstrating which worlds lie beyond all this? Such is the basic tension blocking our advance: even though the need for revolution has never been so clear, our idea of what one would even look like has rarely seemed so distant.
How do we ring in the system’s death knell a little sooner, whilst there’s still so much to fight for? How do we jump ship and live our lives outside this increasingly uninhabitable mess? Indeed, how do we unlearn the myths of this order of misery altogether, and really begin living in the first place?
Of course, it isn’t like these questions are being asked for the first time. All too often, though, calls for change are met with echoes from a distant century, as if mere resurrections of once dominant methods – be they Marxist or anarcho-syndicalist – are even close to applicable nowadays. No longer can we talk about oppression mainly in terms of some tectonic clash between two economic classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Nor can we be too sure of limiting the scope of revolutionary struggle to human liberation, dismissing out of hand the plight of other animals, not to mention the planet we call home altogether. At such a decisive historical juncture, it’s necessary to call everything into question: the times cry out for new visions, new strategies. Ones with a fighting chance of forging beyond the current impasse.
We don’t need any more reminders that this civilisation is heading for the abyss. What we seriously need is to ask is what we’re going to do about it. There’s a great deal of potential to the current social context, one in which the status quo forfeits its title as the most realistic option. But mere potential isn’t enough. Mainstream politics can hardly be expected to collapse under its own weight, except into something more monstrous than what we already know. Only in combination with concrete, accessible means of deserting it all do new forms of life begin to take shape.
This one goes out to the revolutionaries, wherever they’re to be found.

Brussels, Belgium: Bulletin #2

Print out of PDF in English

From 2008, the Belgian State started a large investigation aiming at different struggles – but always without concessions – against detention centres, borders, prisons and the world of authority and exploitation.

In its viewfinder: the anarchist library Acrata, anarchist and
anti-authoritarian publications (Hors Service, La Cavale and Tout doit partir), dozens of flyers and posters, more than a hundred actions, attacks and sabotages…in other words the fight against Power in all its different expressions.

Initially charged with “participation in a terrorist group”, it is
finally under the accusation of “criminal association” that 12 comrades were on trial at the end of April in Brussels. Around the same time, 6 comrades received a convocation for the Chambre du Conseil connected to another investigation that could result in formal accusations for “incitement to commit crimes”.

On the 29th and 30th of April 2019, the trial was held in Brussels
against anarchists prosecuted for “criminal association” as well as for a series of crimes. In 2017 the Chambre du Conseil had already disqualified the accusation of participation in a terrorist group and dropped a number of accusations for which it felt there were not sufficient grounds to charge.

Two defendants attended the trial at the Criminal Court. They refused to answer the questions of the magistrates. The other ten accused did not show up. All were represented by lawyers. Following the oral argument of magistrate Malagnini of the Federal Prosecution, the lawyers took the floor and pleaded inadmissibility and acquittal. For his part, the prosecutor asked for sentences ranging from 100 to 300 hours of community service or a subsidiary sentence ranging from 12 months to 4 years in prison (9 accused), a suspended sentence of 12 months and a fine of 50 euros for one person and acquittal for 2 persons. The accused refused to accept work punishments.

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Philadelphia, US: Anathema An Anarchist Periodical : Volume 5 Issue 2

anathema.noblogs.org/post/2019/05/21/volume-5-issue-2/

In this issue:

What is a Collective?
Tactics Innovation Update
What Went Down
Whither the Insurrection II
Representation is Indirect Action
Galleanist Centennial
Vaughn 17 Update
In Memory of Mauricio Morales
World News
Immanent Immigration Arrests
Go-Gurt Reportback
Whereas (Poem)


Copenhagen, Denmark: New English edition of Orkanen (eng: The Hurricane), an anarchist newspaper

Links to PDF:

Read on the screen: https://orkanen.noblogs.org/files/2019/05/enedspring2019.pdf

Print: https://orkanen.noblogs.org/files/2019/05/enedspring2019-print.pdf

CONTENTS:
Hearts of night
– About the falseness & absense of darkness in society and life.
An attack on identity politics
– Self-expl.
Snitch
– Self-expl.
Black Horizons
– A pace towards the unknown future of anarchy.Insufficiency
– A critical stand against incomprehension in insurrectionary text material.
What about the kids?
– About the children as a tool for reactionaries to pacify and distract.
1st of March in Copenhagen
– On-site account of this year’s (2019) 1st of March.
Rebellion continued
– Dealing with ageism and adulthood amidst the struggle of freedom

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