REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY

Pierleone Porcu

Solidarietà rivoluzionaria, “Anarchismo” n.72, May 1993, pp.8-9

There are many ways to demonstrate solidarity to comrades who are being criminalised by the State, each one of which is a direct expression of the way one intervenes in the social clash in general.

There are those who see solidarity as lending a social service to this or that arrested comrade, and that is the way they carry out their activity: looking for lawyers, sending money and clothes to prison, visiting and so on. This purely humanitarian solidarity also translates itself into the constitution of defence committees and relative campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion.

Then there are those who see solidarity in a strictly political key and play at making a heap of “distinctions” aimed at not compromising the image of their own activity. So for reasons of opportunity they defend and show solidarity to those who declare themselves innocent, not to those who Claim responsibility for their actions.

Others still, if they see there is something to be gained in terms of political propaganda, immediately bring out flyers and leaflets in formal solidarity with the comrade or comrades arrested, i.e. they declare solidarity in words, while in practice there is no trace of it.

Then there is solidarity in an ideological context. This is the case of the marxist-leninists in the revolutionary combatant party version. They show solidarity with those with positions similar to their own, and are in contrast with those who do not share or recognise their political line or strategy, often using censorship and ostracism against those they consider inconvenient.

What do we think we should mean by revolutionary solidarity then? The first aspect is that of seeing solidarity as the extension of the insurrectional social practice one is already carrying out within the class clash, i.e. as a direct demonstration of actions of attack against all the structures of power, large and small that are present in one's own territory. And that is because these should to all effects be considered responsible for everything that happens in social reality, including therefore the criminalisation and arrest of comrades wherever they are. It would be short-sighted to reduce the question of repression against comrades to something strictly linked to the legal and police apparatus. The criminalisation and arrest of comrades should be seen in the context of the social struggle as a whole, precisely because these are always the hasty material means used by the State to discourage radicalisation everywhere. No matter how great or insignificant it might be, every act of repression belongs to the relations of the social struggle in course against the structures of dominion.

The second aspect is that each revolutionary comrade should be defended on principle, irrespective of the accusations made against them by the State's legal and police apparatus, in the first place because it is a question of snatching them from its clutches i.e. from the conditions of “hostage” they have been reduced to. Moreover, it is also a question of not losing the occasion to intensify the attack against the “law” intended as the regulating expression of all the relationships of power present in constituted society.

The third aspect concerns the refusal to accept the logic of defence that is inherent in constitutional law, such as for example the problem of the “innocence” or “guilt” of the comrades involved, and that is because we have many good reasons for defending them and no one can justify the political opportunism of not doing so. We cannot and must not consider ourselves lawyers, but revolutionary anarchists at war against constituted social order an all fronts. We aim at radically destroying the latter from top to bottom, we are not interested in judging it as it does us. For this reason we consider any sentence made by the State vultures against proletarians in revolt, and all the more so if they are comrades, to be a sentence against ourselves and as such to be avenged with all the means we consider opportune, according to our disposition and personal inclinations.

The fourth and final aspect concerns our attitude towards the arrested comrades, whom we continue to behave towards in the same way as those not in prison. That means that to revolutionary solidarity we always and in any case unite a radical critique. We can and do show solidarity with imprisoned comrades without for this espousing their ideas. Those who show solidarity to imprisoned comrades are not necessarily involved in their opinions and points of view, and the same thing goes for us as far as they are concerned. We actively support all imprisoned comrades in all and for all, but only up to the point where what we do for them does not come into contrast with or contradict our revolutionary insurrectionalist way of being. Ours is exclusively a relationship between social revolutionaries in revolt, not that of bartering positions. We do not sacrifice any part of ourselves, just as we do not expect others to do the same.

We think of solidarity as a way of being accomplices, of taking reciprocal pleasure and in no way consider it a duty, a sacrifice for the “good and sacred cause”, because it is our own cause, i.e. ourselves.

Starting from these premises, of primary importance in the development of one's anarchist insurrectionalist action, revolutionary solidarity takes on meaning as such, because we would show simple material support to any friend who ends up in prison.

Revolutionary solidarity is an integral part of our very being as insurrectional anarchists. It is in this dimension that it should be demonstrated incessantly, precisely because it contributes to widening what we are already doing.

Pierleone Porcu

The Virtue of Torment

from Revolutionary Solidarity, Elephant Editions

La virtù del supplizio, “Anarchismo” n. 74

Aldo Perego

Prison, a physical territory distinct and separate from the rest of social life and what it represents and determines, seems to occupy a reserved space in our thoughts and minds.

The law is a concentrate of the way society has chosen to regulate its conflicts (by force and through image), whereas prison sums up what directly crushes and oppresses us. For us it is a question of understanding how and where one can act to put an end to all the filth of survival, including facing the problem of the destruction of prison and the law. And in order to put an end to the law it is also essential to stop thinking and talking in its language, that normally used to denounce the “abuses” of power. By so doing we certainly don't want to contest the prisoner's possibility to demand to be treated properly when tormented by the screw. But by shutting oneself up in particular wrongs (the screw's abuses) without considering the monstruosity of the very existence of prison, the prisoner finds himself drawn into a perverse accountancy: what does it mean to ask for the right to be treated properly? Would any individual whatsoever not prefer not to be treated at all?

The other side of the law

Law as the right of an individual to obtain or do such and such a thing, or as a whole including texts and legal practices. The latter apparently include and guarantee the former. So the democratic procedure always consists of padding out law with the rights of man, whereas any law we might benefit from is itself a dispossession, a search for ourselves in something other than ourselves. But what do laws define? Freedom conceived of only in negative terms: “my freedom ends where another's begins”. A vision of the individual as a territory limited by others, a vision of small proprietors, precursors of the famous “my body belongs to me”. It is not by chance that the temporal dimension, a fundamental human value, is lacking in these concepts.

Every right is by nature both a principle and a practical means of exclusion and privation. Whoever says right says exchange, because the law is these to organise a measured repartition of rights and duties and, in the case of damage, it prescribes the amount of compensation. A right always belongs to a miserable proprietor, because he needs a property title for something he is afraid of losing or that could be taken from him. Law is always aimed at governing a community which is incapable of living as such, in order for it not explode completely.

Law is also an ideology: a mental and rational construction that serves to justify the real social function of justice.

Today law is a precise quantifiying coded instrument which determines and points out what each individual, including each civil servant, must do. The police are held to respect very severe regulations and at the Same time they are continually having to break them in order to function. Legal control of their work is a fake: everyone knows the pig uses particular techniques in order to function and to exert pressure, which judges nearly always close a eye to. No matter whether it is applied to the investigator or the common citizen, the law does not prevent excesses, it merely keeps them within reasonable limits so as not to put the social order and institutions at risk. In the same way a prison sentence serves to circumscribe the revenge of the injured party by keeping it within the Limits that have been established and applied by a third party “above the party”, as all societies dispose of norms to allow those in power to regulate their arguments, legitimize their power and obtain the consensus of the exploited.

The Bible does not define, it lists, justifying such an operation with the unknowable and inscrutable divine will concerning what one should and shouldn't do. The modern era also supplies a definition of man on which to organise its social rules. The same goes for the law, with the pretext of establishing what is right and what is wrong. Hence the classification into good and bad. Innocence and guilt are attributes of the legal mechanism as they contain a judgement (which the person concerned is heartily invited to interiorise). Now, to understand and live the crudest acts (rape, murder, torture) does not mean to judge them. Whoever sits in judgement is action in the name of something that goes beyond the social relations which determined these same acts.

Precisely in the Same way as morals do in interpersonal relations, the law applies a pre-established norm to a conflict or violence to solemnize the trauma, defining it in order to exorcise it. In this logic it is necessary for there to be a guilty party, not just someone responsible as guilt penetrates the guilty, becoming their whole being. This is complete when the law claims to judge not only action but the whole person in the light of their action, reinforced with an analysis of the motivations, psychiatric reports and personality tests.

The law and Democracy

The sphere of State control is extending as rights increase, as it is necessary to have them respected and to sanction transgressions. The tendency of democratic society is to penalise everything. It has a clause and a punishment for every form of violence from the slap of the parent to rape. The extension of rights is synonymous with generalised criminalisation. It is claimed that violence has been banished from all social relations. But that reinforces the monopoly of violence that has been “legitimised” by the State, which is infinitely worse than any other kind. The law does not eliminate violence, it normalises it. Like democracy, it constitutes a filter to intolerance and violence alike.

Like democracy, the law functions on the basis of reason without having recourse to force. But for this reason brute force is also necessary in order for it to express itself, for any discussion to take place on its own terms. In the Same way democracy bases itself on the refusal of the violence it has generated and which it needs in order to perpetuate itself.

And so this filter also affects radical action, when it enters a court for example, rendering it incapable of proposing anything other that what is acceptable to the law. However, that is not a reason for not acting, or for regretting having acted, but rather for doing it knowingly: no revolutionary intervention can exist within the ambit of the law. The legal apparatus separates the accused from the discussions that concern him by delegating his power, as is continually done in democracy, to a few of its representatives: in this case to lawyers.

The worst thing is that, because the trial is public, one is convinced one is controlling the law, whereas it is really the law that is controlling the public. The Image that comes from the court carries an essential, hypnotically repeated message: violence is the monopoly of the State. And when conflicts between parties lead to confusion and uncertainty it is the State that sorts things out: “I also have a monopoly of truth”. The trilogy “police-justice-media” must therefore be analysed as a whole. Even if the game between the three partners overturns it is still able to absorb any scandal. There is a scandal when it transpires that someone has broken the rules: but such an accusation presupposes one's remaining inside the game. The real rupture would be to break out of it.

No denunciation, no blinding glare of truth contains on its own the strength to threaten the existence of social institutions and relations.

The social prison

So, why take up the question of repression and the law? Certainly not just because of the existence of the primary, essential, exemplary horror of the courts and prisons. We have no need to seek a peak of horror in order to put the whole of society in question, as that would fail to supply us with elements for getting to the roots of exploitation and alienation. Moreover, a scale of atrocities would be inconceivable. The prisoner in jail, the soldier being trained for fighting in the mud of a trench, the worker who has an accident at work, the peasant who toils sixteen hours a day, each one has a number of good reasons for finding the ultimate horror in their own condition.

In effect a solid, efficient society knows how to cover up a relationship of oppression with the honey of partial satisfactions. Is the humanisation of work not one of Capital's constant programmes? And then, in a “free” and democratic society it is not necessary to simply produce wealth, it is necessary above all to “find a job”. In prison too they now understand that no one should stay idle any longer: the prisoner will be conceded a job in order to “earn his time”, and will be allowed to move himself, “fall up his time”. The concept of the inflicted sentence alone is now historically and culturally out of date. So these same subjects who failed to fulfill and “ennoble” their existence when they were outside the walls, now find themselves with an occupation that offers considerable advantages to themselves and the State.

The penal institution is necessary to the class society, no matter how many or how few prisoners it holds. The idea of an eventual suppression of it is a pure illusion, just as the idea of an economy managed from the Base is, the existence of firms where the wage earners could “self-manage” their own exploitation (a horror worthy of the most sanguinary dictatorships). Prison has an indispensable symbolic function. The reclusion of the few not only recalls the existence of the norm that has been violated, but also functions as a point of reference, a rough border of the limits not to be ventured beyond.

Today’s society is one of maximum impotence and generalised assistance. The whole of existence now requires intermediaries, so there is a proliferation of public services whose function is assured thanks to a network of induced needs. The State fills the void of existence with the instruments that it uses to control at the same time as it maintains structures like prison as places of social dumping. Of course, this function could be assured in other ways. A society that was capable of reforming itself would do so with lower costs (social and accounting), but it would still maintain that function in some way.

Superficial critiques that are incapable of conceiving of an end to the law consider that it can and must be maintained, at best without intervening, imagining a future society without violence and attributing the violence of today to the misdeeds of the class society. This has been the dream of many enlightened partisans of all the schools of thought desirous of a “perfect” world.

A separate mechanism for the resolution of conflict by projecting an image and excluding the individual, the law will never be abolished even though its functions may be entrusted to another entity that is not above people and is far more maleable, revocable, submitted to elections, or controlled by popular assembly. A spontaneous form of justice with flexible laws or even without any text at all would not for that cease to be machinery dividing good from evil independently of and against social relations. It makes no difference to us whether judges be bureaucrats or not, the penal Code rigid or adaptable. It is the very notion of law that we want to destroy Even if the law changes daily with the “evolution of customs” it does not change its function.

No matter what the opinion folk say, the social order wins every time one votes, in the Same way that no matter what the jury vote, the very existence of the law is what constitutes the victory: it does not need anything else.

Just good boys and girls?

The modern legal apparatus is extremely rational and scientific as it ostentates its superior “impartiality” through the application of procedures which weigh up the possibilities conceded to the accused and their defence almost to the milligram. It can even allow itself to be scrupulous to the individuals who are obliged to submit to it: it controls them, despoils them completely, having acquired full powers over their existence. Its very existence is a victory as it constrains everyone, including those like us who contest it, to play according to its rules.

Only the incorrigible political lefty zealot can consider a sentence or an acquittal to be a victory or defeat of justice. And it is no wonder that it is precisely those who refuse to criticise the law as such who do not understand or accept the nature of Democracy, Fascism, Antifascism, and so on. Just as they participate in elections or claim immigrants' right to vote. They call for working class juries instead of “bourgeois” judges. Their perspective is not at all that of destroying justice as such, but of democratising it like everything else. However, one sees there, tragically or comically, the reproduction of the characteristics of justice and its prison corollary. This often takes place among the exploited themselves, which gives an idea of the extent of the problem.

At times some might feel obliged to pass over to the enemy camp and argue in legal terms, but that never constitutes a victory And anyway it is always a task that is best left to the lawyer. For example, a public action capable of raising doubts, waving the scarecrow of a clamorous “legal” error and some good work by the lawyers during the debate can even Force the judiciary to renounce coming down heavily an the accused, but that does not alter the fact that in any case the law has acted according to its own rules by obliging us to respect them. Moreover, an institution that is capable of admitting its mistakes is an institution that strengthens itself.

In the same way a Court that acquits, like one that convicts, is still a Court. It would be hard to imagine anywhere that the disinherited have less power than in a court. An exceptional case could arise from pressure exercised on the judiciary by a social movement, for example when a crowd gathers demanding an acquittal precisely in the same way as a police station can be besieged by hundreds of demonstrators demanding that those arrested be freed, but this pressure is external. It is always elsewhere that the strength of the exploited can constitute itself.

All the same, eradicating the conviction that the only way to obtain benevolent treatment by the legal apparatus is to busy oneself from the inside to show up the social inoffensiveness of those caught up in it is often an arduous task

Yes, and in theory we are all convinced that the best way to solidarise with an act of revolt is to commit another. Many are capable of applauding and praising a successful action, and there is no lack of comrades ready to put this maxim into practice by reproposing it, thereby contributing to its generalisation. Any act of subversion goes far beyond its actual outcome, in good as in evil. On the contrary, regularly when things “go wrong” and the authors of the act of rebellion are singled out or arrested, it does not occur to anyone to act in turn. Solidarity no longer concretises in our action but in the reaction to the actions of others, in this case, those of the judges.

So we prefer to wait, listen to lawyers' advice, the arrested comrades' declarations, the completion of investigations. We wait to see how things are going as though what mattered before was our desires and our attempts to realise them, and now it is simply a question of getting our comrades “out”.

Not intending to act instrumentally, getting comrades out of prison is undoubtedly our primary aim. All the same, it is necessary to evaluate the means one intends to use and to be aware of their nature and Limits.

Instead it turns out that it would seem more becoming to put the usual critiques of the law aside. Forget the bellicose declarations of war against society, and limit oneself to being just, and consequently to having an innocent person acquitted, freeing a sick comrade, or considering what in other circumstances we would accept as gestures of revolt, as nothing but childish pranks. But is that really what we want? To appeal to the humanitarian sentiments of those we despise?

In the face of the law and the fear it arouses, it seems that we are incapable of doing anything other than recanting ourselves and what we say we desire.

Rebels and revolutionaries when we are free, once we are in the hands of the enemy we are only capable of showing the innocuousness of the actions we carried out.

Power puts subversives, anarchists, in prison because as such they are “socially dangerous”. Is painting them as inoffensive lambs all we can do to get them out?

Are we cynical? Are we making an apology for sacrifice? Nothing of all that. We are simply tormented by a question that is beginning to worry us — are we just good boys and girls?

Revolutionary Solidarity

from Elephant Editions pamphlet Revolutionary Solidarity

introduction by
Daniela Carmignani

The concept of solidarity is not only used and abused by the various reformist syndicalist and humanitarian movements and even power itself, it is also sadly emptied of any content by many anarchists. The levelling is such as to reveal a symbolic attitude worthy of the Church but which allows us to put our conscience at rest.

Counter-information and propaganda in the lead, demonstrations (true processions), then nothing, provoke a feeling of powerlessness, a pernicious frustration that sees justification open the way to resignation.

We discover that everything crumbles there where the mentality of the group and quantity thought it was strong. Nothing changes as we enter a vicious circle with mournful calls to a miserable bartering with the State one wanted to fight.

When individuals find themselves alone at night, no longer supported by “collective strength”, the arms of Morpheus transform the imprisoned comrades one wanted to support, to whom one wanted to express one’s solidarity, into a real nightmare with no escape.

So! Should we no longer show solidarity to imprisoned comrades given that it serves no end?

Never! A movement that is not capable of looking after its comrades in prison is destined to die, and that at a high price under atrocious torture.

The reflection must be made in other terms. What does it mean to express revolutionary solidarity? Basically the reply is not all that difficult.

Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its roots in one’s own project that is carried an coherently and proudly too, especially in times when it might be dangerous even to express one’s ideas publicly. A project that expresses solidarity with joy in the game of life that above all makes us free ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation, mental poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to experimentation and the continual activity of one’s mind in a project aimed at realising itself in insurrection.

A project which is not specifically linked to the repression that has struck our comrades but which continues to evolve and make social tension grow, to the point of making it explode so strongly that the prison walls fall down by themselves.

A project which is a point of reference and stimulus for the imprisoned comrades, who in turn are point of reference for it. Revolutionary solidarity is the secret that destroys all walls, expressing love and rage at the same time as one’s own insurrection in the struggle against Capital and the State.

SOLIDARITY TO MARCO CAMENISCH

Marco Camenisch was born in Switzerland in 1952. In the late seventies, Marco, as a militant of the movement against nuclear power plants, was engaged in many struggles to fight the local Swiss nuclear mafia. Direct action was the base of such struggles; cutting down pylons, sabotage against power stations, attacks against the people involved in nuclear mafia.
In January 1980 Marco was arrested and sentenced to 10 years for his assaults against NOK power station, responsible for destroyed the natural environment of the Grigioni area in Switzerland. During the trial, Marco refused to talk to the judge, but read a statement in which he claimed his actions as a protest against the criminal bosses of class dominion, and for the liberation of the earth. In December 1981, Marco escaped from the prison together with another five prisoners. A prison warder was shot and another seriously injured. After 10 years of hiding and clandestine struggle, Marco was arrested again (1991), this time in Tuscany, Italy, and sentenced to 12 years. He was also sentenced for a series of acts of sabotage including the killing of a border policeman which he has always denied. In the Italian prison system Marco went through terrible conditions of detention, aimed at destroying his string personality and breaking the international solidarity network towards him Such solidarity has never stopped, on the contrary it has been increasing more and more both through public demonstrations and direct actions. In April 2002 Marco was extradited to Switzerland, where he was sentenced to another 8 years for his escape from prison in 1981 and the killing of a border policeman. In Switzerland too, Marco has been subjected to a regime of isolation and every kind of abuse and oppression including continuous transfers from one prison to the other, without any regard for his conditions of ill health.

Here are a few of the thousands of actions in solidarity with Marco Camenisch

25 July 1999 – Novarra, Italy – demonstration of solidarity outside the prison
1 August 1999 – Turin, Italy – Explosive device full of red paint is thrown against Swatch shop in via Garibaldi.
13 September 2002 – International day of solidarity with Marco Camenisch who has just been through 3 months of special treatment. Moreover his correspondence is strictly censured and his incoming and outgoing mail often doesn’t arrive, he spends recreation period in handcuffs and chains to his feet, he has closed visits after a few month’s waiting. And finally the torture of having spent 20 minutes inside a scanner machine with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, not mention the humiliation of having walked through the long corridor of the hospital with his feet in chains.
Demonstration in Bergamo, Bologna, Florence, Genova, Naples, Triest, Madrid.
14 September 2002 – Turin – Windows of Credit Suisse broken in via Bertola.
16 September 2002 – Pavia – Fire to a mobile phone antenna in solidarity to Marco and all prisoners in struggle.
December 2002 – Rome – An envelope full of bullets is sent to the Swiss ambassador in Rome with the message: Free Marco Camenisch, death to the Swiss State and its cops.
12 January 2003 – Paris – During the night a few boutqiues of Swiss bosses were damaged and the surrounding walls filled with writings such as ‘Free Marco’ ‘Switzerland is destroying you, We are gonna destroy it’. The locks of Adia and Adecco (Swiss work agencies) and of Lloyd Continental were been blocked with glue.
18 January 2003 – Bueonos Aires – Posters claiming Marco’s freedom are put on the walls of the Swiss embassy and Swiss International air. From today Marco is on hunger strike in protest against his conditions of detention. Demonstration also in Brussels in front of the Swiss embassy.
19 January 2003 – Abetone, Pistoia – The ski lift in this ski resort in Appenines is completely destroyed by fire, sabotaging the tourist industry for the season. The claim ‘Fire to the Exploiters, Free Marco’.
20 January 2003 – Carrara – 3 mobile phone transmitters are destroyed by fire in solidarity with Marco.
29 January 2003 – Bergamo – A RAI (Italian national television) transmitter is set of fire.
1 February 2003 – Barcelone – The locks of Zurich Insurance Company are blocked with glue and on the glass of the windows is written: ‘Destroy all prisons’. ‘Free Camenisch.’ ‘Stop nuclear power.’
11 February 2003 – Imperia – Fire to Omnitel transmitter. The claim ‘Free Marco’.


OPERATION BLACKOUT


Between September and October 2003, following the orders of Genoa Public Prosecutor, a series of raids takes place all over Italy against a great number of comrades who showed their solidarity to Marco.
The measure starts on 17 September when the ROS (carabinieri Special Operations) search Marco’s cell and seize his computer, notes and letters. Soon after even Manuella, Marco’s wife, is searched. Both are accused of ‘terrorist activities’ About one hundred Italian comrades from north to south underwent the same treatment and are still under investigation.

Marco Camenisch,
Flughafengefangnis
KLOTEN
Postfach
8058 ZURICH-KLOTEN
Switzerland








Marco Camenish was born in Campocologno in Switzerland in 1953. At the end of the 70s Marco began a life of rebel ecologism, carrying out acts of sabotage against invasive energy structures in Switzerland. There for an action in 1979 against a pylon and a substation of Northeast Switzerland Power he was sentenced to 10 years prison. Escaped from Ragensdorf prison (Zurich) he lived in clandestinity, in the final period at Massa Carrara. Marco was again kidnapped by the justice of the assassins on November 5 1991 at Cinquale. The shootout with the carabinieri, resulting in Marco being wounded, and a cop was also wounded got him another 12 years. Transferred from one prison to the other (from Massa to Pisa, Livorno, San Vittore in Milan, Novara, Rebibbia Rome, Biella, Como) after years of struggle, humiliation, blackmail, affective and social isolation, Marco was transferred to Switzerland on April 18 2002. It should be noted that Italian justice did not make him lack anything: he was accused of conspiracy (270bis) for crimes committed in Italy and abroad in 1988; while he was in prison there was an attempt to extend the accusation to his family (including his brother, with a difficult psychic condition, the old mother, his companion and her daughter, a young man of the extreme right) .
Some ‘educando del rosmarino’ thought of inventing an anarcho marxist-leninist organisation (a kind of transgenic!) to justify the escape of Marcello Ghiringelli from Novara prison in 1998. The un… proof of its existence was the friendship between Marco and Marcello, who met in Novara prison.
In Switzerland Marco is doing 8 years for escape and will be tried for other crimes which could cost him a life sentence. He is accused of concourse in murder of a guard during the escape from Ragensdorf (in spite of the testimony of the other they aquitted them) and of the murder of a guard at the border at Brusio going back to 1989. The indizzi of guilt for this last ‘crime’ were his presence in the area.
Not recognising any legitimacy in the governative or repressive organs. Until now Marco had avoided leaving declarations to them during questioning. He only allows the possibility of spontaneous declarations during public hearings. His strength is obviously a source of hatred for the sgerri of universal power, given that also in Switzerland the prison treatment reserved for him is inhuman.
Marco has spent his life struggling against the devastating action of the capitalist technological system, has individuated in this aspect of the beast the central nodo of its proliferation, the instrument of innihilation of all diversity.
He posed the anarchist movement with the priority of direct intervention on environmental transformation, understanding that alienation and lobotomisation are processes that are strictly tied to the elimination of natural and spiritual differences. The cultures linked to the earth are not by chance considered ‘primitive’ and ‘in the course of extinction’ (a term that implies the will to extinguish deliberately as happened with the indios). The process of dismembering of individual will and the devastation of natural reality that ci accoglie and surrounds us. The noise produced by the calpestio of the leaves in the wood, the scrosciare of the ruscello are panic forms caspable of taking the mind to that state of freedom of being, in which any hierarchical paradigm si annulla and all human activity si risolve in the insensato and absurd. This unlimited peace and love are joy and nourishment of the rebel spirit.’ (Krasi)

YET AGAIN, although I can never do it enough, I salute you and embrace you, I salute and embrace each one of you. I am really touched and moved by your numerous initiatives of solidarity and by your precious involvement in support of we political and social prisoners, by your clear and courageous schierarvi for a radical resistence, also because your engagement gives strength to we prisoners to resist. These initiatives are important because they represent the segno of strength and vitality of our solidale resistence. Because they take us, prisoners because we resisted, among you who are many equal and particular at the same time, because you take us to you beyond the walls, the chains and the recint that separate us. These important initiatives ci riportano among you to struggle together the even more important battles of resistence that we find ourselves facing daily, against the war, against occupation and conquest, against genocide, against sexism, racism and xenophobia, against exploitation and social smatellamento. Against the destruction of the environment, against the World Economic Forum in Davos (and anywhere else) which assassins with aureola participated in. These battles must be conducted in a radical manner. Otherwise we are no longer resisting, otherwise we end up being helping hands and accomplices of insatiable exploiters, violent, destructors, true extremists fautori of patriarchy, militarism, industrialism and capital., whose only aim is the need for power. I embrace you again, embrace each one of you. We are, and so long as we are united we will be strong. Marco Camenisch. Pfaffikon December 2002.
The latest news (beginning of May) tell of an improvement in his physical and emotional condition. For a few days now he has had access to a laptop given to him by comrades in Zurich. Correspondence seems to be more fluid even though not all the messages sent to Marco have reached him.
www.freecamenisch.net

Why I don't want a campaign to support me

THE COMRADE EDUARDO GARCÍA HAS BEEEN SETENCED TO 4 YEARS FOR EXPLOSIVE POSSESSION

The comrade Edu was in jail during 11 months and 6 days the past year 2001 and has been out the past two years on parole).The trial was the past November the 17th and the prosecutor asked 22 years for two homicide (the two mail bombs send to twice journalists) charges and explosive possession.
Finally, he only has been condemned for the last one, although he always said that the powder (just 30 grs.) which was the only proof, was put in the drawer of his table by the police.
By now he won´t enter prison because he has appealed to a higher court.

This is a communique (in www.lahaine.org) he made to explain why he doesn’t want a support campaign:

Eduardo García 22/01/04

“Salud

I´ve read some commentaries in “lahaine.org” calling to relaunch the support campaign which started in the year 2000 demanding my liberation. I appreciate very much the worry of those persons and i´m happy seeing there are people ready to do an effort but...
There are about 50.000 prisoners in the spanish state separated from their family and friends, confined between steel and concrete, without any sense, exposed to jailers and institutional arbitrariness. Me, in this moment, am not one of them.

It’s understable that most of the readers of “lahaine.org” could feel more identified with me than with many of the other 55.000 persons, but i´m here writing while they are enclosed. Our propaganda and our mobilizations must be against the penitentiary system and first at all to support the emprisoned comrades and, when those acts could be enough we could talk about the people who are still in the street.

Of course I don´t want to say i think it´s bad to make efforts to support people who suffer retaliations without being emprisoned, but i think the other prisoners have preference and so i don´t want any campaign to support me.

A thousand of thanks.

Neihter FIES, nor dispersion, nor ills in prison... prison demolition!

Some actions against Benetton in Italy '98-2004

BENETTON, THE UNITED COLOURS OF EXPLOITATION


Behind a false appearance of multiethnic solidarity, Benetton, the biggest landowner of Argentina, takes water, land and freedom away from the native Mapuche people. In 19991 the big Venetian company bought 900,000 hectares of territory in Patagonia, Mapuche’s land, which the Argentine government sold for next to nothing. The Mapuche people were confined in a strip of land called ‘reserve of the Benetton company’ where they live in conditions of poverty and overcrowding. Most of them are compelled to work for the company in order to survive and get very low wages. Benetton exploit the Mapuches land for grazing about a million sheep, which produce tons and tons of wool for their company. Any attempt to revolt against the Benetton invasion has always been violently suppressed by the Argentinian police which works in accordance with Mr Benetton. In recent times a Mapuche family who had taken back their piece of land in Chubut (Patagonia, Argentina) were evicted by 12 policemen and had their poor house completely destroyed. Curinanco family was told by the police commisioner Perez that no one can contrast Benetton because they have more money than anyone. Other Mapuche communities, namely the ones living in Vuelta del Rio and Corcovado, are about to be thrown off their land as Benetton has taken possession of it. The struggle of the Mapuche people against the colonists of their land started a long time ago, when the Argentinian State gave its first concessions (oil, minerals and forest) to various companies inside the Mapuche territory. In the 90s, the Mapuche tried to take a great deal of estate back, but each time they were evicted. The didn;’t stop the many actions carried by the Mapuche against any company involved in the realisation of devastating plans such as the building of dams or the destruction of forests. In November 1998, for example, the Mapuche of Cuyinco attacked some vans of the big forest company Bosque Arauco, which was engaged in destroying the forest. They also attacked a group of journalists who were filming the actions and fought against the company’s security service. In January 1999, Mapuche organised a big demonstration against the building of Ralco hydro electric dam and were violently attacked by the army. In March 1999, the Mapuche rebelled against the creation of a tourist area in Lleu Lleu river region and set fire to a building. Five of them were arrested and 2 started a hunger strike in prison. In April 1999 the Mapuche set fire to a digger of the woodcutting company Miminco in Traiguen and in June they destroyed a bulldozer and a few vans of the same company in Bio Bio.



ACTIONS AGAINST THE BENETTON

May 1998 – Athens (Greece) A Benetton shop is destroyed by fire.

10 March 1999 – Trieste, Italy. The clothes of the Benetton shop in piazza della Borsa are dirtied with a stinking liquid. 15,000 euroes’ damage. A few days later the window of via Imbriani Benetton shop is dirtied with red paint.

October 1999 – Xixon (Spain) The local Benetton factory is attacked in solidarity with a few anarchists imprisoned for an attempted robbery.

March 2000 – Pisa, Italy. A Benetton shop is attacked and five windows are broken.

2001

19 January – La Spezia, Italy. Some eggs full of tar are thrown against the windows of a Benetton shop.

26 March – Florence, Italy. The windows of 3 Benetton shops are broken. The action is claimed by this communique:
Strike the capital and its tentacles every day. Behind Benetton’s joyful appearance some awful hides itself: child labour, prisoner’s work, Mapuche’s land stolen. Marici weu: we’ll win 10 times!

29 March – Milan, Italy. The windows of 3 Benetton shops are broken with steel balls. This is the communique that claimed the action: Benetton exploits prisnoers’ work. Benetton also took Mapuche’s land in Patagonia away from its inhabitants. Strike Benetton, the multinationals and the State. Marici weu!’

4 April – Rome, Italy. The windows of 2 Benetton shops are destroyed with hammer blows. The claim: We are with all the people who fight and rebel, we are with the Mapuche people, the struggle against Benetton is also ours.’

18 July – Ponzano, Veneto, Italy. A postal packet explodes inside Benetton head offices.

2002

8 February – Prato, Italy – 5 windows of a Benetton shop are broken. That night a telecom call centre (in which Benetton is a major investor) is set on fire. The claim: Fire to Telecom for the Argentine rebels.

19 December – Trento, Italy – A few balls full of paint are thrown into 2 shops. The damage is 15,000 euros. Two comrades are accused.

19 December – Lecce, Italy. Police attack a demonstration against Benetton. One cop is injured.

2003

A great many actions against Benetton, including demonstrations and distribution of leaflets, are carried all over Italy.

2004
5-11 January A new campaign against Benetton is organised in Italy.

A few notes on the question of anarchist solidarity

It is obvious that State repression cannot be reduced to one single event but is a precise, continuous project that is constantly in act for the maintenance of social control. Although each repressive act is unique in its specificity and brutality, we must never lose sight of the real reasons behind particular arrests. The specific ‘crimes’ the comrades are associated with, and through which they have been framed and criminalised, are just one more occasion to liquidate social fighters and denigrate the struggle within the framework of democratic legality. Fabricated evidence and media sensationalism such as outside elements, terrorist links, etc. are classic dirty tricks from any manual of State justice. As well as keeping them out of circulation for as long as possible, such operations are aimed at offering the comrades on a plate as a symbolic sacrifice to placate the electorate. With any luck, those outside will lock themselves in a frontal, symbolic collision with the State, with all the odds on the latter. Or they could fall into the trap of the innocent/guilty dichotomy in the logic of the State’s legal apparatus, leading them down the cul de sac of court, technical defence and the delegation of the outcome to a judge or a jury. That being said, we do not reject the road of technical defence. But this is mainly the task of the lawyers, and can only marginally be inserted into the social struggle against repression which is both specific and generic at the same time. Action against specific acts of repression should not therefore be conceived as something separate from this reality, but rather as an extension and deepening of the struggle as a whole.
Naturally, there is no blueprint for the individual response to State repression. It is always up to arrested comrades to choose their own line of action: whether to appear in court or not, whether to have legal representation or not, the nature of our relationship with any others arrested, whether to make public declarations or not as the case may be. What is demanded of us here, as in any other situation, is coherence and the capacity to maintain an active dynamic within the struggle. This is all the more difficult as roads of communication with the outside world are often blocked or filtered through a whole apparatus of control and censuring. Our first and main task is therefore to remain true to ourselves and to our project of struggle as a whole, of which this is but one moment.
Anarchist solidarity is not therefore something private and separate from the rest of the struggle. We love and miss our comrades and want to snatch them back from the hands of the State, but that does not push us into the trap of mediation or expediency, which would block the road to the wider attack against the organs of exploitation and repression.
The problem of methods comes to the fore. There must be a logical thread running between the methods we use when pushed by specific cases of repression and the struggle against the organs of repression as a whole. A macroscopic repressive event can reach a wide spectrum of the movement, sometimes leading to defence committees or similar situations, often less formal but following the same logic. Differences are apparently buried in the interest of the higher cause, that of getting the comrades out of the clutches of the State. This can lead to an involution of the struggle, as all decisions must have the consensus of the whole assembly, thus reaching the lowest common denominator. What was before a heterogeneous, often conflictual, but rich, situation, can become unidimensional. Comrades quickly tire of the repetitive ritual of ineffective symbolic gestures carried out with minimal risk and little passion. Analysis and debate give way to a situation of waiting for the next move of the State.
Another road that response to repression can take is that of focussing on the personality of the arrested comrade or comrades. The attack on the State recedes into defensive positions, where comrades have the role of public figure thrust upon them with all that this entails. In the first place that of being an exemplary character, in the second, a victim. Without realising it, we slip into the logic of good and bad, not guilty and guilty. In this way we put an onus on the comrade in question, unwittingly presenting him or her as representative of the movement, through whom it also becomes judged by all the organs of representation. In the recent and not so recent past, this kind of solidarity has led to disastrous results for all those involved.

SOLIDARITY IS A WEAPON

Solidarity is an act of mutual aid between friends, comrades, or simply people who might not even know each other in person, but share the same affinities. It is an act of help or support when there is a need for this, and this can be expressed in many different ways.
While practicing acts of solidarity, and also being in situations where others have shown their solidarity to me, I was able to experience the joy of breaking the walls that divide me from other comrades (no matter whether they are they my friends, or simply people I share affinities with), but it also opened up new questions.
While doing this, am I actually helping someone—because it is not so hard to make a wrong move and instead of helping do absolutely the contrary—,and how can I make my action more effective?

Solidarity is a weapon.
There are a few reasons why I see solidarity as a weapon.
First of all, it is exactly what is not expected of us by authority. By the rules of the system and capitalist reality that impose domestication and alienation upon us, we are supposed to be passive observers of our own misery. Just another brick in the walls that divide us and make it impossible to develop real honest relations between each other. By practicing solidarity we take another step into nonconformity and directly attack these rules, breaking down the walls that divide us. Let’s not fool ourselves, these walls are many, some of them are obvious but there is still so much that we should take into consideration, because we are all affected by our particular surroundings...

Also, by solidarizing with other comrades, be it with comrades in the clutches of State repression or with comrades working on some project, we help them to make their struggle possible or more effective. While trapped in the dungeons of the State, they can maybe continue some of their activities, or find another ways of struggle from inside, but without help from outside, I’m afraid that’s hardly possible. Comrades working on some project are very often limited financially or by the infrastructure that is available to them, so helping them by raising money or by giving them space or infrastructure to use helps them to lose less energy and time in that direction and concentrate more on the project. It also helps them not to abandon their ideas through feeling weak or isolated from other comrades.
Since I live in surroundings where the struggle for mere existence is an activity that takes up most of people’s energy, and where infrastructure is not available unless you are highly privileged, (which reflects the number of active people) and there is little space for activities that attack the existing order and the rules imposed by the system, I see a need for solidarity. And I can say for sure that without communication and support from comrades that are in “better” position I would be forced to stop most of my own activities. This simple and honest communication and support of comrades who recognized the need for it not only helped me in a technical way to be able to carry on the projects I’m involved in, but gave me additional motivation and energy. This is needed (believe me) when you live in narrow-minded surroundings where there are only a few people that you can count on, (or discuss with, to arm your desires, and articulate your beliefs and needs) where you are openly endangered not only by the repression of the servants of authority, but also by other political enemies such as nazis or other fascists by whom you are outnumbered, in danger just because of the way you look, and especially your political (anti political) engagement.
This kind of reality is most common in east European countries where anarchist activities and the mere existence of the idea itself barely survives, and its survival in many cases depends on communication and mutual support (solidarity) between comrades very often placed at a great distance apart.
This kind of reality also attracts something that I certainly do not consider solidarity, that is demonstrated by so-called comrades.
Eastern Europe is the destination of many travellers, many from western European countries and the US and Canada, where the “movement” is much more “developed” and bigger, and some concrete signs of its existence are visible on an everyday basis.
From my experience, most of these people come with the attitude “we know better’ and they act and behave according to that attitude. That is something which I absolutely don’t see as solidarity, even though many are trying to call it such.
“We have come to show you how things should be done...” without trying to understand the situation of the surrounding area, (they are visiting at that moment) which is certainly very different from the one they are coming from where they have gained their experience. This kind of approach is not simply stupid and naive as it seems at first glance. It is a pure expression of racism. The same idea is taught in school, that people from economically developed countries are worth more because of their education and better living standards, and that they should be on a mission to “help” those less developed.
No, we don’t need any anarchist experts, anarchist organizers, anarchist missionaries... , we need comrades and friends with whom we can act together, discuss, and learn from each other, and we can help each other if it’s needed and possible. But these relations must be free from any kind of hierarchy and false morality. It has to be spontaneous and based on mutual understanding...
Very often solidarity is expressed in situations like imprisonment of comrades, or threats of evictions of squats, or other forms of repression imposed by authority.
Should we wait for these things to happen in order to start to solidarize with each other? To improve solidarity as a weapon we should not let ourselves to be timed and guided by the actions of authority, this is something that will constantly keep us back. For sure I do not mean that those affected by the dirty hands of the repressive apparatus (whatever way it is demonstrated) should be forgotten at any moment.
To end my observation I quote the Italian comrades “Il Silvestre” who explained this very well in their periodical “Terra Selvegia”: Repressive plans brought about by the Italian government against anarchists aim not only at stopping the many acts of sabotage that are continuously carried out all over the country, but they are also and mainly aimed at destroying any internal enemy of the State and securing a long period of social peace.
Article 270bis is the most effective means they have to achieve this goal. Moreover repression, besides striking hard, is also taking a series of preventive measures.
The huge investigation used by judge Marini is now split into a great number of small investigations resulting in preventive arrests, closure of anarchist places, etc. It is no longer a question of 270bis, but of a great number of smaller investigations conducted in many towns, which are apparently different from one another but actually come from the same source and have only one goal, to inflict the greatest possible damage on the anarchist struggle.
To consider the question of article 270bis as a unique repressive project, however, would represent a partial and quite dangerous approach. In fact, if we remain stuck to a defensive strategy, we risk running behind repression and inevitably remaining behind it. Furthermore, to focus all our energy on anti-repressive campaigns would result in neglecting the struggle. This does not mean to forget the solidarity towards those hit by repression. It means, on the contrary, that when a squat is closed down or a paper is persecuted, instead of organising gatherings among anarchists, we should try to conquer that squat back and to support that paper.
Solidarity is a weapon, not a shield behind which to hide oneself.
destruktor

DID ANYBODY TALK ABOUT KIDNAPPING?
The proletariat of the industrial countries has completely lost the affirmation of its autonomous perspective and also,in the last analysis,its illusions, but not its being. It has not been suppressed. It remains irreducibly in existence within the intensified alienation of modern capitalism: it is the immense majority of workers who have lost all power over the use of their lives and who, once they know this, redefine themselves as the proletariat, as negation at work within this society.
Guy Debord

Since the nineties different people who’ve expressed themselves about post-modern typology wearing a different mask each time (the neo-liberal, the middle political scene, the social democrat, the ideologist of tepidity and confused multi cultural neo-leftism that mixes everything up, ‘anti-authoritarian’ new-hippie lifestyle) ruminate/brag about the ideology of the end of history: there is no more proletariat, there is no class war, we can at last without fear head towards the Market Paradise, where honey and milk flow abundantly. And hamburgers and ketchup too...
Unfortunately for the apologists of legality, the facts are stubborn: a handful of capitalists has organized a criminal gang and kidnapped proletarians demanding ransoms, their working power, the commercialization of human activity, their time (that transmutates into money), even their whole existence. Wage slavery is a permanent crime against human dignity. It’s not just because of the usual ‘casualties’ of work ‘accidents’ of the class war. It’s not just because of the dead, wounded and amputated people of work ‘accidents’, but also because of the diseases related to the working environment and space. It’s not just because of the strawberry fields, that show us we’ve never escaped the time of slavery. It’s not just because of the sacrificed workers (locals and immigrants, ‘expensive and cheap’ labor hands) at the altar of every ‘American dream’ or ‘Greek miracle’. It is the very existence of waged work that constitutes the permanent crime! And the criminals, the kidnappers and the blackmailers are all Mylonas. Even if the rats of the media present the leader of thieves Mylonas (the boss of the gang of common thieves of the Federation of Industries of Northern Greece) as an ‘innocent’ victim, as a misunderstood neo-liberal Christian child, as a pain-resistant worker, who makes efforts night and day for the common good.
As for the illusionist tricks that different vampires like Mylonas invent to show their ‘human face’ (for example green capitalism, socialised industry, etc.), only one thing can be said:
SATIRE HAS ITS LIMITS...
Mylonas is no more than the brain of a gang of exploiters. Like all capitalists he too is a parasite: a weight on the earth and an obstacle for the winds.
So the Mylonas couple should stop pretending to be raped virgins .
‘O gentlemen, the time of life is short! ...
And if we live, we live to tread on kings’
W.Shakespeare
The first duty of the proletariat is consciousness of itself, of its position and its role. The consciousness of being a prostitute in the hands of a capitalist, of producing wealth for the bosses and misery for itself.The consciousness on the other hand that produces the whole material life of society. That it is nothing but CAN BE EVERYTHING.The second duty of the proletariat is the denial of its imposed role, the denial of work, the denial of alienation.
The third duty of the proletariat which arises naturally from the first duties, is revolutionary action for it’s own suppression.
Only subjects can ignite the objective conditions and cause the revolutionary explosion for the destruction of the authoritarian/class society.
From: ‘The art of war’, 6th issue of ‘Asymmetric threat’
(under publication...)
Unfortunately in the wild west of capitalism the proletarians lullaby with trash-eating over-consumerism. Life has evolved into a necrophilic survival between cages of cement, cars, billboards, surveillance cameras and cops. The route of survival is assigned: from one concentration camp to another. From school to university, from army to wage slavery. And there the proletarian crosses the same streets of alienation as the night walker: work, home, shopping mall, work. From production to consumption...
Behind the iron curtain of virtual prosperity and spectacular misery lies an unadmitted truth: the miracle of the west treads over corpses. Not only of those in the third world (either way this constant exploitation is the most gigantic crime of human history), but also of those in the third world in the west.
Behind a glance of being high on consumption hides the rot of a slaughtering civilization. But from inside this rot one possibility springs up. A possibility that not even the think-tanks of the existent system, not even the bureaucratic certainties of Bolshevism, not even the paleolithic determinism of ideologies can repress: the social entropy, the revolution, the constant struggle for the destruction of the state, of private property and of waged work.
Comrades! Life is short. If we live, we live to step on the heads of bosses and their slaves.
For anarchy and communism!
P.S.1 As in the past also now, in my public speech I will not speak about issues of the penal code. Moreover ‘innocence’ and ‘guilt’ are fake distinctions that concern only the legal armory of the state.
The only thing that I want to say about the case, is that I was and I am in solidarity, as anarchist as well as a friend, to an outlaw and hunted man, Vasilis Paleokostas. From there on, what I say will be a continuity of my pre-arrest position and not a whine for ‘innocence’.
P.S.2 Economical and legal support is good. So are wishes for freedom, but the strongest form of solidarity is the continuation of revolutionary action.
from Terra Incognita

ATHENS SQUATTED POLYTECHNIC COMMUNIQUEJanuary 13 2007

LETTERS IN ENGLISH
COMMUNIQUE OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SQUATTED POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS
Today, January 13 2007, police attacked the anarchist and anti-authoritarian motorbike demo in solidarity to the three comrades arrested at the social forum on May 6 2006 in Athens. The demo was attacked by special motorbike forces (Z team) on the way back from Nikea hospital where there had been a solidarity gathering for two of the imprisoned comrades Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos who are on hungerstrike. The anti riot police squads (MAT) then stormed the comrades on the ground, 42 were taken into custody at the national security police headquarters in Athens, many of them injured, and 4 of them are still being held 9 hours later. Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos have been on hunger strike for 46 and 28 days respectively and were transferred from Koridalos prison to a secure unit in Nikea hospital on January 9 as their condition had deteriorated. They have been held in prison since May 6 2006 along with another demonstrator, Kostas Kachadouras, accused of rioting during the international antiwar demo of the European Social Forum in Athens.
The imprisoned demonstrators of May 6 are 3 of the thousands of people that took to the streets that day when riots erupted between the forces of repression and anarchists and young rebels and attacks were made against State and capitalist targets. The police arrested 17 demonstrators who were accused on trumped up heavy charges and 3 of them have been held in prison awaiting trial without any evidence against them (with the political consent of the traditional leftist parties and groups) so that they can be punished as an example for those who choose to resist without mediation or institutional representation. The struggle that those on hunger strike began for their freedom, using their body as a weapon, has now become the terrain where a general conflict between the State and those who fight it is being expressed.
It is about an attack in which the State, using all the repressive mechanisms of propaganda and control in its power, is attempting to isolate and eliminate anarchists and anti-authoritarians, who are the most radical part of social resistance, with the surrender of the whole of society as its final objective. Under these conditions of intensifying State terror, every action of solidarity to the imprisoned fighters has been under attack. The aim of this repression is not only to keep the 3 in prison as long as possible, it is also to eliminate the very dynamic of solidarity, self-organisation and resistance against the plans of the State and the bosses.
So, on January 12, the police attempted to prevent the solidarity demonstration that had been organised by anarchists and anti-authoritarians. The order was pronounced by the chief of police forces present, stating that he had instructions from the prosecutor, but this was subverted by the persistence of the demonstrators and finally a strong demo was held in the centre of Athens. The attack on todayʼs demonstration (January 13), with the arrests and the wounded, are the peak of this repressive violence, showing the Stateʼs intent to bury the struggle of those on hunger strike in silence, to terrorise those in solidarity and attack the development of the anarchist struggle. What has preceded todayʼs events: the arrest of an anti-authoritarian comrade outside his home following the motorbike demo to the house of the minister of justice; intensive provocation and pressure by the Z motorbike police squad on another motorbike demo to Koridalos prison on December 15; police attack on new yearʼs eve motorbike demo on its return from the prison that resulted in many comrades being taken into custody and one arrest, and on January 9 the surrounding by anti riot police squads of a radio station which had been occupied by 50 anarchists to transmit solidarity messages and news of the hunger strike.
AGAINST the attempts of the State to isolate the struggle of our imprisoned comrades who are on hunger strike behind a wall of silence
AGAINST the constant repressive attacks against anarchists and antiauthoritarians, aiming at their isolation and annihilation
AGAINST the attempt to impose social acquiescance
WE ARE TAKING OVER THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS AND WE DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAYʼS ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO AND THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6 2006
By taking over this university building we are creating a place of constant counterinformation and solidarity within our city, an attempt that is operating horizontally and against all hierarchy, on the basis of the occupiersʼ general assembly. No repressive action will extinguish our solidarity to our imprisoned comrades, or prevent the social struggle for liberation from the chains of Authority
THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM IS STRONGER THAN ANY PRISON CELL
SOLIDARITY TO THE HUNGERSTRIKERS TARASIO ZADOROZNI (SINCE NOV 29 2006) AND GERASIMOS KIRIAKOPULOS (SINCE DECEMBER 15 2006)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE 3 IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6
THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES WHO ARE BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAYʼS ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO
SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMPRISONED AND ACCUSED SOCIAL FIGHTERS
FREEDOM TO ALL THOSE IN PRISON CELLS
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!
Assembly of the occupied Polytechnic University January 13 2007, 7pm.
Ps. At the moment of writing the four arrested have been set free, one of whom with serious chest and back wounds, and many stitches in the head

PORTUGAL - Poster relating to the beatings in Monsanto

Poster relating to the beatings in Monsanto

End to the beatings and tortures in the prison of Monsanto, and in all the prisons.

Solidarity with the prisoners who maintain their dignity, who refuse to bow down before the authorities.

For the decentralized attack on the State and capitalism, which are made of people and physical structures reachable to everyone,

everyday, everywhere.

You can not stop us.

Some anarchists for the destruction of the best of worlds


- Poster relating to caxias

“Prisons, revolt and Caxias”

13 years after a wide struggle by Portuguese prisoners
for the improvement of the conditions
to which they were subjected inside the prisons,
the State decides to put 25 of the
then prisoners in the prison of Caxias on trial,
charging them with mutiny, damage and arson.

We don’t care if they did it or not.
We care about the love for freedom,
that which persists in not letting itself die,
in not letting itself be suffocated by the courts, nor by the bars, nor by the guards.

They’re joyful moments, those in which that love expresses itself.
Moments in which we communicate among free hearts.
Moments that no authority can take away from us.

Solidarity with those who struggled.
Solidarity with those who struggle.

Anarchists for the cutting off of the hand that imprisons us,
and for the expropriation of the key.



- Poster relating to the revolts inside some prisons, during the screws strike

That the mutinies spread everywhere
Inside and outside
In all the prisons


Solidarity with the prisoners in struggle

That voice that shouts “insurrection”!
It’s our brothers, our children, our husbands,
Our companions, our comrades, our friends.
Those that only have violence
To break the wall of silence…

This text won’t be about the misery of prison, since all of us who risk it know that misery. It won’t be about the need to destroy prison;

that need is evident to us, we feel it in each beating of our hearts. This text won’t be about the misery which is the survival here, on the

outside of the prison walls, in this “free society” that is, in itself, an open air prison.
What we want today is to address ourselves to the rebellious prisoners, to those who crave and struggle for the air taken from them.

What we want today is to say that, inside a prison, they can take everything from us, except the desire for freedom. Sometimes that

desire is able to shout out so loud that it overcomes the silence of the walls: in all the Alcoentres, in all the Caxias, in all the Monsantos,

in all the Coimbras, in all the Leirias and in all those that never reach the newspapers…
In the escapes, the hungerstrikes, the refusals to re-enter the cells, the refusals of prison food, the attacks on screws, the work strikes,

the arsons, the destruction of prison material, the climbing on the rooftops, the mutinys, the fists, the screams.
In the screams that, for once, are born from a will that flows inside, a will to communicate with each other. In the screams that, for once,

are born out of a revolt which only aims at breathing freely, without bars, nor screws, nor control nor walls! In the screams that, for once,

aren’t born from the beatings, nor from the psychological or physical tortures, nor from the isolation from those and from what we love,

nor from the shots fired by the GISP assassins, who kill as any other prison guard kills, as does any cop, any judge, any journalist, any

politician.
These screams are yours, and are ours too. They’re from all of us who daily feel on our skins that authority is an enemy of freedom; they’

re from all of us that have our lives controlled and stolen by people with power and institutions; they’re from all of us who want our lives

back and decided to be ourselves fighting for them.

Solidarity in the attack, for the destruction of every prison and the world that creates them.

a few anarchists