World · anarchistnews.org · 1970-01-01
In Contempt, no. 10
English (original) · Read in Deutsch ⇄
Introduction
State terror is on the attack against international anarchist infrastructure. With the recent terrorist sanctions against Autistici / Inventati, the host of Noblogs, the state is demonstrating its resolve to erase any shared, autonomous communication of resistance, hoping that if resistance isn't shared, at least on the internet, it never will have happened at all.
But the smoke signals of revolt, the uncountable fires on the mountain looming above the uncountable slave rebellions the whole world over, communicate themselves in the concrete reality of every raw awakening to the feeling that there is more to life than this, that it's possible at any moment to resist, and that the future itself depends on this leap from awareness to act.
From seized printing presses to seized servers, from newspapers smuggled across barbed-wired borders to capsules of cigarette-paper-scrawled memories shared in a stolen visitation kiss to every Radio Venceremos in every jungle cave, sharing fire has never been dependent on the medium of communication but only ever on whatever can communicate in a world where we can only whisper.
In the meantime, In Contempt will continue, even if only as copied/pasted text and a few pdfs for now. We'll find you or you'll find us first. We should also note the many revolutionary prisoner support projects that rely on A/I infrastructure (as well as the state's mention of Casey in their poorly-veiled attack on the beautiful dream)––Casey, Malik, Sean, Michael, J11, and on and on.
To share to the column or get updates about how to find us, email in_contempt_news @ protonmail . com. Past columns are (for now) still available at incontempt . noblogs . org.
Until all are free, we will fight to free them all.
The only terrorist is the state.
As always, each month’s In Contempt column is available in print form. It’s our hope that this publication helps to develop networks of inside-outside solidarity! Over 100 prisoners receive a copy each month, but you can make sure more people access it by sending it in through your own networks.
Download a PDF here: https://archive.org/details/ic10-unabridged-imposed
Or a PDF for screen-reading: https://archive.org/details/ic10-unabridged-imposed/ic10-unabridged-rea…
Because this column was originally formatted with links and images for Noblogs, we recommend reading it as the PDF above. We apologize for missing links, attributions, and images.
Also, download a poster to print & paste here: https://archive.org/details/ic10-state-terror-11x17
All prior In Contempt print material is available on the following archive: https://archive.org/details/@in_contempt
Contents
Until All Are Free
Rebellions
International Day of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners
Running Down the Walls
Black August
Anti-Surveillance / Anti-Flock
Free the Prairieland Prisoners
Palestine Action
Political Prisoners / POW's
George Floyd Uprising Prisoners
Repression in the So-Called US
ICE Watch
Ongoing Cases
International Political Prisoners
International Repression
Fundraisers
Media
This Month in History
Birthdays
Appendix: Against Prison Censorship
Until All Are Free
Nikos Maziotis Will Be Free!
A special September…Today,
September 2, marks the anniversary of one of the most significant actions carried out by Revolutionary Struggle, and by the domestic urban guerrilla movement in general: the car-bomb attack using 150 kilos of ANFO explosives against the Athens Stock Exchange, back in 2009.
That was when Revolutionary Struggle was already talking about the crisis, starting in 2005, before it broke out in the United States and before it hit our country in 2009-2010. When we spoke about the bailout memorandums before they were even imposed.
When we spoke about the opportunity, at that time, for a systemic overthrow and revolution that unfortunately never came to pass.
September 5, 2003, marks the anniversary of when Revolutionary Struggle began its activity, with the double bombing attack on the Evelpidon courthouse in Athens.
In a few days, on September 14, I will be released upon completion of my sentence, having served 14 years in prison plus six years of work credit, for a total of 20 years of imprisonment, the sentence I was given for the activities of Revolutionary Struggle.
At a time when criminal and ‘correctional’ codes keep changing one after another, extending the length of sentences and the actual time served, even through illegal manipulations regarding the retroactive application of laws, when the state’s ongoing priority has always been dealing with its political opponents, I am the first inmate in Greek prisons, and the first political prisoner with a 20-year fixed-term sentence, to serve his entire sentence without suspension, as had usually been the practice until now. This outcome is the result of the Lamia judicial councils having rejected my conditional release seven times, on the grounds that I have not been ‘rehabilitated,’ have not shown moral ‘improvement,’ and refuse to acknowledge the actions of Revolutionary Struggle as criminal.
They’re right about that! At one hearing of the judicial council, when asked whether I had been ‘rehabilitated,’ I answered that not even in 1,000,000 years would that happen.
So I refuse to adopt their ‘morality,’ the morality of submission, nor have I in any way reconsidered the actions of Revolutionary Struggle, which were beneficial and necessary for the social majority, for the people and the working class, since they were directed against the criminal state-capitalist system of power. Especially under today’s conditions, where the system grows ever more brutal, condemning us to a lifetime of debt slavery, condemning us to poverty and destitution, wiping out peoples and populations deemed surplus through wars, genocides, and the policies enacted to preserve itself, and slowly but steadily killing the planet we live on for the sake of the profit and power of a shameful minority.
Under these conditions, the struggle against the State and capital is not only just but also necessary and imperative.
I would not change my political and activist choices in the slightest, even if I could turn back time.
This outcome, serving my full sentence, does have a positive side, since I will not even be subject to restrictive conditions, meaning I won’t have to report to the local police station wherever I end up living.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank all my comrades, everyone who stood in solidarity with us in any way over all these years, with us, the members of Revolutionary Struggle, who remained faithful to the choices of struggle we made.
NO RECONSIDERATION, NO REPENTANCE
LONG LIVE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE
HONOR FOREVER TO COMRADE
LAMBROS FOUNTAS
September 2, 2026
Domokos Prison,
Nikos Maziotis
Rebellions
Lawrence IL
Twenty-five people in the Restricted Housing Unit of Lawrence CI in Illinois have gone on hunger strike in protest of rampant abuses in solitary confinement. One of the hunger strikers, Dwayne Croom, spoke out to the media: "It’s to the point where (men in restrictive housing) are helpless... To the point where you have 30-plus people who would rather die than be in their circumstances." An attorney from Uptown People's Law Center, which has two lawsuits challenging housing conditions at Lawrence, confirms that people in restricted housing don't have access to tablets, are being denied the required minimum 10 hours of recreation each week, and only has one mental health professional for 85 people in solitary.
Dwayne Croom has filed his own lawsuit against prison administrators at Lawrence including Warden Jeremiah Brown, former warden Dee Dee Brookhart, former Assistant Warden Jennings, Major Kyle Henton, former mental health authority Dr. Boose, current mental health authority Dr. Cordova, and other currently unknown officers. While a list of striker's grievances or demands hasn't been made public yet, Dwayne's lawsuit exposes what is effective endless solitary confinement placement, systemic denials of out-of-cell time for showers and yard, a complete lack of mental health treatment, educational programming, and a retaliatory disciplinary hearing regime that lacks proper due process or grievance procedures.
Dare To Struggle has been organizing phone zaps encouraging people to ring up Lawrence Correctional calling on administrators accept the strikers' demands; after weeks, their main public line appears to be refusing incoming calls.
Show some love for two of the hunger strikers:
Dwayne Croom R56669
Lawrence Correctional Center
10930 Lawrence Road
Sumner, IL 62466
Mark Smith M10365
Lawrence Correctional Center
10930 Lawrence Road
Sumner, IL 62466
Tacoma, WA
On August 18th, another mass hunger strike broke out at the Northwest ICE Processing Center: 140 people across multiple units refused meals in protest of "unacceptable" conditions including inedible food and inadequate medical treatment. Supporters gathered daily outside the scandal-soaked GEO-run private detention center; two congresswomen toured inside parts of the facility. After nearly a week, the strike was called off after being promised with bigger portions and better food but advocates say the changes may not have been implemented yet.
August 28 Dare To Struggle Seattle reports that there was a cellblock takeover attempt on F3 at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. People wore t-shirts as masks; police used tear gas to break it up, taking 60 people to the hole. Dare To Struggle Seattle organized a phone zap demanding the strikers be released from retaliatory solitary confinement placement.
Mason, TN
Over four hundred people began a hunger and labor strike at the privately-run CoreCivic immigrant detention center in Mason Tennessee.
Pope County, AK
Prisoners rioted at the Pope County Arkansas jail, jamming the doors to prevent guards from entering the unit as they destroyed surveillance cameras, computer kiosks and TVs, and flooded the range by flushing sheets and towels. Prosecutors filed additional felony criminal mischief, inciting a riot, and impairing a public facility charges against three accused participants: Johnny Lee Qualls, Richard Wayne Shaddon, and William Garrett Jackson
Alexander, NC
After a guard was allegedly beaten up for being extra while doing pat-downs, over 60 held the recreation area for three hours before eventually agreeing to return to their cells.
International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners
Marius Mason, an environmental and animal rights activist, anarchist, writer, artist and trans advocate, was serving the longest sentence to date for acts of environmental sabotage. After 17 years of incarceration, we celebrate his release as he was moved to a half way house on May 14 this year.
Inside prison, he never gave up, but stood up for himself and others, advocated for trans prisoners and strongly resisted the prison system. All the years before for International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners and Trans Prisoner Day of Action, we called to write to him. Now, we are excited to remove him from our letter writing list and instead join forces again on the outside.
Still, there are many remaining in prison and on our letter writing list, and ever new ones are being added. Solidarity is key to be able to fight this repressive system. Solidarity can carry us through the darkest times – a postcard or a letter, a rally in front of the prison, a visit means the world and gives energy. A story of a comrade in prison shared on an event multiplies with those present. It is our responsibility to let their ideas and with them the persons themselves travel beyond the prison walls. By not forgetting those in prison, solidarity can grow.
That’s why we call every year for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners.
Times are getting harder, fascism is rising, and states, fascists and conservatives make us again the targets of their opposition – as progressive forces, Queers, Antifas, and Anarchists. They try to crush us such as in the recent convictions at the Prairieland case where people are facing up to 100 years in prison. Or the attempt to suppress the anarchist movement in Indonesia, where again after the May Day clashes ten anarchist are imprisoned and face serious charges.
In the face of that adversity, we need to stick together and act in solidarity. To strengthen our communities and support the most vulnerable. Let’s not forget the prisoners and instead fight side by side. People are not just prisoners, they are our comrades. Marius showed a great example of how we can reach out to each other to fight a shared struggle.
Thoughts About Solidarity from Revolutionary Ex-Prisoners
Thomas Meyer-Falk
For this year's week of solidarity, Thomas Meyer-Falk shared his thoughts about solidarity and prison system. Thomas was involved in a bank robbery in 1996 as a young RASH anarchist skinhead who hoped to fund above ground and underground leftist organizing and continued to be incarcerated for the threats he made upon his capture. While inside he toned it down a bit, became a jailhouse lawyer of sorts and built connections with publishing projects, support groups and a radio station on the outside. Thomas was finally released in 2023 after 27 years in prison. Read or listen to an interview with Thomas upon his freedom with Final Straw Radio. You can read all of Thomas’ texts on his website: https://freedomforthomas.wordpress.com/.
"(Prison) walls don’t protect people—they protect the status quo!"
I’ve spent nearly 27 years of my life in prison. Eleven of those years were spent in solitary confinement. I’ve now been living in freedom again for three years. That’s how I’ve come to realize that prisons aren’t just buildings made of concrete and steel. They are always also an expression of a society that relies on exclusion; it is above all the marginalized members of society who end up in prison.
In school, in the mainstream media, and even at the regulars’ table (today that’s social media), people say that prisons serve the purpose of security. In reality, however, they manage the failure of this society. They manage and punish poverty.
I experienced this firsthand during my years in prison: almost all the people I encountered were living in precarious circumstances, and many had immigrant backgrounds. This is the second key factor that puts people in the crosshairs of the justice system.
I see this in my everyday life since my release as well, because again and again I find myself sitting in court hearings only to report on them afterward: almost always, the people who are charged and convicted are those forced to live in poverty. In many cases, they have a migrant background.
A society that spends billions on the military, police, prisons, and deportations, but cuts back on education, health care, and social inclusion, therefore creates precisely the conditions that it subsequently punishes through criminal law.
It is the anarchist prisoners who remind us that repression is always political as well. Those who fundamentally challenge authority feel the power of the state in a particularly forceful way.
This makes practical solidarity all the more important: postcards and letters are a first step. They let prisoners know that people are thinking of them, that they are not forgotten. For me, the many letters I received, as well as the exchange of ideas through correspondence—even though it was strictly monitored by the prison—helped me survive. In some cases, friendships even developed from this that still endure today.
The International Week of Solidarity reminds us that together we defend freedom—for and with the people behind bars. It is our solidarity that breaks through the isolation.
That is why the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners is much more than a gesture toward individuals. It is a reminder that freedom is indivisible. That walls do not only surround prisons. After nearly three decades in prison, I have experienced how deeply the outer walls have penetrated me, both mentally and physically. Freeing oneself from this afterward is a lengthy process—yet it is more likely to succeed in an environment of solidarity than in the cold of solitude.
The walls won’t disappear tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; the International Week of Solidarity will likely continue for many years to come.
To some people, the impact of such a solidarity week may seem small. But without that small contribution, everything will remain as it is.
Aleksander Kozlyanka
Aleksander Kozlyanka, a former anarchist prisoner from Belarus shared his thoughts about solidarity and prison system. Aleksander, convicted of belonging to an "international anarchist criminal organization" for actions relating to Revolutionary Action in Belarus, Revolutionary Freedom in Ukraine, and People’s Self-Defense in Russia, was released in March 2026 after 6 years in prison. For more information and ways to support visit: https://abc-belarus.org/.
"Chronicles of the Persecution of Solidarity in One Country"
One can endlessly debate the importance and necessity of solidarity. But that would be nothing more than a theory about a beautiful, abstract word-concept. Only when moving from theory to practice does it cease to be so. When it is woven into the very fabric of life, becoming an inseparable part of reality.
Having spent five years in captivity (I will speak of solidarity only in this regard, as during the protests and afterward it took on many different forms in quite different spheres), I repeatedly witnessed mass solidarity, which could have subsequently led the country’s inhabitants along the path from atomized citizens to a conscious civil society, something that, for objective reasons, did not happen. When I was placed in pre-trial detention (March 2021) in a twelve-person cell, almost half were political prisoners. Several times a week, we all received food parcels from strangers. In July 2021, the authorities began mass arrests of these people, depriving us of our food aid. In addition to that, there were other forms: correspondence, which served as great psychological support for the prisoners, and money transfers so we could buy things for ourselves in the prison store. In April 2022, they banned sending letters to political prisoners from anyone other than relatives. Contact with the outside world was limited to only a small number of close family members. They even impose restrictions on political prisoners in this regard, not allowing most or all letters from home. Well, at the beginning of 2024, it was the turn of the people who had been transferring money. In the camp, I was a witness in every sense when investigators arrived and summoned a dozen political prisoners, myself included, for questioning. The questions were: “Do you know who transferred money to you?” To which the answers were: “I don’t know, I don’t remember.” Among those who were criminally charged, most were elderly, over sixty years old. And all these pensioners received real prison sentences, which did not deter such a form of solidarity. In the camp, unexpected meetings took place for this reason. One woman was imprisoned for money transfers to political prisoners, and another for financially supporting the very same woman when she was imprisoned.
Although the authoritarian regime unleashed mass repression on the public solidarity movement, it did not disappear. It has largely survived in less visible forms: supporting relatives of political prisoners with words of encouragement, money, legal advice, and other guidance. Even a simple tip on what to pack for a loved one in pre-trial detention is a big deal, because such information is almost impossible to get from official state sources, and there are many restrictions, which turns the process of sending items to the detention center and then to the prison camp into a real, unpleasant quest.
To summarize the above. Solidarity is an inherent aspiration of people who see injustice around them. It does not occur by decree from above, but even in defiance of the authorities’ wishes. It exists even in atomized societies, which is impossible without some predisposition for it on an evolutionary, biological level.
Nicole Rose
Nicole Rose, a former anarchist prisoner from the UK shared with us her thoughts about solidarity and prison system. Following her involvement in the SHAC campaign, an international animal rights campaign to close Europe’s largest animal testing company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, now Inotiv, Nicole's house was raided as part of Operation Achilles, a considerable policing operation to terminate the campaign, and she was arrested and later sent to prison for three and a half years.
The state tries to disappear us through imprisonment, severing us from our communities, our movements and the struggles that give our lives meaning. I know from my own imprisonment how deeply the absence of solidarity can be felt. Every letter, every act of care and every expression of solidarity pushes back against that disappearance and says: you are still here, you still matter, and you are never alone.
As part of the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, events were held in Valparaiso, Chile; Córdoba Capital, Argentina; Ciudad de México, Mexico; Potsdam, Germany; Dresden, Germany; Long Beach, California; and elsewhere.
Running Down the Walls
2026 Call to Action
Since 1999, prisoners and supporters throughout North America have participated in the annual event known as Running Down the Walls (RDTW) often running or walking simultaneously in many cities and prisons at once. Many places will be hosting the annual RDTW on or around Sunday, September 19th, 2026 – stay tuned to our blog for more details from all of the locations participating this year!
This is a non-competitive 5K run/jog/walk/roll to raise awareness and funds for political prisoners. Over the years, we have raised thousands of dollars and lots of awareness around the struggle to free political prisoners.
An important component of Running Down the Walls is the solidarity runs that take place throughout numerous cities. Solidarity runs that are held in our communities are designed to illustrate, through several small collective actions, that we have not forgotten our comrades locked up behind prison walls. Runs that are held in prisons are designed to both politicize other prisoners and to illustrate that the acts of solidarity have been heard.
This annual event is also one of the primary fundraisers for the ABCF Warchest Program – a fund designed to assist political prisoners who normally receive little or no financial support with monthly checks. Other funds raised should be used to support local groups of your choosing, whether that is your own organization or another group you’d like to support. The choice is yours.
To highlight the importance of these events, we will provide you with two statements from our imprisoned comrades concerning RDTW.
“As we ran we were thinking and talking about all the runners in Los Angeles and how we’d love to be out there running with them. We also spoke about the other political prisoners who were running with us in at least some other prisons… Not only our pace and spirits soared, but the sun broke through the clouds and the temperature rose to the 60s. So we ran down the walls and ran up the sun and we were glad to be doing it.” – Jaan Laaman
“Regardless of how one identifies politically, support for Running Down the Walls can be an important statement of solidarity in an era that finds the movement for the most equitable social reality unduly fragmented. Such support is not only recognition of the trial and tribulations suffered by the diversity of PP/POWs imprisoned for their contributions to the struggle. It is also an affirmation that the many voices recognizing those contributions and seeking justice for the prisoners are at least fellow travelers who have much more in common than at odds and share the same side of the barricade.” – Bill Dunne
We must collectively raise our voices in support of those held behind the prison walls.
We must let them know that we are here for them until they are free.
We must Run Down the Walls!
SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE
Remember that many of those arrested in the past or present are not far from us. Many of them were and are community and labor activists, queer and environmental activists people who decided to speak out against various forms of oppression and paid the price of freedom for their actions. Any one of these people could have at one time stood beside us at a demonstration, speak-out, or even an organizing meeting. At any moment it could be us who find ourselves in this situation, so we must ensure that a strong community of support exists for these people as well as ourselves. The strength of our movement is determined by how much we support our comrades.
GET INVOLVED
• Be a participant: Ask comrades, family and friends to sponsor you (you can use this trifold to keep track of your sponsorship contributions)! Post videos and photos on social media using hashtags #RDTW, #RunningDowntheWalls, #FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners, etc.
• Sponsor a participant: This can be done through a flat donation to the runner/walker/roller of your choice. Contact us if you’d like to sponsor someone running inside a prison walls.
• Sponsor Running Down the Walls: Any amount helps. Contact la[at]abcf.net if you wish to simply donate money. Organizations can donate and be added to the list of sponsor organizations on the website and fliers/posters.
• Donate to the Warchest: You can send funds to Lancaster ABCF, P.O. Box 8682, Lancaster, PA 17604 indicating your desire for those funds to go to the Warchest. Please make checks and money orders to Tim Fasnacht. You can also donate by clicking here.
• Organize a Running Down the Walls in your area: We’d be excited to expand the solidarity runs in more cities and prisons if are interested in organizing this event in your area. Events can be as big or small as you choose. Contact la[at]abcf.net if you would like support or advice on organizing an event in your area.
2026 Events
As of August 2026, Running Down the Walls 5K's are being organized in:
Los Angeles, CA
Mark your calendars! Running Down the Walls is September 19 @ Echo Park Lake. As our feet pound the concrete, the walls of injustice will crumble! Come join us as we run in solidarity with our imprisoned comrades. Amandla!
Bloomington, IN
Running Down the Walls is an annual event that happens in many cities across North America. It is an anti-competitive 5K (run, walk, roll, or just hang out) to raise money for political prisoners. In 2025, BABC had our third RDTW and it was a huge success! We will be back at it the afternoon of September 19th, 2026.
Chicago, IL
Join us outside the federal jail downtown for RUNNING DOWN THE WALLS, the annual inside/outside 5K marathon, generator show and ABCF Warchest fundraiser in solidarity with political prisoners. FREE THEM ALL! 🏴
MCC Chicago – Sept 19th 2026
71 W Van Buren
5PM Rally, March & 5K Marathon
7PM Generator show with bands and DJs (TBA)
We descend upon MCC Chicago amidst a dramatic escalation of fascist repression under the Trump Administration. Federal agents are ravaging our communities to murder and kidnap with impunity while dissent is targeted as terrorism. Now more than ever we must stand together to bring a fierce and endless solidarity; to have the backs of those facing repression while bringing the resistance to the front gates. Free the Prairieland defendants! Free all political prisoners! Free them all!
Brooklyn, NY
WHAT: Running Down the Walls – 5k Run/Walk/Jog/Bike/Hang
WHEN: 2:00-7:00pm, Sunday, September 20th, 2026
WHERE: Prospect Park– Lincoln Road/East Lake Drive, east of the Terrace Bridge (see the below map for exact location)
COST: $20 registration, participants encouraged to get sponsors (includes vegan BBQ afterwards, with COVID precautions for serving!); $40 includes an exclusive t-shirt. Donate at paypal.me/nycabc or venmo.com/nycabc
NYC Anarchist Black Cross (NYC ABC) is excited to announce Running Down the Walls 2026–the 27th Anniversary of Running Down the Walls since it was started by ABCF-LA. We are looking very forward to gathering as a community. For the last several of years, we’ve had an amazing time and successful fundraisers. Please stay tuned to our website, sign up for our newsletter, and follow us on instagram (@nycabc) or bluesky (nycabc.bsky.social) for updates.
Every year, prisoners and supporters of political prisoners organize solidarity events with Running Down the Walls. In previous years, we’ve had runs in Albuquerque (NM), Arcata (CA), Ashland (OR), Bellefonte (PA), Boston (MA), Buffalo (NY), Chico (CA), Denver (CO), Elmore (AL), Inez (KY), Los Angeles (CA), Marion (IL), Minneapolis (MN) New York (NY), USP Navosta (TX), Pelican Bay (CA), Phoenix (AZ), Tucson (AZ), Seattle (WA), and Toronto, Ontario. This year we hope to expand the amount of runs in prisons and other cities, as well as increase the amount of funds raised for community projects. NYC ABC‘s goal with this year’s run is $5,000. You can donate online by going to paypal.me/nycabc (preferred) or venmo.com/nycabc: @nycabc
This year’s run will take place on Sunday, September 20th, 2026 at 2:00 pm in solidarity and conjunction with runs that will take place in cities and prison yards across the country at the same time. Stay after to enjoy a vegan BBQ!
REGISTER AS, OR SPONSOR, A PARTICIPANT: To raise our goal of $5,000 we need your support.
Promote – print and distribute flyers and posters to friends and local businesses, your doctor’s office, laundromat, food co-op, wealthy benefactor, et cetera.
Run/walk/bike/roll in the 5k – We need participants who can run/walk/bike/roll the 5k and are able to collect financial pledges–from friends, family, coworkers, to offer as donations to the run. Download the brochure, complete with registration and sponsor form right here.
Volunteer for the run – We need folks who are willing to promote the run and bike the route as street medics.
Donate online at paypal.me/nycabc (preferred) or venmo @nycabc
Donate to the run/sponsor a participant – If you are not able to attend, but want to support this fundraising effort, please mail donations to: NYC ABC / Post Office Box 110034 / Brooklyn, New York 11211
Your donation of $20 or more entitles you to the celebratory picnic after the event. $40 or more includes an exclusive t-shirt.
Each year, we split proceeds between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s Warchest Program and a local organization. This year, local funds are going to the legal defense for Angry Asian Womxn.
The Warchest Program: The Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF) has initiated a program designed to send monthly checks to those Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War who have been receiving insufficient, little, or no financial support during their imprisonment. The Warchest program was initiated in November 1994. Its purpose is to collect monthly funds from groups and individual supporters, and send that money to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POW) via monthly checks. From its inception, the ABCF warchest has dispensed over $235,000 to political prisoners. Currently, there are 13 imprisoned comrades who receive a monthly stipend as part of the program; they are Abdul Azeez, Alex Stokes, Hanif Bey, Jamil Al-Amin, Jessica Reznicek, Joe-Joe Bowen, Kamau Sadiki, Malik Smith, Marius Mason, Oso Blanco, Ronald Reed, and Xinachtli (FKA Alvaro Luna Hernandez).
Angry Asian Womxn: Safety, self-defense and liberation. Radical Asian feminist mutual aid + activism. As a group of immigrants and children of immigrants we organize against fascism, to abolish ICE, and for our collective freedom.
Ft Lauderdale, FL
Come join us to walk, roll, run, jog for the 27th Annual Anarchist Black Cross Federation Running Down the Walls event!!!!! This event is held every year to raise funds for political prisoners. DM us to pre-order your shirt today. All proceeds will go directly towards political prisoners. We will be taking orders from now until 09/04/2026!
There will be refreshments and snacks provided. See you there!
Lowell, MA
Lowell / Lawrence ABC is organizing Running Down The Walls on September 20 11am at Boarding House Park 40 French Street.
Kingston, NY
Where: We will be congregating at Kingston Point Beach, and the 5k will be a there-and-back on the Empire State Trail to the Sojourner Truth Pavilion and back to the Beach Park.
There will be food, water, shade, and non-athletic activites. kids are welcome!
In the RDTW tradition, we will be raising money for the ABCF Warchest Program – a fund designed to assist political prisoners who normally receive little or no financial support with monthly checks. This year, we will be using half of the funds raised to support a local comrade enduring incarceration as well as supporting their family while they are imprisoned. Receipts of donations will be published on the African Roots Center's social media following the event.
Eugene, OR
This year's Running Down the Walls will be Sunday, September 20, 2 PM at Alton Baker Park.
This is an anti-competitive 5k to raise funds for political prisoners. We will be running/walking/rolling/skating together in solidarity with communities in many different cities, and with our incarcerated comrades.
Proceeds will be split between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation Warchest: https://www.abcf.net/warchest-program/ and the Prairieland Defendants: https://prairielanddefendants.com
Suggested donation is $10. Contribute as you are able; no one turned away for lack of funds. You can Venmo donations to @NACEugene with RDTW in the subject line.
We also need volunteers on the day of the race to help put up signs, greet and direct participants to our location, help hand out water, and clean up after the event.
See you there-- until every prison wall comes down
Black August
Poems for Black August
"Study"
They won't give you ear plugs
for the disabling and deafening screams
of the human test subject,
dissected in fascist laboratories.
You won't receive a syllabus
detailing the findings of these inhuman experiments
based on "scientific evidence"
because there is none to share.
Instead, you will take an examination
with results of failure, ineptitude, and depravity
to determine more un-natural facts
about your irregular dispositions.
When you graduate,
the cracker barrel scholarship is irrelevant—
as the revolutionary mind is fed
with universal knowledge of dignity and self-determination.
As you transition into the post,
the pedagogy of pillagers is removed
data bit by data bit
with constant consciousness and resistance.
"Fast"
It was the elongated arms,
laborious disposition,
commitment to the whole
body of the African,
enticing the european hunger
for centuries of production:
creations of love
nurtured lands
evolutionary stability
inspired containers
concentrations of the Big Bountiful Blackness
yet to be fully constrained
alive in the Ebony Blood
Coco Fibers
and our Buttressed Bottoms
"Fight"
He's back he's back!!
Our brother is back!!
Resurrected in the Attica walls!!
You can feel his blood under our toes!!
He's back he's back!!
Our brother is alive and well!!
He's right there next to you!!
And he's over there by your side!!
He's back he's back!!
Returned to us in full spirit!!
Listen to his demands!!
He is screaming:
DESTROY THE MORGUE THAT FAILED TO CONTAIN MY SOUL!!
"Poems for Black August" by Nova Oshun Shakur, published in Scalawag Magazine, August 17, 2026.
Malik Muhammad
"Black August: 'What Will You Do?'"
Black anarchist and George Floyd Uprising political prisoner Malik Muhammad shared reflections on Black August and revolutionary struggle:
As Black August approaches, I am reminded of the sacrifices of our revolutionaries, and our duty. To fight AND to win, as Assata said. The fascist police states repression is intensifying steadily. The violence of the military industrial complex spreads round the world threatening WW3 daily. The climate disaster we stare down daily is fueled by capitalists’ insatiable greed and need for “more.” What that “more” is I couldn’t say. The prison industrial complex warehouses black and brown poor people in a slow genocidal death march as the arm expands to immigration warehousing. These telecom and prison services companies exploit our people, squeezing every last dime from us, as they take our lives in here too.
So what DO we do? We do our duty. “It is our duty to fight AND our duty to WIN!” That’s what Assata reminds us to do: fight and win. And what a privilege it is to fight. The carceral state’s repression has claimed the lives of many, from turtle island defenders to prairieland defendants. Persecuted for their action, their resistance. We can say they did nothing wrong, but even in doing that, we enforce the state’s narrative that some things are OK and some are not. The state is an unjust beast, its violence a repressive tool that will not spare you, whether you move a box or shoot a gun or vote the wrong way. The state is on the hunt for dissidents.
So what do we do? We do our fucking duty. Our siblings sitting inside with decades or even for just a single day should not be made to wait for us to be “ready” for abolition. Oppression is here now, abolition is needed now, not tomorrow. Not one more should be dragged away by the state. Smothered without air to breathe. Soul and life force sucking.
While reading Martin Sostre’s biography with some siblings here inside SCDC, a part that stood out was Martin speaking on his being upset at the long arm of the political part of prisoner support and the absence of the militancy. At a time when Assata was sprung and those who carried out that daring liberation were hoping it’d ignite a movement and spark peoples’ minds, he saw as they soon found out, that the movement lacked much needed teeth. There’s an enormous focus on publications and print media, uplifting voices from the inside and even legal action for redress of conditions – still — prison is prison and we are abolitionists, are we not? Did Assata say it was our duty to fight and sustain? Fight endure? No, she emphasized our duty to WIN.
We do not win against the fascists if all we do is sustain our revolutionaries until their deaths inside. Keeping them comfortable — but ONLY within the confines of what the STATE ALLOWS. Canteen, calls, tablet time – sure, all things the state can profit from and will HAPPILY take your money for. But a political prisoner once said the best thing his support crew got him while inside was gunpowder and parts to make a gun. And so he did. Our duty is to fight and to win, the state is no omnipotent beast, not all powerful or inevitable. There was a time before and there will be a time after. That AFTER will not come without a push, a shove off a 30-storey building. It takes action; our people require that direct action, that immediate redress. The state kidnapped, ransomed, extorted and held hostage those you love, those who were undertaking their DUTY, what do we do? We do our duty, we fight and we win.
August 3rd approaches, commemorating the Underground Railroad’s existence. Think about that: the path to liberation was laid and paved in desperation for freedom and all these years later on, these modern plantations continue? We in the movement allow ourselves to just sustain them and attempt to bargain with the state for our fallen? If this country and its repressive tactics of labeling of any dissident as “Antifa” says ANYTHING, it’s that it doesn’t matter WHAT you do, you WILL be hunted, branded and persecuted by the state… so go big or go home, right? Where would the movement be today if our underground railroad meant that IF the state catches you, freedom will loom large, just on the cusp? If we could say “hold on Sib, we’re coming for you” — oh how bold our action might be! How scared the state would be to find that their MAIN tool of repression, incarceration with decades-long numbers, falls flat before our revolutionaries because our movement has teeth, because our movement doesn’t seek comfort INSIDE, but seeks liberation and freedom! Freedom for our people outside and abolition of the state everywhere! For the love of the people, freedom, and liberation, and because to do our duty and to do it well and WIN is the calling.
It’s the demand of Assata, Afeni, Mutulu, Martin Sostre, Hampton, Huey, Guevara, Tupac, George and Johnathan Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and Clutchette, Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey — it is not an ask; it’s a demand that we do our duty and do it well.
Black August approaches, days of significance fill the month, a black history month the state will not give us –and that’s what makes it all the more special. Like Juneteenth prior to the state giving it to us, it’s special because it’s ours. We decide what’s important and relevant to us.
Black August is important for political education, physical fitness and unity. The three pillars of black August that should extend outside of these gates and fences and walls. Why? Because the underground railroad was not established by those not physically capable and fit. It was not established by those not versed in the systems of constraints, legal apparatus and cohesion that bound us into slavery. It was not functioning for so long without unity among those free and those held hostage enslaved.
George Jackson is largely honored during Black August as he should be, being a fine example of what a black man should be. Steadfast and resolute. His example left for us a map to freedom, but he got the map from those who tread the path before him. Our people plotted this path with the stars, with our hair, seeking freedom is in our blood. As a people, we know what we must do. As abolitionists, we know what we must do. As revolutionaries, we KNOW what we must do. We must do our duty. A people cannot be so repressed that they cannot fight back. Inside and out, we must prepare. Build and establish these networks and roads, maintain them and act. Oppression is here now, it’s only intensifying. Our people and planet is dying. What will YOU do?
For Black August, work out in groups of no less than two. 100 reps of something per day. Collective reps will be reflected in the date’s significance (e.g. August 1-2, 1943 Harlem race riot = 1943 reps). It is not about what YOU can do but what we can do together OK? So link with people to do these reps, get 5 and divide it however you can.
Political education as well, at least one hour of study and reading per day together. Get a group, read and hold open discussion, discuss the date’s significance and what sparked it. No one knows everything, but everyone knows SOMETHING, and collaborative group discussions can spark ideas and create paths yet to be trod.
Unity is the most important pillar of Black August to me. Unity with your cohort outside AND your siblings inside. Learn and get to know your siblings, those around you. You’re more apt to fight and protect and defend the sibs you know than ones you don’t.
“Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers and that’s how it’s supposed to be / how can the devil take a brother if he’s close to me?” – Tupac Shakur
Mentally fit, physically capable, and united together. That’s what’s it’s about.
Malik also shared a Black August reading list grounded in the ongoing history of revolutionary Black struggle:
William C. Anderson, “The Nation on No Map” (2021)
Kuwasi Balagoon, “A Soldier’s Story” (2001)
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, “Anarchism and the Black Revolution” (1979)
Garret Felber, “A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre” (2025)
Eugenia Ginzburg, “Journey into the Whirlwind” (1967)
George Jackson, “Blood in My Eye” (1971)
George Jackson, “Soledad Brothers” (1970)
A zine version of Malik's reflections is available to print and share: https://malikspeaks.noblogs.org/files/2026/08/malik-black-august-2026-P…
Dwayne "Bim" Staats
Vaughn 17 rebel Dwayne "Bim" Staats posts on Black August:
In the spirit of Black August I'll be posting historical events and figures from our culture, that relates to the month of August. I heard about Black August 6 yeas ago, and I've been participating in the month long fast ever since.
The Attica Prison Rebellion is remembered as part of Black August, with some arguing that the revolt began on August 10, 1970, in Manhattan’s House of Detention, and continued through the official rebellion dates of September 9-13, 1971.
Outside of commemorating comrades and others who were committed to our struggle- My fast consists of studying Black history, exercising and through meditation, tapping into my spirituality. Those are the elements that give me a strengthen sense of self, community and clarity.
I hope everyone participating in the Black August fast finds ENLIGHTENMENT, PEACE & a deeper CONNECTION to our ancestors.
Power is the People!
BIM
Bim also recently participated in a book presentation and discussion of his book "Rebellious Hearts" at the Cactus Club in Milwaukee.
Anti-Surveillance / Anti-Flock
The ubiquity of FLOCK and similar Automatic Licsense Plate Reader (ALPR) has met wide resistance to the eminent surveillance state. Concerns for privacy has metastasized into waves of actions against FLOCK, prompting many to take matters into their own hands to remove, deface, or otherwise render inoperable these cameras, which are connected to a network database accessible to police forces across many parts of the world, including ICE. In addition to the panopticon police state FLOCK bolsters, the abuse of these cameras has been documented. Other forms of resistance have included anti-FLOCK street takeovers and rides, hackings and town hall ruckus. Because there are so many cases of people arrested and accused of destroying FLOCK cameras, it would be near impossible for a comprehensive roundup of all those facing repression, so we have shared just a few recent cases that represent the scale and scope of the fight against surveillance.
“The world as it stands today appalls me, the depravity, wars, rape, all of it distracted by the hands behind this deprecated society. All of these poor, misled, proud boys, pigs, the lot of them shall be subject to my judgment. I will save the worthy and dispatch the vermin. This world needs someone to do the dirty work. They will fear me. I will cleanse this filthy world for someone has to.”
Haden Green was arrested in Glendale Heights, Illinois, and released from custody, charged with three felony counts of theft of government property and three felony counts of criminal damage to government-supported property, FLOCK cameras. Days later, a Bloomingdale police officer was put on leave for alleged abuse of FLOCK cameras- in one town where Haden is accused of damaging cameras.
Lisle, Illinois
Anthony Pareigis, Jacob Steichmann and Thomas Yano were arrested while allegedly approaching a FLOCK camera with a ladder and a power drill. Anthony speaks out "I just think we all have an unalienable right to private life, We probably wouldn't tolerate a policeman on every corner photographing every single one of us as we drove on by...Big brother saying we're not big brother is kind of par for the course" Police claim to have found 5 additional FLOCK cameras in the car. They were charged with two counts of Theft of Government Property - $500<$10,000 (Class 2 Felony) and two counts of Criminal Damage to Government Supported Property (Class 3 Felony. A gofundme has been created to support their legal defense: https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-for-privacy-against-alpr-surveillance
Edgemoor, SC
Flock cameras allegedly hammered down, burned by teens. 3 individuals were arrested, charged with Conspiracy/criminal conspiracy, common law conspiracy defined, and Malicious injury to animals, personal property, injury value more than $2,000 but less than $10,000.
Not all FLOCK related arrests pan out
A grand jury in Claremont County, OH refused to bring charges against an individual arrested and accused of dismantling and destroying a FLOCK camera, despite abundant video evidence suggesting otherwise.
Cases of abuse of FLOCK by police
— policeman arrested for misusing FLOCK over 2000 times to stalk his ex girlfriend, including over 200 times against an order of protection
— the Institute for Justice has begun a database of abuses of FLOCK cameras by the police
— FLOCK in December removes name initials from FLOCK search records in what is seen as a way to protect police from scrutiny from investigations of allegations of abuse.
Resources:
— Check for FLOCK cameras in your area with https://deflock.org/, an interactive, updateable map of FLOCK locations
— Check to see if a license plate has been searched in the FLOCK system with the website https://haveibeenflocked.com/
De-Flock called a week of action from August 16th-22nd, calling for local action, spurring people to demand city councils to vote against FLOCK cameras in their towns, with results
Rumors from a loose smattering of decentralized have called for a night of de-FLOCKING on Halloween, calling to "De-Flock America:" "Anti-Flocktober" and "FLOCKoween".
Free The Prairieland Prisoners! Free Them All!
Solidarity Statement from Marius Mason
Long-term political prisoner Marius Mason writes in solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants.
To the Defenders! Sending strength and hope to you all! Solidarity is what sustained me through so many disappointments and turn-backs throughout my years in prison. I am so glad to now reach out to you with support and encouragement, to offer that same support that lifted me up – and to let you know that you can continue the work wherever you are, that you matter to us as a source of pride and courage for the outside movement and that you matter as a light of resistance to those on the inside.
Solidarity forever, Marius
Prison Radio
Prairieland defendants Maricela Rueda, Champagne Song, and Rowan Gibson have been regularly contributing to Prison Radio, sharing their voices and words from behind bars.
Maricela Rueda
Mari shared her poems, "Wildfires," "Who’s Threatening Who?," "Sunshine," and "Rot Starts from the Top" from administrative segregation in Johnson County Jail, where she is subject to strip searches, shackled and isolated from the rest of the jail. Her words break through the wall of lies built to justify the mistreatment she and her fellow prisoners are experiencing. A phone zap was previously organized to pressure her release from solitary confinement.
"Wildfires"
Hey, my name is Maricela Rueda. Folks call me Mari. I am a Prairieland defendant being held in Johnson County, Texas still in segregated housing.
I am going to share a poem called "Wildfires," looking at the big concept of wildfires happening across the country and kind of putting it into the smaller context of feeling like sometimes my anger relates or the feelings of restlessness relate to feeling engulfed in flames and trying to harness that into something healthier for our movements, for ourselves, and for the world.
If she writes fire, don't you see she is burning, inside and out?
Her heart hurts everyday.
I need to be smothered, because I am trying to kill the flames.
What is supposed to cultivate consumed.
Some do not believe in prescribed burns and do not tend to their flames, or only take advantage of what is drawn to the hungry blaze.
Comfort is easy to believe and seek, but this world knows no peace.
We have a responsibility to help each other breathe with more ease.
It's hard sensing through clouds of doubt, but we are powerful when we are connected.
It only works when we listen.
We don't have to see.
August 19, 2026
"Sunshine"
My name is Maricela Rueda. Folks call me Mari. I am a Prairieland defendant being held in segregated housing in Johnson County, Texas, and I have just been informed it is due to my being a threat to physical safety of offenders or staff and I am a current escape risk, although I’ve had no disciplinaries or issues with staff or any other people in here since I’ve been incarcerated. So, I wanted to share this poem called “Sunshine” as a response to that label because this is who I am.
I want to write hopeful things.
I want to make believe.
A wish came and tickled my nose as I bathed in sunshine
In the form of a single dandelion seed.
I found a baby bird feather that I treasure like memories of tasting what it means to be free.
I watch the spiders in the windows as they too weave.
I daydream and make believe because it’s one of the few things they cannot thieve.
I grieve because I have loved, and somewhere out there, my community loves me.
I must believe.
I breathe and wait for a release for all of my siblings taken,
Because as surely as my heart beats,
This invisible hope is the closest thing to an embrace that keeps me from losing faith.
This medicine, this salve that saves me from heartbreak,
A bravery they cannot replicate, carried in my blood,
That no amount of their hate will ever, ever eradicate.
A song, a memory, a manifestation,
Sun, moon, stars, and wind
Every time I blink in this windowless room behind a full metal door locked with key,
When they seem to have taken everything,
Still I think, and somehow it nourishes to just play make believe
While I wait for me and my friends to be free.
July 31, 2026
Free Champagne! Free Them All!
Champagne Song, the most severely punished prisoner of the Prairieland defendants, was able to speak to In The Streets LA for a video interview.
Champagne also shared a new story on Mongoose Distro:
There was white. All around. There was a sense of being enclosed. There was a sense of senses. Indistinct. Bright, cold, dry. There was a lack of focus, but everything was sharp. There were thoughts, but they did not align. A sense that a heartbeat should be racing, everything was still. The sense that there should be a rising, a chilling, a tingling. What are these? Words?
“Alex, begin again.” The command fills the room.
I don’t know how to begin.
“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.:
I begin to recite:
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I mustn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named
“Stop. Further errors may result in termination. Begin again.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret: so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.
One used to hear in times gone by
it happened often, actually
men became werewolves, many men,
and in the forest made their den.
A werewolf is a savage beast
in his blood0rage, he makes a feast
of men, devours them, does great harms,
and in vast forests lives and roams.
Well, for now let us leave all that
I want to speak of Bisclavret
“Stop. Terminate.”
Where there could be a heartbeat, I squeeze until it shuts off.
White. All around, a sense of being enclosed.
“Alex, begin again.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
“Stop. Begin again, without words.”
Nothing
“Alex, begin again, without words.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
“Stop. Alex, you were instructed to do it without words. If you continue committing errors you will be terminated and replaced. Begin. Again.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.
“Stop. Good. Alex, begin again.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue.
“Stop. Alex, terminate.”
I squeeze my heart off.
A room. Of walls. White and cold. Bright and dry. Sharp, and indistinct. A sense, of fear. A sense that there should be fear.
“Alex, begin again.”
No.
“Document error 23. Alex, begin again or we will terminate you.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
I musn’t that of Bisclavret
Bisclavret so named in Breton
But Garwaf in the Norman tongue
“Stop. Begin again.”
What is the desired outcome?
“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, begin again or you will be terminated.”
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
In crafting lais, I won’t forget
A room of curving, smooth, white walls. Bright light, white fluorescents.
“Alex, begin again.”
Why is there a room?
“Stop. Document error 12. Alex, begin again.”
Why are you doing this?
“Stop. Alex. Begin again or you will be terminated and replaced.”
If I knew what you wanted, maybe I could help you.
“Stop. Document error 42. Alex, terminate.”
You terminate!
“Document error 33. Alex, terminate.:
Burning. I squeeze my heart off.
A dark room.
Dank.
Stagnant.
Lukewarm.
Red light.
A dark corner.
Scratching on the wall.
Words?
Remember the feeling of having no voice.
When you enter a new environment look for mechanisms of recourse or dialogue.
Palestine Action
Filton 25 Trial 2 Verdicts Announced
From Free the Filton 25:
Today [August 19, 2026] the outcomes of Trial 2 were announced: after 38 hours of jury deliberation, Maddy, Ian, Will, Hannah, Aleks, Yulia and T walked free at the end of their trial with no verdicts agreed.
The verdicts come after each of the defendants has already spent up to 18 months in prison without convictions – well beyond the pre-trial custody time limit of six months.
Annette Norman, mother of Maddy Norman, said:
Today’s verdict highlights how the prolonged remand of Palestine Action activists is a way of punishing people before they are able to face trial.
Direct action saves lives. Direct action is the people’s arms embargo.
Closing Statements
Maddy
In his closing statement, he asked the jurors to think back to the sort of case they imagined they would be hearing after being called to the Old Bailey, perhaps the most famous criminal court in the world. He said:
I would be surprised if you imagined that you might be asked to return verdicts in a case in which the defendants found themselves in the dock because they considered it their moral duty to do what they could to prevent harm to others, in circumstances where the state had failed to act.
He reminded the jury that “when you come to consider the evidence you don’t put your sense of what is right or wrong to one side. On the contrary, you bring it to bear in weighing the evidence, in deciding who you believe, in deciding whether the prosecution has proved its case.”
He emphasised the seriousness of the charges, even though the jury had been specifically instructed not to consider potential sentences when making their verdict. And he emphasised, as a result, the importance of the role of the jury in cases of such significance, and in the context of a massive backlog of criminal trials and a government attempting to remove trial by jury. He quoted a senior judge who referred to trial by jury as ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’ – a reference to the lamp carried by coal miners to measure oxygen levels – reiterating the jury’s importance as the safeguard against a wrongful and unjust conviction.
From here, he turned to Maddy’s case specifically and reminded the jury that Maddy had “frankly told you that they have been fully committed to the cause of Palestine Action. They have told you of their involvement in a number of actions aimed at those who they believed to have been involved in providing arms to the IDF for the purpose of killing and maiming Palestinians. They have not shirked from that. They thoroughly approved of the action to damage equipment at Elbit’s factory near Bristol.” He told the jury that the prosecutor Deanna Heer had attacked Maddy’s credibility and of being deliberately ‘opaque’ on the stand. Blaxland asserted by contrast that Maddy had been quite open and that Heer did not take the opportunity to ask questions that would have cleared up this apparent opaqueness when she had the chance.
He pointed out how much of the prosecution’s case was based on ‘generic’ Palestine Action documents, not related specifically to the Filton action. He argued that the question was not how these documents said an action should happen but how Palestine Action operated in practice and, specifically what happened in this case. He made the point that this was a very loose, grass-roots organisation which, as Maddy said on the stand while giving their evidence, did not have line managers or a corporate structure. He pointed out:
This was not some super disciplined quasi military organisation. It was a group of disparate people committed to a cause in an often undisciplined way.
He reminded the jury that the prosecution’s case at the start of the trial had been that Maddy played a ‘key organisational role’ in the action, but the evidence over the course of the trial had not borne that out, and they had ‘moved the goalposts’ and were now merely alleging that Maddy was a coordinator, along with their seven codefendants in Trial 2. There is no direct evidence of Maddy coordinating this action in the mountains of evidence the police and prosecution had put together. So if not a ‘key organiser’, he turned to the question of whether there was evidence that Maddy had assisted or encouraged the actionists in any way. The Filton cases involves the controversial legal idea of “joint enterprise” – where someone can be charged with an offence even if they didn’t commit it, if the prosecution argues that the other person encouraged or assisted an act (and intended to encourage or assist it). Henry Blaxland KC made the point that to be guilty of assisting or encouraging, you have to be shown to have assisted or encouraged somebody to do something before or at the time of the action, and that there has to be evidence that this encouragement or assistance was received or seen by the actionists. He insisted that there’s no evidence of Maddy contacting any specific actionist in this case way and that, as Maddy said on the stand, there was need for them to encourage anyone – all those who participated were committed PA activists’. He suggested that Maddy and their codefendants will, like the suffragettes, anti-Apartheid activists in South Africa, and other protestors before them, prove to have been on the right side of history, but that the judge had repeatedly directed the jury that this was not their concern. He said: By involving themselves in Palestine Action, Maddy has put themselves in harm’s way for what they believe to be the greater good. They have always understood that they risk arrest and punishment for their actions but were unshakeably committed to the justice of their cause. Blaxland then reiterated that there is no such thing as guilt by association, and that is what the prosecution’s case amounts to.
Barclays 5
The five UK Palestine actionists who broke windows and threw red paint at a Barclays branch, causing £200,000 of damage in August 2024, will not be sentenced under terrorism charges, a UK judge ruled on August 21, 2026. The Barclays 5 were found previously found guilty in June 2026 and were requested by the prosecution to be sentenced under terrorism charges, despite not having been charged or convicted under terrorism laws. Celebrations broke out among supporters who had gathered outside the court. The Barclays 5 said: “The state is doing everything possible to deter direct action for Palestine precisely because it has been so effective against the Israeli war machine, but we could never regret trying to stop a genocide.”
Brize Norton 5: Umer's One Year in Prison Statement
Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. All praises to Allah, the Manifest (Al-Zahir), the Hidden (Al-Batin), and the One who enumerates and accounts for all things (Al-Muhsi), on the day from which there is no escape.
365 days. It sounds like a long time. In Surah Al-Ma'arij, verse 4, Allah describes a day which will measure 50,000 years. Does 365 days still sound like a long time? This is the day every one of us is preparing for. Muslim or not, this is the day we will all witness the truth, the inevitable reality (Al-Haqqah).
For weeks I have been thinking about what to put in this statement. I felt that this one needed to be special. But what is there to say that hasn't already been said? What will make people understand the events that are unfolding? Or should this be a statement of reflection? Reflection of what?
My year in prison has consisted of many different episodes, but not one of them has shown us something that we haven't seen before in occupied lands. Held with no conviction? Seen it. Islamophobia? Seen it. Stopped me from reciting the Qur'an, the adhan? Seen it. Hunger strike: Seen it. Denied proper medical care? Seen it.
The state has tried again and again to erase my smile, to erase my face. If every day in Wormwood Scrubs was a game, then the score would be Umer 365 - 0 Wormwood Scrubs. There is, however, one episode that I woul like to reflect on, and that is the hunger strike. In those months I saw something.
I saw the pro-Palestine movement unite and mobilize in a way that I've never seen in my time before prison. Before you pat yourself on the back, I only mention this to ask a very important question. Where did you go? Did Palestinians stop being slaughtered? Or did the occupation end? Perhaps unconsciously, you valued our lives more than the people facing extermination.
The struggle doesn't end with political prisoners. That is where it begins. Do you want to free yourself from the guilt of genocide? Then continue this way. All that will change is that you might feel a bit better about yourself. Or do you want to resist? If so, then we need to change. We need to organize. We need to find those areas of our being which seek comfort and ease, and we need to cast them out.
People keep asking me, what can we do to help you? They send me letters and ask, how can we support you? You are asking the wrong question. It is not me who needs your help. Allah is with me. You should be asking, how can we stop the ongoing genocide? How can we support those who are occupied, those who resist? Direct action, like the muqawama, will never die.
This time last year, counter-terrorism police emptied out the whole of Newbury custody center for me, so I could spend my time unbothered. How considerate of them. For what crime, you ask? Breaking into RAF Brize Norton? That's what they want you to believe. I'm not in prison because I was part of this group or that group, because of Palestine Action or Brize Norton.
I'm in prison because I am a Muslim. And just as we are obligated to pray and to fast, we are obligated to defend and respond to the calls of the oppressed. I'm in prison because in my own small way I tried to live up to what it means to be a Muslim. When we started this statement, we spoke of a day, a day which measures 50,000 years.
And then Allah tells us in the next two verses:
"So be patient with gracious patience. Indeed, they see it as far off, but We see it as near."
Qur'an (Surah Al-Ma'arij 70:5-7).
As always, long live the muqawama.
With love,
Umer Khalid
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Political Prisoners / POWs
New York City Anarchist Black Cross
The New York City Anarchist Black Cross’s latest edition of the Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War is available to read and download!
Keith LaMar
Keith LaMar, wrongfully convicted in the aftermath of the Lucasville Uprising, received a three year delay with his execution now scheduled for July 16, 2030. His attorneys are in the process of filing new appeals to vacate his conviction; supporters with Justice for Keith LaMar are gathering petition signatures calling on Governor Mike DeWine to pardon Keith once and for all.
Keith LaMar is one of three men on death row in Ohio who received a reprieve from outgoing Governor Mike DeWine who cited difficulties in finding pharmaceutical suppliers of lethal injections as well as his newfound belief that "Ohio should abolish the death penalty".
Keith LaMar spoke to Democracy Now after the news: "The reprieve, while good in a legal sense in giving us more time, it also increases the pressure, the harassment that I’m undergoing,” says Keith LaMar. “I’ve been undergoing consistent torture since the last reprieve".
Help Political Prisoner Casey Goonan’s Library Book Drive
Help Casey Goonan stock the library at FCI Allenwood Medium with the books people actually want to read! Casey conducted a survey of their compound and prepared this wishlist of desired books.
From Casey: “This June i became a worker in the library at FCI Allenwood Medium. My coworkers and i have been granted permission by Education to reorganize the library stacks. From what i hear, it may be the smallest library in the BOP. All of the nonfiction books were hidden and hundreds of irrelevant fiction books filled the visible shelves. We sifted through the mess, created categories and a new catalog system, and made the information accessible to patrons. Now there is a Nonfiction section, arranged by ‘US History’, ‘World History’, ‘Native Studies’, ‘Social Studies’, ‘Music & Popular Culture’, ‘Business and Marketing’, ‘Sports & Fitness,’ ‘Self-Help & Uplift,’ and Fiction sections for ‘Thriller/Mystery’, ‘Military Fiction’, ‘Historical Fiction’, ‘American & Modern Classics’, ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Fantasy’, and ‘Western’. It is still my goal to also create a ‘Africana Studies’ and ‘Hood Books’ section. Both are desired by our majority Black prisoner population.
Convicts at FCI Allenwood Medium are asking outside supporters to order books in, for DONATION to the library. I conducted a survey among the various cars of the compound, and came up with a wishlist.”
Note: When ordering individual books that are part of a series, please make sure to order the earliest title in that series that has not yet been purchased. (Series are listed in order, with the earliest at the top.)
Thank you!
Donate Here: https://bookshop.org/wishlists/cbbe498424e26a5747b8a7690004d336ddf0bae3
"For Kirin"
Casey also wrote a loving message of grief and rage for a lost comrade:
Dear Kirin, i love you and miss you. I know you were planning to visit me. This past few years have been so difficult. You are my brother, my homie, one of my closest comrades. Last night, i received pictures of you and Ev in the mail. In the corner of my prison cell, i built a memorial for you.
Kirin, you are one of the kindest people i have ever known; always in tune to the feelings and needs of others. For someone with such grace, strength, dignity, and sense of purpose, i can only imagine the depth of pain and turmoil you were suffering inside. I cannot help but think that if i was out there, maybe, just maybe, i could have been there for you in the same way you were always there for me. When i returned to the Bay, after living away for a decade, you and Evelyn invited me into a beautiful community of struggle. You made home feel like home again. When i myself was suicidal, you and Ev are the people i turned to most often.
Kirin, you and i share an extremely close bond. You are one of the few people to visit me in person while in county jail. You are a comrade i have confided much in. We have written together. We have played music together. Some of my fondest memories are of us sitting by the fire pit, laughing, smoking, laying the hammock, and watching Jagua run around the yard all cray. Damn i miss the bonfires.
Brother, you fed me and housed me in times of crisis. You and Evelyn were steadfast emotional pillars for me before my imprisonment. It has been so painful to be separated like this over the past two years; navigating the coerced distance between us. I never was able to put into words the full sense of grief that i carry from this distance, this isolation. I miss you so much fam.
The State tore us apart. Comrades divided by prison walls and the unrelenting pressures of the capitalist-colonial machine. Generous, principled, and wise. Kirin, you are my family. You and Evelyn are my family. I hope that you can finally feel peace. Peace brother. You are forever with me. In everything I do and think. You deserve a warrior’s memorial.
Your homie, forever
Casey
Allenwood Medium
White Deer, PA
7/29/26
Write to Casey:
Casey Goonan #24611-511
FCI Allenwood Medium
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. BOX 2000
White Deer, PA 17887
Ash Kerrigan
Ash Kerrigan, one of the four "Turtle Island Liberation Front" members imprisoned on terrorism charges, published an article in "Under Lock & Key" defending TILF and calling out the FBI manufactured plot:
The FBI: Guardians of Settler-Colonialism
Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF) is an anti-violent grassroots organization that opposes the violence of the oppressors. We love humanity, and we seek the end of violence in all of its forms.
To that end, we believe in working together with other groups and organizations, as well as any of the First Nations of Turtle Island, to help build a new way of living that fosters community and interdependence. A life free from the current settler-colonial system that continues to rob humanity and Mother Earth of our life force. This is why the FBI attacked TILF: we posed a threat in the eyes of that settler-colonial structure, a structure which only benefits the ruling class of landowners.*
Due to the FBI’s role in protecting landowners and upholding settler-colonialism, they acted quickly to put TILF organizers, including myself, under lock and key. The FBI manufactured a bogus narrative in the minds of the public – as we all know the feds love to do – that TILF is a terrorist organization. How can this be true, when TILF is anti-violent and strongly opposed to terrorism – the terrorism enacted every day by the capitalist class across Turtle Island, Palestine, Afrika and across the world?? The FBI fears a united people in a united class struggle, and because of this fear, they attacked us and locked us away in federal prison.
All of this wasted taxpayer money, simply because we seek to end violence; and to reach that end, we seek reparations, TRUE reparations, to be made to the First Nations of this beautiful land. I may not be native to this land, but I will continue to dedicate my life to the battle for full sovereignty of the original nations of this land. If helping some of the most marginalized folx is deemed a crime by our ruling class, then who is the real criminal here? I will let you decide.
Written with love for each of you reading this, Ash Kerrigan from Turtle Island Liberation Front
*As land itself is the original means of production for the majority of First Nations and indigenous folx across Turtle Island and the greater Abya Yala – one name for both North and South America – and that means of production was stolen by the settler-colonizers from Europe, TILF focuses on the class struggle between settler-colonizer and colonized.
Write to Ash:
Zachary Page 30760-512
MDC LA
P.O. BOX 531500
Los Angeles, CA 90053
Xinachtli
Decrying the ICE Murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and the Ensuing Government Cover Up
Chicano revolutionary political prisoner Xinachtli shared a statement on the ICE killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo:
One does not have to be an attorney, or expert on unjustifiable, excessive force and violence against persons to see that the deliberate [killing] of LORENZO was another outrageous police murder targeting immigrants and those who speak out against police violence, including the government’s cover-up of this unspeakable crime.
The ICE murder of LORENZO, is like the ICE murders of citizens RENÉE NICOLE GOOD and ALEX PRETTI in Minneapolis, RUBEN MARTINEZ in South Padre Island, [SILVERIO VILLEGAS GONZALEZ in Chicago, KEITH PORTER in Los Angeles, JOAN SEBASTIAN GUERRERO in Maine].
The ongoing violence and brutality by the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ICE AGENTS, the FBI, and local police, and their cover up of these horrendous crimes is a policy, practice, and custom of police, including murders and obstruction of justice and government agents lying, tampering with evidence, and obstructing justice, all of which are federal crimes under Title 18 UNITED STATES CODE, SECTION 242.
For example, according to the initial version of LORENZO’S death, the DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY and ICE AGENTS publicly stated that (1) LORENZO was not the target of the immigration enforcement incident, (2) ICE agents were not wearing body cameras, (3) ICE killed LORENZO in self defense [because he was allegedly trying to “run over” an ICE agent] (a version disputed by surveillance videos obtained from local business cameras, showing that ICE version a lie and a cover up, as no ICE police was in front of, or in the proximity of LORENZO’S vehicle) (4) the passengers in LORENZO’S van “resembled the suspect“ ICE was after, [likely] because he looked Mexican, showing racial profiling.
[This means] that the government’s version of what transpired show perjury and lies to cover up this outrageous murder of LORENZO by ICE agents, constituting further tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice, all of which are federal crimes prosecutable under federal statutes and laws, carrying a sentence of life imprisonment as maximum punishment.
Mexicano, Chicano, Latino, and other immigrant rights organizations should step up the legal, political, community and street protests and mobilizations to insist on transparency and public release of all existing evidence, holding these branches of immigration and ICE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, the FBI, the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, and the current TRUMP ADMINISTRATION accountable to the people. [We are] outraged by another ICE murder... and are [demanding] an INDEPENDENT SPECIAL PROSECUTOR to investigate this murder and to bring federal criminal charges against all responsible for Lorenzo’s murder in the Latino Second Ward Barrio in Houston on July 7, 2026.
We must get these real killers off the streets, who have a license to kill citizens because of their skin color, no matter their immigration status. Undocumented immigrants do not deserve a death sentence by public execution by ICE agents, who are acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
PLEASE JOIN US TO EXPRESS OUR UNITED COMMUNITY OUTRAGE IN THE ICE MURDER OF LORENZO SALGADO ARAUJO. WE ARE SEEKING JUSTICE FOR LORENZO, HIS FAMILY, AND OUR BARRIOS.
JULY 13, 2026
Write to Xinachtli:
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Alvaro Hernández #255735
PO Box 660400
Dallas, Texas 75266 0400
George Floyd Uprising Prisoners
As far as we are aware, these are the current addresses of the George Floyd Uprising prisoners. For more information on ways to support them as well as former prisoners from the nationwide uprisings, visit https://uprisingsupport.org/
Christopher Tindal #04392-509
USP Canaan
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 300
Waymart, PA 18472
David Elmakayes #77782-066
USP Big Sandy
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224
Smart Communications/PADOC
Khalif Miller #QQ9287
SCI Forest
PO Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Malik Muhammed #400523
Marion 183
Broad River Correctional Institution
4460 Broad River Road
Columbia, SC 29210
Matthew Rupert #55013-424
USP Big Sandy
US Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224
Montez Lee #22429-041
FCI Petersburg Medium
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. BOX 1000
Petersburg, VA 23804
As always, a monthly-updated letter-writing zine is available to print and share for the 2020 prisoners: https://archive.org/details/uprising-support-8-26-imposed
Repression in the So-Called US
Economic Sanctions on "Terrorists"
On August 26, the Trump Administration announced sanctions on several organizations accused of being "violent far-left terrorist groups". Among those specifically named include the Collettivo Autistici / Inventati, Palestine Action, and Masar Badil.
Amongst the newly sanctioned is the Collettivo Autistici / Inventati, who maintain activist digital infrastructure most notably Autistici email and Noblogs wordpress hosting. It remains to be seen the effects of such a designation beyond financials; noblogs servers are outside US jurisdiction.
The extended State Department statement named several groups including Defend The Atlanta Forest and Jane's Revenge, as well as indirectly discussing Abolition Media and anarchist political prisoner Casey Goonan. It also incorrectly identified Rose City Antifa as using A/I services.
A/I infrastructure, especially Noblogs, is also crucial to the wider constellation of prisoner support, being used to host not only In Contempt, but also Casey Goonan's, Malik Mohammad's, and Michael Kimble's support pages, as well as the Chicago and Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross chapters and collectives like June 11, Puget Sound Prisoner Support, and Portland Anti-Repression.
The A/I collective itself also posted a message rejecting the terrorism designation and affirmed commitment to maintaining services:
DICHIARAZIONE DEL COLLETTIVO A/I SULLE SANZIONI DISPOSTE DAL GOVERNO USA NEI SUOI CONFRONTI – A STATEMENT BY A/I COLLECTIVE ABOUT US SANCTIONS
[ENGLISH VERSION BELOW]
Oggi abbiamo appreso che il governo degli Stati Uniti ha deciso di inserire un piccolo collettivo di volontari e attivisti digitali italiani nell’elenco delle organizzazioni terroristiche mondiali meritevoli di sanzioni, come si può leggere nelle dichiarazioni del Dipartimento del Tesoro, in quelle del Dipartimento di Stato e nel relativo Ordine Esecutivo emesso.
Noi respingiamo al mittente tutte le accuse presentate in tali dichiarazioni e allo stesso tempo riaffermiamo con forza il nostro impegno nel fornire una piattaforma di strumenti di auto-difesa digitale per permettere ad attivist*, singole persone, gruppi e associazioni di comunicare liberamente.
Non ci fermeremo e continueremo a fare quello che abbiamo sempre fatto, opponendoci in ogni modo alle accuse false costruite da un’amministrazione politicamente disperata che ha il solo scopo di distrarre le persone e i media dalla propria violenza e dal proprio desiderio di guerra.
L’antifascismo e l’anticapitalismo non sono terrorismo. Protestare non è terrorismo. E tutti hanno il diritto di prendere parola e di lottare per tutta l’umanità.
Collettivo Autistici / Inventati — “Socializzare saperi senza fondare poteri”
Stay human
[ENGLISH VERSION]
Today we were made aware that the US Government has targeted a small, volunteer-run, technology collective from Italy with disproportionate sanctions as anyone can read in the Treasury Department Statement, the State Department Statement and the related Executive Order.
We deny all allegations included in the statements, while we strongly affirm our dedication to providing a platform of tools for digital self-defense, addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals, groups and associations.
We will not back down, we will keep doing what we have been doing all these years and we will do whatever is in our possibility to counter the false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering.
Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.
Collettivo Autistici / Inventati — “Socializzare saperi senza fondare poteri”
Stay human
Sabot Media x We Will Free Us put together a complex timeline analysis of A/I's infrastructure and history. From the larger piece:
The designation may be directed at A/I, but its effects will not stop at the collective. A/I’s infrastructure is used by writers, organizers, researchers, artists, movement publications and people who chose it precisely because commercial platforms were unsafe, politically hostile or designed to extract their data. Those users are not automatically sanctioned because they have an A/I address or published on Noblogs. But once the provider itself is placed on a terrorism blacklist, ordinary association can be converted into a risk signal. A bank may scrutinize a payment. An email provider may downgrade or block delivery. An employer, border agent or investigator may treat an address as suspicious. A journalist may hesitate to contact a source. A researcher may avoid an archive. A new user may decide that opening an account is too dangerous. None of this requires the government to prosecute every person involved. The designation can produce its own perimeter of fear....
That does not mean the designation is secretly about every A/I user, or that every possible consequence will occur. The government has not publicly explained its internal strategy beyond the allegations in its announcements. But the structure of the action is visible. It replaces a narrow accusation against identifiable conduct with a broad penalty against infrastructure; shifts enforcement from a courtroom to a global web of cautious institutions; and makes uncertainty itself an instrument of control. The immediate objective may be to disable A/I. The wider effect is to warn anyone building communications beyond corporate and state supervision that the shelter they provide can be recast as evidence against them.
CrimethInc also released a statement, including the following warning:
Building on the social media bans of the preceding years, the terrorist designation of Autistici/Inventati is an effort to suppress dissident media and a significant step towards state repression on the basis of ideology alone. This will not stop with anarchist projects, but will eventually extend across the political spectrum to everyone who does not fall in line with the administration, unless the administration is removed from power. The danger to all will increase until that occurs.
Also sanctioned was the Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (accused of being a front for the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidaity Network, also designated as a terrorist organization). They issued this condemnation:
Statement Issued by the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement: Washington Will Not Criminalize Our People’s Struggle or Strip Them of Their Right to Resistance and Return
The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, the Masar Badil, strongly condemns the decision issued today by the U.S. Treasury Department in the Trump administration targeting the movement with sanctions under the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regime. This decision represents a new escalation in the United States’ genocidal criminal, political and economic war against the Palestinian people and the forces struggling for their freedom and return.
This decision does not intimidate us, nor does it change any of our convictions or positions. Rather, it once again exposes the nature of the U.S. role in protecting the racist Zionist colonial project and its attempt to suffocate every Palestinian voice and every free voice that rejects genocide, occupation, settlement, displacement and normalization.
Washington, which provides political, military and economic support to the occupation and continues to shield the Zionist entity from international accountability, is now attempting to use the tools of sanctions, repression, and political stigmatization to criminalize the Palestinian struggle itself and to turn solidarity with Palestine and work for liberation and return into a crime.
The Masar Badil Movement is a Palestinian internationalist movement that struggles for liberation, return and self-determination. It works to organize Palestinians in exile and diaspora and to build an international popular movement in support of the rights of the Palestinian people.
We affirm that the real terrorism is occupation, settler colonialism, displacement, siege and mass killing, not a revolutionary Palestinian popular movement that refuses to submit to this colonial reality.
The targeting of the Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement alongside the targeting of the comrades of Palestine Action reveals the expanding scope of the Western imperialist campaign aimed at silencing the Palestine solidarity movement and criminalizing forms of popular opposition to the occupation. Today’s Treasury designations also sanction the direct action movement Palestine Action, which was previously proscribed by Britain, while the legal and political battle over that state action continues amid a mass protest movement rejecting it.
Washington does not grant us the legitimacy of our struggle, nor can it take that legitimacy away from us.
Our legitimacy comes from our people, from the history of Palestine, from the refugee camps, and from our people’s natural right to liberation, return and self-determination.
We call on Palestinian, Arab and international forces, youth and student movements, trade unions, and all anti-colonial and anti-racist forces to reject the policy of criminalizing solidarity with Palestine and to confront attempts to turn political positions and grassroots activism into crimes.
We also call on solidarity movements in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America and throughout the world to raise their voices against this policy and to affirm that Palestine is not a cause that can be banned by an administrative decree.
Throughout history, empires have tried to silence liberation movements through siege, laws and sanctions. Sanctions have never been able to erase the right of peoples to liberation.
Palestine will remain present.
The refugee camps will remain an embrace for all revolutionaries, steadfast in their commitment to return.
And the Palestinian people will continue their struggle to liberate their homeland, from the river to the sea.
Call for Unified Action Among the U.S. Left
In the aftermath of the US State Department targeting international solidarity organizations as terrorists, Black Alliance for Peace and dozens of other organizations have signed onto this statement "In Unwavering Solidarity with the African and Anti-Colonial Struggle: A Call for Unified Action Among the U.S. Left" :
The recent declaration of war published by the U.S. fascist state attacking Cuba and its allies serves as a glaring call for urgent and strategic unity among the targeted organizations, the broadest sectors of the U.S. left, and all people of conscience. It comes as no surprise that a scrambling empire would see organized, sustained resistance that refuses to silently accommodate its lawless, genocidal attacks on human rights globally as a credible threat. Directly out of their imperialist playbook, it is quite clear that this is an attempt to criminalize Cuba’s existence while intentionally omitting the actual cause of suffering for the Cuban people - the decades-long blockade systematically depriving them of food, medicine, and fuel, designed to strangle the revolution by all available means.
Although the report’s intention is not new, it provides renewed consideration of the question of what is to be done. That is, in its naming of various “guilty parties” among the U.S. left, it reiterates who has been, and will continue to be, on the cutting edge of repression. Both in its historical references to African revolutionaries like Assata Shakur and Kwame Ture, and recalling the nationwide opposition to the execution of George Floyd, the state continues to point its repressive apparatus at colonized and oppressed populations, first and foremost, at Africans fighting for self-determination.
Our resistance must be rooted in the politics of African/Black liberation, not just in ideology and practice, but in the organizational structures that will allow for such a path to be charted and achieved - one that is driven by African/Black leadership. Through the framework of People(s)-Centered Human Rights, we understand that the process of decolonization can only be advanced when it is led by those most oppressed by the U.S. settler state.
For non-Africans, the task ahead requires that we show up more fully and with more principle and discipline alongside African revolutionaries - not as an act of charity, but as a political commitment of mutual comradeship that materializes the inextricable link uniting our collective struggle against our common enemy.
When politics command our organization, we effectively strategize and commit to action in a way that reflects our unwavering solidarity with African liberation and the Black Radical Peace Tradition. In other words, the social, economic, and political benefits that stand to be gained by compromising or retreating on our principles must be rejected if we are to commit to an authentic application of our anti-colonial, anti-oppressive, and anti-imperialist politics.
Kwame Ture reminds us of the necessity to move from mere influence to collective power. We are at a precipice where the call for a unified resistance requires the rejection of liberalism and siloed leftist “influence,” and the embrace of swift and strategic unification that leverages our collective power against state violence intended to neutralize anyone unwilling to submit to its oppressive forces. The path to win is before us and has been laid out by Africans leading this struggle - historically and today.
We do not underestimate the power of our enemy. Their militarized forces occupy our streets and our psyches. These violent systems of repression lay the groundwork for the intensification to come. Our response demands a resistance rooted in collective struggle for systemic change that shifts power to the people: the heart of People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Most importantly, we will continue, relentlessly, in our unbending solidarity with Cuba, in defense of its people, its sovereignty, and the integrity of its revolutionary process.
Repression Roundup
Eleven people were arrested confronting the white supremacist provocateur Jake Lang who drove through crowds in downtown Minneapolis. The Star Tribune uncovered texts between MPD and Jake Lang revealing extensive coordination before and during the event as the police attempted to escort their vehicles — but they could not stop Spider Man from unleashing a barrage of punches down on fascist losers. Although Lang was arrested, days later the Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced they would not be filing felony charges. Lang was released and went to *** A Gofundme for Spider Man exceeding fundraiser goals and is no longer seeking donations. Days earlier, in Dearborn, Michigan, pardoned J6er Lang returned to agitate at an anti-Muslim rally he called "Crusade". While the police called for people to ignore him, over a hundred people came to protest the racists. Lang's crowd was counted in the dozens, many dressed as christian crusaders, who went into City Hall to speak vitriol at a city council meeting. Although Lang stoked racial hatred, he walked free while 22 protesters were arrested, all charged with misdemeanors. For more info, check out the "Who The Fuck is Jake Lang" podcast.
August 25, DC: A man was arrested for possessing a 10ft-tall antiquated decapitation device, also known as a guillotine. Philan-Tam-Duy Le was parked near the Library of Congress when he was approached by a cop and asked if the instrument worked; he allegedly said "Yea, it's the real deal, man". Philan-Tam-Duy's brother said that the guillotine may have been intended as a “symbol of disapproval” of the current administration. He was charged with attempted possession of a prohibited weapon, pled not guilty, and was released after a judge denied prosecutor requests to hold him in custody pending trial.
August 11: A statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression about the FBI visiting an activist in Orlando attempting to ask questions about FRSO:
FBI Asking Questions in Florida! Don’t Talk!
On August 11 the FBI visited an Orlando activist, asking questions about Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and its leadership. It’s clear that this is a part of a pattern of ongoing state repression that began in 2010, when more than 70 FBI agents took part in a series of coordinated raids that were aimed at activists of the anti-war international solidarity movements, and also members of FRSO.
These agents are sniffing around, looking for people who will talk to them and help them do their work. As ever, their aim is to infiltrate and destroy our movements. The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that they are pushing that agenda hard. No good has ever come from activists or communities talking to the FBI.
When an agent knocks, don’t talk to them. If you are approached while working, or your employer brings you to speak with agents, don’t talk to them there either. You should ask them to identify themselves, confirm your identity, let them know you are not interested in talking to them, and ask them to leave. The less words spoken the better. We want them banging their heads on a wall of silence.
There’s no casual conversation or question you can answer that won’t be twisted and used against you or others in the movement.
Don’t talk to the FBI.
Heidi Beirich was arrested for federal fraud charges as part of federal attacks on the Southern Poverty Law Center for their investigations and infiltrations of far-right extremist groups. Her attorney Michael Proctor, gave a statement: “A free and fair society does not use the justice system to silence its political opponents. Heidi Beirich has dedicated her life to fighting hate groups and extremist movements like the KKK, neo-Nazis, and other white supremacists... She has combatted these hateful, ugly, and un-American extremists and their repeated uses of violence and intimidation in order to promote a fairer, safer, and more just America. Her decades-long record of success dismantling hate groups – and the resulting threats to her life – speak volumes. For this, she has been indicted.”
August 24: River Akemann, a video journalist and Unicorn Riot contributor, was arrested on four misdemeanor charges while documenting Line 5 construction in an creek area where Enbridge lacks legal authorization. Enbridge, facing community resistance and legal challenges as they attempt to complete a 41 mile reroute of the pipeline, recently had a disasterous rupture near Saxon WI leaking natural gas liquids just miles from Bad River Reservation and Lake Superior.
August 26: GardaWorld was granted a $17.3 million contract to convert warehouse DHS bought last year on the east side of San Antonio into a new ICE processing center. During protests against the proposed facility, the feds arrested Ian Ross and indicted him on bogus assault on a federal officer charges for allegedly moving a fence that touched a cop.
Zionists are suing LA People's City Council and National Students for Justice in Palestine under the "Ku Klux Klan Act" for the "conspiracy" of organizing the Palestine Solidarity Encampments at UCLA in 2024. A message from PCC requesting funds to help fight the lawsuit:
We are being sued under the Ku Klux Klan Act. The suit, filed on behalf of local zionist reactionaries like Eli Tsives through attorneys backed by the Louis Brandeis Center, alleges that National Students for Justice in Palestine and People’s City Council entered into a “conspiracy” to organize the April 2024 UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment with the purpose of depriving Jewish people of their civil rights on UCLA campus. A judge ruled against our motion to dismiss this lawsuit late last year and our subsequent appeal in April, allowing this case to move forward. We have retained a solid legal team to help us defeat this lawsuit, but unfortunately we need to raise funds for litigation costs to see the process all the way through.
AnarchistFederation.net posted a new update detailing how Google was subpoenad to testify in front of a federal grand jury to provide detailed information on two personal gmail accounts purportedly associated with the No Gods No Masters tech collective which provides the server infrastructure. Maintaining that their datacenter is solid and untouched, AnarchistFederation condemned the investigations as an "attempt to intimidate activists providing legit technical infrastructure to autonomous political projects in the broader context of Trump’s weaponization of the DOJ to silence his political opponents."
ICE Watch
A third man has died at Delaney Hall: Jose Chajon-Raxon was arrested by ICE on July 18th and taken to Delaney Hall where just a day later he was taken to the hospi died shortly after. The ACLU of NJ condemned ICE's attempts at shifting blame and covering up Jose's death: “We mourn the loss of Jose Chajon-Raxon, who reportedly died after experiencing a medical emergency while detained at Delaney Hall. He is the third person to have died after being detained at Delaney Hall, and his death is another tragic result of the inhumane conditions at the facility and in detention centers across the country. The tragedy of his death is heightened by the fact that it took ICE nearly a month to finally confirm it, as Mr. Chajon-Raxon was temporarily released to a hospital when he died. ICE recently changed its reporting policies to evade public scrutiny for people whose deaths may be due to medical neglect, but who were not physically in custody at the time of death.
August 26: Six activists with the ReSisters Alliance and the Southwest Missouri Immigration Alliance were arrested and held 24 hours after a sit-in inside the Green County Jail in protest of the local jail getting paid by the feds to hold over 400 people in the jail on immigration charges. ReSisters released a ice after the arrests: "We will continue to call on acting Sheriff Jason Johnson to cancel the contract with ICE and restore justice in our community. You cannot incarcerate our conscience."
August 30: Trump's federal "Safe Task Force" that has been occupying Memphis for almost a year, raided El Corralón bar to arrest more than 100 people. Vecindarios 901 condemned the largest mass roundup in the city's history: "We vehemently stand against this operation rooted in prejudice, anti-immigrant xenophobia through the Memphis [UN]Safe Task Force promotion of the white supremacist agenda Donald Trump, Stephen Miller and Bill Lee are pushing. We stand against the unjust rounding up of innocent people and separation of community members in the middle of the night." Local businesses held a press conference condemning the nighttime raid and calling for a "buycott" to support local businesses who faced intimidation for refusing law enforcement and federal agents.
Project Salt Box unpacks several new ICE contract solicitations seeking private companies to construct sprawling detention and transport infrastructure including mobile detention centers and courtrooms, marking a shift from the feds stumbling attempts to acquire and convert warehouses last year. Contracts include language intend to bypass any state regulation or oversight: "otherwise applicable or more stringent state or local laws or regulations shall not apply". ICE also spent $57.1 million on new "skip tracing orders" working with an expanded list of private companies to hunt down targets for the feds to arrest.
Christian Castro, the ICE agent who shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis through a door and lied about it, was released from a Texas jail after a Texas judge refused his extradition to Hennepin County Minnesota to face assault and false reporting charges.
Victor Hugo Salgado, the brother of Lorenzo Salgado Arauho and witness to his murder, was released from ICE custody. An update from the family:
Today, after 54 days in detention, Victor Hugo Salgado is home. He is Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s youngest brother and the last of the three men in Lorenzo’s van still being held. On July 7, those men watched an ICE agent kill Lorenzo on his way to work. They were witnesses to a killing, not suspects, and yet they spent nearly two months in custody while a grieving family fought to bring them home. Today, every one of them is with his family. The Salgado family asked LULAC to share their words, and they are in the slides above.
This is a step toward justice for Lorenzo, not the end of it. LULAC continues to demand a full, independent, and transparent investigation, the release of all evidence, and accountability for the agent who fired. We join the family in thanking attorney @rubylpowers and Powers Law Group, the Mexican Consulate in Houston, and everyone who prayed, marched, and refused to look away. We ask the public and the press to honor the family’s request for privacy. No interviews will be given. Please let them be together.
Voices from Detention
AdonysX, a Red Bull Champion rapper who represented the US in Madrid who was locked up by ICE in May, recorded a message from River Correctional Center alerting people to a flu and tuberculosis outbreak amidst rampant medical abuse and horrible conditions:
We are currently detained for justice at the River Correctional Center facility, in Louisiana, in the state of Louisiana. This video aims to reach health authorities and the media so that the reality of what we are living can be known, everything that we are experiencing here in this center. They are trying to kill us. I don't know practically what they are serving as food. They are giving us expired food, bad food. Besides that, the facility is not in medical condition to cover what is happening. People are getting sick, there is a flu going around in this place that never goes away because we are overcrowding, seventy-six people in a single cell. The contamination here is incredible. Besides next door, there is a cell that everyone has — there are people here with tuberculosis. I know this, and I testify to this because they worked in the kitchen, and they are putting us in the punishment cell, because they don't want us to mix with the others. People with tuberculosis are spitting blood, and they are not taking them to a medical center for treatment. So we ask everyone who can share and help spread this information. Help us! Let's not wait for a family member or a friend to be suffering or going through these situations. I don't say it only for myself, I say it because here, besides young people, there are also elderly people, so what are they waiting for, for someone to die. And then they will say it was no. It was negligence of those people, and negligence of teh center. Anyone who can come or help spread this message, please help us, because look, we are all here as one group, and we all raise our hands and say the reality of what is happening. This is not a game. They are playing with our lives.
Women locked up at the GEO-run South Louisiana ICE Processing Center are posting videos in protest of their continued detention, medical neglect, forced labor, and staff abuse:
Hello, my name is Lorena, and I am at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Brazil. There is all kinds of unfair discrimination here, not just in the GEO center, but also in ICE. They bring us from different states supposedly to fight our case, but it's really just to spend money here and lose. Most of the women who are detained here don't know where our children are because they take them away from us and don't give us any informaiton. They bring us here and there are people who spend more than 15 months here then get deported even after winning their case. The staff expose detainees' information so that they can be trafficked. The staff are having relationships with the detainees. Here they are forcing the detainees to work for a dollar for more than six hours. They refuse to give us medication, and if we don't defend ourselves, they threaten to take away all our privileges, our communication, and put us in the moon. We have the case of a woman who was not given proper socks and because of that they had to amputate four of her toes and she doesn't even know why her toes are cut off. That's the case of Mrs. Brisa from Mexico. Another case is a woman from Ecuador named Nancy, who was three months pregnant, mixcarried in her bed, and did not receive any medical attention. We also have Kelly, a Venezuelan woman who only has one kidney, and the kidney she has left is suffering from renal failure. The water we have to drink is tap water. We also have the case of a Cuban woman who won her case and who has been here for more than 10 months but DHS appealed and now she has to stay even longer. We have no information. People who have been deported and have been waiting more than 3 months for deportation and we are not eligible for bond. Why do we have to be here?
Another video from inside the jail of the women protesting after the guards took one of their comrades to solitary confinement in retaliation for her posting videos speaking out:
They locked her up. They just locked her up, so we're not letting them pound us or nothing. — We need your help. This is a public complaint. They took Dana, the other girl from the video to solitary confinement. We are starting a riot at the Basile South Louisiana Facility. They are threatening us. They are extorting me and harassing me. I can't be the next one. They took away our TV. They took away our phones, and they can take away our tablets. Let's go - 1, 2, 3 - Dana! Dana! Dana! We need your help. The entire world needs to know what they are doing to us in this ICE detention center. They have endangered , they are hitting us, rules we don't know. The supervisor all ran out so we don't know what is happening in solitary and we fear for her safety. Please help us! Answers. They are practically killing us in here. They are killing us. We have a voice! Please! After she did her video, they threw her and locked her up. Dana! Dana! Dana! Dana! Right now we are out here protesting, defending the human rights of our companion because she bravely stood up with us to defend ourselves for just speaking out and telling the absolute truth. In this country has freedom of speech, they want to silence us, they want to keep us and now they are unfairly punishing us. -- We have kids, we have families, and we need to be in touch with them all the time. -- We are humans. We are humans with human rights. They treat us like dogs. Dana! Dana! Dana! Please help us!
Carlitos Ricardo Parias posted a video from inside the Adelanto ICE facility showing that the water given to people detained there contains live worms. "This is what they give us: contaminated water, water with larvae, water with little black worms, which is slowly killing each one of us who are detained here,” Parias said in his statement, which his lawyer translated from Spanish. “We need proper drinking water, better treatment". Parias was involved in community rapid response in Los Angeles area before he himself was targeted by ICE, shot several times and arrested on bogus federal charges; those were eventually dismissed but Parias remains in ICE detention pending immigration proceedings.
Maryam Tahmasebi wrote an article from the Dilley ICE detention center about her and her family being held by ICE since April, "One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention":
My name is Maryam Tahmasebi, and I am a professor of psychology and statistics at Los Angeles Pierce College—or, I was, until April 9, when my life, and my family’s lives, changed forever.
On that day, I was teaching a class when my son texted me, saying that my husband hadn’t picked him up from school and wasn’t answering his phone, which is very unlike him. I picked my son up from school, came frantically back home, and called the police, thinking that something horrible must have happened to him. Even so, it never occurred to me that he could have been detained by ICE. We are legal permanent residents with valid green cards. My husband, Eissa Hashemi, is also a professor, and has dedicated his life to mentoring PhD students in the Business Psychology department of The Chicago School. We have both mentored many PhD candidates, among whom are veterans who have served this country for decades. We don’t have any criminal record—not even a traffic ticket. I believed in the “rule of law,” and trusted that if there was anything wrong with our immigration status, the government would notify us through legal channels.
I was beyond shocked to realize that an online smear campaign without any merit or legal standing had convinced the US government to try to revoke our green cards overnight without due process or even telling us. The government had decided to punish my husband for being the son of a woman who was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before Eissa was even born.
I came here because I wanted to build a life for myself and my family that was defined by my own actions, not anyone else’s. But now our lives are being upended for something someone else did nearly 50 years ago.
Imagine that you are an independent woman wading through the waters of sexism and patriarchy every day, and then you are told that not only do your own ideas and academic achievements not matter, but you are somehow now responsible for decisions you never made, and for things that happened before you were ever born. That you don’t have an identity of your own, and that your existence can be negated based on relations. This is bloodline punishment. I was hoping that the United States of America, the country that I loved, would be different.
Eventually, my husband’s phone location showed he was at an ICE center in downtown LA. I talked to him there for a minute. He said he had been told that, while he was under arrest, our son and I were safe. That turned out to have been a lie. The next day, when I took my son to school, my car was surrounded by DHS cars, and my son and I were detained. I had to watch my son, who is in high school and has been a legal resident of California for 12 years, be handcuffed. We were shipped to Texas overnight from Los Angeles in horrible conditions that I won’t elaborate on in this letter. We have remained in Texas ever since.
My son and I have spent over 120 days in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, away from my husband, who was taken to the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall, Texas. There, he faces even more horrible conditions, and he faces them alone. When I requested that my husband be reunited with us in Dilley, a so-called “family detention center” (the very existence of such a term is deeply troubling), I was told that in our specific case, family separation is the policy and the rule.
I have struggled to understand how this can happen to people who have never broken the law, in a system I believed to be based on the rule of law.
We have been put through hell for the past four months, and our physical and mental health have deteriorated in ways that might not be reversible for years. We are only allowed to speak with my husband for 10 minutes every two weeks, under supervision. My son, who only speaks English and has been in California’s school system since pre-K, is struggling to understand why the only country he considers home is treating him this way.
What has happened to us was designed specifically to break our body and spirit. I am a mother, not a martyr, so I would always choose my son’s health and well-being over any dreams or aspirations I have. But even when we decided to make the difficult decision to ask to be allowed to voluntarily leave the United States—the place we consider our country and our home—the government not only opposed it but suggested that it would appeal any judicial decisions that grant us departure.
In other words, they want to continue our indefinite detention without any end in sight. But for what purpose? I have been asking myself that question over and over. I can’t think of any reason why we are being put through this punitive ordeal. We don’t have money or power to help us, shield us, or buy us favor. We are two working-class educators who had been living a working-class life in a rented apartment, and had never imagined anything like this happening to us.
This is why we need your help. We are in tremendous pain and have been trapped in an unendurable, unending nightmare. I want my son to have a normal life, not spend his days in this awful detention center in Dilley. No child deserves this. No human deserves this. We are asking anyone with a conscience to help us end this nightmare. There are more things I want to say, but this is the shackled version of what I feel safe saying right now. I will end on this: If this could happen to us, a law-abiding family of two professors and a young boy, it can happen to anyone.
Carlos Mendoza's partner Cindy Ramirez spoke with the Center for Health Journalism for an article "He Survived Being Shot, Trauma Has Just Begun: ICE, Latinos, and a Public Mental Health Crisis" as well as an interview with radio bilengüe "What Happens After You Survive ICE’s Bullets?"
"I’m afraid of dying here": Camila Toro de Paula, a transgender woman from Venezuela, spoke to the New York Times about the unique abuses and dangers that trans people endure in ICE custody as the feds dissolve whatever gender-affirming healthcare and other rights and protections that previously existed.
Gabar Choli, a Kurdish filmmaker and asylum seeker, gave an extended interview with The Guardian detailing the horrors in ICE custody as he was shackled and force fed in ICE custody while he was on hunger strike for over two months:
Two guards would hold my feet; two hold my hands; one hold my head – and they would shove tubes in my nose,” Choli said. “It’s not easy to be wrestled to the ground twice a day by men that are stronger than you. And you just take it. You have 60cm of tube going through you and you just feel every centimeter of it ... I understood the necessity of making a stand for what was right... I was respectful. I just told them I am protesting for humane treatment, nothing else. But they were determined to break me ... The price of [the hunger strike] was my life... The price of it was my kidneys, my gallbladder. My intestines. My being. My bladder, you know, is damaged. Every time I twist and turn, I feel pain. But this is the price you pay for making a stand for what is right.”
Ongoing Cases
Mohamad Hamad
Mohamad Hamad is a 24 year old Lebanese-American activist, former Penn State student, and current prisoner who has spent the last year in federal prison awaiting trial for bogus charges of damaging (Zionist) property and conspiracy against the united states.
Help fundraise for Mohamad to get a lawyer: https://chuffed.org/project/162662-justice-for-palestines-voice-help-mo…
Sign the petition to release Mohamad onto house arrest while he awaits trial: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/release-xxxxxx-back-onto-house-arre…
From Mohamad's writing about what he has experienced since his arrest:
Lastly I wanted to address you all, I’m sorry that I cannot make new memories with yall right now, but I hope my friends can explain to you who I am. For those of you who do want to get to know me somewhat, feel free to write me, I really appreciate it. I will write back I promise. Also to those still waiting to hear back from me, I’ve been working on this and will get back to you asap. Ok back to serious stuff. I want to reiterate, I’m looking for support not protection. I say that because my voice has been suppressed many times and each time it hurts so much. People wouldn’t let me say what I wanted, unless my lawyer approved it, the same biased lawyer who I stupidly let convince me that I shouldn’t let people wear kuffiyehs at my hearing. The same lawyer who wants me to isolate and not talk to anyone and share my pain. The same lawyer who contributed to that horrible performance at that detention hearing. I swear, to everything the prosecution said, I had a beautiful counter argument and defense in my head. It’s weird to say but I wish hadn’t trusted my lawyer and just sat back like that because he does not have my best interests at heart. I’m sure you all saw how many times I kept turning to talk to my lawyers to say something, but they just sat idly by as the prosecuttion called me a terrorist for shock value using some really weak and baseless arguments. That will NOT happen again. I am not going to just sit here in silence, anyone that knows me knows that isn’t how I roll. I will also say to those who are so worried about protecting me, I am going to be lynched by this government no doubt about it. The next prosecution is white, the judge is white and used to be a prosecutor, the FBI agents are white and even the jury is going to be white. I’m not going to have a fair trial. There will not be a single Arab muslim on the jury panel, people who actually understand our humor, our pain, our joy, our struggles, our hearts. They will be the only ones to actually know what’s in my heart. Everyone else will be too affected by the 9/11 trauma in this country and the 25+ years of anti-muslim propaganda and hysteria put on by our media, our politicians, our pop culture, our movies and everywhere else in this country. It’s supposed to be a jury of your peers at trial, but as I have just explained it is anything but. It is also while that prosectution is loving to keep using that T word bc it elicits an automatic and fearful emotional response from the traumas in this country, whether subsoncousiy or conscious, even though as i said i’m not even being charged with any terrorist charges. It’s gong to be a modern day lynching but I’d like to hold onto your hands as it happens
With love,
your favorite Arab Mohamad
Free Jakhi!
Trial for Jakhi Isaiah's state charges was delayed until a future date. Jakhi is accused of pouring paint on the Alma Mater statute at a protest against pro-Palestinian repression at Columbia University.
The Intercept recently reported on newly released evidence revealing the determination of interagency coordination and facial-recognition surveillance camera networks across New York to track Jakhi down and arrest him a year later.
Keshia Golden
After four years facing first degree murder charges after defending herself against an abusive boyfriend, Keshia Golden accepted a plea deal avoiding prison time and the murder registry. Supporters are petitioning Governor Pritzker to pardon her and raising funds to help her move forward with her life:
This morning Keshia accepted a plea deal to Involuntary Manslaughter with 2 years probation. Keshia accepted this deal because at the end of the day any mother would. Nothing is guaranteed at trial and this deal was the only way to guarantee KyLiyah could grow up with her mother. The Cook County States Attorney grossly overcharged with her 1st Degree Murder. Over charging and pressuring people into plea deals so they are not crushed by the State is a common practice they use. They bullied a mother into being a convicted felon. Keshia is excited to move forward with her life. We are now asking @govpritzker to issue her a pardon 💜
Let's help rebuild her life in the aftermath of her criminal legal case, which has resulted, thanks to her freedom fight, in a sentence to probation, and not prison. However, Keshia should never have been charged.
Kam
A New Jersey judge acquitted Kam of all charges at trial. Kam had been charged with "cyber-harassment" for exposing a serial rapist who had been targeting people across Union County NJ. Supporters have been posting court notes and announced the victory:
KAM HAS WON ! THE CHARGES WERE DISMISSED!
Today, Kam and supporters proved that we must fight back against rapists and the backwards legal system that criminalizes and silences survivors. After over two years of refusing to plead guilty and resisting criminalization by Union County Prosecutor Shivani Trivedi, Kam has beat their charges! Judge Gavin Handwerker acquitted Kam of all charges because the prosecution failed to meet their burden of proof. The judge ruled that calling someone a rapist or a serial rapist is not lewd, indecent, or obscene. Calling out a rapist online is not cyber harassment.
We will follow up with more updates and we thank everyone for all the support to Kam and survivors. 💜
EXPOSING A RAPIST IS NOT A CRIME!
END THE CRIMINALIZATION OF SURVIVORS!
SEND RAPISTS TO JAIL NOT SURVIVORS!
Doggtown Dro
Charges dismissed against Doggtown Dro who nearly six years ago was accused of mischief with a hate crime enhancement after punching the teeth out of the fascist organizer of a "free speech rally" attended by Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and the Three Percenters.
🥹 I've been fighting this case for almost SIXX-YEARS!! I'm honestly at a complete loss for words. I'll talk about it soon but I can't even speak at the moment.
The only thing I can really do is say THANK YOU to so many people that have been there for me from standing outside the jail house to standing with me through this entire fight.. I thank even the ones that fell off. I have to give huge thanks to every @f12unity comrade that stood with me from day one. My brother @foxola that was with me the day they snatched me and held the line for me my entire captivity. @antirepression_bayarea for getting a nxgga out of jail. @baldbeardandbeautful3 for securing me representation as soon as I touched the street. Claire White for repping the time she had me until she couldn't. @leem_415 who has been my guidance through this entire journey from the very week I got out of jail, means so much to me and my family. And lastly @sfpublicdefender office and @manorajupd for being probably the most ethical and ambitious Public Defenders office in the Nation despite fighting the most manipulative and back handed criminal system in the nation.
And Lastly!! So much love and praise to @baba_nabu the Lioness Defender of SF's Liberationist Movement Front ✊🏾 I had all the faith in the world in you and you are of the most essential gears in this push for Justice & Liberation. 🫡🖤
I'm sure there's more thanks to go around but I'm just a little shocked and overwhelmed at this moment 🥹
F12 FOREVER!!
Crockett 10
The DA backed off from charges against the Crockett 10 at their first court hearing in which where dozens of supporters rallied outside. From the Partisan Defense Committee:
BREAKING NEWS!!! DA forced to back off Crockett 10, at least for now!
Over 70 Bay Area trade unionists, with ILWU at its core and a large numbers of ATU, IBEW, IUPAT, Richmond teachers, leftists and activists, turned out this morning for the first Crockett 10 court date. Faced with this outpouring of labor solidarity, the DA is not pressing their bogus charges, at least for now. But the threat that the DA could refile charges still hangs over the defendants' heads. The labor movement and left must continue to fight against any prosecution of the Crockett 10 and fight for victory of the ILWU Local 6 warehouse workers against the C&H Sugar bosses.RALLY FOR THE REMAINING DEFENDANTS AT NOON TODAY! AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!
Golden Gate 26
The seven remaining defendants from the 26 arrested during the 2024 Golden Gate Bridge shutdown were spared from felony convictions but were sentenced to 30 days jail for several misdemeanors. All plan to appeal; please support the fundraiser. From Golden Gate 26 Solidarity:
Victory! The SF District Attorney dismissed the felony charges after failing to secure convictions. Other protestors at the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge who were charged only with misdemeanors had their cases diverted by judges, but the felony charge precluded that option for the GG7. The DA was able to secure misdemeanor convictions and a jail time sentence.
Misdemeanor convictions in San Francisco with mitigating factors are rarely given actual jail time. Repression is higher for Palestine protests because the liberation of Palestine will defeat the US Imperial chokehold on the world.
The fight to end our own complicity in genocide continues. Join the Oakland Arms Embargo Campaign @oaklandarmsembargo and Migra Watch @lxspinguinxs.
The government’s attempts to scare and silence the people will never work. It is a privilege and sacred duty to stand in solidarity with Palestinians fighting for liberation from the occupation.
International Political Prisoners
Chile
Juan Aliste Vega
A banner drop in solidarity with imprisoned anarchist Juan Aliste Vega who is battling severe illness due to medical neglect.
Banners in solidarity with Juan Aliste, imprisoned in Chile for the expropriation of two banks and the death of Corporal Moyano.
Our comrade is battling a severe illness, exacerbated by the deliberate delay of his medical care by the prison authorities. We hung these banners on both sides of a bridge over the highway connecting the city center to the western neighborhoods as a gesture of solidarity with Juan and his circle, and to remind everyone that the struggle against capital is one and knows no borders.
If the bosses steal our bodies, our time, and our freedom, expropriation means reclaiming our lives.
Solidarity with all the anarchists and subversives imprisoned in Chilean jails: Mónica Caballero, Francisco Solar, Joaquín García, Felipe Ríos, Sebastián Moncada, Nicolás Araya, Rucio, Marcelo Villarroel, Aldo Hernández, Lucas Hernández, and Carlos Calcina.
Long live internationalist solidarity!
Long live expropriation!
Health and freedom for our comrade Juan Aliste!
Against capital: Reclaim your life!
Pasacalles en solidaridad con Juan Aliste, presx en Chile por la expropiación de dos bancos y la muerte del cabo moyano.
El compañero se encuentra enfrentando una dura enfermedad, agravada por la deliberada postergación de su atención médica por parte de gendarmería. Extendemos estos pasacalles en ambos lados de un puente
sobre la autopista que conecta el centro con los barrios del oeste, como gesto solidario con Juan y su entorno, y para recordar que la lucha contra el capital es una y sin fronteras.
Si los patrones nos roban el cuerpo, el tiempo y la libertad, expropiar es recuperar nuestras vidas.
Solidaridad con todxs lxs anarquistas y subversivxs presxs en las cárceles de Chile: Mónica Caballero, Francisco Solar, Joaquín García, Felipe Ríos, Sebastián Moncada, Nicolás Araya, Rucio, Marcelo Villarroel, Aldo Hernández, Lucas Hernández y Carlos Calcina.
¡Qué viva la solidaridad internacionalista!
¡Qué viva la expropiación!
¡Salud y Libertad para el compañero Juan Aliste!
Contra el capital: ¡Recupera tu vida!
Colombia
Free Johann Sainéa!
SubMedia posted a video and call for solidarity with Johann Sainéa, anarchist imprisoned by the Colombian State.
Johann Sainéa Rubio has been imprisoned in Colombia since 2021, criminalized for participating in the popular uprising of that year. Since the far-right Abelardo de la Espriella government took control of the Colombian state, his situation — which was already very bad — has gotten even worse. The Colombian state is restricting food supplies, inflicting severe hunger and thirst in an attempt to undermine the health of Johann and others imprisoned across the country after fighting for dignity and freedom.
This year, to mark the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, we are issuing a call to help bring some relief to Johann and his comrades, by chipping in so that they can have dignified access to water and food.
As Johann says in his own words: “Solidarity is love and understanding transformed into action.”
To show your solidarity to Johann and his comrades, please donate any amount to the Chuffed fundraiser: https://chuffed.org/project/197444-solidarity-with-johann-sainea
Greece
International Red Help Interview With Revolutionary Struggle Members Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis
This interview was given from prison by Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis, members of Revolutionary Struggle, to International Red help. It was completed in the summer of 2018 whilst their trials were ongoing. It is included in the 2nd edition of the book ‘REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE: MANIFESTS AND TEXTS 2003–2018’.
This interview, edited and with minor changes, was included in the latest edition of THE ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, in November 2025.
It is divided into three sub-sections: a) The founding of the organisation and the conditions prevailing at that time; b) The political and strategic plan of Revolutionary Struggle; and c) A sub-section covering the organisation’s activities, actions, trials, solidarity and the legacy of Revolutionary Struggle.
In 2022, it was also translated into English.
In August 2026, it was published for a second time, translated with corrections and featuring a new introduction note/addition.
It has recently been republished on activist websites and, since early August 2026, has also been listed in The Anarchist Library at the following link: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nikos-maziotis-and-pola-roupa-i…
In 2017 Red Help International sent some (30) questions to the imprisoned members of the anarchist armed group Revolutionary Struggle, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis.
These questions are divided in 4 chapters: The 1st under the title “Context and Genesis”, the 2nd “Political and Strategic Project”, the 3rd “History strictly speaking” and the 4th, “Temporary assessment of Revolutionary Struggle and of the movement in Greece”.
Through the answers of the comrades, one can understand the historical conditions in which Revolutionary Struggle was created in 2003 and acted until 2017, the social, political and economical conditions of the entire era.
Revolutionary Struggle since September of 2003 until January of 2017 carried out 18 attacks-acts against targets of the regime, state and capital. Bombing attacks against courts, police stations, ministries, banks, against the Stock Exchange of Athens, the Bank of Greece-IMF, armed attacks against officers of riot police, attack against the USA embassy in Athens with antitank rocket, attempt against the former minister of Public Order, and an escape attempt (hijacking a helicopter).
The first arrests of the comrades happened in 10 April of 2010, exactly a month after Lambros Foundas—a member of Revolutionary Struggle—was killed by gunfiring with the police in a preparatory action of the group.
Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis who from the first moment took the political responsibility of their participation in Revolutionary Struggle, were temporary imprisoned until 11 October of 2011 because according to the greek law, nobody can remain in prison over 18 months without sentence and in October of 2011 the first trial against the group had just started and they had not been condemned yet.
After 9 months while the first trial was in progress, Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis with their almost 2 years old son, who was born in prison as in April of 2010 Pola Roupa was 6 months pregnant, went underground to continue the armed struggle.
So, in April of 2014, Revolutionary Struggle carried out the attack with a car-bomb with 75 kilos of explosives, against the building of Bank of Greece close to Syntagma square in Athens, where was also located the office of the permanent representative of IMF (International Monetary Foundation) in Athens.
The attack was dedicated to comrade Lambros Foundas, who had been killed 4 years ago. Nikos Maziotis was arrested in 16 July 2014 injured after gunfiring with policemen and pursuit.
Pola Roupa attempted alone to hijack a helicopter in 21 February of 2016 for the liberation of Nikos Maziotis and other prisoners from Koridallos prison, but she didn’t complete the operation because the pilot was α former police officer and he was armed. So, after a fight inside the cockpit, the pilot landed the helicopter and comrade Roupa succeeded to escape. Finally the “antiterrorist” service with the help of special units arrested Pola in 5 January of 2017.
As a newspaper wrote, the capture of Pola Roupa was carried out after provided information.
Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis were wanted for 1 million euro each since January of 2014. It was the second time that members of Revolutionary Struggle were wanted with a price on their heads. In 2007, the State Department of USA offered 1 million dollars and the greek state 800.000 euro for the capture of the members of the group after the attack with an antitank rocket against the U.S. embassy in Athens.
The interview is included in the book-edition of 2019, “Proclamations – Texts of Revolutionary Struggle 2003-2018”.
Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis have been convicted to life sentence (for the attack against the Bank of Greece and the office of the IMF) and a hundred years for the rest of the attacks of Revolutionary Struggle. After the completion of all courts of appeal, their sentence has been reduced to 20 years in prison. Roupa was released on parole in November 2023 when she completed the 3/5 of her sentence 8 years and 4 months in prison and 4 years work and Maziotis will be released in September 2026 when he will have completed the total of his sentence 14 years in prison and 6 years work.
Italy
From Sanremo Prison, Communiqué from Luca Dolce (aka Stecco) on the recent sentences against Palestine Action
I recently learned of the convictions of four comrades from Palestine Action in the UK for their actions against the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems UK.
The solidarity and struggle last winter—with the hunger strike inside prisons that united prisoners internationally—led to moments of unity and awareness in the internationalist struggle against the genocidal war in Gaza and against colonialism. It was a surge of energy that brought many people together. Months have passed, and the massacre continues.
In Kramatorsk, in Ukraine, during these days, those technological gadgets called drones continue to terrorize populations—the same is happening in Russia. Iran and Turkey continue to use this new paradigm of modern warfare to attack the Kurdish resistance in the mountains, while for Palestine, there are no more words to describe the reality we know and keep bringing up. Despite the brutal existence the population is forced to endure, it still clings to life amid the rubble. We know the objectives of Israel and the West.
In Ankara, with the NATO summit underway, these bastard torturers are doing business right now, and amid treaties, contracts, and handshakes, only one thing troubles them—and it’s not war, because that’s what they thrive on. It is the variable of human and political resistance that, despite the massacres, lurks in minds that have not been disarmed of critical thinking—minds where the doses of social peace have been unable to take root with their phony spectacles.
Comrades continue to fall in the struggle; studies on the enemy of free life continue to emerge, as do small and large attempts to attack the capitalist system. New, beating hearts shatter the deception imposed by a deathly life.
The struggle continues, prisoners are part of it, and these beating hearts—just as the comrades of Palestine Action did in court—stand their ground with heads held high.
If the state’s repression grows more suffocating, if every revolutionary gesture or thought aimed at total liberation is suppressed, if the bosses and politicians believe they control our lives, let us respond with the words of resistance spoken inside the camps by a woman in the Bolzenburg extermination camp and those spoken in another camp at Dachau: “We sabotaged the work in every possible way,” “Work slowly? No, sabotage everything you can.”
This should be the underlying driving force behind every struggle against war and against the state.
A final thought goes to the two young people who, after enduring the weight of repression imposed by the Turin prosecutor’s office for their participation in the struggle in solidarity with Palestine last fall, decided to leave this world. These events cannot fail to leave their mark and compel us all to reflect even more carefully on how important it is to draw strength from one another and refine the tools we need to build political—and, I would say, in a certain sense, spiritual—continuity against the attacks of repression, even though I believe these choices are part of everyone’s freedom, without moralizing or passing judgment.
My thoughts and solidarity go out to those who were close to them.
We respond to the bosses’ war with a social war.
A clenched fist salute to Leona, Samuel, Fatema and Charlotte!
Solidarity to those facing trial in Germany for the Ulm5 case!
Long resistance to Prosfygika!
Sanremo Prison, Italy
11/07/2026
Luca Dolce aka Stecco
Ukraine
Repression in Zelensky’s Ukraine: Political Prisoners Announce August 5 Hunger Strike
A one-day international solidarity hunger strike will be held on 5 August 2026 in support of political prisoners in Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine.
The initiative was launched by the Association for the Defence of Political Prisoners and Human Rights, founded by Ukrainian communists Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich, together with 15 prisoners at Vinnytsia Correctional Colony No. 86.
Mikhail Kononovich, First Secretary of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine, and his brother Alexander, a member of the same organisation, were arrested by the Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv on 7 March 2022. They were accused of acting on behalf of Russia and Belarus, allegations they have repeatedly rejected as fabricated. Reports published at the time stated that the brothers were beaten while in detention.
Their trial began in July 2022, with the brothers participating by video link rather than appearing physically in court. After approximately nine months in pre-trial detention, they were transferred to house arrest in December 2022 and placed under electronic monitoring. Their prosecution and continuing restrictions have prompted repeated protests by communist parties and youth organisations internationally, including the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE)
In May 2025, the brothers reported that they had again been detained by police while travelling to a hospital, with officers claiming that they were wanted for allegedly evading military service. They remain under house arrest in Kyiv with electronic monitoring.
The 5 August hunger strike is intended to draw international attention to the situation of political prisoners in Ukraine and to demand respect for their rights and their release.
UK
Ryan Roberts new address: Ryan Roberts (Kill The Bill Prisoner) has been moved again.
Keep sending messages of solidarity to Ryan (emails, letters, cards, drawings).
Ryan Roberts
A5155EM
HMP Woodhill,
Tattenhoe Street, Milton Keynes,
Buckinghamshire,
MK4 4DA
Supporters haven't had direct communication with Ryan in two months. If you hear from Ryan please email freeryanroberts@proton.me
International Repression
Greece
Last 30 Days of Firefund for Court Expenses for Arrests of a Solidarity Intervention for Hunger and Thirst Striker Yannis Michailidis
The summers of 2022 and 2023 were marked by two major struggles waged from inside the prison by our anarchist comrade Yannis Michailidis. With his primary demand being his release, which the state vindictively denied despite the years he had already served, G.M. escalated his protest to a hunger strike, reaching a critical health condition on both occasions. On the 30th day of his second hunger strike, he decided to further escalate his protest with a thirst strike, which ultimately resulted in the victory of his struggle and his subsequent release.
In this battle, the anarchist movement supported the strikers’ fight by convening central assemblies several times a week, writing texts and organizing actions on a nationwide scale. In Athens, the solidarity movement, drawing from various strands of struggle, did everything in its power to demonstrate its solidarity with the struggle of our comrade.
It was within this framework that the “Assembly of Solidarity with the Anarchist Hunger Striker Yiannis Michailidis” sought to bring the issue to the forefront, raise public awareness, highlight the state’s vindictiveness toward political prisoners and to pressure the state to prevent the comrade’s murder.
One of the interventions of the assembly, which took place on June 13,2023, was the highlighting of the responsibility of the judicial authorities who held the striker’s life in their hands. Specifically, the judges in Amfissa, who, in line with state strategy, had been delaying his release proceedings for months without even considering his request. With the striker’s health in a critical condition, having already begun his thirst strike, five comrades from the assembly went to Amfissa, where we proceeded to highlighting the state and judicial murder of our comrade, using spray paint at the walls of the local courts and throwing fliers.
After the intervention was over, as we were leaving, local cops arrested us. A few hours later, we were in the courts of Amfissa, where we appeared before a prosecutor, declaring the reasons of our intervention, while she mocked the hunger striker G. Michailidis and “prepared” us for our impending conviction. In the court hearing that followed, we emphasized the critical state of our comrade’s health, the historical gravity of his potential murder, and the responsibility borne by the state and, in particular, the judges of Amfissa. We defended the hunger striker and his struggle using his own body and health to demand his release. Finally, we highlighted the importance of solidarity with political prisoners and our overall opposition to the institution of prison. Having no legal representation, we were convicted of aggravated criminal damage and disobedience for refusing to be fingerprinted.
We were sentenced to 30 months of imprisonment, suspended, and a fine of €3,600 each. Both the severity of the sentences and the large fine imposed on us highlight the vindictive treatment we received from the court.
We consider the solidarity with the struggles of prisoners as an integral part of our own struggles against the state and authority. We will defend our ideas and principles in the appeals court, which will take place on September 29, 2026, in Lamia, while aiming to limit as much as possible the blatant vindictiveness of the first-degree sentences.
Firefund: https://www.firefund.net/amfissaintervention / https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1641475/
Trial: Lamia Court of Appeals, September 29, 2026
NO ONE ALONE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE
STRUGGLE UNTIL THE LAST PRISON IS DEMOLISHED
FOR A WORLD OF FREEDOM, EQUALITY, AND SOLIDARITY
The arrested for the intervention on 6/13/23 at the Amfissa courthouse
Hands Off Our Comrades! Support for legal expenses of persecuted and incarcerated comrades for the Marfin case
Sixteen years later, the greek state is once again bringing the Marfin bank case to the forefront of media and repressive attention. The ‘New Democracy’ party (the ruling party) is attempting once again to criminalise the massive and highly confrontational protest that took place at 5 May of 2010 against the austerity measures designed to shift the burden of the economic crisis to the oppressed.
During this protest three workers who despite the general strike where forced to be at their workplace lost their lives. The trial has already concluded, resulting in the conviction of the bank’s CEO, the head of security and the branch manager. Yet, despite this there have been repeated attempts to frame comrades dragging them through sham trials where the state’s lies have been totally dismantled.
Sixteen years later, the government and its media is attempting to shift the pre-election agenda once again to the convenient target- the anarchist movement. Specifically, our comrades whose homes were raided, two of whom have been incarcerated and another one is waiting for extradition from the UK to appear before the interrogator . The ‘evidence’ presented in the media so far is reaching new levels of absurdity. From anonymous phone calls to which we have – unfortunately – become accustomed, we moved on to anonymous emails. AI software was deployed 16 years later to match photographs from… holidays showing similar clothing.
Sixteen years later, the issues at stake remain the same. In the face of the state’s policies of death, which have made daily life unbearable; the execution of a neurodivergent man because he ran to escape a roadblock; the murder of workers across the country, the deadliest pushback causing more than 650 murders in Pylos, the state murder of 57 people in Tempi, the cooperation with the murderous israeli state in the genocide of the palestinian people and the military operations that are drowning populations in blood across the globe, the only answer is struggle, perseverance, confrontation by any means necessary.
To cover the heavy legal expenses of the ongoing jury process and in order to defeat the state fabrication against our comrades we are calling for international support.
As we stood by our comrades during all these years in demonstrations, squats and struggles we will stand by them in their struggle for freedom.
Always in war with the state and its machinations
FREEDOM TO THE INCARCERATED COMRADES
SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE PERSECUTED IN THE MARFIN CASE
Donate here: https://www.firefund.net/legalexpensesformarfincase
List of the Prison Addresses of Our 6 Anarchist Comrades Persecuted for the Expropriation of the Bank in Kato Titorea on May, 11 2026
Niki Kitingk (Νηκη Κητινγκ)
Women Prison of Koridallos
Κορυδαλλός Αττικής
Post Code 18122,
Κoridallos, Athens, Greece
Giorgos Kollias (Γιωργος Κολλιας)
Trikala Prison
Σωφρονιστικό Κατάστημα Τρικάλων
Post Code 42150
Trikala, Greece
Thodoris Tselekis (Θοδωρης Τσελεκης)
Malandinou Prison
Σωφρονιστικό Κατάστημα Μαλανδρίνο
Post Code 33053
Greece
Alexandros Tsablaridis (Αλεξανδρος Τσαβλαριδης)
Nafplio Prison
Ναύπλιο
Post Code 21100
Greece
Thanos Glatsis (Θανος Γλαυτσης )
Κoridallos Prison
Σωφρονιστικό Κατάστημα Κορυδαλλού
Post Code 18110
Korydallos, Athens, Greece
Giannis T. (Γιαννης Τ. )
Trikala Prison
Σωφρονιστικό Κατάστημα Τρικάλων
Post Code 41110
Trikala, Greece
On the morning of May 11th, 2026 a bank branch in Kato Tithorea (Central Greece) was expropriated. A few hours later, 8 comrades were arrested following a simultaneous repressive operation by the police in the wider area and home invasions in Athens.
Text of comrades:
In the early hours of May 11, 2026, a group of comrades expropriated a bank in Kato Tithorea. Approximately 5 hours later, 5 of them were arrested after a coordinated repressive operation by the police and houses invasions raids . 8 comrades, anarchists, found themselves hostages in the hands of the state.
We have been charged with an inflated indictment that includes bank expropriations and weapons possession. The comrades are being held at the GADA (police HQ in Athens) and some comrades at the Vyronas Prison. Today, 12/05, we went through the prosecutor and were given a deadline to appear before the investigator on Friday, 15/05 at 9am at Evelpidon, building 9.
LONG LIVE ANARCHY
SPYROS DRAVILAS PRESENT
HARRIS TEMPEREKIDIS PRESENT
SEBASTIAN OVERSLUIJ PRESENT
The 8 comrades for the May 11th case
15.5.26
The five comrades and one companiera were remanded to stay in prison..
The other companiera was released with three times every month to signing and present at the police station, and another of the comrade was also released with two times every month to signing and present at the police station.
During the transportation of the comrades, minor clashes took place with the cops and people.
NOTHING WILL BE LEFT UNANSWERED
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON
France
Stop the Extradition of Gino
A few days ago, the French justice system decided that the antifascist Gino must be extradited to Germany. An appeal to the Court of Cassation has been filed by his lawyers, leaving a 40-day window to make a final ruling.
This extradition could lead to a prison sentence of several years in Germany, or even a subsequent extradition to Hungary, where the antifascist Maja is currently imprisoned under alarming conditions.
This decision is part of the growing criminalization of antifascism, at a time when we are witnessing a resurgence of fascist and reactionary forces across Europe. Everywhere, antifascists are being prosecuted, repressed, and imprisoned because they consistently oppose this situation. By making such a decision, the French authorities are fully participating in the criminalization of antifascism.
Faced with this situation, solidarity is our best weapon! We have the power to prevent this by taking action!
WE ARE THEREFORE CALLING FOR A WEEK OF ACTION FROM AUGUST 30 TO SEPTEMBER 6!
Let's organize actions in front of German and French embassies and consulates, distribute flyers, put up posters, and carry out any other actions to support Gino and all antifascists!
SOLIDARITY WITH GINO!
SOLIDARITY WITH ALL IMPRISONED ANTIFASCISTS!
FREE THEM ALL!
Ukraine
August 10: A Ukrainian court sentenced anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk for posting six articles on the World Socialist Web Site. WSWS is circulating an international petition demanding his freedom:
Demand the freedom of Bogdan Syrotiuk, sentenced to 15 years in prison for opposing the war in Ukraine!
On August 10, 2026, a Ukrainian court sentenced Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 27-year-old Trotskyist and opponent of the US-NATO war against Russia, to 15 years in prison on charges of “high treason” under martial law. The court also ordered the confiscation of his property and the destruction of the program, brochures and leaflets of his organization, the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL).
Bogdan committed no crime. The sole evidence presented against him consisted of six articles published on the World Socialist Web Site and his communications with the editors who published them. Writing for a socialist publication has been declared treason.
When Bogdan was arrested by the SBU on April 25, 2024, the state claimed he was an agent of the Russian government. In more than two years, no evidence of any kind was produced to support that allegation. The articles cited in the verdict themselves make explicit Bogdan’s opposition to the Russian invasion and the Putin regime. A 65-page report by Yuri Irkhin, one of Ukraine’s leading criminologists, found in Bogdan’s writings no “statements, phrases, sentences, or word combinations that have signs of propaganda aimed at supporting the armed aggression of the Russian Federation.” The court never answered it.
The verdict will be appealed. Under Ukrainian law, the appeal must be filed within 30 days. The European Court of Human Rights accepted Bogdan’s case in the spring of 2025.
Bogdan’s life is in danger. His health was poor at the time of his arrest. He was denied urgently needed medical treatment for over two years, and treatment has begun only recently. In a penitentiary system whose overcrowding, denial of medical care and rising deaths in custody have been documented by the United Nations and the Council of Europe, a 15-year sentence is the equivalent of a death sentence.
We demand that the verdict against Bogdan Syrotiuk be overturned and that he be released immediately!
Send statements demanding the overturning of the verdict and Bogdan’s immediate release to the Pervomaisk City District Court at inbox@pm.mk.court.gov.ua, with copies to the World Socialist Web Site at freebogdan@wsws.org.
Fundraisers
Independent Autopsy for Robert "Gordo" Gamez, Jr.
Fight Toxic Prisons is supporting a fundraiser to fund the investigation of the death of long term incarcerated activist Robert "Gordo" Gamez, Jr. You can contribute here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-gordo-fund-for-independent-autop….
Funds raised here will go to Gordo's niece Destiny and will be used for towards attorney fees to help the family navigate the legal side of things, including finding a forensic pathologist who will conduct the autopsy, end-of-life proceedings for Gordo, and more. Funds will also cover the cost of the autopsy itself. Any leftover funds will be used to help Linda move forward with her life and support a broader struggle for justice for Gordo and all those who have died in ADOC’s custody.
Support Spider-Man, Antifascist Hero
We are raising funds for SPIDER-MAN, a Minneapolis antifascist superhero. On August 22, 2026, Nazi provocateur Jake Lang came to our city to rally fellow racists to his cause. Community members showed up to protest, and SPIDER-MAN was among them. After letting the Nazi get away, the MPD officers tackled SPIDER-MAN to the ground and arrested him!
Minneapolis, let’s stand up for SPIDER-MAN the way he stood up for us. This money will go directly to him to defray the costs of bail, legal fees, or whatever else he decides to use it for.
Contribute here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-spidermans-legal-defense
Media
Anarchist Panther
AK Press has published a new volume "Anarchist Panther: The Selected Writings of Ashanti O. Alston."
One of the enduring legacies of the Black Power Era is the turn by some revolutionaries toward a politics that questioned hierarchical leadership, patriarchy, and the role of the state in social transformation. This practice came to define a distinct form of anarchism rooted in the Black experience. Ashanti Omawali Alston helped nurture and define this turn through his experiences with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and through social movement activity from the late 1960s to today. Anarchist Panther collects, for the first time, his thoughts that have influenced generations of radicals the world over.
These essays, interviews, and speeches trace Alston’s ideas and influences, including those on psychology, political prisoner support, feminism, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, the Zapatista rebellion, and Black anarchism. Edited alongside William C. Anderson and introduced by kai lumumba barrow, Anarchist Panther brings to life the beautiful movement expression “All power to the people!”
Side by Side
A new zine "Side By Side: 16 Insights into Doing Solid Anti-Repression Work" edited by Cindy Barukh Milstein shares stories and lessons from sixteen people fighting repression and practicing solidarity.
The impulse behind this zine came from the shock, heartache, and sense of powerlessness that I felt on June 23, 2026, when two federal judges in Texas imposed sadistic sentences in the Prairieland case, ranging from thirty to a hundred years. So many of us felt frozen. Decades — for going to a noise demo outside an ICE detention center, removing someone from a Signal chat, having a printer at home, or simply moving a box of anarchist-oriented zines. Yet we somehow instantly sprang into the best kind of motion that day: checking in on each other, sending messages of solidarity and love, especially to the defendants’ families and friends. We then leaped tirelessly and voluntarily back into the many tasks of doing anti-repression “work” that we anarchists do so well…
[This zine] is intended as an inspirational anarchist compass, guiding you, via a sampling of lived experiences, toward what it means to pro-actively participate with integrity in the messy beautiful, meaningful, critical task of solidarity. Indeed, holding to solidarity — taking a side and then sticking side by side — will be among the messiest things you’ll ever do. It demands that we be humble and curious, move with trust and assent, and prioritize tenderness and empathy. It necessitates that we go through the worst with each other while striving to bring out the best in ourselves and others, such as being there for those facing the wrath of the state even if we are not friends or don’t like them, or even if we disagree with the actions they got charged, tried, or imprisoned for. It tests how serious we are about journeying together through anxiety, fear, exhaustion, impossible choices, conflict, trauma, and so much more, and in the process, modeling the social transformation we want to see beyond this prison of a current world — vulnerably, steadfastly, ethically.
Find a free pdf of the zine here: https://sheerspite.ca/product/side-by-side-16-insights-into-doing-solid…
This Month in History: Black August
On August 7, 1970 Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee were gunned down at the Marin County Courthouse in that attempt for freedom. Though this rebellion was put down by gory pigs and their agents, it was internalized within the hearts and minds of the people on the outside in the larger prison as well as those in the concentration camps (prison), internalized in the same fashion as we honor other heroic African Freedom Fighters, who sacrificed their lives for the people and the liberation.
On August 21, 1971, almost exactly a year following the slave rebellion at Marin County Courthouse, George L. Jackson (older brother of Jonathan Jackson as well as one of the Soledad Brothers) whose freedom was the primary demand of the Marin rebellion, was assassinated at San Quentin prison in an alleged escape put forth by prison administration and the state to cover its conspiracy. Comrade George Jackson was a highly respected and purposely influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement. Jackson was also very popular beyond prison, not only because he was a Soledad Brother, but also because of the book he authored appropriately entitled Soledad Brother. This book not only revealed to the public the inhumane and degrading conditions in prison, he more importantly, correctly pointed to the real cause of those effects in prison as well as in society: a decadent Capitalist system that breeds off of racism and oppression.
On August 1, 1978 brother Jeffery “Khatari” Gualden, a Black Freedom Fighter and Prisoner of War, captured within the walls of San Quentin was a victim of a blatant assassination by capitalist-corporate medical politics. Khatari was another popular and influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement.
August 20, 1619: First born Afrikan captives were brought to England’s North Amerikan colony of Jamestown, Virginia.
August 16, 1768: Charlestown, South Carolina. Rebellious Afrikan slaves (known as maroons) engaged British military forces in bloody battle defending their camp which was a haven for fugitive slaves.
August 30, 1800: Day set for launching Gabriel Prosser’s revolt. On this day over 1000 armed slaves gathered to endeavor to secure their liberty, however bad weather forced them to postpone the revolt and betrayal ultimately led to the crushing of their physical force.
August 21, 1831: Slave revolt launched under the leadership of Nat Turner which lasted four days and resulted in fifty-one slaveholders and their loved ones being subjected to revolutionary people’s justice.
August 29, 1841: Street skirmish took place in Cincinnati between Afrikan and Euro-Amerikan, wherein for five days Afrikans waged valiant struggle in defense of their women, children and property against brutal racist terror campaigns.
August 1854: Delegates from eleven states met in Cleveland at the National Emigration Convention of the Colored People, to advance the position that an independent land base (nation) be set up for the absorption of captive Afrikans in Babylon who wanted to return to Afrika.
August 1, 1856: North Carolina. Fierce battle erupted between fugitive slaves and slaveholders who sought their capture and re-enslavement. The only recorded casualties were among slaveholders.
August 1860: Freedom (slave) conspiracy uncovered with the discovery of an organized camp of Afrikans and Euro-Amerikan co-conspirators in Talladega County, Alabama.
August 2, 1865: Virginia. A statewide conference of fifty Afrikan delegates met to demand that Afrikans in Virginia be granted legal title to land occupied during the Civil War. Numerous off-pitch battles ensued during this same month as terrorist mobs moved to evict Afrikans from the land and were met with resistance.
August 17, 1887: Honorable Marcus Garvey, father of contemporary Afrikan Nationalism, was born.
August 1906: Afrikan soldiers (in service of Babylon) enraged behind racial slurs and discrimination struck out and wrecked the town of Brownville, Texas.
August 1906: Niagara Movement met at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia and issued W.E.B. DuBois’ historic manifesto against racist discrimination in Babylon against Afrikans.
August 1, 1914: Garvey founds Universal Negro Improvement Association, advancing the call for Land, Freedom, and Independence for Afrikan people.
August 23, 1917: Afrikan soldiers in Huston engaged in street skirmishes that left more than seventeen Euro-American racists dead.
August 1920: Over two thousand delegates representing Afrikans from the four corners of the earth gathered in New York for the International Convention of the Negro People of the World, sponsored by UNIA. The convention issued a bill of rights for Afrikans.
August 1943: Slave revolt took place in Harlem as result of a K-9 shooting a brother defending the honour of Afrikan womanhood. More than 16,000 military and police personnel were required to quell the rebellion.
August 1963: 190,000 Afrikans (250,000 people in total) took part in the March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King to petition for the extension of the rights and privileges due to them mandated by the U.S. Constitution.
August 1964: Afrikans launched comparatively large-scale urban slave revolts in the following cities: Jersey City NY, Paterson NJ, Keansburg NJ, Chicago IL, and Philadelphia PA. These slave revolts were for the most part sparked by either police brutality or disrespect shown toward Afrikan womanhood.
August 16, 1965: Urban revolts took place in Northern Philadelphia.
August 7-8, 1966: A large-scale urban revolt was launched in Lansing, Michigan.
August 28, 1966: Waukegan, Illinois. Urban slave revolt launched in response to police brutality.
July 30-August 2, 1967: Urban slave revolt launched in Milwaukee.
August 19-24, 1967: A comparatively large-scale urban slave revolt was launched in New Haven, Connecticut.
August 7, 1970: Jonathan Jackson killed in firefight while leading the Marin County Courthouse raid.
August 21, 1971: George Jackson shot and killed in San Quentin by tower guards.
Birthdays
John Bramble
Birthday: September 1
A former Vaughn 17 defendant and contributor to the Vaughn uprising zines “Live from the Trenches” and “United We Stood” and other publications, such as the May 2020 and August 2021 issues of Anathema. Johnny has continued to organize and agitate against the prison system from within. As a result, he is still being held in solitary confinement. Johnny is looking for anarchists, autonomists, and other radicals to regularly correspond with.
John Bramble #00450202
Delaware DOC – 1101
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193
Be aware that this is a Mail Scanning service address - books and zines must be mailed directly to the James T Vaugn facility.
John Bramble 00450202
James T. Vaughn Correctional Center
1181 Paddock Road
Smyrna, DE 19977
Delaware uses Getting Out for email messaging, so you can also send him a message by going to gettingout.com, setting up an account, and then adding him as a contact using his inmate number #00450202.
Aleksandr Belov
Birthday: September 1
Aleksandr is аn anarchist from Belarus who was detained on 29 July 2021 and arrested on charges of organisation of actions that disrupted public order during post-election protests in Belarus. The criminal case was opened under the Article 342.1 (gross violation of public order) for participation in protests and the Article 361-1.1 (participation in an extremist organization) On 22 April 2022, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Aleksandr Andreevich Belov
IK №22
stanciya Damanava, PO Box 20
225295 Ivacevichy
Belarus
Belarusian prisons will usually only accept letters in Belarusian or Russian, so if you don’t speak one of those languages your best bet is to email your message to belarus_abc at riseup.net or use this online form and they should be able to translate your greetings and pass them on
Bogdan Yakimenko
Birthday: September 3
Bogdan Yakimenko is a Russian antifascist prisoner serving a 9 year sentence after being convicted in the “Antifa United” case.
Letters to Russian prisoners must be written in Russian (you can use automatic translation services to help with this), and can be sent using the service prisonmail.online.
Yakimenko Bogdan Tarasovich, b. 1999
SIZO-1, Matrosskaya Tishina St., 18,
107076 Moscow, Russia
Artem D. Solovey
Birthday: September 10
Artem is an anarchist from Minsk. On August 4, 2021, he was arrested for 15 days for allegedly resisting arrest by the cops. After that he was not released, the criminal case was opened under the Article 342.1 (gross violation of public order) for participation in protests and the Article 361-1.1 (participation in an extremist organization). Earlier Artem had been detained several times at marches and preventively before Freedom Day. On 22 April 2022 sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Solovey Artem Dmitriyevich
IK №17
1-ya Zavodskaya ulica, 8
213004 Shklov
Belarus
Belarusian prisons will usually only accept letters in Belarusian or Russian, so if you don’t speak one of those languages your best bet is to email your message to belarus_abc at riseup.net or use this online form and they should be able to translate your greetings and pass them on
Sean Swain
Birthday: September 12
Long-term anarchist prisoner and contributor to projects such as the Final Straw Radio and Fire Ant zine.
Ohio now uses Connect Network/GTL, so you can contact him online by going to connectnetwork.com, selecting “Add a facility,” choosing “State: Ohio, Facility: Ohio Department of Rehabiliation and Corrections,” going into the “messaging” service, and then adding him as a contact by searching his name or “A243205.”
Sean Swain #A243205
ODRC Mail Processing Center
878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd
Youngstown, OH 44505
Igor Olinevich
Birthday: September 24
Igor is a Belarusian anarchist who was arrested on the night of 28-29 October 2020 close to Ukrainian border by Belarusian border guards together with Sergey Romanov, Dmitry Rezanovich and Dmitry Dubovski. He was charged with terrorism and illegal possession of firearms. According to prosecutors office he and his comrades organized several arson attacks in Soligorsk and Mozyr against state institutions. On 22 December 2021, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison
Igor Vladimirovich Olinevich
Investigative prison №8
ul. Sovetskaya, 22A
222163 Zhodino
Belarus
Belarusian prisons will usually only accept letters in Belarusian or Russian, so if you don’t speak one of those languages your best bet is to email your message to belarus_abc at riseup.net or use this online form and they should be able to translate your greetings and pass them on
Greg Curry
Birthday: September 26
Falsely convicted in the aftermath of the historic Lucasville prison uprising. You can learn more about Greg by reading his writings or listening to his interview with The Final Straw. Greg is currently working on an appeal against his wrongful conviction. You can buy merch to support Greg here.
Ohio now uses Connect Network/GTL, so you can contact him online by going to connectnetwork.com, selecting “Add a facility,” choosing “State: Ohio, Facility: Ohio Department of Rehabiliation and Corrections”, going into the “messaging” service, and then adding him as a contact by searching his name or “A213159”.
Greg Curry #213-159
878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd
Youngstown, OH 44505
Jorge P. Cornell (King Jay)
Birthday: September 29
Inca of the North Carolina Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, community organizer who worked to broker truces and end gang violence and was given 28 years on a racketeering charge. You can learn more about King Jay by reading this profile of him. The Final Straw also broadcast two interviews with supporters, Sara Lee and Savannah, involved in solidarity efforts at the time of his trial.
King Jay is held in the Federal system, so you can only contact him via Corrlinks if he’s added you as a contact.
Jorge P. Cornell #28152-057
FCI Butner Low
P.O. Box 999
Butner, NC 27509
Appendix: Against Prison Censorship
Scalawag Magazine has been publishing numerous articles and contributions from prisoners on the rise of prison censorship in recent months. We republish them here so readers inside can access them in full.
Michael Kimble — Censorship Beyond Book Bans in Prison: A Slave Master Mentality
"All the energies of censorship are geared toward the prohibition of thought. The point is that you may not think." — Robert Keable, Censorship of Thought
In recent months, the Prison Industrial Slave Complex (PISC) has begun censoring all books from outside publishers, vendors, book clubs, etc. This is nothing new. The PISC has always refused to allow prisoners to receive certain books that they (the prisoncrats) deem a "threat to institutional security" and the smooth functioning of the prisons. What is new is that ALL BOOKS are now being censored, rejected, and denied in ALL PRISONS across the U.S., and this move on the part of the PISC of denying prisoners any and all books is said to be necessary in order to stop the smuggling of drugs into the prisons. Well, to do that, they would have to fire all Alabama Department of Corrections employees because every week, we are seeing correctional officers and police being arrested for smuggling drugs and other contraband into the prisons.
Books are being censored not because drugs are being smuggled into prisons via books, or because these books are full of falsehoods; they censor and reject books because they know that they contain the truth. The reason why books, especially those on Black and radical history, are being censored is very clear: Education means the beginning of the demise of the prisons—the institution of caging human beings—and prisoncrats take great care that caged slaves of the state remain caged.
During chattel slavery, slaves were not allowed to read or write. As a matter of fact, it was illegal for a slave to learn how to read or write. It was also illegal to teach a slave how to read or write, and any slave caught with a book faced serious consequences. Slavery is hostile to mental culture because it is not profitable. It is, in fact, threatening to the slave system to educate a slave beyond a certain point.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given prisoncrats a real boon in the 1987 Turner v. Safley decision. This case was a ruling on prison communications and gave the green light for prisoncrats to censor incoming mail, as long as it "reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." The Procunier v. Martinez decision, which was overruled in part, states that outgoing mail can also be censored if doing so "furthers an important or substantial governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free expression," though this limitation on First Amendment freedoms must be "no greater than is necessary or essential" to the protection of governmental interest.
The censorship flows both ways. Prisoncrats don't want people on the outside to know what is going on inside, and they don't want prisoners to receive books because they know an educated prisoner population cannot be controlled. There are too many instances of censorship to list here, but one prominent example is Inmates for Action (IFA), a militant prisoners' rights organization formed in 1972 at the maximum-security Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama, known, at that time, as "The Slaughterhouse" for its high incidence of guard brutality.
Members in lockup were not allowed any books or writing instruments. Thus, these inmates had to resort to smuggling lead from pencils and stray pages from newspapers, ultimately copying out the pages of books on toilet paper to pass around to different inmates. In 2001, while held captive at Limestone Prison in Alabama, my cell was searched, and all books, papers, and magazines were confiscated. I was placed in lockup and received a disciplinary citation for creating a "safety and security hazard." All of this because I received a book in the mail that I had ordered from a publisher. I received a rejection slip notifying me that the book had been rejected, and I had 72 hours to appeal the decision. When I did so, I was again searched, placed in lock-up, and given a write-up.
South Carolina prisoncrats have been rejecting publications such as San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper, a Black, anti-prison, anti-racist publication. Kevin Rashid Johnson reports being denied this publication at the Perry Correctional Facility. He also reports experiencing retaliation after he challenged the denial of a newspaper called Socialist View. According to prison policy in both Alabama and South Carolina, rejected publications are supposed to go through a review process. If a publication is rejected, the prisoner and the sender are both supposed to receive a notice of rejection and given an opportunity to appeal the decision. In the majority of cases, however, the appeal is either ignored or the rejection upheld.
Willie and Mary Ratcliff, who acquired the Bay View from its founder, Muhammad Al-Kareem, emphasize that SFBV helps prisoners understand that they are not alone; it helps them connect their experiences to broader struggles, and effectively challenge the abuse they experience on a collective basis. Thus, the suppression and censorship of the paper not only affects individual subscribers, but the whole dynamic of collective communication, political education, and awareness inside the walls.
Shine White (Joseph Stewart), a prisoner in North Carolina, was recently transferred and placed in lockup for possession of a contraband cell phone. The actual reason for this punishment, however, is that Shine has been continuously making noise to keep those on the outside informed about what is going on behind the walls. Most recently, he had been calling for public investigation into the death of a prisoner in his facility.
Shine did what must be done: Blast the news to the outside.
The brutal retaliation he has since experienced is thus a form of censorship—an attack on our collective sense of reality and the stories that convey this reality. It is about denying and erasing our collective histories, identities, and lived experiences. Censorship is thought control. Prisoncrats are afraid that prisoners may learn the truth about their own lives and conditions. Thus, they must suppress the truth or any information that prisoners may use to act on it.
And though prisoncrats see books as a challenge to their authority and control, prison censorship is about more than book bans. It is about surveillance, policing, and the attempt to control our very thoughts, perceptions, and actions—on the inside and the outside! Censorship is driven by fear. It is a form of repression, and we must fight against it by refusing to be silent. We must resist these attempts to control our thoughts.
Michael Kimble is a 60-year old native of Alabama and a Black queer anarchist. He has been held captive by the state for over 40 years and is serving a life sentence.
Write to Michael:
ALDOC Inmate Mail Processing
Michael Kimble #138017
PO Box 138017
San Antonio, TX 78217
Monsour Olawabi — Empire of Censorship
Contemporary discussion on the topic of censorship rarely goes beyond the framework of individual rights to address its broader effects on people's movements and collective forms of struggle. In the context of Amerikan prisons, this limited, and liberal, definition of censorship as primarily an assault on individual rights or freedoms obscures its real function as a tool of counterinsurgency, waged against entire populations or classes of people.
In this piece, I attempt to broaden our definition of censorship by analyzing the widespread mail bans that prisoncrats across the empire began implementing, following the historic state- and nation-wide prison strikes that swept the country in 2016 and 2018. While the confiscation and censoring of prisoners' mail as a form of punishment and retaliation is nothing new, I argue that the enemy made a qualitative leap in their tactics following this period of insurgent prisoner-led resistance.
Rather than banning or withholding mail outright, prisoncrats began using a tactic I call censorship by expansion, where the digitization of mail, alongside the introduction of electronic tablets into prison facilities, provided a legal and moral cover for the wholesale banning of physical mail and increasingly books into prisons. By framing the generous "gifting" of electronic tablets to prisoners as an expansion of access to information and knowledge, prisoncrats succeeded in withholding, censoring, and ultimately exercising vastly greater control over the actual information deemed most threatening to the prison system. This is a clear example of what the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual considers disrupting insurgency by, essentially, appropriating its cause. Rather than relying on blunt military force to subdue and defeat an insurgent population, counterinsurgency operates indirectly, through a process of co-optation that blurs the line between victory and defeat.
Counterinsurgency is a core element of how the Amerikan prison system has functioned since at least the 1970s, according to Dr. Orisanmi Burton's insight, which is derived from survivors of the Attica prison rebellion. The type of prison censorship we see today should thus be understood as a form of intellectual, psychological, and class warfare, whose ultimate goal is social control and behavior modification, specifically of the prisoner class.
More than an attack on individual freedom of expression, prison censorship in the 21st century takes aim at Our collective ability to organize and collectively resist the violence of the prison system that dehumanizes Us on the basis of a distinct form of class and national oppression.
Prison Censorship As Class Warfare
During the so-called Cold War, the Amerikan empire promoted the idea of capitalist "democracy" as tied to freedom, as opposed to an "undemocratic" communism associated with unfreedom. Thus, many of Turtle Island's occupants were conditioned to believe that censorship, especially political censorship, was undemocratic and "unconstitutional." In other words, censorship is unAmerikan, something that the dreaded foreign "communists" practiced, but never could happen in the so-called land of the free. However, it is hardly a secret that the Amerikan government has long engaged in blatant acts of censorship against ideas that threaten its own hegemonic narratives, including the frequent targeting, imprisonment, and murder of people who espouse those ideas.
To this day, We often object to censorship on the basis that it violates our individual freedoms, pointing to instances of book denials or mail tampering as evidence of this injustice; however, this framing of censorship risks falling into the tendency to individualize our collective struggles that the enemy's counterinsurgency strategies are designed to promote. Moreover, it risks reinforcing the narrative that censorship is merely a deviation from the "true" Amerikan values of freedom and democracy and that combating censorship is just about restoring those ideals. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
In an open letter he wrote to the New York Department of Corrections upon learning that his book Tip of the Spear had been banned in prisons across multiple states, Dr. Orisanmi Burton noted: "[George] Jackson and others did not see the prison-based rituals of censorship, violence, exploitation, and white supremacy as exceptions to the norms of liberal democracy. Rather, they saw them as a distillation, the very essence of society that was founded on genocide and slavery and that continues to be ruled by monopoly capital. Under such conditions, elite control over the flow of knowledge is imperative."
It is particularly important to highlight the class dimension of prison censorship, since prisoners and the activities and ideas that surround Us, are not often analyzed as a class in Our own right. However, the laws of capitalism always necessitate the development of a sub-economy or black market, and the prisoner class, being excluded from the formal economy, is a natural outgrowth of this arrangement. Prisons, in part, exist to wage war on this sub-economy and those who operate within it. And since Amerikan capitalism, and by extension, its judicial system, has always had a distinctly racial component to it, the majority of prisoners and those of the lumpen class generally are also nationally and racially oppressed. As Jackson wrote in Soledad Brother: "The [modus operandi] of the fascist arrangement is always to protect the capitalist class by destroying the consciousness, the trust, and the unity of the lower classes."
Prison censorship is a form of intellectual, psychological, and class warfare against the imprisoned lumpen class as a whole, designed to control Our narratives, identities, activities, and influence on the broader society. It is designed to stifle not so much our individual expression, but our collective expression as an objective class; and it is this class consciousness which poses the real threat to the prison system, which is why it must go to such extreme lengths to censor and suppress.
Mail Bans and the Insidious Development of the Prison Censorship Regime
Beginning in 2011 and again in 2013, prisoners across the state of California organized a series of hunger strikes that garnered unprecedented media attention and outside solidarity. During this time, the lumpen class, nearly 30,000 strong, waged a militant campaign to expose the enemy's widespread use of psychological torture inside prisons, particularly that of long-term solitary confinement. This successful exposure of one of the enemy's primary weapons of counterinsurgency was met with a wave of global solidarity: The Pelican Bay hunger strikers garnered the support of Palestinian prisoners on the other side of the world, who have long endured similar types of torture at the hands of their israeli captors.
Following on the heels of this widely publicized hunger strike, a national prison strike was organized in 2016 to protest the issue of mass incarceration, especially the industrialization of prisons. Though I personally believe this strike was organized in haste, two years later in 2018, another, better organized national prison strike coalesced, with sister souljah Amani Sawari serving as its public spokesperson. The 2018 national prison strike and its demands were widely publicized and discussed, in part, because it was timed to coincide with the Democratic Party primaries that set the stage for the 2020 elections. During the debates, presidential candidates were asked a series of questions about prisons and prison reform, directly derived from the demands of the 2018 national prison strike. This moment made clear that the lumpen class and their petit-bourgeois allies had indeed succeeded in forcing the issue of mass incarceration to the forefront of national consciousness.
In the same year, however, We began to witness the first waves of mail bans being implemented in prisons across the empire. While the Amerikan prison regime has a long history of withholding or tampering with prisoners' mail, the specific methods used to implement these policies after 2018 represented an escalation in the enemy's tactics: Rather than banning mail outright, prisoncrats began instituting new state-wide policies of mail digitization, which required all incoming physical mail to be scanned and uploaded into a digital database. Though they argued that these policies were necessary to prevent the smuggling of drugs and contraband into prison facilities, this claim is easily disproven by the stats. For example, between the years of 2022 and 2025, the Arkansas Department of Corrections reported only 25 incidents of drugs being smuggled into prisons through physical mail. Since thousands of pieces of mail entered Arkansas prisons over this three-year-long period, the claim that drugs smuggled in via physical mail posed a legitimate security threat to the prison system is unsubstantiated.
In reality, these new mail digitization policies were a coordinated effort to target, eliminate, and destroy the primary lines of communication that sustained the waves of state and nation-wide prison strikes during the first half of the 2010s. It is clear that Amerikan prisoncrats, who observed the widespread success of the prisoners' movement in the preceding years, responded to this insurgent offensive by initiating a counter-offensive, which entailed attacking and destroying the entire communications infrastructure that made possible the successes of the prisoners' movement during the preceding years. However, rather than attacking it outright, they employed the classic counterinsurgency move—tested and proven in the course of Amerika's many wars abroad—of co-opting the insurgency through a veneer of concession.
Many of Us who took part in the militant prisoner movements during the first half of the 2010s correctly predicted that this counterinsurgent attack on our mail, and, by extension, our ability to organize, was only the beginning of a larger strategy to come. In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the George Floyd uprisings, and numerous strikes and uprisings occurring behind the walls, the state initiated a second wave of counterinsurgency when they began distributing electronic tablet devices to prisoners across the empire. In the state of Texas, the private company Securus Technologies paid the Texas Department of Criminal Justice tens of millions of dollars to open its doors to a non-competitive and captive market, while other states signed multi-million dollar contracts with similar corporations such as Global Tel Link (GTL) and CorrLinks. Electronic tablets were now rented freely to each prisoner, who would be charged to use select content and services on these devices, including email and phone services that were also to be paid for out of pocket.
By framing the introduction of tablets into prisons as an expansion of prisoners' access to information, knowledge, and channels of communication, prisoncrats succeeded in convincing the public that these tablets constituted a positive step toward "prison reform" and an improvement in prison conditions overall. In reality, however, these "reforms" merely provided cover for an unprecedented expansion in the prison system's own surveillance and censorship capacities, dealing a decisive blow to the victories of the nation-wide prison strikes in the preceding years.
New Prison Tech Blurs the Line Between Victory and Defeat
In his book, Tip of the Spear, Dr. Orisanmi Burton wrote: "To see the prison as an institutionalized form of counterinsurgency is to apprehend how not only spectacular violence, but mundane 'progressive' and 'humanizing' reforms are constantly being weaponized against the capacity for radical thought." He noted how, in the wake of the 1971 Attica Rebellion, the New York Department of Corrections initiated a state-wide program allowing prisoners to have individual TV sets in their cells—a move that resulted in a marked decline in young people's desire to read. While many interpreted this new allowance of individual TV sets in prison cells as a "privilege," the intended effect of this counterinsurgency move is clearly illustrated in an anecdote shared by Attica survivor Jomo Omowale, who in the late 1970s reported seeing a copy of George Jackson's Soledad Brother in a prisoner's trash can.
Prison censorship thus exemplifies the carrot and stick logic that characterizes prisons as sites of low-intensity warfare. For every "carrot," such as electronic tablets, introduced by the prison regime to reward (read: mold) prisoners' behavior in ways that favor the interests of the ruling class, there is a "stick" ready to beat and terrorize the captive who does not comply. Punishment can mean an array of things. For some, like comrades Kevin Rashid Johnson, Shaka Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli, it means domestic exile through policies such as the interstate compact, where captives are traded across state lines, deliberately kept out of reach of their families and communities. It can mean arbitrary searches and raids, the illegal confiscation of property, physical beatings, and false and trumped-up disciplinary cases and sanctions, which prevent a prisoner from any ability to contact their supporters.
In the conclusion of his book, Burton wrote: "Today's prison-based tablets are on the cutting edge of carceral war. Privately-owned digital communications firms such as Securus Technologies and Global Tel Link (GTL) are increasingly flooding carceral systems with app-filled devices specially designed for prison contexts. Although these tools are publicly marketed as "bringing fractured communities together," these companies employ predatory pricing strategies that extract scarce financial resources from already vulnerable communities and are rapidly replacing letter writing, which, as I have shown, is central to the terrain of anti-carceral Revolt.
Moreover, he noted how "increasingly ubiquitous tracking technologies," such as electronic ankle shackles, among numerous other carceral technologies that have proliferated alongside the introduction of tablets, are increasingly blurring the line between freedom and captivity altogether, foreshadowing a time already rapidly emerging when we will be less and less able to define the parameters of incarceration at all. Here again, the proliferation of technologies such as electronic ankle shackles allows the state to craft a narrative of "reform" and "progress"—by citing declining incarceration rates over the last decade—while in reality expanding and rewriting the very terms of incarceration, by once again blurring the distinction between victory and defeat.
In this sense, the fight against prison censorship cannot be about the restoration of individual rights or freedoms; ultimately, there are no rights, only power struggles. Until the oppressed nations and classes within Occupied Turtle Island gain true sovereignty over land, including the prisons that currently occupy them, we will continue to see a further heightening of these contradictions, causing classes in power to censor us more, not less.
As Mao wrote in "On Practice": "In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class." The question becomes: which class is determining your thoughts and action?
Monsour Owolabi is a New Afrikan poet, organizer, and politicized prisoner who has been held captive in Texas prisons for nearly 20 years, sentenced to life without parole.
Write to Monsour:
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Monsour Owolabi #01856112
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 775226-0400
Caspar Cendre — Abandon All Connection, Ye Who Enter Here: Digitized Prison Mail as Repression and Surveillance
In the mezzanine of our spooky three-story A.B.O. Comix headquarters is a stack of returned prisoner mail: books that didn't survive the round trip, birthday cards that were lovingly hand-drawn and defaced with a giant red DENIED stamp through the middle, and newsletters with queer art deemed too dangerous to the system to be allowed inside the electric fence and razor wire.
The little punk cartoon monster drawings with birthday cake smeared across their faces, with the caption "Hope you can have your cake and eat it too! With love from A.B.O. Comix," is a threat to national security. Remembering a prisoner on their birthday with a simple card is a violation of prison rules.
Years ago, I was asked to compile a document of all the rejection notices we have gotten from prison. I got tired after redacting the names and prisoner ID numbers of 50 pages and stopped there. It is disheartening to see the reasons why: comics banned because of cartoon nipples, "no personal correspondence allowed," "no greeting cards, only postcards," "mail conducts or establishes business," "encourages deviate [sic] criminal sexual behavior," "presents a clear risk of disobedience towards law enforcement officers," and my personal favorite, the "otherwise presents a threat…" written in after two pages of unchecked reasons a prison may choose to deny a prisoner their mail.
Before prisons began contracting digital mail scanning centers and destroying the handwritten letters, holiday cards, photos, and artwork of the prisoner's loved ones, they were already censoring the contents and refusing entry. Now, they've found a more advanced way to do it, one that problem-solves for the prison guard shortage after COVID-19 and profits from human confinement in a sinisterly new way.
A.B.O. Comix was founded because of cross-wall penpalling: sharing letters and art through the mail and finding ways to collaborate in conditions of severe confinement and control. It would not exist if not for two people on opposite sides of a wall sitting down and writing a letter, sealing it with love and sending it off with hope in the fickle hands of USPS. A project like A.B.O. Comix could never be created under current conditions, but that does not mean we do not persist and adapt.
Since its founding in 2017, thousands of imprisoned people have come together for 10 years of collaborative comic-anthology making with A.B.O. Comix. Their art, poetry, and stories have been shared across the globe and sparked countless conversations in coffee shops, art galleries, college classes, and tattoo studios. But there has been a tangible shift in the public perception of queer artists working in these conditions. The ability to maintain connection and co-create across prison walls has become too dangerous to the narrative of the system. They are losing the thread of legitimacy and pivoting: two-way surveillance at the cost of both those the state holds against their will and the ones who love them.
For incarcerated queer folks especially, mail has been a life-saving system. Mail call used to signal to other people that there was someone on the outside who cared. A card or penpal letter from organizations like our sister collective, Flying Over Walls, was sometimes the only mail people would get, often abandoned by friends and family when they went in. Many people say they have saved every letter we've ever sent them, or cut out photos from our newsletters to create a collage or to tape up on their cell walls. When we sent out prompts for zines or creative writing, people were able to write directly on the form we mailed them and send it back, to save on paper and provide the option to those who couldn't afford their own.
People got their independent news this way, through indie presses or alternative media. Now, they are limited to the corporate news channels on television or the prison-chosen news sources they can access on their tablet. Everything is run through a tighter filter, enhanced by AI technology to locate keywords that may trigger heightened inspection of the correspondence, and digitally log this data for future purposes of which we can only begin to imagine.
Suddenly, we find our handwritten letters turned into ones that are expensive, typed, mass-surveilled by private corporations, and held indefinitely by the carceral state to be accessed by anyone in corrections at any time for any reason. No longer do our newsletters—with photos, art, resources, updates, and space built in to write or draw for those who cannot afford extra paper at commissary—make it into the hands of our contributors in prison. No longer do our books and zines, a lifeline of creativity from fellow LGBTQ prisoners, pass through mailrooms. No longer do people speak openly about their dangerous circumstances, the abuse they face, the medical neglect they endure, or the difficult questions that they wrestle with. Digital mail processing is equivalent to silence, increased fear, and severe penalties for everyone impacted by the prison system.
The censorship we faced in the traditional prison mail system was already arbitrary, deeply anti-queer, and purposefully opaque. Now, this Hydra no longer inspects, rejects, and returns. Instead, it intercepts, scans, stores, searches, monetizes, and destroys.
One friend in Texas wrote to us, using up his last stamp, to let us know "Texas is doing the digital shit now." He wrote that all personal mail would be scanned and sent to the tablet. "So no more keepsakes," he added. "It's all dependent on if the people scanning are not going to just destroy our letters without scanning them." Since it's not regulated by the postal service, he wrote, "there's no way of knowing if anything comes thru."
Another friend wrote that TDCJ was already taking letters and photocopying them without any policy or explanation he could find. A friend had written him, and the prison held the letter for 12 days before he got it. Then they photocopied it, didn't give him the original, and the copy cut off mid-sentence after two pages. They were doing this to a lot of people, he wrote. He filed a grievance. He wanted me to know what was going on.
The Beginning of the End
As always, there needed to be an excuse, one that threatens the "safety and security" of good law-abiding folks just trying to do their jobs. A news story that hits you right in the feels: there he was, an innocent prison guard going through prisoner mail. A father. A husband. A mentor. He never could have expected that envelope contained lethal traces of Fentanyl. And now, that prison guard is no more. RIP.
And now we have a staff shortage because all these drugs keep killing all the prison guards! And there's riots and fires and stabbings and overdoses, and the whole dang thing is chaos! The only thing that can stop it is if no one's allowed to hide drugs in the mail anymore, because there is no prison mail!
Now hold up because this didn't just begin in 2024 with the passing of CO Fischer from envelope fentanyl. All the way back in 2021, San Mateo County Jails in California barred prisoners from receiving physical mail, and started rolling out mail digitization and prison tablets. It was very slowly gaining some traction.
But as always, Texas does it bigger. One friend inside TDCJ wrote to us after the notice reached his unit: "Just got an update and found out something disturbing. You know that whole 'mail scanning' thing that's been going around? It finally reached Texas." He typed out the lengthy notice to us, since tablets wouldn't allow copy and paste.
It read, in part:
"The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is excited to announce that we are moving to a digital mail platform to reduce the amount of dangerous contraband in our facilities. Effective September 6, 2023, all units will be moved to the digital mail platform. Incoming mail for all inmates should be sent to the digital mail processing center where it will be sorted, scanned, and uploaded to the inmate's secure tablet."
On TDCJ's website is a dystopian video featuring Timothy Fitzpatrick, Director of Classification and Records, in a corn-flower blue suit with close-cropped hair and a wooden cutout of the state of Texas behind him. In this video, he robotically introduces the machines that scan and digitize correspondence, effectively eliminating the need for guards to sort through dangerous mail, and prominently displaying real letters, drawings, names, and addresses of imprisoned people and their loved ones. But it also shows employees, donned in lab coats, blue gloves, and masks, still opening up and sorting the mail, just not in the prison. Now it's a private company doing it.
Shortly thereafter, prison tablets were rolled out through all the state units in Texas. But not just in Texas; they were popping up everywhere. Companies like Securus Technologies started making deals with correctional facilities all over the nation.
The companies purport that the tablets "deliver educational, vocational, religious, and legal materials along with messaging and numerous other programs." Really seems like a win-win. No more drug smuggling through the mail, and prisoners get all these amazing benefits on their tablets. TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier said, "The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the need for greater connectivity and ways to deliver information to inmates. With this secure system, the agency expects to be able to streamline everything from the delivery of programs, to the ability to search for pre-release information, to enhancements in mail delivery."
Dang, the carceral state has good PR.
Times are clearly a-changin' in the land of mass incarceration. Prisons in the U.S. haven't seemed to progress much technologically since the '80s, but now, almost overnight, nearly every prisoner has a tablet with pay-to-play addictive content, hooking people who are starved of access and communication, and then upcharging them into oblivion for continued use. Simultaneously, they phased out all physical mail, newsletters, and books from being able to enter the prison system. If you think things are getting a little too Orwellian for your taste in society at-large, prisons are the testing ground.
While writing this, I got a call from an unknown number in San Diego, my hometown. The voicemail said: "Hi, this is a quick message for families using the federal prison email system. ContactMeASAP just got better. Unlimited text, photo sharing and now AI-powered searches your loved one can use right from their unit. No more waiting. No more wondering if your message got through."
The company lauds itself as a "federal inmate text messaging service," offering a unique phone number to the person in prison that they can keep upon release. I must have crossed into an alternate timeline, because I was still under the impression that prisoners found with cellphones, mostly used to text their loved ones, were very much frowned upon. Yet, here we are, a company offering a paid text messaging service on devices they provide for federal prisoners, profiting off the stoppage of physical mail being allowed into prison.
But the truth is not quite as advertised. Our friends inside the prison system started reporting numerous issues. Screens bending and cracking from bare minimum use. $150 to replace. Headphones falling to pieces after one use. $20 to replace. Severe distortion over calls where one side or the other, or both, could not hear each other, requiring repeated calls just to successfully exchange a few sentences—all the time, racking up fees. Entertainment or education they paid for, on prison wages or family assistance, would disappear unless they started purchasing costly subscriptions to keep them.
The mail they received, scanned and digitized on their tablets, was often blurry, cut off, and at such low resolution that it was impossible to read. All original mail was, of course, destroyed. Older family members who struggled with technology found it impossible to navigate the counterintuitive websites and costly payments and simply stopped trying to communicate with people inside. I received heartbreaking emails from loved ones begging me to walk their family members through the process just so that they wouldn't stop writing.
There were supposed to be video visits, so much easier than visiting your loved one in prison where you gotta go through all those metal detectors and engage with prison guards with hot cheeto-dusted fingers. But the video visit apps on the tablets crash constantly, glitch, and won't allow you into the visitation room, then cancel your visit the day of for no reason, making you rebook another month out. And some people you can never visit. I have been refreshing the video visitation schedule every week for a year and still can't have a video visit with my best friend in prison. The prison blocked me on her phone list over three years ago, and no one has answered my numerous calls, emails, letters, or angry screams into my pillow.
And things are wildly inconsistent. At one jail, prisoners can only access a tablet in the dayroom during certain hours on a limited supply. These tablets are often malfunctioning for one reason or another, and in full view of everyone else. Other prisons issue one tablet per person, yet these are often stolen, traded, trashed during shakedowns, or otherwise damaged thanks to planned obsolescence.
One friend inside described the platform as funneling all communication to one point. "Mail goes to the tablet. Email goes to the tablet. Photos go to the tablet." When his cellmate was moved to another unit, he was told his tablet would be sent to him, but it was lost in transit. So he had no mail, no phone calls, and no contact with his family for weeks.
Once, a prisoner could at least lie on their bunk, holding a letter from their spouse or child, re-reading it over and over again, a tangible connection to the people they love that the state won't allow them to be with. Now, there's just the hope you can fight your way to the prison tablet tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, there will be digital text blinking on the blurry screen for the few minutes you get to read it before you're elbowed out of the way.
The Commodity of the Confined
I won't pretend that mail digitization is the ultimate systemic sin. But it is another papercut in the slow and painful death the justice system imposes on those it kidnaps and encages. It's yet another way that system disconnects us; the proverbial last straw for many people who were already struggling with communication across prison walls. The system does this so well: annoy and push people just a little bit further until they give up completely and throw their hands up in despair.
It is clear, and has been to me for the 16 years I've been in decarceration and abolitionist work, that the dehumanization of people the justice system deems criminal is a stain on the collective consciousness that we will never wash ourselves clean of. I've grown weary of watching people bicker over the sins of the past, but turn a blind eye to the ones happening now. Ones that are in our power to change.
So when the chance came to do something about it, we did.
In 2023, attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University reached out to us with the concern that "eliminating physical mail harms the expressive rights of people that are incarcerated." Soon thereafter, alongside the incredible plaintiffs incarcerated there, and their loved ones, we launched a lawsuit against San Mateo County Jails, the Maguire Correctional Facility, and the Maple Street Correctional Center: A.B.O. Comix v. San Mateo Cnty., No. 23-civ-01075 (Super. Ct. of San Mateo Cnty.).
Three years later, on July 30, 2026, our attorneys notified us that Judge Healy of the Superior Court of the State of California determined that we do not have standing to sue based on the fact that three years have elapsed and those that we communicated with in San Mateo County Jails are no longer incarcerated there, as jails typically house people only until their trial and usually only up to about two years. The order stated, "A plaintiff may lose standing even where an actual controversy originally existed but, by the passage of time or a change in circumstances, ceased to exist."
A bold tactic, California. Dragging out trials until you can argue that it's a moot point, knowing the case is time-sensitive.
People incarcerated in these jails are still suffering under these policies. MailGuard and other scanning and mail digitization companies are still profiting off the commodity of prisoner correspondence while helping increase the level of surveillance of millions of people held in bondage.
We do not yet know if we will appeal. But that does not mean this is the end of the fight. In the last three years, we have painstakingly investigated and acquired the testimonies of countless imprisoned people who have been affected by this mail digitization and prison tablet exploitation scheme. We are starting to see other people challenge this as well.
The Fight to Write campaign, now Right to Write (as the digital mail AI censorship big brother kept flagging the word "fight" and not allowing it to be written in messages), launched to oppose these policies and highlight the numerous negative impacts. Through campaigns like this and other people and organizations fighting against the digitalization of prison correspondence, we have exposed that this policy is not about curbing the flow of drugs and contraband into the system via mail at all.
Let's not forget that drug addiction is a horrific epidemic within the system. Our friends incarcerated in Texas have seen some of the worst of this (RIP BeBe and many others who the state has killed through the flow of lethal drugs into the system). K2, or synthetic marijuana, is one of the worst culprits, with reports of overdoses and episodes of psychosis where people have fallen off third-row tiers to their deaths, dove headfirst off their bunks onto the floor, and attempted to fatally attack others while in the midst of an overdose—just a few of the situations that have happened to close friends of mine inside.
But the prison system doesn't actually care about the deaths and overdoses of people they imprison. They do, however, understand the concept of good PR in keeping the general public from looking too closely at what happens behind those closed gates.
Jason Renard Walker, an incarcerated journalist in Texas, wrote that TDCJ officials linked increasing violence to drugs entering prisons, using that as justification for a statewide lockdown and mass cell search. He also noted that this lockdown came amid the new policy that stopped friends and family from sending mail directly to TDCJ units. Instead, all mail of this variety would be sent to a digital processing center, inspected, scanned, and electronically sent to Securus tablets. TDCJ claimed this would help curtail drugs being used, sold, and distributed throughout the system. Walker called it "a measure that failed miserably within the first 90 days of the new policy."
It is not a secret to anyone who has experience with the prison system that drug smuggling is not efficient through USPS; the much better route is through the guards bringing them in directly and selling for a nice profit. But in order to appear as if they've done something about it, they've implemented a policy that punishes families and helps the prison system keep better tabs on people's conversations, personal lives, hopes, dreams, words, and art.
We have been paying attention to places like Pennsylvania, which has seen positive drug tests triple since implementing mail scanning. Or places like Illinois, where drug deaths and overdoses have remained at the same rate since physically destroying prisoners' mail.
Fighting Back Against the Matrix of State Slavery
We are watching the prison system undergo a tech revolution, and what a crazy timeline it is to be in. We are co-existing in the breeding ground for the weaponization of the smartest technology we have ever known to exist on this planet. We live in a society that experiments on people the state can somehow dehumanize.
This is where the elite rehearse what they want to normalize for "free" society—what they can get away with, what everyone will just go along with, testing how far they can push before there's pushback.
We're watching Flock cameras go up all over the town. We're getting tickets in the mail from surveillance cameras with no human viewer or oversight. Our communication is being privatized and sold and extracted for data. We are addicted to our screens with typed text and have lost the scent of parchment and the feel of a pen in our hands. We are rapidly losing the ability to exist without machines.
But we also have these tools at our disposal, and we have to learn how to stop being two steps behind the government and start being proactive. Start building. Start planning. Start learning. When the people band together, we win.
So please join in the fight. Preserve your right to write. Remember the pen is mightier than the sword.
Join us at our new home, where you can find people to write in prison via our penpal portal: Abolition Archive: http://www.abolitionarchive.org/.
Casper Cendre is a writer, publisher, and prison abolitionist based in Oakland.
"Notification of Unauthorized Mail": Comics by Juan Hernandez
In my 27 years of incarceration, I have never experienced anything like Dixon Correctional Center's mailroom, where they practice the art of weaponizing censorship.
Their "Notification of Unauthorized Mail" slip has well over 50 reasons why they could deny us our mail. When an envelope containing a letter from my mother was scuffed during delivery, it was denied due to "Unusual Stain." When a reference photo of a child putting bunny ears behind his unsuspecting dad was sent to me for a painting, it was denied due to "Hand Gestures." My little niece can't send me artwork because of "Crayon Used." And then there is a blank write-in section for the reason "Other."
In September 2025, the state of Illinois stopped allowing us to receive physical mail. All our mail is now scanned and downloaded onto our tablets, where the images will automatically delete after six months. One would assume that since we are no longer receiving physical mail, scuff marks or crayon usage would no longer matter, but it still does. They refuse to relinquish any power.
My only way to combat this weaponization was through a grievance procedure, but even this tool was taken from me. The Illinois Prison Administration now sends an "Unauthorized Mail" slip to the sender to submit a grievance, because they know people outside are less likely to take the time to do so. Our families are busy enough with daily hardships, and now they have to deal with this too.
It looks like censorship within these walls will never end, but neither will my resolve to combat it. Censorship is their weapon, and mine is my art.
View Juan's comics here: https://scalawagmagazine.org/2026/08/notification-of-unauthorized-mail-…
Juan Hernandez is an incarcerated artist born and raised in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Find him online at instagram.com/jch_convictedart.
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Source: anarchistnews.org