Open letter from the prisoners of October 17, 2026

from lundimatin #539, 28/10/2026

For weeks, the repression against the ongoing movement has intensified. In the aftermath of October 17th, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, flouting all separation of powers, ordered the judiciary to hand down the harshest possible sentences to arrested and prosecuted protesters. Many of them are now in prison. Some of the prisoners from October 17th managed to send us this open letter, which serves as both a confession and a call to continue the struggle.

We are writing to you from a prison in the Île-de-France region, the name of which we will not disclose, in order to protect ourselves from the risk of reprisals and, above all, from the judicial and prison authorities.

We are students, high school students, teachers, the unemployed, restaurant owners, small business owners, delivery drivers, gangsters, from every neighborhood and every city in the region: Créteil, Bobigny, Belleville, Montreuil, Bagnolet, Noisy-le-Sec, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Paris. We are of all ages, all skin colors, and all nationalities; we are Arabs, Whites, Blacks, Roma, Turks, Germans, and French.

We have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of looting, of committing violence against law enforcement, of assembling illegally, of concealing our faces. Ultimately, our situations and the accusations against us are irrelevant, because the courts have bowed to Macron’s orders and sent us all to jail. Even though each prison is all the more the unsanitary and overcrowded as a consequence, next, as long as they fit!

This reminds us how what we call Justice is in no way an independent institution, especially when the State and the bourgeoisie feel threatened.

In prison, we have the privilege of being able to numb ourselves all day in front of BFMTV, CNEWS, and the channels of the regime’s other watchdogs. The ideological offensive on these TV stations supports the repressive policies of those who think they govern us. This offensive is commensurate with the fear that has gripped them since last Saturday. It was a true revolutionary warning. Everywhere, they are now trying to make us regret it, to break us, to dissuade us from returning to future Saturdays. They are silencing the support, the pride, and all those little words we have read and heard in recent days, such as “I wish I had been there” or “you made them pay.” They want us to believe that our violence is comparable to the thousands of lives crushed by capitalism every day.

If the media mouthpieces of the powerful can’t define the “typical profile” of the insurgents, it’s because we are the people who have risen up. The people who suffer and who are now fighting to end their suffering. They try to divide us, to categorise us as protesters, vandals, looters, thugs, or far-left extremists. But they haven’t understood that we are all of these things at once! We are united by our anger and our desire for revolution. A revolution that gives us back the possibility to breathe and hope, to share and to work together. To finally allow us to decide how we want to live. A revolution that puts an end to this humiliation that oozes luxury.

This social rage drove us into the streets last Saturday; it’s the same rage that simmers in the corridors and cells of the prison where we are locked up. This rage also explains the support and respect other prisoners have for the October 17th uprising. Nor will we accept being separated into political prisoners and common criminals, because we were all driven into the prisons of this regime by this unjust world.

For all these reasons, we tell you emphatically, we regret nothing! Nothing except not having adequately protected ourselves against the repressive violence that was about to be unleashed upon us.

We therefore call on all those who are outside to continue standing up to the State and to return to the streets every Saturday, until the fall of Macron and his entire corrupt world.

We call on you to organise yourselves between each Saturday, to meet with one another, to prepare yourselves, and to take control of your lives now.

We call on you to support all prisoners like us and all uprisings, both here and elsewhere.

We urge you to avoid small shops as much as possible, to remind everyone that our people’s justice only targets the biggest, the richest, the multinationals—those who have been robbing, crushing, and despising us for far too long.

We urge you to reject any division among us and to loudly proclaim what we are fighting for: revolution.