[Pnews] A message from an anarchist prisoner on the Alabama prison work strike

[Prisoner News]

  A message from an anarchist prisoner on the Alabama prison work strike

April 3, 2014

*http://prisonbooks.info/2014/04/03/a-message-from-an-anarchist-prisoner-on-the-alabama-prison-work-strike/#more-4468*

    *HOW YOU CAN HELP*

    We ask that you make phone calls to the Warden, the commissioner of
    the Alabama Department of Correction, and the Governor of Alabama,
    to check on the situation, our condition, demands, and welfare.

    *Please call:*

    Warden Gary Hetzel (Holman Prison): (251) 368-8173
    Commissioner Kim Thomas (Alabama DOC) (334) 353-3870
    Governor Robert J. Bentley: (334) 242-7100

/From Anarchy Live! 
<http://anarchylive.noblogs.org/post/2014/04/03/message-from-michael-on-the-alabama-work-strike/>/

Clenched-fist salute!

I'm Michael and yes, I'm locked down in one of Amerika's many prisons in 
the state of Alabama. But that does not excuse me from the struggle for 
a better world. And I believe that anarchism is the best alternative to 
what exists now. I believe this without reservations. Anarchism is not 
about building state power, but rather, destroying the state and 
building new humyn relationships based on mutual aid and cooperation and 
freedom.

I'm not a public speaker, but a warrior in the struggle to build that 
new humyn relationship, mutual aid, cooperation, and freedom from all 
coercive power, rather than a soldier, because a soldier is someone who 
is ordered about without thinking for him/herself in a hierarchical 
structure. A tool of a ruling power.

Right now there is a struggle going on in Alabama's prisons demanding a 
change in the horrendous, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions in the 
prisons. In the prison I'm at, Holman, birds fly around the kitchen 
dropping bird shit on prisoners and/or their food, industrial light 
fixtures are falling from the ceiling injuring at least one prisoner 
seriously, during the winter months the showers are cold, the dorms are 
also cold in the winter, inadequate medical care, inadequate outdoors 
exercise time, inadequate nutrition, harassment of family members during 
visiting hours, and a host of other serious problems too numerous to 
list (see Justice or Just Business 
<http://anarchylive.noblogs.org/post/2014/04/03/justice-or-just-business/> for 
more). But most of all, we are fighting and struggling for our dignity 
and humanity.

Prisoners have very few options against the prison system. We have the 
options of: (1) filing lawsuits, (2) rioting, (3) hunger strikes, (4) 
work strikes. These four are the most common practices used by prisoners 
throughout the world. A work strike is what is going down in Alabama 
right now. The reason a work strike was chosen is simple. To cause the 
state to lose the profits it rests in off of prisoners' labor and to 
force them into making the changes in the conditions that's demanded.

In January 2014, prisoners in Alabama staged a work strike demanding 
changes in the laws, sentencing, and prison conditions. The present work 
strike is a continuation of the January 2014 work strike.

Of course, as an anarchist I know that only by smashing the state and 
its oppressive institutions will people receive true humyn rights. I say 
people and not prisoners because there will be no prisons. Also, as an 
anarchist, I'm an enemy of the state and its rotten institutions and 
those that support them, invest in them, profit from them even if it's a 
wage.

Another option or weapon I didn't mention until now is the people on the 
outside in what some of us call minimum kustody (society) and what 
others call "free-world." What's free about it? Anyway, the people on 
the outside are the greatest weapon we can employ. Those on the outside 
can use the media (print, TV, social media) to expose the inhumynity 
going on in Amerika's prisons. This is a priority. Through exposure, 
people can be educated as to the true nature of prisons and motivated to 
move against the state. Also, outside folks can carry out actions such 
as the George Jackson Brigade actions in solidarity with prisoners in 
Washington state who was struggling there, the actions carried out by 
the Red Army Faction in Germany to show their solidarity and disgust 
with the state, and most recently by anonymous warriors in Indiana in 
support and solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strike there. 
There's real risks in these actions for the people carrying them out and 
one must give it the seriousness it deserves. But one must also 
understand that prisoners are at serious risk of physical violence 
against them, possibly death, continued incarceration, isolation just to 
name a few outcomes. I myself don't look to come out of this latest work 
strike unscathed.

But my solidarity with my fellow prisoners is more than lip service. We 
are already experiencing violence due to the fucked up conditions we all 
suffer under. A person can't be so oppressed that they can't find a way 
to fight back in some way. And one must use the weapons at their 
disposal. It's on!

Tutashinde Mbili Shaka! (Together we can win!)
Death 2 the State!
Until we all are free!
Abolish prisons!

We expect retaliation, possibly including beatings of prisoners who are 
labeled as agitators.

*HOW YOU CAN HELP*

We ask that you make phone calls to the Warden, the commissioner of the 
Alabama Department of Correction, and the Governor of Alabama, to check 
on the situation, our condition, demands, and welfare.

*Please call:*

Warden Gary Hetzel (Holman Prison): (251) 368-8173
Commissioner Kim Thomas (Alabama DOC) (334) 353-3870
Governor Robert J. Bentley: (334) 242-7100

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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