“In summer 2013 members of several ABC groups discussed the necessity of introducing an International Day for Anarchist Prisoners. Given there are already established dates for Political Prisoners Rights Day or Prison Justice Day, we found it important to emphasise the stories of our comrades as well. Many imprisoned anarchists will never be acknowledged as ‘political prisoners’ by formal human-rights organisations, because their sense of social justice is strictly limited to the capitalist laws which are designed to defend the State and prevent any real social change. At the same time, even within our individual communities, we know so little about the repression that exists in other countries, to say nothing of the names and cases involving many of our incarcerated comrades.”
The call for an annual Week for Anarchist Prisoners on August 23-30 was put with the 23rd as a starting point, because on that very day in 1927, the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in prison. They were convicted of murdering two men during an armed robbery at a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Their arrest was a part of a bigger anti-radical campaign led by the American government. The State’s evidence against the two was almost totally non-existent and many people still today believe that they were punished for their strong anarchist beliefs. Given the nature and diversity of anarchist groups around the globe, a week of common action was proposed rather than a single campaign on a specific day, making it easier for groups to be able to organise an event within a longer target period. In response to this call, we formed a new group during the Week of Anarchist Prisoners called ABC Hurricane.
Now the week of action is finished and the facts are being gathered, as anarchists we believe that, of course, solidarity doesn’t stop and our activities are simply intensified, having travelled together for a brief time with many individuals and groups around the world who want to manifest the struggle for total liberation and the destruction of the prisons. We’ve learned about different imprisoned comrades’ cases and exchanged shouts across the oceans and know that we are not alone. Our view is that revolutionary solidarity does not take place once a year for a week, but it is a continual renewal of our struggle through keeping alive the ideas and the actions. We think that there is a need for this kind of week of exchange which reinforces the open internationalising process which has always taken place within the anarchist movement.
We think that through the spreading of the stories and experiences of our imprisoned comrades and the explanation for and/or the execution of the types of deeds they were imprisoned for, that not only does our struggle become clearer, but regressive reformist tendencies within the movement are confronted. We know that when ‘solidarity’ is reduced to just become a reason for another dinner or a party, without a conscious understanding taking place, the prisoners soon become forgotten.
It’s the same when parts of the anarchist movement have theorised themselves away from the embrace of illegalism, direct action and sabotage. That’s the moment when prisoners become forgotten-because both they and the attacks they made are dismissed for not being acceptable to the bosses of the civil anarchist officialdom.
Confrontation with reality comes about through the refusal of conformist dictatorial expectations and laws of society, and the attempt to break free through transgression and the attack on hierarchy. Whether the struggle is fought with pens & paper, stones, molotovs or with arms, each of us have a part to play. The polymorphous struggle of anarchist war contains contradictions that widen at the base, but at the spark-point of action narrow as each individual rebels against authority. We want to meet new comrades through a breach in the walls that divide us, and we want to widen that breach.
Simple means, simple achievable goals, for now.
Rebellion is the key.
ABC Hurricane