Category: Prisoners

Nationwide Strike Targets U.S. Prisons

Nationwide strike calls for end to prison slavery and inhumane conditions

by carolina saldaña

 The Nationwide Prison Strike throughout the United States began on August 21, 2018, the anniversary of the assassination of George Jackson in San Quentin Prison in California and ended on September 9th, 47 years after the rebellion in Attica prison, NY. Two historic dates in the revolutionary movement inside the country’s prisons.

On July 17th of this year, the artist, analyst and organizer Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson, of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, wrote an article that places this strike in the context of several years of resistance in the prisons of Texas, Georgia, Alabama, California and Florida as of 2010. Rashid argues that a new movement is on the rise against slavery and the inhuman conditions in prisons, which is eroding the structures of isolation imposed almost half a century ago to put an end to the prison movement that existed in the 60s and 70s.

During the Nationwide Prison Strike of 2018, there were actions in at least 36 institutions in 17 states.

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CODEDI Demands Justice for Assassination of Abraham Hernández Gonzales

CODEDI holds Governor Alejandro Murat responsible for assassination of Abraham Hernández

TO THE PEOPLES OF OAXACA

TO THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS

TO HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

TO INDEPENDENT AND COMMERCIAL NEWS MEDIA

Today Tuesday 17th of July at 11:30 AM, a group of armed men with ski masks dressed in military style uniforms broke into Abraham Hernández Gonzales’ home in Salchi, Pochutla, and they violently took the compañero from his home. They later transported him in a gray pick-up truck with license plate number RH-70-92 along with motorcycles which escorted the truck.

Immediately after Hernandez Gonzales was picked up several police agencies were notified and none of them made any effort to find the compañero, who after five hour was found dead near the same community.

Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat is directly responsible for this kidnapping and assassination of our compañero Abraham Hernández, who carried out the important job of local coordinator for the community of Los Ciruelos. The government’s lack of interest in solving cases like this one demonstrates its complicity with criminal organizations that operate in the region and the state. Allowing these organizations to operate freely at all hours of the day without being detained by anyone illustrates the farce that is the government operation “Safe Beach”; in reality these are the places with the greatest degree of insecurity, and even more so with the return of the PRI to Oaxaca’s state government, whom we know are connected to narcotics trafficking.

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Urgent Support Needed for Mexican Anarchist Prisoner Fernando Bárcenas

Fernando must pay a 35,500 peso (1,950 USD) fine by Friday, June 9 or have his imprisonment extended for 550 days.

Fernando Bárcenas is an anarchist political prisoner in Mexico. Earlier this week, he learned he must pay a 35,500 peso (1,950 USD) fine imposed during his sentencing by Friday, June 9 or have his imprisonment extended for 550 days. Let’s ensure he doesn’t spend one more day locked up.

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Podcast on Anarchist Organizing and Solidarity Inside and Outside of Mexican Prisons

A special podcast with Sofi, an anarchist compañera from Mexico City who is deeply involved in a variety of solidarity and organizing efforts with anarchist prisoners in Mexico.

Originally published to It’s Going Down
Translated by Scott Campbell
Download and Listen Here

This is a special IGDCAST with Sofi, an anarchist compañera from Mexico City who is deeply involved in a variety of solidarity and organizing efforts with anarchist prisoners in Mexico. The audio interview is in Spanish, while below is an English transcription, along with two song MP3s you can download separately. If you want to see more in depth reporting on what is happening in Mexico, be sure to support our Mexico trip fundraiser.

We start off this episode with a recorded greeting from the Cimarrón Collective in North Prison in Mexico City. Then Sofi discusses the persecution and repression facing the anarchist movement in Mexico City as well as a review of the situation of four anarchist prisoners currently being held by the Mexican state. We look at the corruption, exploitation and neglect that occurs in Mexican prisons and what compañeros on the inside are doing to fight back. In particular, there is a focus on the Cimarrón Collective, a formation started by anarchist prisoner Fernando Bárcenas that has autonomously reclaimed space inside the North Prison and self-manages a variety of initiatives. For listeners, perhaps the most intriguing one will be their punk band, Commando Cimarrón. A couple of their songs are included in the podcast.

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Combative October 2: On the Institutionalization and Autonomy of Social Protest

The combative march brought together more than 400 libertarian, anarchist, and antifascist compañerxs who were able to get to Tlatelolco to remember the fallen from October 2, 1968 and to demand freedom for political prisoners.

Radio Zapote
October 5, 2016
Translated by Scott Campbell

Forty-eight years after the Tlatelolco massacre we continue demanding justice for the murdered, disappeared, persecuted, tortured, defamed, and imprisoned, as even though the killers and masterminds have not been tried and punished, those compañeros who fell in the militant struggle remain present in the popular and social struggles today as part of our memory, solidarity, guidance, dignity, strength, inspiration, rage and courage. Today, no one doubts that IT WAS THE MEXICAN STATE who planned and carried out that mass murder, just as it did with the disappearance of 43 teaching college students on September 26, 2014, as from Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa one can trace a historical continuity that affirms the totalitarian character of the state that today we can characterize as “narco and terrorist.”

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