“Through our ability to help one another articulate our suffering, we help one another to act. And in helping one another to act we help to demonstrate to those around us that something different, something other than what currently is, is possible. When we unabashedly grieve, fully, publicly, without reservation, we invite other to do the same. Every act of resistance sows the seeds of its own replication. When we resist as part of daily life, we sow the reproduction of a daily life of resistance. “
We return, our hearts inflamed for our companions in struggle enduring the worst of state repression, with the latest In Contempt, a roundup of repression news, political prisoner updates, and prisoner rebellions. While repression may be inevitable for any movement for freedom, the future of the prison world is not. Until the day the cages are empty and the prisons are ashes, we must support those fighting inside for freedom.
A zine and pamphlet of this column will be available in the coming days to print and share with friends, comrades, and loved ones behind bars.
As always, we welcome contributions at in_contempt @ autistici . org.
NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us shoving at the thing from all sides to bring it down. — Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letter #8
On March 13, a Texas jury convicted nine of the Prairieland defendants in a precedent-setting trial marred by a fascist injustice characteristic of the Trump administration.
Cruelly and heart-breakingly, all defendants except Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada were convicted of Rioting, Providing Material Support to Terrorists, Conspiracy to Use and Carry an Explosive, and Use and Carry of an Explosive. Additionally, Benjamin “Champagne” Song was convicted of Attempted Murder and Discharging a Firearm During in Relation to & in Furtherance of a Crime of Violence; Maricela Rueda and Des were convicted of Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record.
What amounted to a typical noise demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center to show solidarity with those inside was instead criminalized as an “ambush” and dozens with the flimsiest association were arrested as part of a fictional “antifa terror cell.” As the trial unfolded, it became clear the government had no evidence and had to imagine everyday activity as such as wearing black, transporting zines, or possessing a firearm as evidence of a vast criminal conspiracy. Several who were convicted were not at any planning meetings, part of any Signal groups, and were not even present during the noise demo or alleged shooting at all.
While this is not the first or last time people face political persecution, the trial was a test of Trump’s “antifa” domestic terrorism designation: a dozen convictions from the most spurious of evidence will have major implications for those resisting against repression – already the DOJ is celebrating with warnings that future prosecutions will follow.
It was obvious from the very beginning that there would be no justice found in Judge Pittman’s courtroom. From the initial mistrial, seen as means for the Judge to draw a more cop-friendly jury pool, to imposing financial sanctions on defense attorneys, and formally prohibiting any of the defendants from raising any self-defense argument, the feds pulled every trick in their book. During cross examination, multiple cops denied ever having written or seen their own written statements which were presented as evidence. Skimming through powerpoints highlighting extensive text messages, photo libraries, cloud backups, cellphone data and physical evidence collected from the raids of people’s homes, prosecutors attempted to string together irrelevant anecdotes and lefty memes to concoct an imagined terrorist plot to attack the detention facility. What was never presented to the defense was any medical records for Lt. Gross who was supposedly grazed by a bullet but was released from the hospital after just a few hours.
Five of the original arrestees who had plead guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government testified against the other defendants during the trial: Seth Sikes, Nathan Baumann, Lynette Sharp, Susan Kent, and John Thomas. Details of the extent of their snitchery emerged; the traitors turned over unlocked phones, identified people in pictures, and correlated real names to handles on Signal. John Thomas, who was secretary of the local Socialist Rifle Association chapter, had given prosecutors the membership roster containing names, emails and home addresses for over 100 members of the SRA. Despite these egregious betrayals, the DFW Support Committee noted that some of their testimony actually contradicted the government’s narrative; mainly, that there was never any plan for violence and no one was members of any “antifa cell”.
Prosecutors also brought on right-wing security consultant grifter Kyle Shideler from the Center for Security Policy, an Islamophobic think tank documented as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Despite admitting his work is “not a hard science” with no academic credentials, methodology or peer review, the government recruited his help to craft the language to describe “antifa” in the original indictment. Even with such uncredible and ludicrous testimony (such as “Signal is a hallmark of Antifa” despite using it himself), Shideler admitted that he hadn’t seen any plan for violence or property destruction in any of the evidence.
The government also called Neliea Quirina Meda Frias to testify about organizing the protest earlier that same day at the Prairieland Detention Center; prosecutors hoped to drive a “good vs bad protester” wedge showcasing how Frias collaborated with the police ahead of time to determine allowable times and routes for her demonstration organized through a 50501/No Kings-themed “DFW Peaceful Protest” Facebook group.
Throughout the trial the government hamstrung the defense’s ability to fight the charges and attempted to isolate the defendants from any meaningful show of support. A week before trial the nine were moved to Tarrant County Jail and placed in solitary confinement; all their previous possessions including legal work was taken during the transfer. Supporters were frequently denied entry to attend court and the Dallas overflow room as excessive space was reserved for police and press. Outside the courthouse supporters gathered with zine tables, snacks, and even puppets shows; at times court officials came out to harass and threaten people with citations.
The prosecution has particular implications for radical printers and zine distros, as zines were introduced as evidence, the feds had raided the Sotos’ house a second time to seize their copy machine and binding equipment, and Daniel Sanchez Estrada was convicted simply for carrying a box of zines.
Sentencing and appeals will be a long road, and several Prairieland Defendants still face separate state charges. This moment is for grave reflection and re-strategizing, but instead of retreating in fear, let’s refuse criminalization and continue fighting for a world free from their cages and borders. Never let them take comrades away without a fight; take action in solidarity with those behind bars and those targeted under the Trump administration.
Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: this is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.
The state never had a case. The state only has its intimidation, torture, and suppression. The federal government came out in force: using repression, terrorism charges, home raids, multi-million dollar bails, and torturous jail conditions.
What they wanted to do was to isolate the defendants, to control the public narrative. But people came together, spoke out, fought back, and set the tone for what’s to come.
We have a long journey ahead of us to continue fighting these charges along with the state level charges. What happens here sets the tone for what’s to come. We are here and we won’t give up.
On Saturday, as part of Smash by Smash West, the collective Firewheel and the Austin Lawyers Guild hosted a Movement Defense Conference. The first panel included members of the DFW Support Committee speaking in a really raw way about the Prairieland verdicts, less than 24 hours after they came out, with helpful reflections on the inevitability of repression in liberatory struggles and how to collectively fight it. The conversation is also available as a zine to print and distro.
The crux of a political defense is solidarity. And the crux of real solidarity is that feeling of: I can’t leave, I can’t do this without other people, my survival depends on you. That’s what solidarity’s about. And that’s what we have to find.
Call to Action: April 4, International Day of Solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants
A day of solidarity has been called for April 4: organize noise demos, letter writing nights, fundraisers, benefit shows, and actions. We have a long journey ahead of us to continue fighting these charges, along with the state level charges. What happens here sets the tone for what’s to come. We are here and we won’t give up.
A number of noise demonstrations were held outside Tarrant County Jail during the trial: in consideration of the verdict, folks are encouraged to organize noise demos in their own regions.
Over the last two weeks, the state has attempted to crush political dissent by criminalizing those acting in solidarity with their neighbors, labeling them terrorists and “antifa cell members”.
Organize, go out with your friends and neighbors. Hold a noise demo at ICE detention centers or jails in solidarity with all of those behind bars. Keep your eyes open for the verdict, and no matter the result–make some noise.
This case is a desperate move by the state to silence not just these defendants but all who dream of a future worth fighting for. Regardless of the outcome, we encourage people everywhere to act alongside those on trial and everyone detained by ICE. As these defendants have demonstrated, the answer to repression is resistance, and all of us can make the choice to fight back.
Solidarity with the Prairieland Defendants––Until All Are Free.
Noise demos were also recently held in Atlanta with banners and roman candles, New Orleans, Richmond, Tacoma, and Austin, where punk bands raged outside of Capital Factory to disrupt the meeting of war profiteers and surveillance tech companies who collaborate with ICE taking place inside.
A benefit show for the Prairieland Defendants in New York City is planned for March 22:
If you know of more planned, please share and we’ll include!
Write to the Prairieland Defendants
The nine defendants convicted at trial have already been moved away from Tarrant County Jail and will likely be moved again before their sentencing hearing, so be sure to check the support website for updated mailing addresses. In the meantime, they can be reached at the following addresses:
Name
Facility
SO/CID Number
Autumn Hill* (address envelope to Cameron Arnold)
FMC Fort Worth
11138-512
Benjamin Song
FMC Fort Worth
11137-512
Ines Soto
FMC Fort Worth
11144-512
Meagan Morris* (address envelope to Bradford Morris)
FMC Fort Worth
11136-512
Zachary Evetts
FMC Fort Worth
11141-512
Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada
FMC Fort Worth
95099-511
Elizabeth Soto
Wichita County Detention Center
100005
Joy “Rowan” Gibson
Wichita County Detention Center
100009
Maricela Rueda
Wichita County Detention Center
100010
Savanna Batten
Wichita County Detention Center
100006
Rebecca Morgan
Wichita County Detention Center
100008
Lucy Fowlkes*
Johnson County Detention Center
202600038
Janette Goering
Johnson County Detention Center
202503019
Prisoner Name, Register Number FMC Fort Worth Federal Medical Center P.O. Box 15330 Fort Worth, TX 76119
Wichita County Detention Center, TX Prisoner name, SO Number P.O. Box 247 Phoenix, MD 21131
Johnson County Jail, TX Prisoner Name, SO Number P.O. Box 247 Phoenix, MD 21131
* Note: In early July, Meagan spoke with law enforcement, which caused serious harm to other defendants. With the help of competent legal counsel, she has made a commitment to affirming her constitutional rights going forward.
As always, a printable letter writing zine is available to distro.
Letter writing events are being organized all over the country.
Seattle (Puget Sound Prisoner Support), Olympia (Olympia Prisoner Letter Writing), Portland (Portland Anti-Repression, and Eugene (Willamette Valley Abolition Project) are all holding letter writing events on April 5.
Bloomington Anarchist Black Cross is also holding their monthly letter writing night on March 30, with focus on the Prairieland Defendants.
If there are other letter writing nights in the works, send them over & we’ll add them here.
The snitches testified that they were coerced into cooperation by abusive investigators who threatened them with life in prison; Baumann even testified that his attorney advised him he “had to snitch, even if I had to make something up”. But these types of dishonest threats are standard interrogation tactics that people should know and be prepared for beforehand. Now is the time to have these frank conversations with comrades collectives and affinity groups before the feds try to break our resolve again: discuss risk levels, needs and expectations upon arrest; review No Justice No Pleas, Midnight Special’s Court Solidarity Manual, and A Titled Guide to Being a Defendant.
We can also look to J20 and Stop Cop City for how court resistance and joint defense agreements can keep people collectively safe.
“A ‘rat’ is a traitor, a conceiver, planner or physical participator
He doesn’t sell secrets for power or cash
He betrays the trust of his team or his family hoping to save his own cowardly ass” – from “Snitches & Rats” by 21 Savage
We may say that people cooperate and have the right to, and that we also have the right to exclude them from our supportive efforts. The mutual hostility of right then barely conceals a real antagonism that has not been addressed in practice. When left to the choice of individuals, any ethics of non-cooperation is ultimately left to a matter of moral qualities absent the consideration of the conditions and social relations within which they are cultivated. Without this, the question of whether or not people can withstand the blows of repression has no content beyond their shapeless fears of what is to come.
This then leads the betrayals of cooperators to be excused by any number of factors in the situation, as if anyone would be susceptible to cooperate if they had to endure the experience of the rat. The rat then becomes a tragic figure. Having to face their betrayal tugs on our heartstrings, and the tragedy then merely reflects back a farce upon us. We then cringe from the specter of responsibility that hangs over us. When we flinch before the facts of what must be done, anything becomes excusable, and basic facts of a situation become distorted. What is a typical night in jail for the many people who never talk instead becomes “torture,” because we must feel empathy for the coward who cannot stomach their own discomfort. The actions of the state to compel such equivocations from the captured lead to a horror of any means of coercion at all, yet this is precisely the necessity with which we are confronted. It is then not a matter of abstract individuals possessing more or less intrinsic qualities, but the contention of a balance of forces in struggle.
It cannot be said then that the rat deserves “nothing.” Such actions require responses for our own protection, for our own longevity. The baseline hatred and disgust for the rat is the ambient recognition of this necessity of survival in a struggle against a society of hostile relations. This task cannot be managed by any mutual respect for the rights of individuals. In a political movement, we simply cannot do whatever we want. For any concerns of authoritarianism, there is no greater assertion of the authoritarian personality than the singular and unilateral declaration that one’s own life is worth more than another facing repression and deciding instead to send others to prison to save your own skin. The rat makes a wager: “maybe the state will take less of my life-time if I give them the means of taking the life-time of others.” It is the very logic of competition that emanates from the essence of capitalist social relations. The rat then creates a situation in which a contrary force must match this threat. Authority is then not the problem in itself. It is rather a problem of an antagonistic relation that must be confronted.
There is then the necessity of creating the actual means of developing behavior that successfully reproduces revolutionary movements, and suppressing that which threatens this development. The means of effecting this in a conscious and directed manner in our lives and relations is then a clear necessity. Against the asymmetrical force of the state, there is no room to maneuver if the actions of the cooperator are tolerated to any extent. Even the expression of empathy for their ordeal communicates a weakness that will be exploited either immediately or in the near future and simply wastes time that no one has. We then become enamored with the tragedy and turn away from the reasons of those who never cooperated to remain steadfast as they have, an immensely more enriching source of education than can be found in the motivations of a rat. In this very differentiation we find the foundations for a movement that will be resilient to repression.
A movement cannot tolerate any hesitation on this matter. We all must take note of who does balk in the face of the necessity of non-cooperation and insulate ourselves from their presence and influence. The means of support in the face of repression have to cohere into a definite political front and be leveraged to deter cooperation. A rat must not only receive no support, but must be subject to actions that demonstrate to all those who bear witness that betrayal has consequences. Anything less than this fails to recognize that the repression that faces individuals is but a single front in a struggle that pervades throughout the whole of social life. Supporting each other against this very repression negates that which separates us through conscious action upon these interdependent relations. As such, support is then never unconditional, for it creates a series of reciprocal obligations between partisans. Solidarity is the cohesion that arises from the recognition of this necessity put into practice.
This small piece is also available as a zine to distro, via with whatever weapons distro.
After years fighting his case pretrial in jails and on house arrest, Jack Mazurek was sentenced to 10 years probation after accepting an Alford plea to reduced charges related to the torching of several police motorcycles during a week of action against Cop City. Supporters held a rally and released a summary timeline of the case; Jack did an interview with The Guardian and has posted the following statement:
This morning, after much deliberation with family and friends, I chose to take a non-cooperating plea agreement to reduced charges. Rather than face trial for arson carrying a potential 20-year prison sentence, I entered an Alford plea, which allows me to maintain my innocence while avoiding trial. I have been sentenced to ten years of probation with credit for time served in jail. While this is not an acquittal, it is an outcome I can live with, one that allows me to remain here with my community.
The case against me was built up around a single piece of alleged evidence, a bit of touch DNA found on a bottle cap at the scene of burned APD motorcycles. Due to the flimsy nature of this single piece of alleged evidence, the state sought to use my political views and activities to bolster up their case. When they raided my home on February 8, 2024, they hoped to uncover an explosives factory. Instead, all they found was the banal horror of their own disgruntled constituency.
Although the case concocted against me was weak, and I believe that would have been evident at trial, risking 20 years of my life in our current political climate was no small decision. After two years of waiting, the state ultimately agreed to all of the terms that we had asked for in order to even consider accepting a plea: non-cooperation, an Alford plea, first offender treatment, and no prison time. I have never been much of a gambler and so, after careful consideration, I chose the sure thing. Only about 2% of cases in the US ever make it to trial and that only speaks to the brokenness of the court system.
This case was never about bringing so called justice to a perpetrator for an alleged crime. It was about instilling fear in a strong movement that shook this city to its core and exposed it’s dirtiest inner workings.
Cop City will forever be a stain on the pages of this city’s history, marked indelibly by the courage of those who resisted it.
The glow of red dots scanning my living room before finding their home on my forehead still haunts me. Many nights I still hear the flash bangs. I think of the masked men who charged into my dining room and how they went home to have dinner after, that it was just another day at work.
The depravity of the world is held up by those who are just following orders.
These events have defined the past 2 years of my life: the uncertainty, the dread, the fear. I spent time in one of the most notorious jails in the country. I watched my home transformed into a prison which I could not leave, the very same home that masked men stormed into with guns drawn. I have had a camera disguised as an electrical box placed on a lightpole outside of my home, been followed in my vehicle, and had my movements constantly tracked by ankle monitor. I have had my picture blasted all over the news and was featured in a special press conference with Mr. Andre Dickens. I have had the ATF call my lawyer to threaten me ahead of protests, to attempt to scare me and those around me into silence. Cops have sat outside of my home and blared their sirens in the middle of the night. One night I awoke to a lit flare placed in the bushes against my house.
And yet, despite all of these attempts to break me, I stand here before you with my head held high. I stand here because when I stand here, I know that it is not just my flesh and bones that hold me up, but something much bigger. A body stronger than any I could ever inhabit. I know that I am not alone. I know that my friends, family, and comrades hold me up, and I know that I come from a long line of brave people who have fought, died, and been imprisoned in the struggle for a better world. I stand here strong because I owe it to them.
Repression is designed to break us, to weaken our commitments to one another. It is designed to individualize us, to instill fear and mistrust. Throughout this process, at times, I have felt scared, and I have felt alone. The prospect of losing 20 years of my life, the violence of a life stolen, is not a small thing to bear. It is heavy. It weighs on you. It is to be presented with your own mortality, to be forced to face it head on. This is a sobering thing, and yet, in many ways, it is the most human thing. I have done my best to grow throughout this experience, to understand the fragility of life, and to appreciate every moment I have, no matter where I am. This reckoning with life and mortality is a stark reminder that a life worth living is something worth fighting for.
Much of what the movement against Cop City assumed has already come to pass. Today, Minneapolis and other cities across the US act as training grounds for federal agents to practice unleashing terror on migrants, political opponents, and random citizens alike. Cop City in Atlanta was only one stop on the incessant march to a cop nation. The movement was always about something bigger than one training site, and I am confident that the wisdom forged by the movement against Cop City in Atlanta will continue to inform a new generation.
There is no doubt this empire is caught in the tightening coils of its own death spiral. While the task may seem insurmountable, the future will belong to those who are brave enough to organize and act against seemingly impossible odds.
In closing, I am immensely grateful for the support I received during the time I spent in jail and on house arrest, for all of the letters, the donations, the books, and the words of encouragement. The horror of the state was eclipsed only by the love of comrades. Seeing highways and trains painted with free jack, receiving letters of solidarity from children in New York and Atlanta; friends who popped over for a game of chess while I was stuck on house arrest, local diy spaces and businesses that showed up for me with food and fundraisers, artists who donated art, musicians who played shows, inmates who slid an extra peanut butter sack under the cell door, shared books and newspapers, and who taught me how to sew with a staple and turn ramen packets into a dozen other meals. These things all kept me alive. I spent hours reading letters on the jail kiosk every day, I could not have made it through without them. I will forever be grateful to the movement that held me up and supported me through these dark times. While the world appears to only be getting darker, it is an honor to know such a great light.
Please continue to support the RICO 61 and all those facing charges.
Long live the spirit of Tortuguita.
Free Them All!
Peppy & Krystal
Finishing a 5 year federal prison sentence, Brian “Peppy” DiPippa was released to the halfway house. Peppy released this celebratory statement “Unwavering Faith in Collective Power”:
Some years ago, Krystal and I departed downtown Pittsburgh with a farewell kiss. We know love when free is liberating and when held in defiance of oppression is revolutionary.
We left with an unwavering faith in the collective power accompanying us through the hardship of an all-too-common journey, in the clutches of the carceral state.
Now I return to the point of departure, having fared well with your hands at my back every step of the way. I return to my comrades’ arms for a moment to pause and breathe; we are still not free until all are free.
I took a ride along the contours left by the wounds of a system fixated on war. What these 971 days behind the walls have gifted is attunement to the shadowed sorrow that state, capital, and alienation are so committed to.
I exited the closed prison today for the open prison of “community confinement”, a half-way house. From within and against these prisons, it is clear that abolition is only rational if we seek war’s end. Beyond idealism is the practical matter of placing hurt people with other hurt people in battle royale ghettos. AI will not resolve social inequities.
My eyes saw ingenuity and cleverness, hallmarks of determined people to find a way. Your letters and shared stories, from Minneapolis to Gaza, upheld this heart in which our new world is carried.
On this International Women’s Day, nearly a year after I was first detained by ICE for speaking out for Palestinian freedom, my thoughts are filled with the women who, like me, are living – surviving – in immigration detention.
Women who wake up every morning unsure when they will see their families again.
Women who hold each other up, because sometimes it is the only support we have.
A woman who gets her period while being transferred to a detention center, while her hands, waist, and feet are shackled so tightly she can’t even lift her arms to scratch her head. The bus doesn’t stop. There is no bathroom. She sits for hours, unable to move, as blood soaks through her clothes.
I think about the woman who is six months pregnant, barely sleeping because of the pain in her back and body. The only “nutritional” food the facility gives her to sustain the new life she carries is a “salad” made of just lettuce. She is afraid to seek medical attention. “Medical is not good.” All you do there is sit on a cold stool in a smelly room until they send you back.
Pregnancy becomes a higher risk here. We are haunted by the knowledge that one of the women before us lost her baby in the bathroom. They deported her the next day.
There are women of all ages here. One grandmother told a judge she would accept never leaving her son’s house, if it meant she could spend her last years with family. “I don’t want to die alone,” she says.
Another woman, in her late 60s, cried every day because she was being deported to a country where she had no address, home, or anyone waiting for her. I tried to tell her it would be okay. Her son and sister would take care of her, send her money. Don’t worry. But at her age, she doesn’t know how to use technology. Her family told us it was really difficult to contact her.
A girl with me hasn’t even turned 18 yet. She’s so innocent, quiet. She doesn’t speak. Another young woman, who has since been deported, was grabbed by an ICE agent from her classroom in front of fellow students.
One woman here was taken while driving her daughter to school. She had a pending asylum case and work registration. When she asked what she had done wrong, the agents would not answer her. She asked to call her husband and let him know he needed to pick up their daughter. They refused. The school called him at the end of the day when she couldn’t be reached.
This place makes women sick. Those with serious medical conditions are not given proper treatment.
I spent 72 hours chained like an animal in a hospital after experiencing the first seizure of my life. A woman coughed for 10 days straight until her chest and bones hurt. One night, she coughed so much that nobody slept. Facility staff refused to give her cough drops.
One screams in pain every night, “I’m dying, I’m dying,” only to be told by a doctor that there’s nothing wrong with her.
Next week, I will have spent a year in Prairieland Detention Facility, because I attended a protest and called for an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza – which has killed nearly 200 of my family members.
Throughout history, women have been taught to stay quiet and shrink our power. The longer they hold me, the more I am reminded how important my story is….Why else would they be so afraid of what we have to say?
The struggle of the Palestinian woman is never-ending. There is no way to measure the grief. A nurse who continues to work at the hospital, saving lives after losing all of her children. Wives separated from their husbands, families torn apart, which is something that happens often in detention, too.
An Immigration judge has now twice ordered my release on bond, but ICE used procedural loopholes each time to keep me confined.
Throughout history, women have been taught to stay quiet and shrink our power. The longer they hold me, the more I am reminded how important my story is. Our voices must matter. Why else would they be so afraid of what we have to say?
DHS insists they are targeting criminals. But all I see here are mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers. Some have active green cards. Nevertheless, they are transferred from detention center to detention center. It is human trafficking, by another name.
Women are forced to stay for days in an intake room with no mattresses, no blankets, or pillows. Those who ask for water are told to drink from the bathroom sink. Once they arrive in the dorm, they are already exhausted and hopeless.
My friendships with the women here help me get through this otherwise unbearable ordeal, both figuratively and literally. When I first arrived, there was no food for me. I was told the kitchen was closed. If it weren’t for the women who shared their meals with me, I might have starved.
Now, I pay the kindness forward. During Ramadan, I get a small luxury: an apple. Each day, I give my apple to a different woman. Yesterday, I gave one to a pregnant woman. Though her English was difficult to understand, I knew that she was craving it. Just a piece of fruit. But she doesn’t have access. She almost cried.
This year, I have a Muslim friend to observe the holy month with me. We pray together, we make Dua together, we break our fast together, and we fight for our religious rights together. Neither of us should be here, but selfishly, I’m grateful not to be alone.
During the holidays, women made small Christmas trees and put them on every bunk. I turned 33 in December. I told everyone not to celebrate my birthday, but – despite that – they gave me a beautiful card. Not just a regular one. They actually spent time making it.
We have each other. We only have each other.
We laugh together. We cry together. When somebody is crying, everybody is crying. When somebody is laughing, everybody is laughing. We try to do anything to make anybody happy. If someone is having a problem, we solve it together. We explain paperwork to each other. Many women here can’t afford lawyers.
In a place where any of us could be taken away in the middle of the night without warning, we keep each other’s family phone numbers. Just in case.
We have each other. We only have each other.
Today, if you want to honor the strength and resilience of women, remember those of us locked behind these walls. Listen to our words. Demand accountability.
We are still here. No matter how hard they fight to erase or silence us, we will not be forgotten.
Rebellions
Hundreds of women went on hunger strike at Perryville Arizona State Prison against poor conditions and staff abuse boiled over when a guard assaulted a 20 year old during a shakedown. Victoria Law published an article about the action at The Appeal and Unnatural-Life.com has posted interviews with hunger strike participants Shajiyah Iman and Crystal “LilSis” Carimbocas.
The details of millions of suposedly “anonymous” tips to law enforcement was leaked to Distributed Denial of Secrets by a group calling itself the “Internet Yiff Machine”. The information contains Crime Stoppers snitch information reported to P3’s clients which include ICE, Air Force, Secret Service, DOJ, and more. A statement explains their motivations for targeting law enforcement and snitch systems: “ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS … EVERY COP PLAYS A ROLE IN FOLLOWING THE ORDER OF BILLIONAIRES, POLITICIANS, AND CORPORATIONS … EVERY COP IMPLICITLY DEFENDS THE RICH AND POWERFUL … Remember folks, don’t do the dirty work for the pigs. Investigating crime is their job, not yours. They don’t care about you, they want convictions and prisoners to fuel the for-profit prisons”.
Phone Zaps
Phone Zaps for Ramadan
Malik Muhammed posted a call for support for Muslim prisoners at Eastern Oregon CI who are being mistreated during Ramadan.
Malik has since been placed in solitary confinement for fifteen days. Malik is asking for calls to be made into Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution due to the lack of quality food they are providing Muslim adults in custody for Ramadan!
THE ISSUE: “Islam has never been respected or allowed to be practiced freely inside. They started Ramadan a day late providing us our meals late, luckily most of us have our own food so fasted and broke fast still. Still, it’s not something that we should have to miss out on if we don’t have food. Yet to add insult to injury, the very simple basic meal they provide us to eat ([which is] supposed to be 4 pieces of bread, 2 for peanut butter and jelly and 2 for a meat and cheese sandwich, a ramen, carrots, and celery, bag of chips, and some baked “dessert”–that’s how it’s been across institutions) is not standardized, and varies based on the proclivities of the kitchen coordinator. At OSP, we got rotten meat and complained. The coordinators response was to only give us one day with meat, one day with tuna for our sandwich. When the tuna came rotten and we complained, they took away dessert. At Snake, they also rotate meat one day, tuna the next, sometimes neither.
Now here, we are also given bread and cheese, no meat. Not even tuna. The reason here is apparently because of a complaint about it being rotated between roast beef and turkey. The coordinator, in spite and retaliation for the complaint, now gives us only bread and cheese. Kosher meals are provided daily for those of the Jewish faith but our bare minimum is too much to ask. We don’t get halal meals special and our Eid meals everywhere I’ve been has been substandard, save for OSP because they allow Muslims to prepare the food. Now we’re being discouraged to complain for fear of more retaliation. The chaplain and the kitchen coordinator need to be informed and corrected and the dome building need to give us standard dignified meals and treatment no matter the plan.”
THE DEMAND: Provide dignified standard food with meat that meets a daily calorie count suitable for adults.
Numbers to Call EOCI Chaplains and Faith-Based Services: (541) 278-3641 and (541) 278-3642 Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution General Line: (541) 276-0700 Michael Reese (Director of Oregon Department of Corrections): (503) 945-0927 Jessica Hale (Executive Assistant): 503-945-0978 Ryan Dwyer (Acting Inspector General): 503-945-0988
Sample Script: “Hello, I’m calling on behalf of the Muslim adults in custody at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. I was extremely concerned to hear that since the start of Ramadan, they have been provided with delayed meals and food that is not suitable for adults, consisting of simply bread and cheese. Not only is this discrimination based on their religious practices, but it is extremely unhealthy and dangerous. I am contacting you to demand that the adults in custody practicing Ramadan at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution are supported with standard food that meets the daily caloric intake required for adults, including meals with meat in them. Additionally, adults in custody have been retaliated against by the kitchen coordinators for complaining about the quality of food being provided. I am requesting that this retaliation ceases at once.”
* Please note that Malik has requested that their name and SID do NOT be included in calls! If asked for AIC names or SIDs, keep statements generalized *
IDOC Watch shared a phone zap for Muslim prisoners at Westville Indiana
🚨FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 🚨 PHONE ZAP: Demand that Khalfani and Other Muslim Prisoners Recieve Ramadan Accomodations!
Leonard Mcquay #874304, aka Khalfani, is currently incarcerated at Westville Correctional Facility where he and other Muslim prisoners are being denied relgious accomodations for Ramadan. Khalfani reached out to IDOC Watch to say that his name was taken off the 2026 list for Ramadan accommodations and that despite escalating this matter to the director of religious services for the Indiana Department of Corrections, David Liebel, he is still being denied his religious rights. Khalfani is not the only Muslim prisoner at Westville that is being denied his religious rights; multiple people are being denied accomodations. Join IDOC Watch in demanding that Khalfani and all Muslim prisoners be given accomodations to observe Ramadan!
CONTACT LIST: Westville Correctional Facility – Phone: (219) 785-2511 WVCF Warden Jason Smiley – Email: jasmiley@idoc.in.gov – Phone: (219) 785-2511 x4001 Director for Religious and Volunteer Services David Liebel* – Email: dliebel@idoc.in.gov – Phone: (317) 233-1702 IDOC HQ Line – Phone: (317) 233-6984, press 0 then press 2 Lloyd Arnold, IDOC Commissioner – Email: larnold@idoc.in.gov – Phone: (812) 267-9357
PHONE/EMAIL SCRIPT: Hello, I am (calling/emailing) about the lack of accomodations and neglect that Leonard Mcquay aka Khalfani #874304 and other Muslim prisoners are facing at Westville CF. Khalfani and other Muslim prisoners are being denied their constitutional right to observe Ramadan. Khalfani was taken off the list of accomodations for Ramadan 2026 and despite escalating this issue to the Director for Religious and Volunteer Services David Liebel, he has not been given the require accomodations to observe Ramadan. Khalfani is not the only person in Westville being denied these accomodations. Join IDOC Watch in demanding that Khalfani and other Muslim prisoners at Westville CF recieve Ramadan accomodations!
Still on hunger strike. 6 others joined. Maybe more by now. i will remain on hunger strike until you hear my actual voice for yourself! Period! i agreed to stop strike the other day when they promised i could call home if i stop. That did not happen! On 3/8 a prisoner was found dead in his cell. After asking for medical attention! Entire prison has been on lockdown for a few days. By the time you get this if you haven’t heard my actual voice for yourself DO NOT STOP. Do not give up on me or my komrades! My mail is coming through but i know it’s not all of it since you are referencing other letters I have yet to receive. Keep writing. Keep it going! i am here! i am holding on!
CALL/EMAIL Stephen Jacobs — Director, South Central Region ☎️: 910-565-1473 and ask for Director Jacobs 📧: stephen.jacobs@dac.nc.gov
SAMPLE SCRIPT: “Hello, I am calling about Joseph Stewart, OPUS #0802041. Joseph describes the conditions at Scotland Correctional as some of the worst he has ever experienced. Joseph began a hunger strike on February 24th and will remain on hunger strike until the following demands are met: 1) he is given phone time to talk with loved ones and 2) he is provided a tablet and regular access to his mail. I am also requesting that Disability Rights NC and the ACLU of NC immediately investigate Scotland Correctional for violations of NCDAC Institutions Policy and Procedures Manual, Chapter O Section .0300 – Conditions and Confinement including but not limited to: • Prison staff exacerbating inmate mental illness through physical abuse, neglect, and psychological torture in the form of solitary confinement. • Prison staff denying prisoners mental health care and appointments with prison psychologists by falsely claiming that prisoners don’t want their appointments. • Prison staff failing to conduct hourly rounds and scheduled security checks. • Prisoners being denied the opportunity to exercise outside of their cell, even though policy states they have a right to outside rec 5 times a week. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.”
📌Update (3/12): As of a message dated 3/10, Shine is still on hunger strike after prison officials backtracked on promising him phone call time in exchange for ending his strike.
📌Update (3/10): As of a letter dated 3/3/26, Shine stated that his cell was partially cleaned by janitors. He had to acquire makeshift cleaning supplies to complete the job. Due to the delay between communications, there has been confusion about the amount of time Shine was on strike. All signs indicate that his demands were met shortly after his strike began. Thanks to everyone who participated. Stay tuned for a new call to action.
Justice 4 Derell
Derell has had a large part of his bowel and stomach removed and has had to live with a colostomy bag because the pigs gruesomely shot him multiple times. Derell is entitled to 2 colostomy bags per day that he needs in order to empty his bowels, but nurses at Rikers are REFUSING necessary medical care. Because Derell has been denied the ability to regularly change his colostomy bags, the contents of the bags have regularly exploed and emptied onto him. Rikers’ negligence has exponentially increased Derell’s risk of infection, illness, and long-term health complications on top of the already brutal conditions of daily prison life.
PRIORITY – CALL NYC Health + Hospitals – Correctional Health Services at 347-774-7030 (Mon-Fri, 8 AM to 4 PM)
CALL 311/212-639-9675 or TEXT 311-692
CALL Riker’s Medical Staff: 347-774-7000
CALL the 18B Supervisor, Vanessa Burdick at 212-748-0382. Since Derell’s lawyer is a 18B, you can also call the 18B supervisor to request them to pressure correctional health services. 18Bs are private attorneys appointed and paid by New York State to represent individuals in criminal or family court who can’t afford counsel.
Script: “I would like to file a complaint to demand that the nurses and medical staff at Rikers provide Derell Mickles (Case #8252501181) with the 2 colostomy bags that he’s entitled to per day. Facility is RESH (RMSC Enhanced Supervised Housing).”
Based on the 3-day mail pause, coinciding with the switch off between digital message providers and the end of the regular legislative Bill introduction period, we believe CDCR is planning to eliminate all physical mail, as has been done in many other prison and jail systems when digital messaging is introduced. We want your help in stopping this.
In the waning days of February, just as the deadline to introduce new bills for the year was expiring, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) implemented a brand new authority: they announced a pause to all physical mail delivery for a few days at certain prisons. This is concerning for multiple reasons:
1) Its context. Several other state prison and jail systems have already eliminated almost all physical mail. This further isolates imprisoned people from love & support, causing further psychological harm to them and reducing long-term public safety. This new policy seems to be a clear step in that direction.
2) Its timing. In addition to this happening at the end of the CA Legislature’s bill introduction period, this also coincides with the court-mandated handoff of tablet & digital messaging services from GlobalTelLink (GTL) to Securus, which seems very intentional. Reading between the lines, it seems clear that (at best) CDCR intends to use “mail pauses” as the newest tool in their repression and collective punishment toolbox.
They have already gotten away with using weeks-long lockdowns that shut down educational programs as collective punishment all throughout last year, often falsely relabeling them as “modified program” in attempt to dodge the limited public pressure when it did arise. Now they are emboldened, and they are coming for physical mail next.
To meet this new challenge, IWOC is taking a new step of our own. This will be a long-term campaign for us, to beat back both the overuse of lockdowns & ensure that physical mail from friends & loved ones becomes a protected right in California. We know this is a priority for incarcerated people as a whole. Prison profiteers know that if they can eliminate physical mail in California, they can do it anywhere. Since the state legislature are the bosses of those imprisoned by the State of California, we are asking all our supporters to join us in contacting, educating, & pressuring their state elected officials on this issue.
We realized this choice of tactic will be welcomed by some & scrutinized by others. It was the result of internal discussions with our members, including incarcerated members, about what will be most effective in getting results.
In fact, there are still ways for different bills to be moved forward this year. If it doesn’t work this year, we will still be here next year. We intend to build a coalition and be tenacious on both lockdowns (regardless of what CDCR calls them) and the right to physical mail. Anyone who sees this and is interested in taking part can feel free to DM us about it.
Please keep in mind, this is CDCR’s move. Not only did elected officials did not order it — their supposed authority was actively circumvented by the timing. This is pretty on brand for CDCR. While the legislature has challenged them in the past (through passing bills that protect the basic rights to showers and visiting, for example), that experience fades. The legislature has term limits, and CDCR does not.
CDCR needs to be taken to task. They do not take public safety half as seriously as they claim to. There is already significant evidence tying the shuttering of prison educational and emotional support programs directly to deadly re-offences. Interrupting these supportive programs for weeks on end, over and over, makes a total mockery of the language used by Newsom and others to describe how they want the CA prison system to be. Clearly, politicians who want us to believe CDCR is on the up-and-up— and well on their way to becoming similar to the penal systems for citizens of Scandinavia— are either lying or being taken for a wild ride by the unelected, entrenched power structure of CDCR, or perhaps a bit of both. Preventing incarcerated parents from getting cards and letters from their kids will not add to the safety of California. It will add only to California’s level of misery and resentment, and the profit margins of prison profiteers like Securus.
Read more about prison emessaging here, or at the link in our bio: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/emessaging.html
Find and contact your elected officials here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov
After the third death in four weeks at Bedford Hills Women’s Prison, a coalition of abolitionist and prisoner support organizations have shared a joint letter demanding action be taken around particularly cruel treatment in the context of the rising death toll.
On behalf of the undersigned individuals and organizations representing justice and transparency, we are writing to formally raise urgent concerns regarding reports we have received from multiple people incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The allegations describe conditions and practices that, if accurate, constitute serious violations of basic human rights, DOCCS policy, and standards of humane treatment.
We respectfully request your immediate attention to the following issues:
Collective and Extended Lock-Ins
Indoor Recreation Eliminated//Removal of Furniture from Day Rooms
Physical Violence Against Incarcerated Women
Lack of Access to Menstrual Hygiene and Sanitation
This update includes updated mini-bios, illustrations, and address changes for several prisoners. Amazingly, this edition includes the removal of Peppy. Welcome home, Peppy!
Xinachtli
After an ongoing phone zap and two weeks cut off from communication, his lawyer, and his property, Xinachtli was transferred back to the Carole Young Unit with restored access to communication and his belongings.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, which is always on February the 14th, I understand the meaning of that celebration of love between two individuals to two persons, that part of the love that we had, when we joined unions, when we join marriages and so forth, it could be even of our friendships, that’s okay with me.
But the thing is, what I’m looking at on tomorrow, February the 14th is that there’s also another element to LOVE, in the sense of not being connected to the capitalist markets, not being connected to the capitalist ideology that we have all been indoctrinated with. All liberation movements and oppressed people should look into the revolutionary love that we must nurture between people who love the struggle. People who understand the necessity, especially now in these times of fascism.
Fascism is here, as George Jackson said. People are living butchered lives. Not only that but people are dying for taking the stand in defense of the oppressed, in defense of immigrants, in defense of prisoners, in defense of the poor, in defense of LGBTQ+ community, you know, on and on and on. You know what I’m saying? I mean, you see the brutality, the brutality that’s going on the murderers of innocent people who go into the streets like in Minnesota, like in Los Angeles.
First of all, we must decolonize our mind. Through that process, it’s a dialectical process, because remember the different colonial, neo-colonial system has always defined itself to erase our historical language. To dehumanize, to dehumanize us, first by taking possession of our ancestral lands and then and then conditioning us to be in the mentality of them. To think a certain wait that celebrates capital, and I mean between individual rights. You know this vision of competition, because that’s what that what capitalism is. You compete with individuals. You compete within corporations. The strong will survive. The big fish eats the smaller fish. That’s what capitalism represents.
In my consciousness, it’s freeing myself of that mentality, to embracing that mentality of revolutionary love for our community, for people who are oppressed, for people who are under siege. That’s what I’m talking about. Love for community care for community health, for community unity, for community prosperity for independence from colonialism, capitalism. For establishing a right to autonomy or creating our own spaces. What this campaign is doing here, we are creating our own spaces, which is amazing. I mean, that’s where people power grows. Creating this economy, creating this thing for our own self-determination, so we can, so we can, you know, own our own destiny. So, we can create our own destiny. We don’t need kings, queens or fascists to tell us how to run our lives. We create our own community. We create our own system of justice. We don’t need the capitalist state, we don’t need the police state to administer justice to our people. We separate ourselves from the capitalist economy. We must create the economy that is helpful to our liberation to our complete liberation from freeing our mind to freeing our labor power.
This is the decolonization we have to go through. And we go through that, realizing our, using the word of Indigenous nations of “right power,” to not only free in our mind, but to create bases—for example, this freedom campaign all of you have created.
This is political re-education—that’s the most important key to our liberation. That’s why this prison system hates me because they see the revolutionary love that I have for the prisoner class. Those who want to change their life, go through a metamorphosis. Go through a transformation of our souls, of our hearts, of our minds, to stop this state cycle of violence.
Write to Xinachtli:
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Alvaro Hernández #255735 Post Office Box 660400 Dallas, Texas 75266 0400
Oso Blanco
Oso Blanco released a statement on his birthday, February 26:
Brothers and Sisters and Everyone in the Struggle:
I am now about to turn 59 years of age, and this will be my 26th birthday serving time on this case in federal prison. It is often very empty and cold on birthdays and holidays, because you’re obviously far away from your family. But when people reach out, when brothers and sisters in the struggle reach out and write to a political prisoner on their birthday, it is amazingly powerful. But when you share something that sounds like it was written according to a format, or like it comes from a robot, it is disheartening. Because I often receive birthday greetings from people where it sounds like there is no real heart to the message. I’m a human being, and I like people to express human love from the heart. When they write they should write something from the heart—because I can tell the difference, and I don’t feel any human interaction because they don’t express real human emotions. It is often the same thing—the same words—over, and over, and over, for years.
If you’re reaching out to me on my birthday, you should express real thoughts. Don’t go by a format, a set of words, that someone told you to say. I want you to express your real hearts because I put in my work for the struggle, for the Native-American struggle, for the Zapatista struggle—and I want you to express your real selves, your real heart, your real emotions.
I am far away from my family, and the letter will come a month after February because the police won’t let me have my mail, and they will hold it for at least that long. People must express themselves more genuinely, more from the heart, because you’re talking to a person that is suffering because they’re missing their birthdays with their family, because they’re missing their birthdays with their friends, missing their birthdays with their community. You’re talking to a person who is excluded and exiled from society and all human connection.
When you reach out to a political prisoner and it’s their birthday, it’s really meaningful. I still get birthday greetings from my homeboys in the streets in Albuquerque sometimes, but Fentanyl killed 100 people that I knew in New Mexico, and that’s a real number. And that almost ended the greeting cards coming from people I knew from the streets. My parents are too old. I get some birthday greetings from my Cherokee sister’s side of the family in Oklahoma, on the reservation in Tahlequah. When you’re reaching out to a political prisoner, don’t sound like a robot. Sound like a real human being with real emotions and real love. Because I can tell the difference as time goes on. And I would venture to say society is really messing up the human-emotion-connection for things as important happy birthdays.
When someone that reaches out to you for you birthday, something that is so deep and meaningful when you’re in prison doing a zillion years for your political actions, it is very powerful. So, let’s keep the human connection going for political prisoners because they’re in here for you. They’re in here for people who want a better world. They’re in here for people who know we have to heal the Earth. And they’re in here for the struggle to uplift love. Because without love there will be no change, there will be no better world, there will be no revolution—not without love.
If I have a birthday wish, I wish that people would get up off their asses and really do something to end oppression. Really organize. Really bring oppression, and repression, and abuse by the State to an end. That is my birthday wish.
I love you all, and I thank you so much. Anyone who picks up a pen or types up a letter, I love you so much. I could never have survived these 26 years alone. I never could have survived these years without people like Leonard Peltier, Tom Manning, and Dr. Mutulu Shakur, who I crossed paths with—and not without little things. Not without little things that mean a lot—like birthdays.
Anti-fascist political prisoner Alex Stokes has a new address. Alex received a 20 year sentence and is not eligible for parole until 2039. You can donate to his support fund at: https://freealexstokes.com/donate
Write to Alex:
Alexander Contompasis 22 B 5028 Sing Sing Correctional Facility 354 Hunter Street Ossining, New York 10562
Casey Goonan
Casey Goonan has posted a Bookshop.org Wish List where people can purchase books to be sent to them at their new location at FCI Allenwood. Among many other topics, they’re interested in Palestinian history, political analysis, and literature, Black philosophy and critical theory, Autonomous marxisms, Analysis of the George Floyd Uprising, and books by anarchist historian Paul Avrich.
If you purchase books through other outlets please be mindful of the mail rules for Casey’s facility. You can send them as well as letters to:
Casey Goonan #24611-511 FCI Allenwood Medium Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 2000 White Deer, PA 17887
Tarek Bazrouk
Palestinian political prisoner Tarek Bazrouk has a new address.
On March 18, Tarek was transferred to his newly assigned facility at FCI Danbury in Connecticut. Tarek will remain in FCI Danbury as he continues to serve the remainder of his time. He is expected to be released in July. Until then we ask that the community so graciously continue to support him and send him kind words of encouragement, books, and funds to his commissary, since he wasn’t able to transfer any of his belongings with him, and to support him post-release.
You can continue to put money on Tarek’s books at tinyurl.com/tareksbooks. These funds will go directly to Tarek’s commissary. Any remaining funds will support Tarek post-release and set him up to get back on his feet.
Michael Kimble has published an article in Scalawag Magazine about the ongoing prison strike across Alabama DOC: “We Are Striking A Blow at the State”:
When prisoners rebel and demand to be treated as human beings, we are not just fighting inhumane living conditions and shitty food. We are striking a blow at the state, which maintains the situation of slavery and super-exploitation—by which each of us are robbed of the fruits of our labor every day.
Work strikes or “shutdowns,” as we like to call them down here in Alabama, are also geared toward consciousness-raising of prisoners as an oppressed class; and by refusing to work for free (which is slavery), we are asserting our power as workers and as human beings, thereby challenging the view that prisoner labor is free and exploitable.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal unless one has been duly convicted of a crime and ratified by Congress on December 6, 1865, which merely removed the ownership of slaves from the province of the individual citizen to that of the state, which then became the sole owner of other human beings (or slaves).
Alabama was the last state in the South to end convict leasing in 1928. Before ending convict leasing, the state hired out prisoner labor to the lumber yards, mines, and cotton mills. In 1883, about 10 percent of Alabama’s total revenue came from convict leasing. In 1898, almost 73 percent. In 1922-1926, net profits from leasing and state-run mines exceeded $3 million.
In order to continue to exploit Black prisoner labor and profit from it, Thomas E. Kilby, the governor of Alabama, ordered the construction of the Kilby prison and even named it after himself. This new prison was to be the most advanced prison in the South, with the exception of the federal prison in Atlanta, styled as an industrial prison.
It was intended to house prisoners from the lumber yards, mines, and cotton mills, which would all eventually be moved inside the prison itself. The prisoners manufactured cotton to make shirts that would then be sold on the market.
Just as slaves in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries challenged their dehumanization and exploitation via work stoppages and slowdowns, letting the crops rot in the fields, so too do prisoners in this day and time. Alabama has a long history of shutting shit down! In the 1970s, we had Inmates for Action (IFA), which organized a number of work stoppages to demand an improvement to their conditions.
We see work strikes as a weapon to be used to hit ’em where it hurts. There are many different strategies and tactics that prison rebels use, and work stoppages are just one of them. We organize around the knowledge that prison is slavery and super-exploitation of our labor power. Work stoppages are often violent due to the arena and conditions that prisoners are forced to maneuver in.
Prisons are, by nature, violent places. The guards are armed to the teeth with pepper spray, batons, sticks, knives, handcuffs, gas, and guns, and they use extreme violence as a mechanism of control. Moreover, organizers of work stoppages must navigate the different groups: gangs, shot-callers, influencers, and dope boys—and believe me, each of them has their own agendas.
You have to get past the “pig thinking” in some of these guys who see any challenge to their captors as merely a provocation for the guards, riot squads, and CERT teams to search and confiscate their cell phones, drugs, and weapons—and to incite further harassment and beatings.
That’s how they ultimately control prisoners: through their fear of losing something. And it can get violent for those who attempt to break the strike and report to their slave jobs. These people are regarded as strike-breakers (scabs), and rightfully so.
For those out there in minimum custody, you can play a part by doing what’s in your capacity to do. You can make donations and phone calls demanding that slavery, the death penalty, and life without the possibility of parole be abolished. You can take to the streets. Or you can get creative and do what the George Jackson Brigades did in the mid-1970s in support of striking prisoners.
Check out the radical histories in the U.S. and you just may find yourself. Here in Alabama prisons, we are going on a work strike starting February 8, 2026, to protest forced labor (slavery), the Habitual Offender Act (three strikes law), Life Without the Possibility of Parole, and ultimately call for the total abolition of the system of caging people.
We are exercising our agency and our right to fight back. What’s wrong with that?
Write to Michael:
Michael Kimble #00138017 Ventress Correctional Center P.O. Box 767 Clayton, AL 36016
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
Supporters of Rashid are raising funds for Rashid who is in need of about $600 in legal fees: $500 to file an appeal to the Fourth Circuit regarding the oppressive conditions he is facing in prison, including denied medical care. And the rest for several state court petitions ($50 each).
Venmo, PayPal, Cashapp: @elizabethxutang
Please help if you can.
Peace, but only if you’re willing to fight for it.
Write to Rashid:
Kevin Johnson #397279 Perry Correctional Institution 430 Oaklawn Road Pelzer, South Carolina 29669
Shaka Shakur
The New Afrikan Freedom Campaign is asking supporters to sign and share a petition to the Indiana Parole Board supporting the release of Shaka before an upcoming parole hearing.
Write to Shaka:
Shaka Shakur #1996207 Lunenburg Correctional Facility 690 Falls Road Victoria, VA 23974
George Floyd Uprising Prisoners
As far as we know, the current prisoners––welcome home Margaret!––from the George Floyd Uprising and their addresses to write letters of support are:
Christopher Tindal #04392-509 USP Big Sandy U.S. Penitentiary PO Box 2068 Inez, KY 41224
David Elmakayes #77782-066 USP Lee U.S. Penitentiary Satellite Camp P.O. Box 644 Jonesville, VA 24263
Smart Communications/PADOC Khalif Miller #QQ9287 SCI Forest PO Box 33028 St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Malik Muhammad #23935744 Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution 2500 Westgate Pendleton, OR 97801
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
Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho #08572-509 FCI Beaumont Medium Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 26040 Beaumont, TX 77720
As always a printable letter writing zine is available to distro.
On March 16, the pause on Jakhi’s federal case ended, a legal exclusion to the Speedy Trial Act / the time limit for State prosecutors to indict someone within 30 days of their indictment. There have been five such pauses in Jakhi’s case. In the coming days and weeks, Jakhi and his defense team will consider a plea offer from the US government. If the offer is declined, federal prosecutors could indict Jakhi on a number of exaggerated, bogus, and politically motivated charges with the intent to scare him and demobilize his support. After six weeks of being hunted by multiple law enforcement agencies for allegedly burning 11 NYPD cars in support of the struggle for Palestinian liberation, and turning himself in, Jakhi has shown a refusal to let the federal prosecution dictate how his case proceeds.
Also, Jakhi recently was granted access to a curfew after 8 months of home detention, allowing him to move around New Jersey and be closer to his community.
Jakhi’s support group and NYC Anti-Repression Group are raising money for their support:
Venmo: @NYARG with “⭐”
https://www.givesendgo.com/freejakhi
Fundraisers & Post-Release Support
Casey Brezik
After 15 years in prison, anarchist political prisoner Casey Brezik has come home!
He is adjusting well, and psyched about life, but needs help to get started.
Living expenses and basic needs can be difficult to meet without a job, connections and experience moving through this technology-driven, end-stage-capitalist reality.
Anything you give will help ease the labor and anxiety that anyone would be dealing with after nearly two decades in a highly-controlled, hyperviolent carceral system.
Donate:
cashapp: $caseybrezik venmo: @casey-brezik
Dhoruba Bin Wahad
Our radical elder Dhoruba Bin Wahad needs our support. Dhoruba has struggled for his people and the call is now on us to uplift and aid our elder in this time where his cancer treatments are out of sync, and the day to day has become the primal focus. Dhoruba is in need of basic necessities such as maintaining lights, running water, and medical bills.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin
Black revolutionary and former political prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin needs support for emergency dental care.
I am Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, the author of Anarchism and the Black Revolution. A former Black Power and Civil Rights activist, I was a political prisoner from 1969 to 1984.
Due to the lack of affordable dental care in America for senior citizens, I have had to put off routine care I have needed for years. I lack the necessary money for expensive dentistry procedures. Now, I’m facing a dental emergency which is threatening my overall health, and causing me pain and discomfort on a daily basis.
In September, 2025, a dental office in Chattanooga, Tennessee, told me that I need urgent emergency care to pull some teeth, and that I need other routine dental care over the long term. The price: $7,000 for a “discount” and $25,000 for full mouth restoration. My family cannot afford this high price, and I went to a second dental office, which quoted me a price of $3,000. But, the second office is overcrowded with patients, and I have been waiting for almost six months to see a dentist.
I could lose all of my teeth or get serious mouth infections now and in the near future. I suffer daily with tooth pain, which keeps me up at night. Nobody should have to suffer from lack of dental care like this because of their inability to afford to see a dentist.
I am asking my friends and allies to help me and my family raise the funds to pay for the dental care I need. I am 78 years old. Help me to not become a victim like so many other senior citizens and low income people in America who are suffering from poor dental health.
Please join this campaign and share it with others. Your contributions will help me get the emergency dental care I need to get some of my teeth extracted to help preserve my life and overall health and to purchase dental insurance to cover future care.
Contributions may be sent via Paypal to: organize.the.hood@gmail.com .
International Political Prisoners
Palestine
Free Mohammed Khatib
Palestinian activist and coordinator of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoners Solidarity Network in Europe, Mohammed Khatib was arrested by Greek authorities in early February and ordered to be deported from Greece in new attack on Palestine movement.
Samidoun’s statement:
Today, Saturday, 7 February, as he was traveling to Crete where he was scheduled to speak at an event in solidarity with Palestine, highlighting the struggle of the prisoners inside the occupation jails and the voices of liberated prisoners freed by the resistance, he was suddenly detained at Heraklion airport and told that he had been labeled inadmissible to Greece due to reasons of “national security.” His detention pending deportation is an official escalation against the Palestinian community and solidarity movement in Greece, and we demand his immediate release.
This order was allegedly issued on 24 December 2025 — only two days after the tenth “Greece-Cyprus-Israel tripartite summit.” It is clear that, contrary to the strong sentiments and solidarity of the Greek people with Palestine, the Greek government is once again carrying out the will of the Zionist entity, the United States and EU imperialist powers like Germany. The Greek people have repeatedly made clear, in mass marches and demonstrations, powerful direct actions, and labor actions rejecting cargo for the Zionist war machine, that they stand with Palestine and against the genocide — yet the right-wing Greek government has gone out of its way to deepen the state’s entanglement with the Zionist economy and military.
On 23 January, the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, issued a call to the Greek movement, including workers, students, and political parties: “The almost weekly visits of Israeli ministers to Athens today reflect an accelerating Zionist infiltration inextricably linked to the imperialist project in our region. This infiltration aims to consolidate the influence of the criminal Zionist entity through oil, gas, and energy agreements in the Eastern Mediterranean, the relentless acquisition of land and real estate, and the integration of the Greek economy and infrastructure with the interests of the occupation and its security, economic, and military companies. This is all part of a broader effort to redraw the map of imperialist control over the region and transform Greece into a strategic outpost against the peoples of our region.”
outside the central police station in Heraklion, Crete, carrying a banner: “Sumoud: The resistance will be victorious. Palestine will be liberated” and demanding his immediate release.
Tonight’s event, at which he was scheduled to speak, in solidarity with the prisoners and the resistance, and for the liberation of Palestine, will continue at 6 pm at Mastraha 9, in Heraklion, Crete. We urge all to participate widely in this event to show support for Mohammed, for the Palestinian prisoners, and for the liberation of Palestine — especially at a moment when the occupation regime is continuing and escalating its daily war crimes and genocidal crimes against humanity throughout Palestine, and especially in the Gaza Strip.
This is only the latest repressive incident targeting the movement for Palestine, especially in Europe and North America, including the ongoing attacks on the Samidoun Network, denials of entry for Mohammed Khatib in the Netherlands, Switzerland and now Greece, attempts to confiscate his asylum status in Belgium, the ban on Samidoun in Germany and its designation on “anti-terror lists” in the United States and Canada. In Belgium, the far-right Arizona government is attempting to create a new law allowing it unprecedented authority to ban organizations, explicitly seeking to ban Samidoun. Of course, these attacks are far more widespread and target the movement as a whole, including the British proscription of Palestine Action, the attempt to prosecute dozens of direct actionists (including six who won their case just days ago), the arrests of prominent Palestinian community leaders in Italy, the imprisonment of over 10 Palestinians in Germany, the ongoing use of “apology for terrorism” allegations in France to criminalize activists, and the targeting of Palestinian students and youth in the United States, including Mahmoud Khalil and Leqaa Kordia, for detention and deportation. All of these attacks are part and parcel of imperialist complicity with and direct involvement in genocide — and the attacks on Samidoun are part of the targeting of the nearly 10,000 Palestinians jailed in occupation prisons.
We urge all supporters of Palestine to respond to repression with organizing and action, to escalate our activities in support of the Palestinian people and their struggle for return and liberation, to stand with Gaza under siege and under fire from the genocidal forces and subjected to the pseudo-ceasefire of the “Board of Peace,” and to organize wide-scale protests, actions, educational events, disruptive activities and mobilizations for the liberation of the Palestinian prisoners inside the Zionist and imperialist jails, and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
Solidarity with Mohammed Khatib!
Free all Palestinian prisoners!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Today, following negotiations between a U.S. delegation and Lukashenko, it was announced that another batch of prisoners has been released. According to the @pink__scarves, anarchists Aliaksandr Kazlianka and Pavel Shpetny are also on the list.
Both were convicted in the case of an international criminal anarchist organization and received 6-year prison sentences each. They were supposed to be released in early March of this year. However, the prison administration opened new cases against both under Article 411 (malicious disobedience to prison administration) and sentenced Shpetny to an additional 2 years and Kazlianka to an additional 1.5 years of imprisonment.
Chile
Interview with anarchist prisoner Francisco Solar
Greetings to our anarchist and subversive comrades who are resisting in different Chilean prisons. To the anarchist prisoners in Italy and Greece, always active. To every space, publisher, magazine, and counter-information media outlet that persists and stubbornly commits to anarchy even in difficult times. A special hug to our comrades in the “Nueva Subversión” project: your blows are the joy of anarchist prisoners.
Subversive compañero Tomás González escapes from prison
On February 25, 2026, former subversive prisoner Tomás González, along with another prisoner, escaped from the penitentiary dressed as a prison guard.
Comrade Tomás was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison (16 years for shooting at police officers to avoid arrest in May 2022) and 5 years (pending for carrying a Molotov cocktail) for the murder of police officer José Luis Rodríguez. Comrade Tomás was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison (16 years for shooting at police officers to avoid arrest in May 2022) and 5 years (pending for carrying a Molotov cocktail).
In the face of the repressive measures that are beginning to be imposed inside and outside, the call is not to provide any information useful to the repression. No collaboration is acceptable! No photos of our comrade, no information about his surroundings or connections given to the police!
Long escape and life to the comrades on the run and in hiding. All our strength and solidarity to those who still resist in prison.
“I cherish every moment in which I can, together with my comrades, learn from the experiences that different generations have passed down since ancient times, based on solidarity and humility. Nothing is over, because the task continues to contribute in a concrete way. Those who live fighting walk, opening paths wherever and however they can. Autonomous and illegal, that is our horizon.” – Tomas González Quezada
Greece
¡Lambros Fountas Presente!
In two separate statements, revolutionary anarchist prisoners give homage to Greek anarchist Lambros Fountas, a member of the Revolutionary Struggle organization, killed by the police on March 10, 2010.
Read the first statement, “On the Trail of the Struggle,” by anarchist prisoners Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta written in Korydallos Womens Prison, as well as the second statement, “Eternal Honour to the Anarchist,” by Pola Roupa and Nikos Maziotis, written in Domokos Prison.
International Week of Solidarity Action with Imprisoned Comrades of Ampelokipi Case and in Memory of Kyriakos Xymitiris
We call for an International Week of Solidarity Action (24-31 March) with the imprisoned comrades for Ampelokipi case and in memory of the anarchist armed fighter Kyriakos Xymitiris.
These days before the beginning of the trial on the 1st of April at Athens Court of Appeal, we call for comrades around the world to participate, in order to collectively fight for our comrades’ Marianna Manoura, Dimitra Zarafeta, Dimitris, Nikos Romanos and for A.K’s release, as well as defend the memory of our comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris.
Our support and solidarity is non-negotiable and in the battle they are facing -at court this time- we will stand by their side.
Solidarity Manifestation Friday 27/3, 7pm at Syntagma Square (Athens, Greece)
Solidarity manifestation (beginning of the trial) Wednesday 1/4, 8.30am, Athens Court of Appeal
FREE COMRADES MARIANNA MANOURA, DIMITRA ZARAFETA, DIMITRIS, NIKOS ROMANOS AND A.K.
KYRIAKOS XIMITIRIS ALWAYS PRESENT
STATES ARE THE ONLY TERRORISTS
Solidarity Assembly for the imprisoned,
fugitives and persecuted fighters
Trial Begins for the Ampelokipi Case
On Wednesday, April 1 (9am), at the 2nd three-member felony panel in Loukareos (4th floor, room D100C), the trial begins for our detained comrades who are being prosecuted for the case of the explosion in an apartment in Ampelokipi.
The text of the assembly on the case follows.
On 31/10/24, after an explosion in an apartment in Ampelokipi, the anarchist comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris fell in the battle for social and class liberation, while the anarchist comrade Marianna M. ended up seriously injured in the ICU of Evangelismos. She was transferred to the women’s prison of Korydallos where to this day she is deprived of the necessary medical care.
The well-known “witch hunt” and the attempt to shape impressions by the media follow. The narrative is set up as follows: the processing of (a small amount of) explosive material and mechanisms with only the anarchist comrades Kyriakos and Marianna present and knowledgeable is called an organization, the apartment to which there was access only for a few days is called a yafka [safe house used by clandestine urban guerrilla groups], anyone involved with it is targeted and interrogated. Amidst media propaganda, the state and its persecutory mechanisms orchestrate and unleash their repressive plan regarding an anonymous “terrorist” organization with the pool of suspects including friends, relatives, and even strangers, criminalizing political, comradely, and friendly relationships. The anarchist comrade Dimitra Z. and comrade Dimitris are arrested and remanded in custody with the only connection being their relationship with the apartment in which the explosion occurred. A few weeks later, the arrests and pre-trial detentions follow with a unique “element” of a fingerprint section on a mobile object of two more individuals, the anarchist comrade Nikos Romanos and A.K. This flimsy element of the anti-terrorist service, whose pass-through evidence is used without any further questioning by the judicial system, has been used extensively in methods of trapping activists.
The judicial mechanism, in the service of the same state strategy, extended, a few days ago, the pre-trial detention of all those who claimed their freedom, rejecting the requests for release. The pre-trial detainees are once again being tried to appear as unconscious, “blind” bombers, as a “public danger”.
However, the truth is far from their police reports and their miserable publications. In contrast to the barbarity of the capitalist world, the anarchist concept stands against and consciously acts against the logic of collateral damage, which now parades as evidence of guilt against means and choices of struggle. Which oppressed, which poor, which proletarian, which immigrant has reason to believe that they are in danger from the world of Struggle and its choices? From people dedicated to the fight against inequality and exploitation, people who take their place on the lines of revolutionary struggle, who dedicate and are ultimately capable of giving their own lives to the defense of high ideals, to the overthrow of the world of power. People who resist in every way the storm of privatization, individualization, indifference to the commons and politics.
The proletariat, the social majority, have no common interest with the oil and drug smugglers, the intertwined mafiosi, the powerful millionaire oligarchs of banking, construction, shipping and industrial capital who own all of the major systemic media. With those who openly support the policies of governments, who profit from the unbearable accuracy in basic necessities and anti-worker legislation, who cover up state murders at the borders, in police stations, on public transport, on the streets, who wash and cover up scandals and rapists. Who are connected to the international and domestic arms industry, who promote and support the participation of the Greek state on all war fronts and in the genocide of the Palestinians. The poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the proletariat – natives or refugees and immigrants – know that the revolutionary struggle, the radical struggle, is waged within the class war, for their interests.
For this reason, we do not forget and will not stop saying: The state and capital were, are and will be terrorists. They terrorize through the daily oppression of our lives. They are the ones who exploit and plunder nature and our lives in order to maximize their profits, who condemn us to poverty and destitution, who throw us out onto the street by selling out the obvious need for housing to funds, who turn our neighborhoods into inaccessible tourist zones, who hide the ever-increasing worker murders behind the word accident, who kill immigrants and refugees at the borders, in labor camps and police stations, who cover up and reproduce patriarchy and sexist violence by shamelessly handing out panic buttons. Those who wage wars on the altar of their economic and political interests, those who redistribute the world by staining their hands with blood, those who attack the peoples of the Middle East and level the resisting Gaza, those who commit the genocide of the Palestinian people. Those who confirm the violence of a system of inequalities, the violence of the powerful.
Revolutionary anti-violence is a necessary tool of struggle as a collective defense of social parties that struggle against state repressive violence, as it can act as a lever of pressure to sabotage the plans of the sovereign, to prevent national wars but also to spread the revolutionary project. Armed struggle as part of revolutionary anti-violence, attempts and succeeds in returning to the state a portion of the violence that it daily inflicts on us. Armed struggle is an integral part of the radical movement, of the multifaceted social and class struggle, deeply rooted in our militant tradition, and we defend it as non-negotiable.
Part of this continuous insurrectionary movement of resistance against the imposition of power was the armed anarchist fighter Kyriakos Xymitiris. Comrade Kyriakos was for years continuously present in projects of solidarity with prisoners, in the anti-war Internationalist movement, in actions for the defense of the Exarchia neighborhood, in the struggles within the universities, in the defense of the liberated spaces of occupations and in every social and class struggle. He chose to fight to the end, fighting with all means the world of power, the state, capital, racism, patriarchy. He chose to fight on the side of the oppressed and the rebels for a better world, for a world of solidarity, equality, freedom. Somehow his last breath found him, where he consciously and always consistently chose to be, in the struggle.
We defend all those who gave their lives, who were imprisoned, who fought, who were confronted with state methods throughout so many years of social and class war.
WHO FORGETS THE PRISONERS OF WAR FORGETS THE WAR ITSELF
KYRIAKOS XYMITIRIS PRESENT
Solidarity Assembly for the imprisoned, fugitive and persecuted activists
Indonesia
List of Detainees Under the “Chaos Star” Label in Bandung, West Java
Of the thousands arrested during the Indonesian Insurrection, 34 have been sentenced to prison under the “Chaos Star” label, a designation of the state to categorize anarchist subversives.
Dark Nights has made a list of prisoners and sentences publicly available:
Release Komar – Stop the Repression
Our anarchist comrade Komar (Muhammad Ainun Komarullah) was arrested by police from Surabaya when he was released from Kebon Waru prison after serving a sentence for instigation related to the Black Bloc Zone blog and Instagram account. The arrest by the Surabaya police is a vindictive revenge against Komar, due to the fierce and humiliating clashes that took place in that locality. Hundreds of young people, delivery drivers, taxi drivers and precarious workers were rounded up in the aftermath of the anti-state uprising and brutally tortured. Police violence cannot hide the fact that the regime uses systematic torture. Let’s not leave this comrade alone in the hands of the police, write to Komar, send solidarity post here:
Muhammad Ainun Komarullah (KOMAR) Polrestabes Surabaya Jl. Sikatan No.1, Krembangan Sel., Kec. Krembangan, Surabaya, Jawa Timur 60175, Indonesia
Anarchist comrade Dena in prison transfer to Kebon Waru prison before trial
Imprisoned anarchist comrade and rapper, Dena (Maditya Dena) a.k.a Apip a.k.a Scoobydoomz, has been transferred to Kebon Waru prison in Bandung from West Java paramilitary police headquarters. This has finally occurred due to his charges being filed with the court. Dena is accused of the destruction of Hana Bank in Bandung, along with comrade Adit, who is also accused in the same case and faces trial. Dena is suffering with health condition related to his HIV+ status and in prison it is difficult to consistently obtain the meds, which costs money. Dena had been kept isolated from the rest of Chaos Star comrades. It is expected that Dena and Adit will face two years or less for the property destruction, however Adit also faces 25 years for the bombing of a police outpost, in an adjacent trial, relating to an action in 2024.
Send solidarity post to comrade Dena, English language or Bahasa Indonesian:
Maditya Dena JI. Jakarta No.42-44, Kebonwaru, Kec. Batununggal, Kota Bandung, Jawa Barat Indonesia
Tasikmalaya Regency Pipe Bomb Case Begins
10.3.26 : On February 26th, the trial began for another section of the comrades of the Chaos Star Case (Adit, Opal, Pem, Herdi and Hugo [informant]). This case is about a pipe bomb that exploded which destroyed a police post in Gentong, Tasikmalaya Regency in December 2024. The action was claimed by the Free Association of Autonomous Fires. The communique can be found in the Blessed Is The Flame chronicle and was also published on Dark Nights. The action was declared in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito, Nikos Romanos and all anarchist prisoners.
The comrades are being threatened with up to 25 years in prison. The anti-terrorist unit, Densus 88, tortured the comrades badly, including trying to damage their sight. The prosecutors maintain they have everything for a conviction, as well as the words of a snitch, Hugo. On early February 15 police officers from the Criminal Investigation Unit of the West Java Regional Police Headquarters went to Kebon Waru prison because Hugo reported that there was a threat to his life. These are the police that paid him as he coldly smoked cigarettes during the torture of our comrades and gave his “evidence”. All the comrades remain imprisoned in Kebon Waru.
Yogyakarta Burns Again – Free The Prisoners
Yogyakarta Regional Police were visited by students and residents of Yogyakarta. The crowd are demanding the release of ALL remaining detainees from the August 2025 uprising.
Hundreds of students and residents held a protest in front of the Yogyakarta Regional Police Headquarters on Tuesday (February 24th). The demonstration was sparked by anger over the death of a 14-year-old student in Maluku, assaulted by members of the Mobile Brigade Corps (Brimob).
The protesters marched from UPN to the Regional Police Headquarters without any written demands or a stage. The protest was described as spontaneous and an expression of disappointed anger.
Observations on the ground revealed that the fence on the east side of the Regional Police Headquarters had collapsed. Officers stood guard behind barbed wire to prevent the crowd from entering the police station area. Several police were injured. The people set fires at the police compound, launched fireworks and clashed with police and denounced the police-terror and the Prabowo regime.
Revenge for the prisoners, the tortured, the killed and the disappeared.
Destroy all states – Destroy all police and jailers.
Italy
Update on Repression in Italy: “Operation City”
From October 2022 to April 2023, a strong solidarity movement accompanied the hunger strike of Alfredo Cospito, an anarchist prisoner in 41-bis, the most afflictive prison regime in the Italian penitentiary system, a regime of extreme harshness and isolation, a tomb where one spends 22 hours in a cell, with hardly any possibility to communicate with the outside world (censorship on all communications and with only a one-hour visit per month with a family member or a ten-minute phone call, also a month).
Initiatives, demonstrations, direct actions have marked in Italy, and in many other parts of the globe, the steps of a heterogeneous movement that has grown to give strength to Alfredo’s protest.
A protest which not only called for the transfer of Alfredo himself from the 41bis regime but also demanded the abolition of this legalized torture together with that of ostensive life imprisonment i.e., life sentences without the possibility of access to parole or benefits, with which the Italian State as of today condemns almost 1300 prisoners to die in prison.
A government that is strongly characterizing its policy on the tightening and embitterment of laws and sentences, obviously had no problem ignoring, and sometimes mystifying, that struggle that highlighted the State’s torturer’s true face and it certainly would not have given in, if Alfredo, after 6 months of struggle, had not interrupted his hunger strike. But the objectives of protest and mobilization remain on the table of causes worth fighting for. Obviously that same government, which probably would have left our comrade to die of hunger, did not delay in presenting the bill with investigations and trials in various territories and cities where the solidarity mobilizations of those months spread like wildfire.
In the city of Turin, this government counter-offensive is manifesting itself mainly through the so-called “Operation City”, an investigation which has provided a good number of preventive measures (such as house arrests, obligation to sign on in police stations on a daily basis, ban from accessing certain cities, obligation to not leave your town of residency, etc…) and has led to several trials for which hearings are being celebrated at the present moment. The contested crimes refer to different moments of the mobilization, but most of the comrades on trial are accused in relation to the events that occurred during the international demonstration that took place in Turin on the 4th of March 2023, when Alfredo had been carrying out a hunger strike for almost five months with an inevitable worsening of his physical conditions.
The events that occurred during the demo are classified under the charge of “complicity in devastation and looting”. “Devastation and looting” is the most serious crime that can be contested in the field of public order under Italian State law, which provides for high sentences (from 8 to 15 years); “complicity” on the other hand, does not require that the defendant has carried out a “criminal action” in itself but it is his mere presence at the demo which constitutes a crime of “complicity” with any criminal action that happened during the demo. The call into question of the count of “complicity” reveals the political purpose for which it is used: to scare and dissuade people from demonstrating because the punishment could affect anyone who decides to take to the streets. For this reason, the juridical concept of “complicity” must be fought with the aim of not giving up space to the criminalization and demobilization of street conflict, an inevitable element in any path of real criticism of political and economic orders.
As far as we are concerned, the practices implemented during that demonstration are nothing other than the response to the violence that the State wanted to exercise against its enemies for yet another time, at a moment when its intention to psychologically and physically annihilate our comrade Alfredo Cospito was clear. In the same way, we believe the self-defence of demonstrations is essential to protect the safety of the demo itself and make the identification of demonstrators more difficult. These are practices that belong to the heritage of every movement that wants to position itself in opposition to the State – practices that are increasingly pilloried, criminalized and stripped of their political meaning to reduce their presence in public demonstrations merely to a problem of “public order”.
Our considerations regarding the international demonstration of March 4th 2023 are few but immutable: the importance of having been there in that specific and crucial moment of the mobilization, the expression of anger towards an announced death sentence, the affection and gratitude towards a comrade who put his life on the line to fight against a world of exploitation and authoritarian abuse.
At the moment, the trials involve over 60 people; thus, the legal expenses are high and all contributions are welcome. For any contribution, please write to: operazionecity@anche.no
Today, as always, on Alfredo’s side, against the 41-bis regime and life sentence without parole, against all prisons and all governments! The only response to repression is to keep on fighting!
Some accused comrades
Kenya
Booker Ngesa Omole is free!
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kenya, Booker was arrested in late February on bogus charges and tortured in custody. After wide displays of solidarity internationally, Booker was released on March 6.
Since the outbreak of war and amid the continuing nationwide internet shutdown, IHRNGO has received alarming reports regarding the situation of prisoners in Iran. Reports indicate a pattern of serious human rights violations, including food shortages, the closure of prison commissaries, denial of adequate medical care, unsanitary and degrading detention conditions, severe restrictions on prisoners’ access to basic necessities, arbitrary transfers and the increasing militarisation of prisons. In at least two prisons, these conditions have led to protests by prisoners and collective hunger strikes. At least one prisoner has died as a result of being denied medical care.
Iran Human Rights has received alarming reports about conditions in prisons across Iran since the start of the war on 28 February 2026. The control of a number of prisons in Khorasan Razavi, Isfahan, Lorestan, West Azerbaijan, Qom, Qazvin and Tehran have reportedly been fully handed over to NOPO counter-terrorism special units, creating heavily militarised environments in the prisons.
According to reports received by IHRNGO, while many prisoners convicted of financial crimes and lighter charges have been temporarily furloughed, death row prisoners, prisoners of conscience and those serving lengthy sentences have been left behind in deteriorating conditions or transferred to unknown locations.
Spain
María José Baños Secures Release Thanks to Mass Mobilization
María José Baños Andújar, GRAPO anti-fascist prisoner, has been granted a suspended sentence, in accordance with Article 104.4 of the Spanish prison regulations. This paves the way for her imminent release to receive urgent hospital care due to her critical health condition. Aged 61, her health has severely deteriorated, notably due to HIV at stage C3 and a 69% disability.
This decision follows a solidarity and mobilization campaign led by various groups and political prisoners across Spain. In particular, fellow prisoner Marcos Martín ended a 16-day hunger strike, while other political prisoners continue their protests until their release. Supporters of María José Baños Andújar emphasize that this decision is a victory for collective mobilization, but also for the determination of the political prisoner who refused to be blackmailed into recanting. They call for the struggle to continue until her effective release and that of all other political prisoners still incarcerated.
ICE Watch
Despite the change of leadership at DHS, the ICE menace continues, as does the resistence. Kristi Noem was pulled from head of DHS after numerous scandals, including condemning multiple people murdered by ICE as “domestic terrorists”, but also corruption allegations involving a $220 million propaganda video, and her mismanagement of FEMA disaster relief funding. But far from being put out to pasture, Noem was appointed ‘special envoy’ to the “Shield of the America’s”, Trump’s new coalition formed with allied latin american countries to assist with his war on immigration. Gregory Bovino similarly was pulled as “Commander at Large” of the CPB and is retiring by the end of the month. These leadership removals marks a shifting strategy by the DHS away from the highly-visible militaristic show-of-force, towards a more discreet, hidden aggression, where agents conduct abductions in a manner to avoid confrontations with resisters and to obfuscate the violence occurring by agents in the streets and behind prison walls.
A partial government shutdown has forced DHS to fudge their budget in order to pay enforcement agents while witholding pay from other departments within DHS such as TSA. Democrats are holding out on the shutdown in attempt to reform the fundamentally horrific and corrupt agency, compromises expected as heated hearings begin to confirm Trump’s appointment of controversial Oklahoma congressman Markwayne Mullin as new head of DHS.
The “Bring Heat, Melt ICE” week of action brought hundreds into the streets of the Twin Cities to keep up the momentum of widespread anti-ice rebellion during “Operation Metro Surge”. Several dozen training/political education/discussion sessions were held, rapid-response networking and expansion, bike patrols, blockades, noise demos, student walkouts, home demos, multiple protests and actions. On the final day of the week of action, a protest was held at the Whipple Federal Building that resulted in a mass arrest of 40 people. On one side of the building, hundreds marched in the street, stopping traffic into the fenced-off facility, on the other side, a group of protesters held a blockade with a shield wall. At the march, state police and sherriffs declared unlawful assembly, using an LRAD to claim that “everyone is under arrest”, kettling and brutalizing protesters – on the other side, cops gave no warning to disperse, instead immediately attacking with bear-spray. Protesters countered with snowballs and rocks, with police giving chase. The week ending with a rowdy protest accurately encapsulated the resistance to the ICE machine and it’s collaboraters – we are tired, but fight we must!
Ruben Martinez was murdered by ICE in March of 2025, but it was an entire year until bodycam footage that contradicts DHS’s lie was released. A Texas grand jury failed to indict any of Ruben’s killers despite video evidence of the unprovoked use of deadly force.
Twin Cities Ungovernables and Crimethinc is organizing the “Breaking The ICE” speaking tour to share lessons from the resistance in Minnesota to cities across Turtle Island throughout April; check the GoFundMe to help raise funds for travel expenses.
Project Salt Box has been investigating ICE property acquisitions: according to their current data, ICE has purchased warehouses for large-scale immigrant processing and detention facilities in Romulus MI, Tremont PA, Socorro TX, Hamburg PA, Salt Lake City UT, San Antonio TX, Social Circle GA, Flowery Branch GA, Roxbury NJ, Surprise AZ, and Williamsport MD; and is currently eyeing locations in Durant OK, Starke FL, McAllen TX, Port Allen LA, Holtsville NY, and Orlando FL.
Hundreds descended on the proposed ICE megawarehouse site in Salt Lake City; three youths were arrested as protest marshals were unable to stop the building from having the building tagged with “kill all nazis” and twenty windows were smashed.
Organizers in Merrimack describe how they were able to squash the planned detention center: “Build pressure from the town to the state to the federal level. Let residents lead. They have credibility no outside organization can match. As an established organization, support the grassroots activists and the offerings of skills, talents, and creativity by newly activated leaders. Use every argument: human rights, cost, environmental concerns, community character.“
Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi, an Iranian man who lived in the US since 1991, spent over a year in ICE detention facilities in Winnfield and Angola Louisiana before dying on March 1st.
Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian man who entered the US through a federal humanitarian program who had been in ICE detention since last September, died at the Florence ICE Detention Facility due to an untreated tooth infection.
Daphy Michel was in Washington County Jail for six months before her misdemeanors were dismissed; she was found dead just days after being released into ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program.
19 year-old Royer Perez Jimenez died on March 16 at the Glades County Detention Center, a scandalous prison that community had successfully fought to shut down but was reopened last year
In video footage from inside Bakers County Detention Facility Florida, women in immigrant detention describe the abuses and horrible conditions, showing off the raggedy clothes, mattresses, describing how the food is terrible, how long they’ve been there waiting for court or being transferred to multiple detention centers. “There are many people suffering. We are being treated very badly… We are treateed as criminals. We are mothers and our families need us… ¡Queremos libertad! ¡Justicia!”
404 Media revealed that in January 2024 Proton Mail cooperated with a Swiss court order to hand over identifiable payment information associated with the defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com email address to the FBI through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request.
Travis W. Juhr, a regular protesting outside the Portland ICE facility with a Captain America shield, showed up to federal court for a hearing on his case for threatening Trump and ICE supporters online when he was arrested by local Portland police for allegedly setting fires at the Tesla building. Juhr is currently held at the Multnomah County Detention Center held on multiple arson and criminal mischief, and reckless burning charges.
A federal appeals court ruled that Baltimore-based Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson must stand trial in the civil suit brought on by a Louisiana cop John Ford who was hit in the in the face by a rock during a protest DeRay helped organized. McKesson responded to the ruling: “I will not stop fighting this ludicrous suit in order to protect all of our rights to protest, organize, and imagine a world beyond policing.”
A restaurant owner in Summerville SC was charged for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for being part of a student walkout Instagram groupchat for a student walkout against ICE; a local police officer was also apparently in the chat.
Alexia Moore was charged with murder by Georgia authorities for taking Misoprostol in the first prosecution under Georgia’s anti-abortion “LIFE Act” of the mother when the law was meant to target abortion providers.
The Texas state prison system announced new mail restrictions: captives will longer be able to receive used or hardcover books and the TDCJ is creating a portal requiring publishers and distributors to track incoming publications, blaming a supposed epidemic of drug-soaked books as cover for political censorship and privatized mail scanning contractors.
Captives in West Virginia filed a class action lawsuit against Aramark for serving inedible poor-quality food as a means to increase sales to it’s Union Supply Group commissary company: “Aramark extracts a profit on both ends; it saves costs on its daily meals services business by providing less, reused, and poor-quality food, while earning more money from incarcerated consumers’ purchases from its food-for-purchase programs.”
Not Guilty
Charles “Sonny” Burton was on Alabama death row scheduled for execution March 12th until a sustained campaign with over 67,000 petition signatures persuaded the Governor to commute his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Charles celebrated the win: “I’m feeling like a newborn baby, you know? …I have dodged death, and I feel OK”. His daughter Carolyn Amanda Shavers shared the story of the struggle towards this momentous victory with The Marshall Project.
Charges were dropped against two of the “Broadview 6” facing federal conspiracy charges for protests outside the Broadview ICE Processing Center. One of the former defendants Joselyn Walsh offers comments: One of the former defendants Joselyn Walsh gave comments about being targeted by the feds: “This has been a scary, chaotic, and uncertain time, but over the last couple of months, I had grown so confident that we would win that I stopped feeling scared. What I felt instead was determination and energy to use this moment to put the government on blast and expose its violence and hypocrisy. My supporters and I were looking forward to using the attention around the trial to keep speaking about the violence of ICE, the need to organize together, and the urgency of abolishing ICE.”
Afroman beat the Adams County Sheriffs at trial who, after raiding his place on a false informant tip to find nothing, attempted to sue Afroman for defamation and invasion of privacy for including his own surveillance footage to mock the cops in his music video “Lemon Pound Cake”.
An Oscar is generally beyond the imagination of the typical Black person in America, and even more removed for a person who has been to prison twice, served over 20 years and has multiple felonies, as I do.
I’ve appeared in other documentaries, in addition to the hundreds of videos I have put out over the years, so this is not altogether new territory for me.
The difference about this film is its scale. Since 2014, when we first started putting out this type of footage, the goal has always remained the same: exposing the reality about prisons and saving lives, so people can return home better than when they left.
This is a unique and historic platform for us to expound upon this mission. But it remains to be seen whether those in positions of authority and influence are going to allow us to truly capture this moment. Will this grow out into a purely commercial project that dies out when the opportunities for personal benefit wither away?
ON THE FOUNDATION THE FILM BUILT UPON The greatest potential for the film is embedded in what made the film possible in the first place — and that’s the larger movement created by the Free Alabama Movement.
Among its achievements is awakening the prison population to the possibilities of telling our own stories with the power of a cellphone. [As part of our organizing], we created a small battalion of prison journalists who were unafraid to get in front of a camera and expose to the world the truth about what is taking place in our prison system.
To give you a sense of the movement’s scope: We’ve had an underground podcast, hosted numerous webinars and Zoom events, staged hundreds of protests, and distributed thousands of pieces of content over the years. These are some of the factors that made this film possible. Without the foundation already in place, it simply would not have been possible.
The narrative surrounding the film has to stay rooted in this history. Otherwise the film won’t serve the purpose for which we made the sacrifices to bring the film into existence. From the beginning, [we’ve believed that] the metrics for the film should be measured in lives saved, conditions changed and people and families reunited.
The film can be a pivot from direct action and lead us down the rabbit hole of the political process, or it can be a galvanizing force which brings additional resources, ideas and foot soldiers into the broader movement.
ON THE WAIT FOR ACCOUNTABILITY Specifically, we are still waiting to see how we can leverage the film’s impact to create justice for the murders of Steven Davis and James Sales. [Editor’s note: Steven Davis was beaten to death by guards in Donaldson prison in 2019. The state paid $250,000 to his mother in a 2024 court settlement. Meanwhile, the state attributed the death of James Salesto “natural causes,” but incarcerated people speculated in the documentary that his death involved foul play, possibly from a laced cigarette given to him by a guard. Sales had told Davis’ lawyer that he would serve as a witness if needed after he left prison, but he died one month before he was released.]
We did not expect to see immediate results on that front, and that’s because we understand the nature of corruption inside the Alabama Department of Corrections.
There are stages to change, and the first stage is awareness and education. On that point, it appears we have exceeded expectations. I don’t think anyone ever anticipated that the film would have this type of impact.
We are still early in the process, but we cannot deny that so far the results have not been there — and neither has the organizing.
Since the film was released, there have not been any real mobilization efforts to unify any group, and there appears to have been some deliberate attempts to stop certain actions from taking place.
It is one thing to celebrate an Academy Award nomination as a personal achievement, but it is an entirely different thing to utilize a platform like this to further a mission.
The final chapter on “The Alabama Solution” will not be written for quite some time. Until then, there is much work to do.
Creative Resistance: Lets Get Free has published Daughters #18 Spring 2026 with “an exposé on sex trafficking in women’s prisons, interviews with Success Stories, a feminist Men’s Group in CA, In Traffic Magazine, a new PA prison based culture mag, and Kwaneta Harris shares insights on the patriarchy from inside solitary confinement in Texas”
Kevan Thakrar was wrongfully sentenced to a lifetime in prison in 2008, and has been fighting for his freedom ever since. He is one of the prolific prisoners in challenging prison conditions, racism and injustice. He has been subjected to severe torture and solitary confinement in the UK’s most highest security prisons – Close Supervision Centres that act as prisons within prisons. He continues to fight for his appeal. He appreciates letters and support via action alerts.
Kevan Thakrar A4907AE HMP Whitemoor Longhill Rd March PE15 0PR England
Ryan was arrested with over 75 people after the confrontation with the police at Bristol’s Bridewell police station at the Kill the Bill demonstration on March 21st 2021. He was convicted of riot and four counts of arson, and sentenced on the 17th December 2021 at Bristol Crown Court to a total of 14 years in prison. Three of the sentences run consecutively and only one concurrently, hence the brutal sentence of 14 years. As it is over seven years, it means he has to do two-thirds of the sentence (9 years and 4 months).
Azat Miftakhov, mathematician and graduate student of Moscow State University, has been under arrest without clear reason. It is declared that Miftakhov has been framed by the Russian government as a result of his anarchist views.
Miftakhov was unlawfully detained on February 1, 2019 on charges of manufacturing explosives. Without being officially arrested, he was held and tortured at the police station by law enforcement officers who beat and threatened to sexually assault him with a screwdriver.
Miftakhov ultimately did not admit to any wrongdoing. It wasn’t until the next day, February 2, 2019, that he was officially detained and sent to a temporary detention facility. The court found no evidence to keep Miftakhov in custody; he was released on February 7, 2019 without any charges.
Right as Miftakhov was leaving the detention facility, he was taken by men in plain clothes and transported to another facility, where he was told that he was being detained for another crime. This crime — breaking a window in the office of United Russia, the current ruling political party — took place a year ago, on January 13, 2018. There was no proof that Miftkahov was the one who committed this crime — the ”secret witness” who reported this incident was unable to describe Miftkahov’s facial features or attire — only his “expressive eyebrows.” This person also took a year to come forward, stating that they had not done so right away because their phone was out of battery.
The only other evidence against Miftakhov was a ticket to Belarus that he purportedly bought on February 11, 2019. On this day, Miftakhov was kept in a temporary detention facility without Internet access. The purchased ticket was deemed to be a sufficient reason for Miftakhov’s subsequent detention. The court continued to extend Miftakhov’s sentence throughout 2019, despite the fact that the only evidence has been the words of a “secret witness” and a ticket to Belarus in his name. On January 18, 2021, condemning him to “six years in prison with serving a sentence in a general regime colony.”
Mikita Jemialjanau (Nikita Emelyanov)
Birthday: March 24
Jemialjanau came to his anarchist ideas gradually, evolving from a social democrat through a period of sharing left-wing nationalist ideas. Having recognised himself as an anarchist, Mikita decided not to join any active organisations, but to act autonomously, choosing direct action as his method.
He and Ivan Kamar were detained on 20 October 2019 on suspicion of attempting to set fire to a pre-trial detention facility in Minsk in solidarity with Dzmitry Palijenkoa, who was in custody there at the time. This attack was preceded by another unsuccessful arson attempt. It is assumed that they also threw paint bulbs at the building of Minsk City Court as a sign of solidarity with the same comrade. On 12 February 2020 they were both sentenced to 7 years in prison, but after an appeal the sentence was commuted to 4 years. In January 2025, Mikita Jemialjanau received another year of his “term” under Article 411 (“malicious disobedience to the demands of the prison administration”).
Emelyanov Nikita Vladimirovich ST-1, 230023 Grodno, ul. Kirova 1
Roy Brown was arrested for looting S&K’s P-X Liquor store, Dellwood Market, and the Phillips 66 at Chambers Rd. and Green Valley Dr. during the night of rioting on November 24, 2014. He was sentenced to 60 years, serving time consecutively, largely on unrelated robbery and burglary charges.
Roy Brown #1310047 C/O Digital Mail Center-Missouri DOC PO Box 25678 Tampa, FL 33622-5678
Mumia Abu Jamal
Birthday: April 24
Mumia is an award winning journalist and was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Philadelphia. He has struggled for justice and human rights for people of color since he was at least 14 years old––the age when he joined the Party. In December of 1982, Mumia, who moonlighted by driving a taxi, happened upon police who were beating his brother. During the melee, a police officer was shot and killed. Despite the fact that many people saw someone else shoot and then run away from the scene, Mumia was convicted and sentenced to death by what can only be called a kangaroo court. During the summer of 1995, a death warrant was signed, which sparked one of the most effective organizing efforts in defense of a political prisoner ever. Since that time, Mumia has had his death sentence overturned, but still has a life sentence with no opportunity for parole. More information: freemumia.com
Smart Communications/PA DOC Mumia Abu Jamal #AM8335 SCI Mahanoy Post Office Box 33028 St Petersburg, Florida 33733
As PADOC is a digital mail scanning state, please use single sided letters; books must be sent to Mumia Abu Jamal #AM8335 / 268 Bricker Road / Bellefonte, PA 16823-1667
Casey Goonan
Birthday: April 24
Casey Goonan is an anarchist/anti-imperialist political prisoner incarcerated for actions carried out in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza and response to the repressive actions against the pro-Palestine student encampments in the United States. In January 2025, Casey pleaded guilty to one count of maliciously damaging or destroying property used in or affecting interstate commerce by means of fire or an explosive for the arson attack on a campus police car. As part of a plea agreement, Goonan took responsibility for the other attacks but pleaded not guilty to the additional charges and was sentenced to 235 months in federal prison. More information: freecaseynow.noblogs.org
Casey Goonan #24611 511 FCI Allenwood Medium Post Office Box 2000 White Deer, Pennsylvania 17887
Janiis Mathis
Birthday: April 24
Janis Mathis: A former Vaughn 17 defendant. While the state has now given up on its attempts to charge Mathis in relation to the Vaughn uprising, Mathis deserves respect for staying in solidarity with his codefendants throughout the process and refusing to cooperate with the prosecution.
Janiis Mathis SBI# 00492275 James T. Vaughn Correctional Center – 1101 PO Box 96777 Las Vegas, NV 89193
