some thoughts about prisoner solidarity work (written in connection with the happenings in Belarus)

In a moment of strong repression the affected sphere tends to concentrate all its energy on supporting the prisoners. This happens often by letters, support for friends and relatives, making their cases public, solidarity callouts, donation appeals, symbolic solidarity actions and similar things. In our words we seem to repeat over and over again how surprised we are about how vicious the repressive organs of the state are. They took our belongings, didn‘t tell us their names, didn‘t tell our relatives about whats going on, they keep us imprisoned without saying the reasons (also if we are of bad health), don‘t believe our words, tell lies, hit us, don‘t give us good food or medical healthcare - just in general; they don‘t follow the law! But are we really that surprised? Why are we still shocked when we feel the logic of this system on our own bodys or have comarades experiencing it?

Of course, all this things are very bad, not to say completely crazy. But didn‘t we know this allready before? Don‘t we fight against the ruling order of this world, aren‘t we anarchists because we know how fucked up this all is?

We seem to get torn to pieces by the pain of being separated from our loved ones, knowing they could be suffering. But even by going trough all this very important emotions we shouldn‘t forget that prison is just showing us the tip of the iceberg. It is the concentrated form of what we and everybody else feel and experience everyday in our lives. There is nothing to be surprised about. And so there is nothing to whine about. However we have the option to turn our pain into the determination to continue our fights all the more.

The complaining about all these meanness is mainly made out of a reformistic perspective, to get the public, the „masses“, on our side. To make them say „This mean state should be nice to this nice anarchists.“ But what do we belive to find in this for us and our struggle? By whining about our misstreatments we don‘t ask the most important questions of all around this topic; what kind of society needs prisons and how can we overcome everything that maintains it? In the moment it might seem like the best idea to say „no, i didn‘t do it“. And may be even „no, i would never do such things (and i don‘t know anybody who would)“. We might think, it prevents us from going to prison. But is that really preventing us from it or does it put us back to a much wider prison; the prison of bending our heads in front of the system? By not going into a dialoge juridical language -that has anyway nothing to offer for us- we can keep a little bit of the freedom we won when we chose struggeling. We might think, by denying we prevent more repression. But if we didn‘t do it, someone else did, so the search for the guilty people will continue. And if they don‘t find „the true guilty people“ they could just make somebody into it. We also might think, that it would be a good idea to distance ourselfes or (if we still move in static groups) our organizations from the events. But by that we only make the circle of possible attackers and supporters smaller. Exactly in this moments it is especially important to stand behind the ideas of the attacks on the system at any time. We don‘t have to say we did it. But we can say we think the attack was and will be necessary until the overthrow of the ruling order and the begining of something new. By saying this, we give a very necessary and important (prisoner) support. By saying this, we repeat the attack. We keep on being dangerous. Because no one will stand alone in front of court. No one is alone in its cell. The logic of the prison isn‘t effective. The idea and the meaning of the attack stay alive and grow. Like this and by choosing new targets, by continuing to attack, by living the stuggle, we help our comerades more then by sacrifing us to the judicial machinery. We continue what they stand for. We continue to be ourselves. We stay anarchist.