Solidarity knows no laws

We firebombed the courthouse in central Yate, on 22^nd May. 10 camping gas canisters were enough to devastate the front lobby, with a homemade napalm mixture as the detonator. We chose the early hours to avoid any injuries. Social war doesn’t sleep: at any given time, irrepressibles somewhere are awake and angry, raging against impositions of the governing system which wants us as its cogs. That night it happened to be us.

New and bigger custody centers; more restrictive laws, injunctions and “anti-social behavior” legislation; legal aid reduced to entrap the poor; phonelines for snitching; different shades of cops embedding themselves throughout the layers of society; probation schemes to reinsert convicts into the world of wage-slavery and consumerism; a whole prison-world of concrete cities and surveilled data-streams overseen by the powerful, armed with

CCTV, biometrics and electronic tagging to defend their wealth and social order…

And also carrying out this authoritarian disciplining of the individual, are the courts. Enforcers of human misery, shamelessly applying laws drawn up by the upper classes, politicians and business leaders. Stamping down to subdue people who are mostly trying to find means of survival while capitalism pits all against all.

The justice system tries to pass itself off as the only protection from the very same desperation and imbalances that civilized society creates. Its real function is and has always been to protect and sanctify property and privilege above all: and to usurp free communities or individuals capacity for autonomy, retaliation or reconciliation.

The system is not interested in changing the root causes of much “crime” (poverty, alienation, boredom, etc) at more than a tokenistic level, but simply manages its distribution while keeping the exploited at each others throats. This is especially true as the market now makes a booming business out of prisoners low-cost labor and from the private detention industry. Everything stays in line so long as the personal neighborhoods of bosses and judges remain sanctuaries free from the discontents of the class society they maintain: a sanctuary we fully intend on breaking.

At the heart of “prosperous Europe” is a vast modern underclass of unemployed, criminals and “illegals” (most others still being far from the industrial workers of last century) and who are primarily disciplined by welfare, migration controls and of course the judicial system. Ours is the era of temporary work, the necessity to be flexible as an obedient resource for the owner class, and endless brain-numbing service jobs with high turnover of dissatisfied and alienated staff. Illegality and the black market are a lifeline for millions of those consigned to deprivation on the margins of a society whose welfare recipients are increasingly supervised like “deviants” or “criminals”. Then once locked up (or put on dole schemes) we can be forced to work under threat of further punishment and made “productive” under conditions of slave labor, so solving one of capitalism’s contradictions.

And yet the administrators of the prison-industrial complex must remember that they still don’t hold the absolute power they’d like to over the unruly. Private screws of the Sodexo corporation learned this only two months ago when fifty or more prisoners seized control of a wing at HMP Northumberland. All types of wardens in this infernal prison-world are counting on the exploited not to consciously rebel and begin a clean sweep of any form of control-system which limits us. 22^nd May, and every other day in our own way, we set out to prove them wrong.

As a result of the blast, multiple windows were taken out and the canopy of the courthouse building was also set ablaze, and anyone can see: power is not untouchable. Here’s a single example among many that they who want to can take the war back to the streets, offices or houses of the people plainly responsible for administering the pain and suffering of ourselves and our loved ones who are humiliated and condemned in these places. This doesn’t end here… For a complete end to all prisons and not just the most physical ones: the whole ensemble of confinement and domestication whether through surveillance, “soft-touch” policing, implanted morality, gender constructs, wage-slavery, schedules, social classes, cities, etc.

We know that individuals still exist in the grim times we’re living through who face the judicial system as fighters with dignity and without self-victimization, and our hearts are with them. When even the prospect of incarceration stops outweighing our fury we can be strong indeed. Specifically this time we mention Gabriel Pombo Da Silva: many years of isolation for the criminal revolt carried out since his youth have so far failed to neutralize his lust for life. Nicola Gai and Alfredo Cospito are locked up with heavy tariffs after shooting a nuclear industry boss but as can be seen from their letters and prison-struggle they haven’t lost their spark. Babis Tsilianidis remains alongside one of the combative communities in Koridallos prison comprised of more anarchists than we can name, who sabotage the official and unofficial functions seeking to weaken and annihilate them. And liberation warrior Marco Camenisch, ever-lucid, whose decades-long detention is endlessly getting renewed by the authorities.

To the remaining anarchists “flying high or laying low” to resist interrogation by grand jury in the United States, Felicity Ryder and now also Mario Lopez who are underground in Mexico, and the No-TAV arrestees as well as Adriano Antonacci and Gianluca Iacovacci soon on trial via video-link from the high-surveillance modules of Italy: your refusal to bow down is inspiring. Mauricio Morales that night you lived again, a wild and free element dancing to the flames.

Motivating our action was the part that the justice system also has in suppressing broader insurrectional situations when they take hold. Courts worked around the clock while the 2011 summer riots raged to harshly sentence captured rebels and other suspects, as we know they will when control gets contested. But we certainly aren’t deterred by the chances of coming face to face with self-righteous toffs in wigs or their jailer stooges, even on the occasions when our circumstances of meeting suit them more than we’d prefer. Repression will just draw out more conflict, even across borders. Our methods stay adapted to the task in hand. Building strong affinity among ourselves, a feral passion for freedom, and the diffusion of rebellious attitudes and actions are the basis of our practice.

This one’s for all who remain defiant come what may and whichever side of a prison wall. Courage, comrades.
Long live Anarchy

Informal Anarchist Federation – Conscience & Fury