Black Dove Support Network: Letter from anarchist A.Kiriakopoulos from Koridallos prison

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Letter from anarchist A.Kiriakopoulos from Koridallos prison

Five months after the explosive events of December, the mass arrests and the prosecutions that took place, six of us remain captives in the claws of the state.
Recently, the so called “justice state” and its servants decided to extend my pre-trial detention (remand) stating that what should come first is the extermination of my person and of my “criminal” activity and the protection of society. According to their characterization, I am a reckless and fanatical person. To sum it up they characterized me an enemy of society. But the enemies of society are all those who after the cold-blooded murder of comrade Alexis Grigoropoulos tried to repress the social phenomenon of the violent insurrection in December with the reckless and mass use of teargas to the extent of torture, the beating of protestors, and their swift imprisonment. Anyway, it is known for years now that the cops, especially when dealing with anarchists demos, unleash chemical warfare with the slightest pretext so they can torture people. Despite the vicious repression of December’s insurrectionary violence, it continues to persist and is proof that the fire that was lit cannot be put out. After all Alexis’ murder was the cause and at the same time the pretext for the outbreak of social rage.
As always, a special role was taken on by mass media and the lowlife journalists brought their propaganda to the limit of vileness. After the state murder of Alexis, they reported about the widespread destruction in the whole of Greece and that the police made no arrests. I believe that the fact that all of us imprisoned for the insurrection face the same charges is no coincidence. The line from the state was exactly the same for nearly all of us.
Inside prison, time is the worst enemy. Especially when you are in custody awaiting trial there is a continuous uncertainty as you never know exactly when you are going to be released. This is a situation that definitely wears you down psychologically. This is also an effect of being locked up against your will with four people for 14 hours a day in a 9 square meter cell designed to fit only one person. It is especially felt when relationships of camaraderie or even of understanding are rare as they are outside the prison bars. Of course there are always those who choose to stand in dignity and struggle.
Incarceration is an everyday psychological warfare enforced upon you by the system when you are in prison. On top of this you also have the screws usually treating prisoners who take part in struggles (hunger strikes, refusal of prison food, demanding their printed material from the censorship) in a derogatory and sly way. One typical example is the last time prisoners were refusing prison food as a protest for the murder of Alexis, the warden of the wing came in together with other screws and threatened the prisoners taking part in the protest with disciplinary prison transfers.
Generally, when you are not subjugated to their correctional system they try to create a climate of fear. Anyway prison is like a large melting pot of souls. If you are a coward it will mince you up and make you even more of a coward but if you are tough it will make you even tougher and colder as a person. The cell makes the prisoner suffocate. Outside in the prison yard is the illusion of freedom…
Still through all of this nothing has ended, the struggle continues
Those who are right are the rebels
not the snitches and those who bow down
(a popular greek anarchist chant)

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What is the Prison Industrial Complex?

What is the Prison Industrial Complex? The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a complicated system situated at the intersection of governmental and private interests that uses prisons as a solution to social, political, and economic problems. The PIC depends upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. It includes human rights violations, the death penalty, industry and labor issues, policing, courts, media, community powerlessness, the imprisonment of political prisoners, and the elimination of dissent.How the PIC WorksTo fully describe the PIC, we have to look at the big picture of how it functions. For example, the prison construction boom can be linked to, among other factors, the huge increase in the number of people sentenced to prison terms with the onset of the war on drugs, the repression of radical movements by people of color for self-determination, and the anti-imperialist struggles of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The "war on drugs" and the national and local efforts to destroy radical political movements led to increasing police presence in communities of color and poor communities, higher arrest rates, and longer prison sentences.This boom is also fueled by dramatic and racist reporting about "crime," "delinquency," and "rebellion," creating a culture of fear in which it continues to be acceptable and desirable to many people to lock people (primarily people of color, youth, and poor people) in cages for longer and longer in the interest of "public safety." The way the many parts of the PIC interact is exactly what makes it so powerful and destructive. In order to fight this system, we have to see it for all that it is and recognize what drives and shapes it.Fighting the PICFighting the PIC means fighting the mainstream ideas of public safety and challenging the idea that police, prisons, and the court system make people who are not in power safer. At the same time, we must create alternative ideas of security based on the safety of the people most affected by the PIC.The United States currently imprisons around 2 million people. About 6.5 million people are presently under some form of supervision within the criminal justice system. Women represent the fastest rising prison population. Since 1980, the number of women imprisoned in the U.S. has risen by almost 400 percent. Racism continues to be a major factor in the United States, illustrated by policies and programs that sustain white supremacy. Racism, as it is used through criminal laws that target people of color, is essential to the PIC, not accidental.Prisons Are Not an Answer to CrimeThe wrongdoings we call crime do not exist in the same ways everywhere and are not "human nature". What is considered a crime is determined by the societies we live in. Because we have seen over and over again that locking more people in cages does not reduce crime, we must understand the power relationships that lead society to lock up only certain people. Since prisons do not stop problems like poverty, racism, or drug addiction, we cannot expect them to stop crime. We need to understand that we have no option but to fight and continue to fight until all of the different parts of the PIC that continue to put our survival in danger are eliminated.The Movement Against the PICThe movement against the PIC runs the risk of being shaped by easy victories or simplified struggles that do not recognize and fight the whole system. We must go beyond false separations, such as "non-violent" versus "violent" that place prisoners in opposition to each other. One important place to begin to fight the PIC is by pushing the movement to a more complete race, class, and gender analysis. We cannot allow ourselves to do short-term work that undermines our long-term vision and goals, or rely on the same systems of oppression and domination that sustain and drive the PIC to influence "mainstream" voters and decision makers. In order to do this work, we must continue to create spaces for people with different points of view to have honest discussions and disagreements about directions the movement against the PIC should take.What We Are ForSince we are so frequently asked what we are "for" rather than "against," the struggle against prisons, police, repression, punishment, and the criminalization of entire communities must display a clear vision that a world without the PIC is possible. One way to define and shape what we are for is through creating a culture of resistance, or a culture and society that fill all the different parts of our lives with alternatives to the culture of imprisonment. A new culture must nurture and sustain our struggle and provide space for political education, conversation and debate about what we are doing and what we need to do in the future.In order to figure out why people get locked up and under what circumstances, we need to look at what are sometimes called "root causes." This strategy requires looking at the competing priorities of the systems in which we live and understanding why they work well for some and horribly for others. The systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality, for instance, are commonly understood as privileging some people's needs and ideals over others. By exploring why and how those systems work for some and not for others, we can begin to develop a better understanding of how to include concrete steps in our work that deal with the negative effects of these systems on the people who are most often put in cages.To oppose the PIC, activists must work on both theoretical and practical levels. We cannot only engage in single-issue struggles, because all the issues intersect. How can we best create social change in an era of globalization? The voices of today's radical activists, particularly activists of color, must be at the front of the fight against the PIC. Those who are most affected by the system must be the ones planning its end.Organizing against the PIC is as much about building something as it is about fighting what is destroying our communities. Our organizing is also an ongoing effort to create alternatives, not only to imprisonment, but to the culture of punishment we've become so used to.

Black Dove Support Network

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Letter from anarchist A.Kiriakopoulos from Koridallos prison

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What is the Prison Industrial Complex?

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