Maine Anarchist Black Cross

NYC Anarchist Black Cross has released its updated Illustrated Prisoner Listing. Download link here.

Prison Policy Initiative released a new graphic pie chart.

Denver ABC Directs us to this project for trans Prisoners calling for an International Day of Solidarity for Trans Prisoners on January 22nd

Relating to women in prisons Huffington Post published this piece regarding the incarceration rates and conditions (source the Prison Policy Initiative)

Anecdotally, reporting on violent crime in the state has seemed to be increasing. With a “police-involved shooting” where Officer Ryan Jones of the Bangor Police department shot and killed a 23 year-old man,  during Jones pursuit of the man.

In a recent government attempt to curtail prisoner communications on grounds of “their” security was roundly criticised at a public hearing in late October. MPBN

More to come in following weeks..

Maine Anarchist Black Cross is a molecular scale organization right now, and current membership is reaching out toward along the strands of heart, called solidarity, to others working to prefigure the world without an incarcerated mind and as one group describes going ‘upstream’ to the causes of poverty and their removal.

With the aim  of building capacity in broad-range organizing with strong principles, steeped in the fight against economic and social exclusion, is one group called Food AND Medicine in the Greater Bangor Area.

Food AND Medicine’s mission is to organize, educate, and empower workers and our communities in the fight for economic and social justice.

http://www.foodandmedicine.org/?key=69432598

This organizers impression is that this seems a strongly democratic group and responsive to unfolding events, possibilities and needs.

Another affiliated and separate group is an interfaith Faith Linking in Action, a group describing going upstream or as some folks prefer going to the root. (That’s radical, folks!)

Addressing causes and unifying oppressed and struggling people is a goal that is get-behind able, any readers of any inclination look into participation in these groups or start similiar groups.

The call out is to connect on what moves you the most, these will be the strongest bonds, and this helps the seed have it’s carrying fruit to proliferate outward.

Finding points of unity with a broad amalgamation of groups

promotes critical thought on this matter of imprisonment, which is both difficult and urgent.

Challenging ourselves to find common ground where we may not expect it, feeds the solidarity

which can challenge the prison-state and it’s corollary systems.

Projects/ Campaigns/ Organizations:

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. More than 30,000 California prisoners initiated an indefinite hunger strike. They are calling on the Governor and the CDCR to meet their 5 Core Demands. California holds nearly 12,000 people in extreme isolation at a cost of over $60 million per year. The cells have no windows, and no access to fresh air or sunlight. The United Nations condemns the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days as torture, yet many people in California state prisons have been encaged in solitary for 10 to 40 years! In 2011, over 12,000 prisoners and their family and community members participated in statewide hunger strikes protesting the inhumane conditions in the SHU. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) promised meaningful reform. In February 2013, prisoners announced that another hunger strike would begin July 8th because of CDCR’s failure to fulfill that promise. The hunger strike has been organized by prisoners in an inspiring show of unity across prison-manufactured racial and geographical lines. The changes the prisoners are demanding are standards in other Supermax prisons (eg, Federal Florence, Colorado, and Ohio), which supports the prisoners’ position that CDCR’s claim of such demands being a threat to safety and security are exaggerations. The hunger strikers** have developed these five, straight-forward, core demands

PARC is a prison abolitionist group committed to exposing and challenging all forms of institutionalized racism, sexism, able-ism, heterosexism, and classism, specifically within the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). PARC believes in building strategies and tactics that build safety in our communities without reliance on the police or the PIC. We produce a directory that is free to prisoners upon request, and seek to work in solidarity with prisoners, ex-prisoners, their friends and families. We also work with teachers and activists on many prison issues. This work includes building action networks and materials that expose the continuing neglect and outright torture of more than 2 million people imprisoned within the USA; as well as the 5+ million who are under some form of surveillance and control by the so-called justice system.

TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom.
We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures. We seek to create a world rooted in self determination, freedom of expression, and gender justice.
Members:
Low income transgender women of color and our families who are in prison, formerly incarcerated, or targeted by the police.

Since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), has been on the frontline in supporting those imprisoned for struggling for freedom and liberty. This is the website of the Anarchist Black Cross Federation which runs the Warchest Program among others

https://www.prisonactivist.org/sites/default/files/2014-parc-directory.pdf

Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness.

Suggestions for Supporting Prisoners
Prisoner support is integral to radical movements because resistance breeds repression. We know that any successful movement that is making real gains will be met with repression and people will face jail time as a result of their contribution to a better world. Not only do people within the movement have an imperative to support people facing incarceration as a result for their beliefs and/or actions, but people who accept support from the movement while they are incarcerated have an imperative to respect individuals within and the movement as a whole by not cooperating or testifying against co-defendants.

Anti-Authoritarians, Anarchists, and Plain Ol’ Compassionate Folks!

Come out to Maine Anarchist Black Cross’ first Political Prisoner Letter Writing Group. A brief presentation and all need materials will accompany the group’s namesake activity. Letter writing as a political act can establish outside links with otherwise isolated and abused prisoners which may lead to better treatment, more importantly than that it establishes a bridge where the state seeks to sever connections. Actionists and their community support should be like fingers in a glove, we resist dehumanization inside and outside the Penitentiary walls.

Shake off the apathy, remember that the struggle has high stakes for those in oppressed groups, and that the state wants us to forget.

Let’s Remember, Celebrate, and Struggle

Meet me and your other comrades at:

With Breath Puppetry Studio (#1 on second floor of the Masonic Building at Main and High in Belfast, ME)

MARCH 12, 2015 5:30pm 

for more information contact:

jd.kauppila@riseup.net

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia, I know that your line is going to be cut off in a minute, and I was wondering what message do you have to people outside the bars right now?

MUMIA ABU–JAMAL: Well, increasingly, that space has expanded, because if you look inside the bars, you’re looking at millions of men and women and juveniles, as I noted before. But even beyond that, I mean, how free are we today, those who claim to be non-prisoners? Your computers are being read by others in government. Your letters, your phone calls are being intercepted. We live now in a national security state, where the United States is fast becoming one of the biggest open-air prisons on earth.

Democracy Now! February 1, 2013

Anarchist Black Cross is an organization built around Solidarity with prisoners. In our Panopticon society, anywhere prison walls are built a prison arises on both sides. Realizing the chilling effect this has on the perceived range of political action, the PRISON as an institution of the state must be challenged and confronted. Those fighting and struggling in the labyrinthine corridors of justice must be supported and assisted with understanding of the primary function of prison in society.

Those “Free” are forever threatened with the loss of freedom and those without that distinction are told to work to retrieve and earn it. The final threat of the State is absolute restriction of movement and association, absolute surveillance and control. Knowing that a fight against this tool of the State restricts it’s use by any “leader” gains made in this area can significantly reshape the struggle and promote more effective action against the State and its Capitalists.

Always Revolt, Never Submit. Fight Smart, Get Results.

Solidarity!

Maine State Prison

Maine Anarchist Black Cross