Monthly Archives: December 2020

A Tribute to Ricardo Flores Magon, Created by the Xinachtli Defense Committee and the Central Texas ABC Collective

 A Tribute to Ricardo Flores Magon, Created by the Xinachtli Defense Committee and the Central Texas ABC Collective

[W]e consider it absurd that a few people should possess the Earth, and the many not have a place to lay down their heads for rest. We want land to be accessible to all…

Ricardo Flores Magon, Regeneracion, Theoretical Journal
RICARDO FLORES MAGON WILL LIVE FOREVER IN OUR PRESENCE AND IN OUR HEARTS

Ricardo Flores Magon was born in San Antonio Eloxochitlan, Oaxaca, Mexico, in 1873, to Nahuatl parents. In 1900, he founded the revolutionary theoretical journal Regeneracion, that protested the policies of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz and the military dictatorship that oppressed the Mexican masses. His organizing and literary writings and denunciations of government and society resulted in his political imprisonment in Mexico for a number of years. Ricardo and his brother Enrique went into exile in the US to flee extreme government repression of Mexico’s working-class movements. In 1906, Ricardo founded the “Partido Liberal Mexicano” in St. Louis, Missouri.

In January 1911, the Magon brothers inspired the insurrection in Baja, California, that took over Mexicali and Tijuana into the hands of workers’ councils, with the support of the workers’ movement, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Ricardo and Librado Rivera produced a manifesto entitled “To the Workers of the World” in 1918 in Los Angeles, widely circulated and distributed around the world. Addressed to “Anarchists of the World,” they called on working class unity, and control of the means of production and distribution in the hands of the workers themselves, and for the elimination of all patriarchal, oligarchical forms of ruling class domination of the poor and for the freedom of working class labor power from the shackles of wage-theft slavery, which they considered as an immoral, criminal system of exploitation and illegal expropriation.

For their political activism, Ricardo, Enrique and the other “Magonistas” were arrested, tried, convicted for “seditious conspiracy” and imprisoned at McNeil federal prison in Washington State, and later at the Leavenworth federal prison, then being used by the U.S. government to house revolutionaries, anarchists, socialists, communists and anti-fascists, at the height of the “Red Scare” fascist right-wing frenzy in the U.S., designed to suppress, destroy, and imprison resistance fighters and their social liberation movements, criminalizing all militancy and dissent.

Ricardo, inspired by the manifesto “The Conquest of Bread,” written by the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, produced many revolutionary theatre skits, and wrote many profound essays, poems, commentaries, and other revolutionary satirical writings denouncing Mexico’s ruling class. Ricardo also denounced the robbery of Northern Mexico through white settler colonial wars of plunder and annexation, that today comprise the states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Colorado, and parts of Utah and Nevada, and forcing Mexico into illegal treaties, such as the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, at the point of a gun, and threats of further war to steal all of Mexico, while the U.S. Marines sat in the port of Vera Cruz, awaiting orders from the U.S. ruling class government to invade all of Mexico or retreat with its territorial land-grabs.

Repression against the Regeneracion editors grew more intense after the journal published essays related to the 1915 Revolutionary Plan of San Diego, Texas, that called for an uprising in the occupied territories stolen from Mexico, and called on all African Americans to join the armed struggle for their own liberation from the plantation slavery of the South, and for the creation of their own African Republic in the South.

A U.S. anarchist political prisoners support movement to free Ricardo, Enrique, and the other imprisoned “Magonistas” was born, led by Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, the IWW and other working-class and labor movements, in spite of repression against the movement by the governments of Mexico and the U.S., who joined forces to destroy the working class movements in both countries. Ricardo was assassinated on November 21, 1922, in Leavenworth prison.

Today, Ricardo Flores Magon lives through his ideas and his writings, such as Tierra Y Liberta, and other of his writings published in Regeneracion that remain valid today, as adopted by Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution, the anarchist indigenous resistance movements in Mexico, and the social tremors initiated by Sub-Commandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas, and the Chicano Mexicano Movement for independence, for self-determination, and for national liberation revolution, from within the belly of the beast’s occupied territories and its concentration camps for the poor, neo-colonial plantation prisons of mass incarceration in Texas.

This November 21, 2020, we pay homage to our Comrade, our mentor, our hero, our martyr, and our Brother and Teacher, and remind the rest of the world that the Chicano Mexicano movement for National Liberation has never died, for a people, a nation, a movement will never die as long as our indigenous homeland remains in the hands of racist, war-criminal, foreign invaders, who will never lay permanent claim to the stolen lands in the U.S. Southwest, for those who occupy these lands can never be truly free, nor enjoy human happiness, and freedom of conscience and dignity, until these lands are returned to their legitimate owners, and victims of these colonial war crimes are awarded reparations for their human suffering and loss, to make them whole again, that must begin at a convened International Truth Commission and Reparations Tribunal, as our healing of these historical traumas begins…

  • By Xinachtli, Chicano POW, political prisoner, now going on 19 years in consecutive solitary confinement at the James V. Allred Unit Control Unit Prison in Iowa Park, Texas, November 21 2020

*** “Intellectual property rights” are an imperialist concept we do not believe in, nor honor; this piece may be reproduced, circulated and disseminated in all social media and other sites, without the permission of Xinachtli or the Central Texas ABC group.

Note:

Having been wrongfully imprisoned since 1997 for defending himself against an armed Texas sheriff, Xinachtli is eligible for parole in 2021. More information about how to support his parole effort should be released soon, but the Xinachtli Defense Committee would encourage everyone to send letters to his lawyers in support of his parole, using his registered name, ALVARO LUNA HERNANDEZ, and prison number, TDCJ-CID#00255735. Parole letters should be addressed to:

Texas Department of Criminal Justice – Parole Division
P.O. Box 13401,
Austin, Texas – 78711-3401

But the letters themselves need to be sent to Xinachtli’s lawyers at:
ALLEN PLACE LAW,
109 South 7th Street,
Gatesville, Texas 76528

Sending them to Allen Place instead of directly to the parole board will help his lawyers to use them effectively.

Key points to mention are that he has a solid support system waiting, with available opportunities of employment, residence, and transportation, and that he is in his late 60s with several health conditions which would put him at high risk if infected with COVID-19.

To contact Xinachtli directly, write to

Alvaro Hernández #255735
James V Allred Unit
2101 FM 369 North
Iowa Park, TX 76367

International Call For New Year’s Eve Noise Demonstrations

This is a call for a night of strong solidarity with those imprisoned by the state. Historically, New Year’s Eve is one of the noisiest nights of the year. This year, most of which has been consumed by a global pandemic, we encourage folks to take whatever measures are necessary to insure individual and community well-being, in response to both the virus and the state, understanding the balance each of us must strike for ourselves. Given our current reality, on New Year’s Eve gather your crew, collective, community, organization, or just yourself to raise a racket and remind those on the inside that they are not alone.

Internationally, noise demonstrations outside of prisons are a way to remember those who are held captive by the state and a way to show solidarity with imprisoned comrades and loved ones. We come together to break the loneliness and isolation.

We know that prison is beyond reform and must be completely abolished. It is a mechanism of repression used by the state to maintain a social order rooted in white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. To come together outside of the sites of repression is to also stand in defiance of what they represent.

The logic of the state and capital—of punishment and imprisonment, must be replaced by a rejection of oppression and exploitation. This call is one step in that direction.

Wherever you are, meet on New Year’s Eve at the prisons, jails, and detention centers, be loud in solidarity with those imprisoned and to push forward the idea of a world free from domination.

We send this call in solidarity with those defying state repression of large scale dissent: from the George Floyd uprisings to ongoing defiance in Greece by those facing repression as anarchists, and all of those in the spaces between.

We want a world without walls and borders.
We will fight together until everyone is free!

Share via https://nycabc.wordpress.com/2020/12/09/nye_call_2020/

“This is America” podcast features Certain Days calendar collective

Check out the latest This is America podcast produced by It’s Going Down at https://itsgoingdown.org/this-is-america-132-eviction-defense-in-portland-certain-days-collective-eleanor-goldfield-on-hard-road-of-hope/

We then speak to two participants in the Certain Days collective, which puts together both the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners yearly calendar as well as IGD’s Prison Break column. We talk about political prisoners, repression in a post-rebellion world, what a print project like Certain Days means in 2021, and much more.

Buy the 2021 Certain Days calendar at burningbooks.com

Kings Bay 7 Plowshares update

Carmen Trotta and Martha Hennessy, two of the Kings Bay Plowshares disarmament activists, self-reported to federal prisons yesterday to begin their sentences.

Carmen was driven by a group of community members and friends from St. Joseph House Catholic Worker in NYC to the prison in Otisville, NY, about a two hour drive. Before leaving he received a blessing from many friends with a laying on hands. The group also stopped for a farewell meal in Middletown near the prison.

Carmen was given a 14 month sentence and has already served 7 weeks. He is expected to be quarantined for two weeks and then put into the prison camp population. The prison has stopped all visiting which may be a sign that the virus rate is growing.

Carmen in middle before reporting

Martha was brought from her home in Vermont to Danbury, CT by her husband, Steven Melanson to begin her ten month sentence. Two of her codefendants, Mark Colville and Liz McAlister along with Liz’s daughter Frida Berrigan and Bill Marsten met them in the parking lot. Mark reports, “I was conscious of Martha’s courage and faith, her faithfulness to the Gospel and compassion for all of creation which has made it possible for our community of love and justice to extend beyond that prison.
Martha goes in with a message that we need now, more than ever, to abolish nuclear weapons and war. She’s laying down her life for that good news. We celebrated her there with homemade soup and chocolate. Frida’s children made beautiful signs saying ‘FEAR NOT’ and ‘We love you, Martha!’

I remember one particular moment when Liz stepped forward and reminded all that many great spirits had passed through those prison gates, including her beloved, Phil Berrigan. God rest his soul and many other resisters. Martha is carrying on that tradition and we were able to celebrate her as a community. It was a beautiful day, with snow descending as we drove up and intensifying as we drove back.

On the way, we passed through the little town of Sandy Hook. Dec. 14th, was the 8th anniversary of that terrible school shooting of all those children and educators. We are conscious of the connection between nuclear weapons and the kinds of violence that plague our communities and neighborhoods everywhere in this country. Martha’s going forward very much was a witness to this connection between the ultimate violence of omnicidal nuclear weapons and the violence that plagues our neighborhoods.”

Fr. Steve Kelly is now being transported from jail in Georgia where he has been held since the action in April, 2018 to federal court in Tacoma, WA to appear for a probation violation. Steve had been convicted of trespass in an earlier action at the Kitsap-Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base. Taking into account his good time credit, Steve has served beyond the 33 month sentence given by Judge Wood. It is expected that his extra time will be credited to any sentence from the Tacoma court. So far Steve has stayed COVID-free and healthy. He gave away all his belongings just after his October 15th sentencing expecting to be moved soon but it didn’t happen quickly. The transport to the West Coast could take days or weeks through various intermediate stages and holding prisons. Check the website for updates.

Carmen Trotta #22561-021
FCI Otisville- Satellite Camp
PO Box 1000
Otisville, NY 10963

Martha Hennessy #22560-021
FCI Danbury
Route 37
Danbury, CT 06811

You can send letters to them on white paper with blue or black ink but no drawings. We are checking what else they may receive. See the website for updates.

Clare Grady and Patrick O’Neill will report to prison in the New Year. Mark Colville has a delay for sentencing until February 19. To access the defendants’ powerful sentencing statements go to https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/sentencing-statements/ which is under the “Legal” tab in the menu. Biographical information can be found under the “About” tab.

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 symbolically and nonviolently disarmed Trident submarine nuclear weapons on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who devoted his life to addressing what he called the “triple evils of militarism, racism, and materialism.”  Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction. They hoped to call attention to the ways in which nuclear weapons kill every day, by their mere existence and maintenance.


EMAIL:  [email protected]
WEBSITE:  www.kingsbayplowshares7.org
FACEBOOK :https://www.facebook.com/Kingsbayplowshares
TWITTER :https://www.twitter.com/kingsbayplow7

Political Prisoner profile: Xinachtli

Xinachtli (Nahuatl, meaning “seed”) is a community organizer and Chicano movement revolutionary, currently imprisoned in Texas. Formerly known as Alvaro Luna Hernandez, he worked diligently in the barrio on civil and human rights issues, known widely for his legal skills. Gaining international recognition as the national coordinator of the Ricardo Aldape Guerra Defense Committee, Xinachtli was instrumental in helping to free Mexican national Aldape Guerra from Texas’ death row, where he had been framed for the murder of a police officer.

In July 1996 Xinachtli was arrested after disarming a County Sheriff who was attempting to shoot him. After defending himself at trial, Xinachtli was sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated assault, a charge he vehemently denies. While imprisoned, Xinachtli continues to write frequently, has helped to organize multiple prison strikes, and has been held in solitary confinement for the last 19 years and counting. Xinachtli is a prolific jailhouse lawyer, as referenced by Mumia Abu Jamal in his book Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v the USA. Xinachtli assists many prisoners in seeking new trials, and filing suits against the repressive, inhumane Texas prison system.

Xinachtli* #255735
James V. Allred Unit
2101 FM 369 North
Iowa Park, TX 76367
*Address envelope to Alvaro Luna Hernandez.

More information: freealvaro.net
Info flyer
Info was taken from NYC ABC’s Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners.
More PP addresses here.

NYC ABC Updates and Announcements– 12.15.2020

One part of NYC ABC‘s every-other-week Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinners is presenting updates and announcements. These typically relate to PPs, POWs, or are especially relevant to folks in NYC. Since February 2011, we’ve been printing and mailing hard copies of the updates and announcements to about a dozen imprisoned comrades.

In April 2013, along with Denver Anarchist Black Cross and Sacramento Prisoner Support, we expanded printing and mailing to include all U.S. held political prisoners and prisoners of war. As of September, 2014, that work has diffused over several support crews, collectives, and individuals.

Download the newest update at
https://nycabc.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/updates-15-dec-2020.pdf

Send love through the walls this holiday season

While we generally think any day is a good day to write political prisoners, we would be remiss to not mention how hard the holidays are for anyone in prison. Now is a great time to send cards or letters to people behind the walls.

Please check out our political prisoner page and consider sending a few holiday cards to some political prisoners. We also highly recommend NYC ABC’s Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners which has bios, addresses and information about U.S. held political prisoners and prisoners of war.

While there won’t be any of the big holiday card party gatherings (the image below has been used for an annual holiday card party between NYC ABC and Resistance in Brooklyn for years), you can still do something similar on your own or with your family.

NYC ABC Letter writing event for Eric King- Tuesday 12.15

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing
WHEN: 7pm, Tuesday, December 15th, 2020
WHERE: YOUR HOME
COST: Free

It is the last month of what some may say has been the longest year of their life. COVID 19 continues to rage on both sides of the walls, partially due to the ever insidious ‘individual american exceptionalism.’ All we can do is continue to support folx who are forced to weather the pandemic under the rule of the carceral state while we try to stay healthy and safe out here.

Dedicated followers of our bi-weekly letter writing night may remember that we encouraged folx to write to Eric King in May of this year. Shortly after that week, Eric was placed on a mail restriction and could only correspond with his wife and mother. As of the end of November it was lifted, although it is unclear for how long. Not only that, but Eric tested positive for COVID 19 on November 27th. Because of that we are encouraging people to flood the prison with mail for Eric! Do not talk about his case or the mail ban in your letter.

Eric King was indicted in May 2019 by a grand jury in the District Court of Colorado for a new federal felony charge of Assaulting a Federal Official. This charge is based on what the government says happened during the interview in the Florence storage room with a Lieutenant. Eric now faces up to 20 additional years in federal prison and is fighting this charge while still in the custody of his accusers. Eric is pre-trial, do not mention his current charges.

Please take the time to write a letter to Eric King (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online):

Eric King #27090-045
FCI Englewood
9595 West Quincy Avenue
Littleton, CO 80123

Eric King’s trial postponed to April 2021

Eric’s trial has been postponed. This is a good thing! Previously, the Judge had set trial for January. It will happen in April 2021.

For now, please send Eric a letter. He appears to be off of mail restriction. If you get any letters denied, please let us know.

Write Eric at: (no labels, white envelopes only)
Eric King #27090-045
FCI Englewood
9595 West Quincy Avenue
Littleton, CO 80123

Eric has new lawyers from the Civil Liberties Defense Center and you can support his legal defense efforts by donating at https://cldc.org/donate/

* Please earmark your donation on the website “Eric King legal defense”