Listen to interview with former Political Prisoner Jaan Laaman on WORT 89.9FM Madison‘s A Public Affair show at https://www.wortfm.org/jaan-laaman-on-life-as-a-political-prisoner/
“Back in May, political activist Jaan Laaman walked out of McCreary Federal Prison after serving thirty-seven years.
Today on the show, Jaan tells us about life on the inside—and what allies on the outside can do to help political prisoners.
You can read more about Jaan Laaman’s life and incarceration here.”
WHAT: Running Down the Walls – 5k Run/Walk/Jog/Bike/Hang
WHEN: 2:00-7:00pm, Sunday, September 12th, 2021
WHERE: Prospect Park– Lincoln Road/East Lake Drive, east of the Terrace Bridge
COST: $10 registration (if COVID permits, will include food/drink afterwards. TBD)
We’re excited to announce Running Down the Walls 2021, COVID permitting. After making the difficult decision to not hold last year’s event in person, we are very much looking forward to gathering as a community for the first time in a long time. Please stay tuned to our website, sign up for our newsletter, and follow us on twitter (@nycabc) for updates.
Every year, prisoners and supporters of political prisoners organize solidarity events with Running Down the Walls. In previous years, we’ve had runs in Albuquerque (NM), Arcata (CA), Ashland (OR), Bellefonte (PA), Boston (MA), Buffalo (NY), Chico (CA), Denver (CO), Elmore (AL), Inez (KY), Los Angeles (CA), Marion (IL), Minneapolis (MN) New York (NY), USP Navosta (TX), Pelican Bay (CA), Phoenix (AZ), Tucson (AZ), Seattle (WA), and Toronto, Ontario. This year we hope to expand the amount of runs in prisons and other cities, as well as increase the amount of funds raised for community projects. NYC ABC‘s goal with this year’s run is $4,000. You can donate online by going to paypal.me/nycabc
REGISTER AS, OR SPONSOR, A PARTICIPANT
To raise our goal of $4,000, we need your support.
* Promote – print and distribute flyers to friends and local businesses, your doctor’s office, laundromat, food co-op, wealthy benefactor, et cetera.
* Run/walk/bike/roll in the 5k – We need participants who can run/walk/bike/roll the 5k and are able to collect financial pledges to offer as donations to the run. Download the brochure, complete with registration and sponsor form right here.
* Volunteer for the run – We need folks who are willing to hand out water, bike the route as street medics, and help chalk the route beforehand.
* Donate online at paypal.me
* Donate to the run/sponsor a participant – If you are not able to attend, but want to support this fundraising effort, please mail donations to:
NYC ABC
PO Box 110034
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Your donation of $10 or more entitles you to the celebratory picnic after the event.
Each year, we split proceeds between the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s Warchest Program and a local organization. This year, local funds are going to New York state political prisoners released within the last year.
The Warchest Program:
The Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF) has initiated a program designed to send monthly checks to those Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War who have been receiving insufficient, little, or no financial support during their imprisonment. The Warchest program was initiated in November 1994. Its purpose is to collect monthly funds from groups and individual supporters, and send that money to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POW) via monthly checks. Over the last twenty five years, the ABCF warchest has dispensed over $100,000 to political prisoners in the United States. Currently, there are 18 imprisoned comrades who receive a monthly stipend as part of the program; they are Abdul Azeez, David Gilbert, Doug Wright, Ed Poindexter, Eric King, Hanif Bey, Jamil Al-Amin, Joseph Bowen, Kamau Sadiki, Leonard Peltier, Malik Smith, Mutulu Shakur, Oso Blanco, Ronald Reed, Ruchell Magee, Sundiata Acoli, Tom Manning, Veronza Bowers, and Xinachtli (FKA Alvaro Luna Hernandez).
For more information, visit: abcf.net/warchest-program
We will be starting here:
From the Q train, get off at the Prospect Park stop. Walk to Lincoln Road and turn right into the park. We’ll be about 700 feet away.
The event will be one lap around what is known as the Main Loop, and will total five kilometers. For the curious, here’s what it looks like:
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at [email protected]
New political prisoner and Water Protector Jessica Reznicek started her 8 year prison sentence at FCI Waseca yesterday. Please spread the word!
Write:
Jessica Reznicek # 19293-030
FCI Waseca
PO Box 1731
Waseca, MN 56093
Bio
Jessica Reznicek is a 40 year old land and water defender who has worked with and lived in the Des Moines Catholic Worker community for the last 10 years. In 2016, Jessica took a stand against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Jessica and her fellow organizers attended public comment hearings, gathered signatures for valid requests for Environmental Impact Statements, and participated in civil disobedience, hunger strikes, marches and rallies, boycotts and encampments.
In 2017, Jessica and another person took direct action and disabled construction machinery in order to protect the land. No one was injured by their actions, and the land was protected from the flow of oil for an additional six months.
Jessica has worked with the Catholic Worker and the homeless populations of Duluth and Des Moines. She has worked on third-party accompaniment work in Palestine, as an organizer during Occupy Wall Street, both at Zuccoti and in Des Moines. She has campaigned against weapons contractor Northrup Grumman in Omaha and protested the drone base in Des Moines. She also protested the construction of a U.S. Naval base on Jeju island, South Korea so as to save the sacred Gureombi Rock in the village of Gangjeon.
On February 6, 2021, Jessica pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility and on June 30, 2021, was sentenced to 8 years in prison. She received the ‘federal crime of terrorism’ enhancement and was ordered to pay over 3 million dollars in restitution and three years of supervised release. She reported to federal prison on August 11, 2021. Jessica has a deep love for nature, camping, swimming, hiking, theology, music, gardening, laughter and eco-sustainability, as well as a commitment to self-discovery through deep relationships cultivated in intentional faith-based community living.
Birthday: July 25th
Support
[email protected]
https://supportjessicareznicek.com
https://www.facebook.com/freejessrez
https://twitter.com/FreeJessRezhttps://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protecting-water-is-never-terrorism-repeal-jessica-rezniceks-terrorist-enhancement
by David Campbell, former political prisoner
“I was arrested in January 2018 at an anti-fascist protest of an alt-right gala in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. Nearly a thousand people, many of whom were Proud Boys, were celebrating the one-year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration inside a venue there. Outside, roughly a hundred protesters milled around with signs and slogans. Most, including myself, were in black bloc attire, but the protest was very tame, which was fine with me.
Unfortunately, around 10:30 p.m., a cluster of attendees from the gala, clearly drunk, ran into a cluster of protesters. I don’t know how it started, but it soon became a melee with a half-dozen people from each side fighting. I had been in the streets since the Women’s March that morning, over 12 hours by that point. I was tired, cold and hungry, and I’d been about to leave. Before I did, drunk alt-right guys in suits started trying to punch me and I defended myself.”
Read the rest at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/antifa-rikers-island-jail_n_6107f59be4b0f9b5a235ce77
Here’s the latest compilation of every other week updates:
https://nycabc.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/updates-10-aug-2021.pdf
NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support
crews send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of
war we support. If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner,
please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to
have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.
Free ’em all,
NYC ABC
—
NYC ABC
PO Box 110034
Brooklyn, NY11211
By Lauren Regan|July 26th, 2021|CLDC.org
Today I was locked in a small windowless room with asbestos walls crumbling onto a filthy floor for over seven hours. I was allowed to leave only once to use the restroom. I was not permitted to have water, food, or access to my cellphone to let anyone know whether or not I was OK.
A small metal shelf, about the size of a laptop, is mounted on one of the walls of the room. Above the shelf is a window of plexiglass that looks into an equal sized cement room in which our client, Eric King, sits looking back at me. I am in the attorney visiting room of the segregated housing unit (SHU) at the Englewood Federal Correctional Institution outside of Denver, Colorado.
Eric is an antiracist, antifascist anarchist serving a 10-year federal sentence for an act of protest over the murder of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man who was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. He is scheduled to be released in 2023. In a federal prison system filled with racial segregation, white supremacist gangs, and brutal violence, Eric’s time locked up has been the stuff of activists’ nightmares. Some prison guards and “white power” prisoners work together to exact vengeance on prisoners like him — “race traitors,” LGBTQIA individuals, and smaller-framed people who are visibly proud of standing against fascism, as evidenced by their tattoos.
Eric has been left in a cage by guards to be beaten or killed by the leader of an infamous white supremacist gang; framed; seriously beaten at least a dozen times; had his head split open by a guard and rendered unconscious; and was taken into a mop closet and punched multiple times in the face by a Bureau of Prisons Lieutenant who screamed “terrorists killed my daughter” before throwing the first punch. Eric was then strapped to a metal bed in four-point restraints while multiple guards beat him, and a captain used a shield to smother him while hissing “I hope you get raped or beaten up at your next institution.” And, sure enough, he did get beaten…while guards watched. Eric currently faces a federal criminal assault prosecution for allegedly punching the BOP Lieutenant in self defense. He has been waiting for a trial on the charge for almost three years now. If he is convicted, this hell may be prolonged for several more years.
About a year ago CLDC took on Eric’s criminal case. After reading through the evidence and viewing the security videos — which appear to be edited to remove several periods of torture — we knew we had to try to help keep Eric alive until he could come home to his wife and daughters. Two months ago we filed a federal civil rights case on his behalf. You can read more about the trauma and abuse Eric has endured, and our suit on his behalf, here.
In addition to Eric’s criminal case, our small legal team is also handling several other major #BLM related cases, including several federal prosecutions. Those clients are largely young BIPOC activists also rooted in the antiracist/antifascist movement. In the event that any of them are forced to do federal prison time, we must attempt to make that place survivable by at least shedding light on the secretive system of racism and abuse that has been running rampant within the BOP for a long time. It is necessary to call for the abolition of the prison industrial complex and the carceral state in order to permanently stop these egregious harms. It is also necessary to try to keep our comrades safer as they attempt to survive alone within the cement walls of those jails and prisons where some prison employees act with impunity.
After a long day of listening to Eric’s terrifying, tragic saga of imprisonment, I will return again tomorrow for another eight hours in the tiny, foul attorney cell. Of course, I am grateful that, at the end of the day, I can leave, but I am intensely worried for our client and friend who fears for his life almost every minute of every day.
If you support our legal defense of antiracist, antifascist activists and political prisoners, please consider becoming a monthly CLDC donor. Your contribution will help defray the costs we incur in taking on these pro bono cases. Thanks to generous donations, our activist clients are never turned away for lack of ability to pay for litigation expenses.
WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing
WHEN: 7pm, Tuesday, July 27th, 2021
WHERE: YOUR HOME
COST: Free
On July 19th, 1936, right-wing authoritarian generals and their fascist allies revolted against the timidly left-leaning government of the Spanish Republic. Though no friends of the liberals in power, Spanish anarchists saw the existential threat to the working classes—and humanity—that fascism posed, and fought heroically not to save the government, but to repel the coup. What followed has been called revolution (as people in liberated cities and villages dramatically re-organized their social and economic lives), civil war, triumph, defeat, and folly, depending on who you ask and where their ethics lie. Whatever you call it, it was the first major international battle against fascism, and included some of the largest experiments in real-world anarchism the world had seen. This confluence is no coincidence, since every form of centralized government contains the seeds of fascism. As Buenaventura Durruti put it: “No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.” Y la Lucha continua…
July 25 is the International Day of Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Prisoners. In honor of this, NYC ABC and Page One are asking folks to write a letter to anti-fascist political prisoner Gage Halupowski.
Gage Halupowski was arrested along with two other protesters in the wake of clashes in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, later indicted on four criminal charges, including second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, attempted assault of a public safety officer, and interfering with a peace officer. In November 2019, Gage was convicted and sentenced to six years in state prison.
Please take the time to write a letter to Gage (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online):
Gage Halupowski #21894460
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Boulevard
Ontario, OR 97914-8335
Monthly Prisoner Letter Writing Night-
Monday August 9th
7-9pm
Lamplighter (1719 Summit Avenue, Richmond, VA)
Join James River Anarchist Black Cross to write letters and share info about prisoner support and movement defense. Space Information: masks required indoors, stairs at front entrance, ramp entrance available [email protected]
Here’s the latest compilation of every other week updates:
https://nycabc.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/updates-27-jul-2021.pdf
NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support
crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of
war we support.
If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner,
please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to
have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.
We’ve also been told that some prisoners are not receiving the copies
sent in, yet we aren’t getting rejection notices. If you are in steady
contact with a prisoner, please ask them whether or not they are
receiving the updates and let us know.
Free ’em all,
NYC ABC