Anti-Prison and Political Prisoner Support

[SonofRage]

hey all,

I'm just curious, is anyone else doing anti-prison and/or political prisoner support work? I haven't been able to find many threads on the topic.

[Lenin1986]

I help out different political prisoner support groups here in Ireland. They would mainly be Republican political prisoners. But Iv helped other support groups for political prisoners like the Rossport 5 and Maura Harrington. They were jailed for for protesting against the Shell company laying a pipe line.

Here's a link to one campaign group I lend a hand to
https://www.facebook.com/bringmichaelcampbellhome?fref=ts

[Lenin1986]

heres two more links for political prisoner support groups

Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association
http://www.irpwa.com/

Cogús
http://www.republicanunity.org/cogus-political-prisoners/

[Lenin1986]

The longest campaign i worked on was the Maghaberry prison protest. The prisoners started a united protest of all the Republican groups that were in Maghaberry prison. The prisoners wanted strip searches to be ended and free association for all political prisoners. On St Patrick's day 2010 the prisoners began their protest and they were put on lock down. On Easter Sunday the entire Roe House (that's the block where the prisoners are housed) rose up against the administration.
On August 12th 2010 an agreement to end the protest was accepted by negotiations. Failure to implement that agreement led to six prisoners on Roe 4 to reembark on protest action.
Then the Prisoners split and have been split ever since. All prisoners started back on protest.
On November 1st 2012 a screw that worked in Maghaberry prison was shot dead on his way to work. Afterwords the prisoners were promised that the August Agreement would be implemented and thus the protest were suspended.
The agreement has not been put in place.

While the prisoners were on protest, there were lots of protests and function held to try and drum up support and create awareness about the prisoners and their protest.

[Sasha]

I'm close to many people involved with the Anarchist Black Cross, RoteHilfe, fire to the prisons etc but its not my own dominant subject.

[SonofRage]

It kind of surprises me that more people on the left don't focus on this area. Do folks specifically decide to not focus here or is it something that doesn't come to mind as something to work on?

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 4

[Sasha]

dont know, here its really that everybody finds their own primary subjects based on what they are good at and what connects with them.
i do mostly antifa related stuff, other people run squatting assistance groups and other people do prisoner support.
and even in that, while there is also overlap, there is often an distinct difference in the "type" of people who do general anti-prison/prison abolishment work and people who run the practical support for recently arrested comrades, the former are mostly (but not exclusively) guys from a well developed insurrectionist background while the latter are mostly very practical girls (but again not exclusively) who just got nicked one time to often and start out mostly wanting to return for the help they received and then getting caught up in the subject.

[JussBox]

I was hoping some people here would have an interest in supporting political prisoners. I'm not sure if this would be the right place to post it, but I'm hoping. My main focus has been and will always be the Cleveland 4 Because I'm close to all of them. Their arrest really hit home for me.

A few MailToTheJail and FreeAnons folks and me run Online letter parties for Political prisoners, We try to have one each week, but sometimes we only have time for one a month. The next Letter Party is for CeCe, and then we'll be having one for the PayPal14 at the end of the month.

All the info for the letter parties are on pastebin, and there's also a facebook group, but I'm new here and can't post links :P

Hope this is the right place! I'm also trying to compile a list of more political prisoners for MailToTheJail to add, if anyone can throw ideas it would be super helpful.

[Quail]

I've moved this to Practice & Propaganda, because it seemed to fit better in here than Learning.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I've contributed to the legal defense funds/commissary costs of political prisoners in the past. Never written a letter, though, partly because I'm too paranoid about them being photocopied and put in a file somewhere (not that I'd put anything in a letter advocating illegal stuff or anything like that, but still...)

[JussBox]

Thank you! I wasn't sure where it needed to go!

[JussBox]

Thats definitely a factor, Everything is read, scanned, and kept in some database for the BOP, I've had letters sent to me be admitted into evidence because of something the person who sent it put. I keep my non-political and end up just sending supportive letters, funny photos, comics, and literature. (: But they all need letters, I actually run an email that I mail letters for people who aren't comfortable sending them themselves.

[WilliamGreen]

There can never be enough support for those brave enough to put action in.

I and some mates have been thinking of developing a routing type system. That acts as a proxy for those wishing to write and support political prisoners.

:)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Yeah, among the frustrating things about sending letters to prisoners are bizarre rules concerning minutiae like types of paper, number of photos, types of artwork, number of photocopied pages, etc. These rules, as I understand it, vary from prison to prison too, so if a prisoner gets moved, and especially if they get moved to somewhere higher security (eg Marie Mason (http://supportmariemason.org/)), you might have to familiarize yourself with a new set of arbitrary rules.

In terms of other things people can do - something that I did recently - is organize a benefit show/event. Benefit shows/events share the multiple purposes of raising awareness, providing a politicized space to talk about ongoing struggles, and, most obviously, raising money: but, hey, if you only succeed in two out of three, it's not so bad, right?

[JussBox]

Yeah, among the frustrating things about sending letters to prisoners are bizarre rules concerning minutiae like types of paper, number of photos, types of artwork, number of photocopied pages, etc. These rules, as I understand it, vary from prison to prison too, so if a prisoner gets moved, and especially if they get moved to somewhere higher security , you might have to familiarize yourself with a new set of arbitrary rules.

In terms of other things people can do - something that I did recently - is organize a benefit show/event. Benefit shows/events share the multiple purposes of raising awareness, providing a politicized space to talk about ongoing struggles, and, most obviously, raising money: but, hey, if you only succeed in two out of three, it's not so bad, right?

I wish I could do more shows and table, but I dont have the time or transport, so all of my prison support is usually traveling to sentencing, sending letters, getting them books and doing online out reach, which does a lot more then I thought it would in the beginning (: Fundraisers are always awesome!

And the change or rules is always a pain. BOP Federal prisons always tend to be the same, which makes it a bit easier, but every transfer is like a crisis because stuff changes.

[JussBox]

I help run the Cleveland 4 support network, and do online letter parties which has been nice. Right now I'm organizing '#opseasonsgreetings' for political prisoners, Getting them books and comm $ if we can so the winter months aren't as rough. MailToTheJail and FreeAnons are mostly what I do now though, which seems to be a different 'genre' of political prisoners then most of what I see on here. (:

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Merged both Prison Support threads.

Hope it's not too confuzzling.