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Title: Anti-Politics and Revolutionary Solidarity
Author: Anonymous
Date: October, 2012
Language: en
Topics: prison, solidarity, anti-politics, anarchy
Source: Scanned from original

Anonymous

Anti-Politics and Revolutionary Solidarity

There appears to be a trend in radical circles of distinguishing

prisoners based on their so-called ‘crimes’, with the intent (conscious

or not) to identify ‘political prisoners’ who, by virtue of their

actions, are more deserving of support and solidarity. Prisoners who

have been targeted by the state due to their political beliefs and/or

actions are given special attention amongst radicals, while the rest of

the prison population spending their days in a cage are often only an

afterthought, used as a means to lend credibility to political ideology,

or completely forgotten.

This privileged and moralistic practice has invaded radical circles and

creates a distinction between ‘political’ and ‘ordinary’ prisoner.

Political prisoners are said to have been imprisoned unjustly, unlike

the rest of the prison population. This can manifest either as an

insistence of their innocence (as in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal), or,

in cases in which the prisoner has obviously broken the law, they are

viewed as acting only in response to unjust laws or conditions (as in

the case of Walter Bond). In both cases, their innocence is maintained.

But stating that some prisoners are innocent implies that others are

guilty and deserve their punishment, that some unjust laws should be

broken, while others should be upheld. This distinction requires

predefined ideas of what is right and wrong and the application of those

ideas in all situations and to all individuals, regardless of context.

This process of taking subjective ideas, reifying them as universal

moral principles and claiming their objectivity is no different than the

state claiming that to uphold their laws is to uphold ‘justice’.

The idea of justice is also problematic in that it reduces the struggle

into a political debate over whose ideas are the most morally just. In

this context, all actions are mere civil disobedience, attempts to

expose the injustice of certain laws and to have them replaced with new

ones.

Only acknowledging political prisoners devalues the experiences of all

of the exploited class who are arrested for breaking the law simply to

survive. Those who steal for food, sell drugs for money, and squat or

sleep on the street due to the conditions that this society has forced

them into are not sent to prison because of political consciousness, but

because their lives, their very existence, has placed them in conflict

with those in power.

Some anarchists have attempted to broaden the definition of political

prisoner to include all prisoners. But to be political means to identify

with a specific ideology and to believe that the universal application

of that ideology will result in a better world. Since all political

systems require institutions to uphold them, political action must

involve either an attempt to reform current institutions to benefit a

new system, or in the case of radical politics, the abolition of current

institutions and the creation of new ones in their place.

If it is accepted that to be political is to act with the explicit goal

of reforming institutions to suit a new political system, then the term

cannot be applied to individuals who are harassed and arrested because

of their place in the exploited class. They are not targeted because of

any belief system, but because they are forced to break the law just to

survive. They have no choice but to live in opposition to this society,

and to reduce these lives to mere politics is an inaccurate and unfair

representation.

Also, as anarchists shouldn’t we be fighting against political

ideologies, not creating new ones? If we are struggling against this

system in it’s totality, we should strive for a freedom based on

creating conditions of existence and relationships on our own terms, and

not just more freedom than we currently have by way of institutional

reform.

The term political does not include those of us who do not see the

struggle against this system as separate from the rest of our lives,

those of us who are consciously engaging in a project of creating

ourselves in a way that completely rejects the domination of the state

and capital. These struggles, along with those that the exploited class

engage in everyday, are directly opposed to the authority of any

political program and are therefore anti-political. Not only should the

label of ‘political’ be undesirable because it represents the thing we

should be fighting against, but it is also a misrepresentation of the

struggle that many people are engaged in.

None of this is meant to imply that all prisoners deserve our

unconditional support. Solidarity should not be given out of obligation

or a sense of duty. That is the foundation of liberal activism and

cannot be the starting point for any radical project. Solidarity needs

to start from ourselves and our own struggles, and extend to people in

whose struggles we can see our own, with those who we have real affinity

with. We should be pushing the actions of our imprisoned comrades

forward as their accomplices. If our friends need support it should be

given in the spirit of mutual aid and never as charity. We need

co-conspirators and comrades, not self-sacrifice in the name of the

struggle.

But while we may not agree with the thoughts and actions of all

prisoners, and there are certainly some who we would despise completely,

we should be clear that we oppose putting any person in a cage for

deviating from ‘acceptable’ social behaviour developed to maintain the

current social order.

For the destruction of all prisons, for the release of all prisoners,

for total freedom.