Occupy 4 Prisoners Demonstration

On Monday February 20th, the Occupy Movement called for a National Day of Occupation for Prisoners. There were actions all across the country. In Columbus, we had a workshop, delivered some letters, and supported friends inside who went on a hunger strike.

These are videos of the letter delivery action, so the fascists can never say we didn't ask them nicely.

What we've been up to... and ways you can get involved.

1. Building relationships with penpals. All of RedBird's work is based on communication, requests and ideas of Ohio prisoners. We have a list of prisoners seeking penpals. If you'd like to write to someone, let us know and we'll help you make a connection. 

2. Working with Ohio prisoners who have been targeted for greater repression because of their political affiliations or actions. We have connected with a number of these prisoners, who are ready and waiting for a larger movement in Ohio to join forces in struggle.

NYE Noise Demo

Last Saturday we went down to Jackson Pike to do a New Years Eve solidarity noise demo in response to the international call out. Some places these things got big and wild. In some places, they got epic long.   


There were 15-20 of us. We stayed for about 45 minutes, ignored by the authorities, and unable to see any responses from inside. Jackson Pike's cells are pretty well insulated, with frosted and blocked off windows. We had fun anyway, and left Just as cops were coming out. As we drove off, 4 police cars with lights on came storming towards the jail (dunno if they were coming for us, or something else). Our sound system didn't work, but we had lots of weird cacophonous instruments, pots and pans, and a good enough time. 

East Coast 'In the Belly' tour report!

We just got back from a two week tour talkin' bout prison abolition along the East Coast. Here's our report-back, including where we went, who we met, and what we learned:

ATHENS, OH-

Played a performance art space in a converted church. It's an art center, subsidized by the city to encourage culture in Athens. Our audience consisted of maybe 30-40 people, students, artists, local eccentrics, old hippies. Athens is a college town, and it seems like most people in the audience were involved or associated with the university in some way. The audience was mostly white, but there was a pretty wide array of ages present.
It was interesting performing in a "real" theatre space, even though we had the audience come up on the stage with us. Having black outs and control of our lighting was nice. We felt good about our performances, and crashed with an old geography friend of Wes'. Stayed up into the night taking about Colorado and artificial arrangements of public space.

Reportback: ABC conference!

Collaboratively written by Kate, Wes and Ben
We decided to apply to participate in the North American Anarchist Black Cross (ABC for short) conference in Denver, and look at that, we ended up going. Though we don’t focus specifically on political prisoners, as ABC groups do, we definitely do some of this kind of work and are happy to exist in the space between political prisoner support and resistance to incarceration in general. We booked a couple shows on the way out there, developed a workshop on the Lucasville Uprising, performed at the conference and had a great time meeting people and learning from them.

The conference was organized by Denver Anarchist Black Cross, who is based out of the 27 Social Center - a warehouse space that includes a print shop, health collective, childcare collective, zine library, lending library, office space, show space, and a collective house upstairs. It’s a really amazing and inspiring place. Denver ABC seems to have more members and more activities than any other ABC in the US these days, they’re not sure why. Members are also involved in a lot of diverse activities, supporting political prisoners, copwatch, courtwatch (specifically for Immigration and Customs Enforcement cases), rallies and actions against police violence, the Denver Armed Resistance Committee, and I can’t even remember all the others. 

REPORTBACKS GALORE

We have been too busy for the internet. Here's what's up...

1. Pelican Bay- we went to Ohio State Penitentiary  for a "supermax to supermax" rally organized by the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network. Before talking about the silly little action we did, I want to acknowledge both the amazing bravery of the hungerstrikers and the despicable apathy of the powers that starved them for four weeks (some are still refusing food). Read updates here. We made the group into about 15 people standing on the side of the road 1/4 mile away from the prison. Visitors came and waved. We chatted with folks and got sunburnt. Shift change happened and dozens of COs drove past scowling. We got bored and felt even more ineffectual than protests normally make us feel, cuz we were out of sight of both the inmates we were trying to express solidarity with and the administration we were trying to confront. So, we got our signs and some buckets and marched, past the no tresspassing signs making as much racket as we could. A couple other protesters joined us, including Brother Quahar of the new black panthers. We made it to the parking lot by looking at the ground, walking and not stopping with the noise every time a car pulled up next to us to try and talk to us. Finally in the parking lot an oily no-nonsense CO who clearly did not know how to talk with people he couldn't get away with beating up or macing with impunity informed us that the highway patrol was on their way to arrest us if we didn't leave immediately. We knew we weren't going to tear down any walls that day, and had important plans to come back and visit people the next morning, so we marched back, hoping at least half the inmates had seen or heard us. 20 minutes later 4 highway patrol cars rolled up and a much more polite officer told us that we ought not do that again. As usual he started with "who's in charge here" and when we told him no one was, he directed his statements at me, until Wes and Kate reminded him that they were there too.

2. ABC conference- We're going to the Denver ABC conference, and they've asked us to do a presentation on the Lucasville Uprising Prisoners. With that goal in mind, we visited Staughten and Alice Lynd at their house near Youngstown. They've both done a lot of work with the Lucasville cases, including writing the book on it. They have so much detailed knowledge to share. I feel like we could have talked to them all night, but we only had 45 minutes.  Then we camped out in a thunderstorm, which was surprisingly fun. The next day we went back to OSP to visit Siddique Abdullah Hasan and Bomani Shakur. This was an inspiring and very enjoyable experience. Bomani and Ben shared handshakes and book references. Hasan, Kate and Weslie talked about all kinds of current events and political prisoner issues. We also discovered they're celled on the other side of the prison. We'll have to march around the whole perimeter to be seen by them. We got a much better understanding of their case and their preferences for what we tell ABC. We'll be going back soon, for the bigger challenge of talking with Jason Robb about his affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood and ABC's tradition of refusing solidarity with white supremacist groups. We're very much looking forward to helping the complexities of the lucasville situation enrich discussion and analysis at the ABC conference.

3. Elkton FCI food strike - got a letter from the shitheads claiming that they can't give me any records I requested. They say it's part of an ongoing criminal investigation and I can appeal to a higher authority, which I will be doing.

4. The "what are prisons for" puppet show from Mysterious Rabbit and Puppet Army was really great. If you have a chance to see them, please do.

June 11th reportback

This event ended up being a rather intimate and informal gathering. About ten of us got together, discussed police, safe space, community accountability and long term political prisoners. We had a great dinner in the beautiful backyard of the king house and had a lot of fun with the staged reading of Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Tim Dechristopher showed up as the play was wrapping up, so we got a chance to meet and chat with him. Its unfortunate that our event was overshadowed by a multitude of other things (graduation parties, concerts, naked bike ride) if you couldn't make it, you definitely missed out on a good time. But you don't need to miss out on most of the reasons we got together, because you can still get involved in them.

Reportback: Amnesty Intl Conference.

So, Amnesty International at OSU held a human rights conference on Sat April 9th. One part of this conference was a panel discussion on human rights abuses in US prisons.

The panel was comprised of Brian Wells, Executive Director of T.O.U.C.H. Eric Crew, Advocate with Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJCP) and Sharon Dannon of the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network. Each spoke for 15 minutes, and then things were opened up to questions.

Ad Seg Tour!

Some of us took a play about the US prison system on tour. We brought in $178 to cover some of RedBird's recent expenses. There's a full report and lots more information about the play available online here.

Report back on the Hungerstrike at the OSP.

Jan 15th- Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, members of Columbus ABC attended the Solidarity Rally for Lucasville Uprising death sentenced prisoners.

The most important thing is what we learned at the reception after the rally... Staughten Lynd (lawyer and author of this book on the uprising) told us all about the hunger strike, which was a mixed success. Thursday morning (the 13th) the prisoners (Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Namir Abdul Mateen, Bomani Shakur and Jason Robb) met with Warden David Bobby and other prison officials. Under their security conditions, this means they were in four separate cages, unable to see each other, but able to hear each other and all see the officials. The Warden had accepted most of the demands without any negotiation or concession by the prisoners other than they start eating again.