Cleveland Four Sentencing trials.

I went to court for the Cleveland 4 sentencing trial earlier this week. It was very dramatic. We need to pack the court room again on Nov 20th, 9am [note date change] when the judge will be giving his decision. Anyone who wants to participate in a car pool from Columbus, please contact me, 614 704 4699.

In lieu of a reportback, I'd like to share some letters I wrote, the first is to the judge, and the 2nd was written to Anthony Hayne, the guy who rolled, and sent back, because they're controlling his mail now. I hope someone who is allowed to mail things to Tony gets these and sends them his way. Please. 

Anyway, read them after the jump.

Update on the Cleveland 5

Members of RedBird Prison Abolition have been in touch with the Cleveland 5. We sent them our friend Sean Swain's letters of support. 

We will likely be visiting them and participating in support efforts. If anyone in Columbus would like to join this efforts, please contact us. They are also desperately in need of funds, please donate via Cleveland5Justice.org

Detailed updates after the break...

An Open Letter to Five Anarchists Accursed of the Intended Bombing of a Bridge in Cleveland.

18MAY12

Dear Friend,

            I don’t know your names. All I know is what corporate news media has reported. They say you are Anarchists, that you intended to blow up a bridge, and that you purchased what you believed to be explosives from a federal informant. I don’t know how much of that is true.

            I am going to assume for purposes of this letter that you are Anarchists. I hope that you are. In a world filled with mindless worshipers of hierarchy, freedom-loving Anarchists are too few and far between. I hope you to be Anarchists, just as I hope everyone to become Anarchists, to swear off slavery to bosses and tyrants and profiteers.

            I will also assume that you intended to blow up a bridge. I hope that this is true also. We are enslaved by a sprawling system that forces us to live poor, butchered half-lives, that reduces us to drones; it can only continue with our participation, and when we work to directly obstruct and sabotage that system, we create free space for greater resistance.

            By my way of thinking, you would not be destroying a bridge. You would be creating a future where there would be the absence of a bridge, and therefore the absence of a tool used by the larger machinery of enslavement.