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.

Open Letter to the Occupy Movement

Ohio prisoners are talking about Occupy4Prisoners a lot recently. They, and some of us on the outside really want to see more coordinated protests and actions in the future. Not just a token day, but a part to play in solidarity with whatever social movements are erupting and challenging power anywhere in the country. May day? The anniversary of OWS? Why shouldn't these also be Occupy for Prisoners day?

If you think prisons are a side-issue and the real problem is the banks or the housing bubble or inequality or something like that, then I urge you to please read the following as well as the OSP hunger strike press releases and these other things we've put out recently. All come from the pens and typewriters of Ohio prisoners. All show us what we all have in common. All contain valuable wisdom for the movement. These prisoners all show a commitment to struggle that anyone seeking any kind of change in america would be a fool to ignore.
For more information about the footnote on the bottom of the first page, see this post.

Letters About Abuses at SOCF

Joseph Riley, an inmate at SOCF has written letters to the ODRC administration with no response or action. He sent us hand written copies of these letters, which we have transcribed and will resend to Gary Mohr, ODRC, Governor Kasich and attempt to publish in local media sources.

The letters are below, they speak for themselves. Please think twice before calling the police to send more people to be tortured in these facilities.