Prisoner Hunger Strike Update

The California Prisoner Hunger Strike has resumed. CDCR reports that 12,000 inmates have participated by skipping at least 9 consecutive meals. Inmate families and advocates estimate that hundreds or thousands have been refusing all food since the strike resumed on Sept 26th. The prison administration has retaliated against hungerstrikers with very repressive policies: denying them privileges and rights, attempting to provoke them to violence, isolating many of them from laywers, advocates, family members, and any other outside support.

The way things are going, in a few weeks we may be living in a country that allows hundreds of people to starve to death in our prisons. We cannot allow that to happen. Our attention and anger is a very important part of reversing this process. You can call CA gov Jerry Brown at 916-445-2841 and help flood his office with demands that the SHU be shut down, that the hungerstrikers' demands be met, that CA reform it's prison system, now.

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. 

What are Prisons For? Puppet show about the Prison Industrial Complex

The Mysterious Rabbit Puppet Army rolls into town on Friday, July 22nd as part of its whirlwind, month-long excursion across the continental United States to raise awareness about the prison system. Performing at 9 at Villa Vilekula 2623 Neil Ave.

Dinner Theatre Solidarity Fundraiser

[read the reportback from this event here.]


June 11th is a new holiday! It's the international day of solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners.

RedBird Prison Abolition is planning an event to celebrate this holiday in Columbus. Please join us at 64 King Ave, on Sat June 11th for the following activities.


6PM- Discussion Circle, come talk about and take action on making ourselves and our community less dependent on the police and prison system. Continue and join the conversations we had after the last performance of Ad Seg.

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.