New York, NY: Noise demonstration at jail in solidarity with California prisoner hunger strike

“Off the Pigs, Off the Snitches, Burn the Prisons!”

In solidarity with the thousands of comrades hunger striking behind bars in California’s maximum security prisons, over a dozen of us braved the rain and held a noise demonstration outside of the Metropolitan Correction Center in lower Manhattan. In the belly of the beast, there was a minimal visible police presence but we were aware of being surrounded by the apparatus of the State on all sides; you can’t throw a stone in that neighborhood without hitting some remnant of our common enemy – from the MCC itself, to the federal courthouse, the infamous “Tombs” holding facility and One Police Plaza – home to NYC’s killer cops.

We used our voices, whistles, and blow horns to make contact with those on the inside, chanting “you are not alone”, “off the pigs, off the snitches, burn the prisons!”, “fuego, fuego, a las prisiones!, and “Attica, Attica, Attica.” Prisoners flickered the lights in their cells on and off throughout the building, banged on windows, and we could see the shadows of many of those on the inside waving and pumping fists.

The State attempts to separate those of us on the outside as “the good citizen” from those of us on the inside as “criminals, thugs, and felons”. But in a society that has the highest incarceration rate in the world, these attempts are futile because it can easily be us next, and it will always be our friends, family, and neighbors. The “good citizen” who supports the “tough on crime” politicians, who thanks the cops who murder us, and snitches on those he knows is a traitor who works against his own interests and is as much an enemy as the cops and correction officers who serve the State.

Until all cages, walls, and prisons are burned down, we will never stop!

Solidarity with the Pelican Bay hunger strikers
and all those who resist prisons – inside and out!

http://antiracistaction.org/node/95