Reportback from New Year's Eve Prison Solidarity Demo in Helsinki

From Takku (Finnish original)

Around 30 anarchists gathered at the Sörnäinen penitentiary in Helsinki on New Year's Eve to make some noise in response to the Pelican Bay Solidarity Network's call for international demonstrations of solidarity with the struggle of the imprisoned. The demonstration in Helsinki lasted for about 15 minutes during which fireworks were shot above the prison, messages were sprayed and paint bombs and flares were thrown on and over the walls. The crowd dispersed before the police arrived.

We organized this energetic and noisy demostration to raise awareness about the connection between prisons and the capitalist social order also in the Finnish public sphere. Our banner read: "Solidarity with those imprisoned by the State and Capital". This was done to emphasize the anarchist notion of the prison system only serving the ruling class' purposes of securing its own place in the hierarchy and disrupting working class unity.
[And we wore black shoes to represent that with each footfall the generations of past anarchists stood with us, singing, laughing, judging...]

The so-called rehabilitatory role of the prisons was criticized in posters we wheat-pasted on the walls. The posters declared that the only true purpose of prisons is to dominate and punish people, and that their "rehabilitatory" function serves only to reintegrate prisoners into the capitalist society.

We wish to send out our warm greetings to all prisoners fighting for their rights from Finland to the United States and all around the world. We also wish to contribute our methods to the discussion about supporting prisoners' struggles and finding new ways of working towards abolishing the prison system.

Solidarity and direct action!

http://takku.net/article.php/20120105115010726