Reportback From the Valentine’s Day Anti-Prison Noise Demonstration In Chicago

On the evening of February 14th, 2012, a group of anarchists, nihilists, and other people who are upset with and infuriated by the conditions of modern existence gathered outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago for an anti-prison noise demonstration. People brought bucket drums, pots, pans, and other cookware, and even trombones and tubas to send a message of love and fury to potential friends locked up in cages on the inside. The city was prepared in advance for any anti-social behavior, with a line of riot police by the front doors, countless narc cars, a bunch of big creepy vans, and even a sniper placed in the multi-story parking complex.

Those with insurrectionary desires displayed a banner that read “WE FOUND LOVE IN A HOPELESS PL(A)CE” waving through the winds of revolt as people screamed “Burn the Jails, Burn the Prisons, Just Make Sure the Cops Are In ‘Em!” // “When Society Makes You Pissed and Tired, Set a Fucking Cop on Fire!” // “Work, School, and Prison All Play the Same Game – Capitalism is it’s Name/Let’s Make the City Go Up In Flames!” // “Shank the Guards, Not Your Cellmates!” among other cries of sedition. Some individuals chalked beautiful poetry on the sidewalk, including one piece that read “Why Isn’t This Prison On Fire?!”

The gathering danced around all sides of the building, attempting to connect with inmates in every section of the prison. Lovers inside flickered their lights on and off and wrote messages in the condensation of their breath on the windows. They were clearly happy to see rebels outside screaming for their freedom. It is certain that plenty of them remembered the gathering held in the same location one month prior on New Years Eve.

Despite personal reservations that any of the participants that evening may have of the holiday, Valentines Day is marked as a day where you, in some way or another, show people – even people you do not yet know – some sort of message of love. The prison society tries, and time and time again succeeds at keeping its incarcerated population increasingly alienated and estranged from those who posses the freedom to walk around outdoors and participate in every day banal existence under capitalist domination, the freedom to enter or at least be surrounded and rejected by its’ bourgeois institutions.

Every day life in this dreadful society is oppressive in nature. Often times it feels completely hopeless. However, there are many individuals who seek revolt: the destruction of all that dominates our lives – work, school, prison, mental asylums, nursing homes, borders, immigration detention facilities, surveillance cameras, liberal pseudo-communities, notions of progress, etc. Beyond the ruins of society and all of its terrible conventions and institutions, we seek to find love in a hopeless place.

Actions against society can spark flames that not only warm our hearts, but also spread generalized rebellion. Genuine acts of love can destroy capitalist conceptions of exchange-oriented, pre-packaged, Hallmark bullshit.

Against the Prison Society, Against Domination. We Want Everything. We Want Freedom. Wild, Unrestrained Freedom.

http://www.anarchistnews.org/content/reportback-valentine%E2%80%99s-day-anti-prison-noise-demonstration-chicago