Raleigh, NC- Noise Demo in Solidarity with Local and West Coast Prison Resisters, Seattle 26, and Against Police Violence

At 2:30pm on Sunday August 14th, over 30 people gathered in front of the huge max-security men’s Central Prison in Raleigh, NC to stand in solidarity with the the thousands of California prisoners on hunger strike. We were also there to express our support for local prison resisters such as the 10-15 death row inmates who staged a cafeteria protest on July 14th inside Central Prison to condemn the beating of fellow death row inmate William Bowie by prison guard Sergeant Soucier, and James Graham, a Lanesboro, NC prisoner who succeeded in getting most of his demands met after a week-long hunger strike last month; for our brutalized and arrested comrades in Seattle, and the victims of the recent spate of killings by police in California. We timed this demonstration to coincide with the latest block of visiting-hours for that day, so that prisoners’ friends and loved ones might see us and relay our messages to the inside.

A number of passing motorists honked, waved, yelled in support and shot us thumbs-up as we held banners, banged on drums, chanted and darted into the street to distribute handbills through open car windows. After about 45 minutes we migrated to a side of the property that lay a bit closer and within clearer sight of the prison’s housing units, came up to the metal fence and for about 2 minutes yelled and beat on drums and cookware as loud as we could while facing our banners and signs toward the prison’s windows, so that prisoners could briefly see or at least hear us in those last few moments.
[Why did they hide you?]

Out of all the locations in NC’s capital city that sustain the functioning
of the prison-industrial complex, we chose this particular correctional
facility to demonstrate in front of for its proximity to a major boulevard
and thus, high visibility to passing traffic, and its particularly loathsome
status as the state of North Carolina’s “execution prison,” currently
housing over 150 death row inmates set to be murdered by the State within
those very walls.

This demonstration followed on the heels of similar events held in front of
the Guilford County Jail in
downtown Greensboro on Sunday July 24th, and Sunday August 7th in front of the
downtown Durham jail.

http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/15076
http://www.anarchistnews.org/%3Cbr%20/%3Ehttp://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/15163

As a climate of nationwide and international resistance against correctional
systems and law enforcement continues to develop, we will maintain our
support for all prisoners and victims of police violence and harassment, to
demonstrate affinity with those trapped behind bars, and to lend solidarity
to those who disrupt business-as-usual in the prison system.

-some NC anarchists against prisons

Text from the handbill is printed below.
Pictures available soon at trianarchy

http://www.anarchistnews.org/www.trianarchy.wordpress.com%3Cbr%20/%3E

(handbill...)
SOLIDARITY WITH ALL PRISON REBELS!

On July 1st, dozens of prisoners in the long-term isolation unit of Pelican
Bay in California began an indefinite hunger strike. Their strike quickly
spread, and has now been joined by over 6,000 prisoners in at least 11
prisons across the state. Though some prisoners have entered into
negotiations with officials, an estimated several thousand in southeastern
CA remain on hunger strike.

These prisoners are held in soundproof cells with no windows for 22½-24
hours per day, often for years at a time. The only way out of this slow
torture is to "debrief", i.e. inform on other prisoners, a situation which
clearly encourages false accusations. They are served unsanitary and
unwholesome food, punished collectively for the actions of individuals, and
routinely denied access to basic services like phone calls or warm clothing.
In an attempt to change these conditions, these prisoners have united to put
their own lives on the line. Over 100,000 American prisoners are held in
these solitary conditions. Solitary confinement is not an aberration from
the norm but in fact the logical result of a country that locks up more of
its population per capita than any other nation in the history of world.

We are here to support the efforts of these strikers, and the struggle of
all prisoners to free themselves from the brutality and isolation of prison.
We also want to draw attention to other acts of state repression on the west
coast. This past weekend 26 Seattle anarchists were arrested, seven attacked
and critically injured by police armed with shovels in their own home. Only
a matter of days earlier, police in the Bay Area murdered an unarmed
African-American teenager for not paying a $2 metro fare. Both of these
incidents have elicited acts of solidarity and counter-attacks.

It goes without saying that the brutality of the police and the torture of
prisons are inextricably linked. In both cases, the function of these
institutions is not to reduce crime but to perpetuate a long history of
slavery and exploitation. If prisons are to be understood as warehouses for
the poor, then the police are the bosses of the unemployed. As such we wish
for nothing but their destruction.

-some anarchists against prisons,
and the world that creates them.

www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

www.trianarchy.wordpress.com

| www.prisonbooks.info

AGAINST POLICE AND PRISONS!