Infoshop.io: Prisons

3 Positions Against Prisons

There are no political prisoners, only prisoners of war. There is no prison, only imprisonment. Prison cannot be abolished, only destroyed.

Topics: capitalism, democracy, prisons
Authors: August O'Clairre'
Publisher: NC Piece Corps
Sources: http://ncpiececorps.wordpress.com/

A Brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle

This article was rst written at the request of the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO). Its original tilte was “The Rise and Development of the New Afrikan Liberation Stuggle Behind the Walls.” The New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls refers to the struggle of Black prisoners, “behind the walls” of US penal institutions...

Topics: anarchism, history, prisons, race
Authors: Sundiata Acoli

Alternatives to Police

A guide to building a world without police, in which communities function and thrive without the intervention of the heavy and often deadly hand of the State

Topics: anarchism, introduction, militarism, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Editors: Missy Rohs, Emily-Jane Dawson
Publisher: Rose City Copwatch, P.O. Box 12353, Portland, OR 97202
Date: 2008
Sources: http://www.rosecitycopywatch.org/

Anarchy Works - Crime

Paths towards peace and social justice without leveraging power dynamics, domination, or oppression

Topics: anarchism, militarism, police, prisons
Authors: Peter Gelderloos
Publisher: Rise Like Lions
Sources: http://riselikelions.info/

Death by Regulation

Death by Regulation and A Message from a Death Camp, two essays on 'clean torture' in U.S. prisons

Topics: militarism, prisons
Authors: Eussel Maroon Shoatz
Publisher: Kersplebedeb Printing
Date: May 2008
Sources: http://www.kersplebedeb.com/

Democracy means Prisons

Those who don’t accept the authority of the state must be isolated, lest their disobedience spread to the rest of the population. We’re told that prisons protect us, but the only constant since their invention has been that they protect the state from those who might threaten it. In practice, by breaking up communities and fostering antisocial tendencies, they only endanger us—even those of us who aren’t behind bars.

Topics: democracy, posters, prisons
Authors: CrimethInc
Publisher: CrimethInc
Sources: http://www.crimethinc.com/vote

Liberation or Gangsterism

Freedom or Slavery; an essay on the nature of the Prison Industrial Complex

Topics: class, militarism, prisons, race
Authors: Russel Maroon Shoatz
Publisher: International Prison Books Collective

Locked Up

A critique of the prison system

Topics: anarchism, prisons, theory
Authors: Alfredo M. Bonanno
Publisher: Elephant Editions
Date: 2008

Men Can Stop Rape

Supporting survivors, what men can do, racism and rape, and notes specific to male survivors.

Topics: anarchism, consent, feminism, lgbtiq, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: Kansas Mutual Aid Collective
Date: Spring, 2003
Sources: http://www.mencanstoprape.org/

No Prisoner Left Behind

The fight for transgender / gender variant prisoners

Topics: gender, prisons
Authors: Kevin Weaver
Publisher: Break the chains

Out of the Closets and Into the Libraries

A collection of radical queer moments

Topics: anarchism, gender, lgbtiq, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: The Bangarang Collective

Police are Enemies

They come expecting free coffee at my work. The same ones who detain and search my friends; the same ones who beat that girl back in the spring; the same ones who threaten us with prison one day for smoking weed and who will another day speed past us with because they don’t wish to wait for the light. They dress in our attire at a party, listening for important information; they wag their finger or their nightstick when we get out of hand; they help old ladies cross the street; they shoot dead someone who mouthed off to them—who conveniently had something shiny in his hand. They pave the concrete world in video cameras; they speak to me like they are my friend, they give me directions, and they discipline me anytime I stray from their directions. They are our enemy, the police.

Topics: democracy, police, posters, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: Politics is not a Banana
Sources: http://www.politicsisnotabanana.com/, http://325.nostate.net, http://www.prole.info/, http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/

Prisons and their Moral Influence on Prisoners

Kropotkin nowhere so clearly described the evils of the prison sys- tem. It has not been done better by any writer in so brief a com- pass. It does not require an anarchist philosopher to point them out, and save in discussing the remedy he makes no contributions peculiar to anarchist thought. But his remedy is revolutionary, and his indictment is necessary to give it point. Abolish the prisons and treat all offenders as brothers, applying to them where necessary all that medical sci- ence and modern psychology offer to cure anti-social conduct.

Topics: anarchism, prisons
Authors: Peter Kropotkin
Publisher: Zabalaza Books
Date: December 20, 1877
Sources: http://www.zabalaza.net/

Prisons, a Social Crime and Failure

Topics: anarchism, prisons, theory
Authors: Emma Goldman

Race Treason Behind Prison Walls

Usually racism is the best tool of the prison officials to control volatile prison populations. The warden and his guards intentionally keep up racial hostilities through rumors and provocation, and. use the racist white prisoners to confine both themselves and others, in return for special privileges and the fleeting feeling that they are ‘helping’ the ‘white race’ maintain control. This is how the system imprisons whites and uses them in their own oppression.

Topics: anarchism, prisons, race
Authors: Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Staughton Lynd
Publisher: One Thousan Emotions
Date: March 2006

Revolutionary Solidarity

Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its roots in one’s own project that is carried on coherently and proudly too, especially in times when it might be dangerous even to express one’s ideas publicly. A project that expresses solidarity with joy in the game of life that above all makes us free ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation, mental poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to experimentation and the continual activity of one’s mind in a project aimed at realising itself in insurrection.

Topics: anarchism, prisons, theory
Authors: Daniela Carmignani, Killing King Abacus, Pierieone Porcu, Wolfi Landstreicher
Date: June 2005

Solidarity and Revolt Across Borders

Letters from prisoners, solidarity statements and action chronologies from France and other countries (January 2008 to March 2009)

Topics: anarchism, direct-action, history, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Sources: http://abcvancouver.wordpress.com, http://tarnac9.wordpress.com, http://cettesemaine.free.fr

Superprisons in Canada

What they are and how to stop them

Topics: anarchism, capitalism, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: End the Prison Industrial Complex
Date: February, 2010

The Network of Domination

Anarchist Analyses of the Institutions, Structures and Systems of Domination and Exploitation to be Debated, Developed and Acted Upon

Topics: anarchism, capitalism, class, media, prisons
Authors: Wolfi Landstreicher
Publisher: Venomous Butterfly Publications

The Stockade Stood Burning

Rebellion at the Convict Lease in Tennessee's coalfields, 1891-1895. Something happened in Tennessee, something almost unimaginable to the mine owners and politicians of that state. When the companies tried to intimidate their workers by bringing in convict labor to take over their jobs, the workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prison- ers, and loading them onto freight trains bound for Nash- ville and Knoxville and places far away...The Tennessee convict war was one of the largest insurrections in American working-class history. And yet, unfolding at exactly the same time as the more publicized labor wars in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, it was largely ignored.

Topics: anarchism, direct-action, history, prisons
Authors: Sweet Tea
Publisher: North Carolina Piece Corps

Under the Yoke of the State

Selected Anarchist Responses to Prisons an Crime, Vol. 1, 1886-1929

Topics: anarchism, police, prisons, theory
Authors: Albert Parsons, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, Louise Michel, Mollie Steimer, Peter Kropotkin, Ricardo Flores Magon, Rudolf Rocker
Editors: The Dawn Collective
Publisher: The Kate Sharpley Library
Date: 2003

What Better Time than Now

Notes on Consciousness and Unity in US Cities and Prisons

Topics: democracy, police, prisons
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective
Sources: http://prisonbooks.info/

What Is Prisoner Support

A collection of original writings from political prisoners on prisoner support and solidarity

Topics: anarchism, prisons, relationships
Authors: Anonymous
Publisher: No More Locked Doors
Date: 2015
Sources: http://nomorelockeddoors.org/