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#FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement

Posted on 2025/01/01 - 2025/01/01 by unsalted
A noisy background with a newsprint image of a white man with a goatee, short shaved hair and glasses, who is presumably Casey Goonan. Text at the top reads "empty the prisons" and at the bottom "free casey goonan"

#FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement

Casey Goonan is the only US political prisoner from the 2024 pro-Palestine student encampments. They are an abolitionist and anarchist who has dedicated themselves to multiple forms of prisoner support work and directly engaging with incarcerated comrades. The impact they’ve made inside is prevalent, as indicated by statements from their comrades Stevie Wilson and Hybachi Lemar. They’ve always pushed to ensure an understanding of Black struggle and revolt as central to their abolitionist work, and through understanding the totality of anti-Blackness the importance of an anti-police and anti-prison perspective was brought into any and all of their efforts towards liberation.

In June of 2024, they were arrested by a task force comprised of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in connection with an alleged direct action which took place in solidarity with the UC Berkeley encampments which had been brutalized by police and zionists earlier in the year* . If convicted, they could face up to 20 years in prison with a minimum sentence of 5. The investigation and court proceedings are currently ongoing but a non cooperative plea deal is pending in which Casey will plea guilty to one charge to allow additional charges to be dropped. This plea deal does not include information or testimony against anyone else.

While Casey has received a great amount of support from decentralized community in New York, Chicago, California, and elsewhere, the pro-Palestine movement needs to be publicly and actively supporting them. Right now, their primary accomplices are those who personally know them, those who prioritize prisoner support, and fellow anarchists. Despite vague assertions of the interconnectedness of repression and struggles between the American policing and prison apparatuses to that of Israel, there has been little material manifestation from that understanding within the US pro-Palestine movement. Meanwhile, coordinated struggle between prisoners and outside militants has been a key point of success for Palestinian liberation.

Continue reading “#FreeCaseyNow: On Casey Goonan and the Abandonment of Political Prisoners in the Pro-Palestine Movement” →

Posted in Call to Action, Free Palestine, GeneralTagged abolition, anti-repression, call to action, Casey Goonan, counter-repression, Free Palestine, prison abolition, prisoner support, Solidarity

June 11, 2024: No Separate Worlds – Call for Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and Long-term Anarchist Prisoners

Posted on 2024/05/12 - 2024/06/04 by unsalted
A Poster for June 11th Solidarity. It reads "June 11th, An International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and Long-term Anarchist Prisoners. There are no separate worlds. JUNE11.org" It is black and white with abstract and floral patterns.

Originally published on https://june11.noblogs.org/2024-call/

 

We once again approach June 11th, a day of remembrance and active solidarity, in a world of multiple crises and struggles for liberation. All of these are interconnected; there are no separate worlds. Across borders, languages, contexts, and identities, both catastrophes and victories of spirit and defiance reverberate around the globe. One environment is not untouched by another. The personal is not separate from the political. The positive project is not separate from that of destruction. Prison is not separate from the “free world.” Means are not separate from ends. Bridging these divides is a shared curiosity and commitment; bridging these divides is solidarity. This is not to flatten or oversimplify diversity and differences in circumstance, intensity, and consequence. Rather, that these different pieces are held together like organs of the body held by connective tissue. So we consider: how do we strengthen this connective tissue? How do we remain strong, yet supple and flexible? Bridges, connection, must also be built through time, especially in a world that moves too fast, from one crisis to the next. June 11th aspires to be one of these bridges: to build solidarity across borders, between movements, and among generations. Remembering and supporting long-term prisoners, as well as carrying on shared struggles, are two ways to strengthen this connective tissue. A stronger connective tissue will, in turn, bolster us against further repression.

Continue reading “June 11, 2024: No Separate Worlds – Call for Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and Long-term Anarchist Prisoners” →

Posted in Call to Action, GeneralTagged abolition, call to action, June 11, prison abolition, repost, Solidarity

JANUARY 18: DAY OF THE FOREST DEFENDER

Posted on 2024/01/09 - 2024/06/04 by unsalted

On January 18, 2023, Georgia State Patrol officers entered the Weelaunee Forest alongside police from other agencies in the region. They sought to clear the encampments re-established there in the weeks prior. A month earlier, on December 13, a similar operation cleared encampments after a year of struggle, and culminated in the arrest of 6 forest defenders on obscene and fraudulent charges of Domestic Terrorism.

When Patrolmen entered the forest in January, they entered into a long confrontation they had little or no experience with, a confrontation pitting free people, local residents, environmentalists, aspiring revolutionaries, and itinerant insurrectionalists against the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and his submissive City Council, Michael Thurmond and the Dekalb County government, Ryan Millsap and Shadowbox Studios, and all of the contractors hoping to devastate the land, displace its life forms, and replace them with a police training facility and soundstage complex.

This struggle has been something of a burning torch for class confrontation and subversive cultural innovation in the United States for nearly 3 years. It would not be an exaggeration to say this has been the sharpest struggle in North America during the entirety of the Biden-Harris administration.

The nature of this confrontation was altered permanently by the hasty and poorly-made decisions of Jerry Parrish, Bryland Myers, Jonathan Salcedo,  Ronaldo Kegel, Royce Zah, and Mark Jonathan Lamb. These officers ambushed and killed Tortuguita, the nom de guerre with which we knew a 26 year old anarchist living in the forest.

******************** Continue reading “JANUARY 18: DAY OF THE FOREST DEFENDER” →

Posted in Call to Action, Defend the Atlanta Forest, GeneralTagged anti-repression, call to action, counter-repression, eco-defense, Solidarity, Stop Cop City

“If the Cops Kill Me I Want You to Riot”

Posted on 2024/01/06 by unsalted
An Atlanta Police Department cruiser burns, with overlaid text reading "Jan 18 2024 Tortuguita was murdered by the state on this day last year. Take action anywhere + everywhere on turtle island and all over the world. Honor its life. Cherish its memory. Be ungovernable. You know what to do."

“If the cops kill me I want you to riot
Burn down their stations and set their cars alight
Know that I went out fighting and wish we all
Could just have peace and be free
…
We cannot have peace until this empire falls. Even then, peace takes work and freedom is a constant struggle. If the cops kill me I want you to riot, to kill as many of them as you can.” – Tort’s diary p. 121

Tortuguita lived and died fighting for the dispossessed, the wild, and the feral; against the world of empire, prisons, and police. It was a true warrior who made the forest its home, devoted their life to the struggle, and was willing to die a revolutionary death rather than be captured. We invite all those who knew Tort, and all who were impacted by its life from afar, to take the anniversary of their death as an opportunity to reflect on our own commitments and deepen our resolve, so that we might invigorate and intensify our conflictuality.

Rather than retreat into the bounds of comfort and safety, let us allow our memory of Tort to remind us of what it means to truly act in accordance with our values, and to challenge ourselves to follow through. We are rendered harmless only when we allow our fear of the enemy to eclipse our desires to defend the land and reduce this capitalist hellworld to ashes. Remember that the mechanisms of subjugation and control encroach all around us. Wherever you are, you need not venture far to find the veins of industry; go out and sever them.

We need not be concerned with optics and media portrayals. We have no interest in seeking validation, recognition, or understanding from the same media outlets — agents of the society we wish to destroy — that deadname and misgender Tortuguita and relentlessly whitewash its life as one of nonviolence and passivity. Additionally, to contort our actions to render them acceptable to the general public is to inevitably dull them to the point of irrelevance. To work only within the confines of the existent is to disarm ourselves completely. As anarchists, we are able to speak to each other in a language all our own. When we redecorate walls, shatter windows, and set fires, we speak to each other in ways that the media and the general public need not understand; we become beautiful. When we refuse legibility, when we refuse sympathy and demands, we refuse cooptation, we refuse recuperation, and we seek out life.

Avenge Tortuguita — Avenge the Forest

Originally published on https://scenes.noblogs.org/post/2024/01/05/if-the-cops-kill-me-i-want-you-to-riot/

Posted in Call to Action, Defend the Atlanta Forest, GeneralTagged call to action, direct action, repost, RIPTortuguita, Solidarity, Stop Cop City

SUPPORT REQUEST FOR HANNAH KASS

Posted on 2023/12/11 by unsalted

In addition to facing profound state repression, Stop Cop City RICO co-defendants are having their accounts at Bank of America suddenly closed. Defendant Hannah Kass, an organizer for food equity and eco-defense, is in need of survival funds this week because she had her account closed—to support Hannah and her co-defendants, please share this ask, and venmo @madisonsolidarity with the subject line “support.” No donation is too small, and if you can’t contribute financially, signal boosting this is equally helpful and meaningful. Thank you all for your community care and solidarity!

To learn more about Hannah and her co-defendants, check out the statement “Anarchism Must Not Be Criminalized”: https://bbnews.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/10/statement-from-12-of-61-rico-co-defendants-anarchism-must-not-be-criminalized/

Posted in Defend the Atlanta Forest, GeneralTagged anti-repression, Solidarity, Stop Cop City

Banner Drops in Ypsilanti & Ann Arbor in Solidarity with Stop Cop City

Posted on 2023/11/13 - 2023/11/16 by unsalted
A banner hanging from a roof in downtown Ann Arbor which reads "Free Palestine, Stop Cop City"

Last night we dropped a banner in downtown Ann Arbor reading “Free Palestine, Stop Cop City” in solidarity with the Block Cop City Week of Action and with Palestinians everywhere.

The genocide of Palestinians is directly supported by the Atlanta Police Foundation and all cops defending it. These two struggles are connected. The unmitigated violence of Cop City as well as the IDF will be brought “home” to be used against us if the need arises. No to settler colonialism, no to cop city!
A black flag on a police monument flagpole which reads "ACAB"
We also improved a local police monument by hoisting a black flag reading “ACAB” in place of some thin blue line trash, to make them mad and make us laugh.

Love and rage to everyone throwing down to stop cop city, and to everyone fighting for life against domination.

Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.

Posted in Communiqués, Defend the Atlanta Forest, GeneralTagged Banner Drop, Block Cop City, Free Palestine, No Cop City, Solidarity, Stop Cop City

Anarchism Must Not Be Criminalized – Statement from 12 of the 61 People Indicted on RICO Charges in Atlanta

Posted on 2023/11/09 - 2024/06/05 by unsalted

This RICO indictment is an attempt by the state to not only criminalize dissent, but a specific set of ideas which leads to dissent and offers an alternative framework to the state and capitalism. Anarchism, solidarity, mutual aid, and collectivism are specifically named in the indictment to make people afraid of these ideas, when the only people who are actually afraid of these collective ways of organizing are the politicians, cops, and corporations who seek to preserve their absolute power over humanity. If we had ways of living more collectively, satisfied our needs through mutual aid, and had solidarity with each other, people may realize they don’t need the state or capitalism, and they may realize that the greatest causes of human suffering and barriers to freedom and security are the state and capitalism. The state wants us to be atomized consumers who cannot survive without selling ourselves to someone wealthier than us, who rely on alienating, impersonal judicial systems and violence from a gang of armed outsiders to resolve our conflicts, who outsource the production of our food to invisibIlized, mostly non-white, non-citizen laborers, and who outsource our decisions to a corrupt, unaccountable politician class. The state wants us to be terrified and paralyzed into allowing the continuation of its sordid legacy through the land grab, the plantation, and the prison farm which haunts the Weelaunee forest and all the state’s territories to this day. This critical analysis of the state is an important part of anarchism, and it is what the state and corporate media want to scare us away from and criminalize.

Acting autonomously and directly to shape our world is a good thing. Solidarity means seeing our siblings in the human species as people with the same intrinsic value as ourselves. A society which depends on endlessly competing, undercutting, exploiting, dominating, and selling each other out is going to be scrutinized and resisted by anyone who believes in solidarity. Mutual aid means providing for each other and collectively gaining from the construction of mutually beneficial interpersonal/inter-community relationships. A society which depends on depriving us of the ability to meet our needs for food, water, shelter, and healthcare and then selling them back to us is going to be seen as unjust and worth changing/rejecting by anyone who believes in mutual aid. Fowler’s description of collectivism is a bogeyman meant to imply that anarchists intend to force everyone to give up their personal autonomy and sacrifice their needs for the collective, but in fact a core goal of anarchism is to empower people to have more autonomy, and a core goal of the state to force everyone to sacrifice some or all of their autonomy for the continuation of systems which enrich a shocking few and are making the Earth uninhabitable. Do you feel free when you go to work? When you pay taxes? When you pay rent? When you pay for health insurance? When you pay for groceries? If people had more solidarity maybe they wouldn’t allow the US to invade and exploit other countries with impunity. Maybe they wouldn’t allow the US to imprison millions of people, tear apart families at the border, or let people starve to death while throwing away half of all the food. If people learned about mutual aid maybe they would start to solve these problems themselves, start to mitigate the damage done by the state, and demonstrate that none of it is necessary. Continue reading “Anarchism Must Not Be Criminalized – Statement from 12 of the 61 People Indicted on RICO Charges in Atlanta” →

Posted in Defend the Atlanta Forest, GeneralTagged eco-defense, No Cop City, Solidarity, Statements, Welaunee

Zionist Rally Countered by Anti-Zionist Jews

Posted on 2023/11/07 - 2023/11/07 by unsalted

Word was spreading about a pro-zionist rally planned for the University of Michigan campus for November 3rd, and a crew of about 20 anti-zionist Jews and supporters decided to counter the shit-show.

The diag on UM campus is a popular spot for rallies and protests, but this was the most well-resourced event I’ve ever seen there, and with the largest police presence. Uniformed officers were spread throughout the crowd, and there were many plainclothes cops as well. The speakers not only had a large professional sound system, but two big-screen displays that I’d never seen used at a diag event before. There was a crowd of about 300-500 rallygoers, many with Israeli flags. It also seemed that a large number of attendees were older, probably due to the rally being planned for parent’s weekend when parents of students visit town to spend money at the M Den.

The rally’s speakers showed how close to power the rally was. We suffered overly-long speeches from right-wing former UM regent and Trump fundraiser Ron Weiser, as well as AIPAC president Betsy Berns Korn, and a separate speaker whose name I didn’t catch, but was introduced as affiliated with the “FIDF”.

The genocide denial and nationalism was coming from the halls of power. There were standard IDF talking points and conspiracy theories about Hamas command centers in hospitals and fake photos of palestinian victims. No tears were spared for the dead and captured from October 7th, and none were shed for the victims of IDF retaliation in Gaza, let alone victims of settler violence in the occupied West Bank. It seemed that the most compassionate the speakers or rally-goers got was to shrug their shoulders at how unfortunate it was that they had to retaliate by killing Palestinian children by the hundreds, as if their hands were forced. NOT killing these children however was unthinkable.

Speakers claimed to defend “Free Speech” while calling for the banning of all criticism of Israel, on campus and beyond. The existence of voices speaking against the genocide of Palestinians were blamed essentially on “the woke mob”. Intersectionality was specifically called out as dangerous for the Israeli state. Accurate descriptions of life in Gaza under occupation were claimed to be conspiracy theories. The standard lie that anti-zionism and criticism of Israel is anti-semitic was a regular feature. The crowd seemed to follow the speakers the entire way, letting out loud cheers to a speaker’s call for everyone to be “proud zionists”, and following in other pro-Israel chants. It felt almost like an Israeli MAGA rally.

Thankfully we were there to make sure this shit couldn’t be spewed in public without opposition. We held cardboard signs with simple messages like “Never Again for Anyone” or “Genocide is not a Jewish Value”. Zionists tried to cover us with Israeli flags, get close-up photos of us, heckled us calling us “nazis” and even saying one of us should be beheaded. More than once we had to physically block an angry rallygoer from approaching one of our group. Police would also intervene if it looked like a confrontation was going to become physical and not just verbal. This was almost entirely coming from the older people in the crowd, not the younger student-aged attendees who seemed to at least consider the signs as if they were totally unaware of anti-zionist Jews. It was one of the rare times I felt like physical violence was a possibility at a Diag event, but the rallygoers didn’t end up trying anything foolish. Some did try lecturing us about how Israel wasn’t apartheid, or how things “really were over there”, but quickly left when one of us who spoke Hebrew challenged them.

As the rally died down, we left as a group chanting “Free Palestine”! No physical altercations happened, and nobody was arrested or detained by police. Overall I’d call it a success. The point of the zionist rally was to conflate pro-palestinian and anti-genocide organizing with anti-semitism, which as anti-zionist Jews we visibly disrupted. Zionists were also clearly uncomfortable that there was even some resistance they had to confront.

Some lessons learned and other thoughts:

  • The positionality of being Jewish and anti-zionist in solidarity with Palestinians is very powerful right now. Use it if you have it, boost it if you don’t.
  • Having someone to film confrontations is very useful for these kind of counter-demo situations, you may want to prepare to do this while handling footage securely.
  • It can feel very empowering to have friends to protect you so you can shout down genocidal
    rhetoric.
  • Stick together, it makes managing interactions with a potentially hostile crowd easier.
  • Put messages on both sides of your signs so they can be read from the back.
  • Be prepared for media presence. If someone is willing to be public, and is good with
    media, it can help possible coverage not be one-sided (though there’s no guarantee).

Shutting down zionist rhetoric in mainstream spaces is important right now, as well as interfering in the material support for the state of Israel. This may take some nuance since in the wider world there are actual anti-semitic actors trying to take advantage of the situation, as covered in It’s Going Down. But, you can still act. Find each other! Do something!

Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.

Posted in General, ReportbackTagged anti-zionist, counter-demo, Palestine, Solidarity, University of Michigan

In response to a comrade requesting information about potential targets

Posted on 2023/10/26 by unsalted

“This section includes companies involved in state violence and human rights violations as a part of occupations through:

· The Settlement Industry – companies that support and maintain illegal settlements in occupied lands.
· Exploitation of Natural Resources – companies involved in the exploitation and plundering of natural resources in occupied lands.
· Wall and Checkpoints – companies that support the system of severe travel restrictions Israel imposes on Palestinians.
· Weapons and Military Equipment – companies that provide militant groups in Palestine/Israel with weapons and militarized equipment specifically designed for and consistently used in war crimes or attacks on civilians.
· Discrimination – companies that discriminate against Palestinians in their services or goods, in the workplace, or by exploiting the unequal and discriminatory legal situation for their commercial benefit.”

https://investigate.afsc.org/occupations

Solidarity Means Attack!

Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.

Posted in Call to Action, GeneralTagged anti-imperialism, call to action, Palestine, Solidarity

Solidarity with Gaza, Palestinian Anarchists

Posted on 2023/10/25 by unsalted

I have no idea what the fuck to do or how to organize right now, but some of us need to push past these performative liberal rallies. Please, if anyone has info to share on potential targets for action ranging from NVDA to spicier stuff, please share them here. I have found a number of names, companies, and state orgs who partook in a horrendous trade ‘mission’ with ‘Israeli’ military occupation entities in 2018.

Beth S. Gotthelf, 100 Bloomfield Hills Pkwy
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 (unconfirmed), is the scum who organized the conference under her firm, Butzel Long, which has offices all over Michigan. Cignys in Saginaw, Challenger Communications in Albion, and RAMI in Grand Haven are some of the criminal corporations who went to network with settler military occupation companies. There’s more names in this article: https://www.butzel.com/news-Butzel-Long-attorney-Beth-Gotthelfs-passion-for-Defense-Industry-trade-missions-with-Israel. And anyone who knows how to dig could probably find more info to help blow these shitfucks and the Macomb County Economic Development pigs up with propaganda and uhhh… just propaganda, yeah.

Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.

Posted in Call to Action, GeneralTagged anti-imperialism, call to action, Palestine, Solidarity

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