Gerald Koch
68631-054
MDC Brooklyn
PO Box 329002
Brooklyn, NY 11232

Jerry was taken into custody of US marshals today at 4:18 PM. Throughout his hearing, he did not answer any questions; he remained silent the entire time.

About sixty people showed in support of Jerry. The court room was packed, and he knew as he was taken by the marshals that we support and love him. The crowd yelled out their support for him as he was escorted out of the room.

Jerry asked that we release this statement to his supporters after his incarceration:

By the time you read this, I will be in the custody of the United States government for continuing my refusal to cooperate with a federal grand jury. This is the right thing to do.

I continue to believe that the government is using this federal grand jury in an abusive manner to force me to divulge information about my political associations and social networks.

If we mean what we say when we talk about radical politics, then we do not participate in witch hunts, inquisitions, or the assembly of black lists. As an individual, I will not lend legitimacy to government brutality and intimidation; I will not be used. As an anarchist, I will summon the courage to be stronger than the forces of the State’s all-too-real repression; I will not break.

Your show of truly powerful support has done nothing but strengthen my resolve in refusing to cooperate. We must not let ourselves be isolated by the government’s heavy-handed tactics. We must not give the state that last inch it tries to break in every one of us.

With Love, with Dignity, in Solidarity

Jerry Koch

If you haven’t already, please sign up for a recurring donation so that we can ensure that Jerry has immediate access to his commissary and will be able to be in touch with his loved ones. You can sign up and make donations at Jerry’s support site at jerryresists.net

On March 27, Chicago teachers and their supporters – including parents, students and community residents – rallied against the largest mass public school closure in US history. News of the mobilization sparked huge public interest before the demonstration – including from an undercover police officer calling himself “Danny Edwards.”

The day before the big rally, “Danny” reached out in individual emails to fellow volunteer street medics he had met a year earlier after he took a 20-hour training with Chicago’s local street medic collective, Chicago Action Medical (CAM). CAM’s volunteer emergency medical technicians (EMTs), nurses, doctors and trained street medics provide emergency medical treatment at local protests.

“Danny” – who admitted to us on May 6 that he is, in fact, a Chicago police officer – could have saved himself the trouble and his department the expense. After all, organizers had already coordinated directly with top CPD brass about their plans for the next day and widely promoted their intent to stage nonviolent civil disobedience.

After the CTU rally, “Danny” also tried to recruit at least one CAM volunteer street medic via email on April 30, the day before a May 1, 2013, immigrants’ rights march, to pair up with him as a partner. There were no takers, so he showed up alone at the rally sporting marked medic regalia.

His latest undercover sortie as a fake volunteer street medic bookends a hectic year for him.

Full story

Jerry’s contempt hearing is tomorrow, May 21st at 3:45 PM on the 20th floor of 500 Pearl Street.

We expect that he will be taken into custody by U.S. marshals tomorrow.

Because the hearing is public, we will be able to be in the courtroom with Jerry. Bring a photo ID if you will be going into the court house. No electronics are allowed and will be checked with security.

We suggest folks arrive 45 minutes to an hour early: security takes a while, and we want to show Jerry–and the feds–that we support him, and all grand jury resisters.

Bring banners or flyers. Spread this widely.

Resist state repression! Support Jerry! Support all political prisoners!

On May 2nd, the FBI named Assata Shakur (fsn Joanne Deborah Chesimard), one of “America’s Most Wanted Terrorists”. Her addition to this listing has show an evolution in the DOJ’s longtime war on black liberation.

We are calling on all people of conscience, all liberationists, radicals, revolutionaries, any other concerned folks to meet on May 19, Malcolm X’s birthday and strategize how we as a community may aid in the struggle to keep Assata free.

Assata is a former Black Panther and member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Throughout the 1970′s and into the 1980′s, the BLA was an active clandestine organization seeking to attack capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism.

In May 1973, Shakur was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, during which New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster and BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur were killed and Shakur and Trooper James Harper were wounded.

Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was indicted in relation to six other alleged criminal incidents—charged with murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, bank robbery, and kidnapping—resulting in three acquittals and three dismissals. In 1977, she was convicted of the first-degree murder of Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the shootout.

Shakur was incarcerated in several prisons in the 70s. She escaped from prison in 1979 and has been living in Cuba in political asylum since 1984. Since May 2, 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has classified her as a domestic terrorist and offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. On May 2, 2013, the FBI added her to the Most Wanted Terrorist list and increased the reward for her capture to $2 million. Attempts to extradite her have proved less than fruitful for the U.S. government and FBI, and to this day, Assata lives in freedom in Cuba.

The intended goal of the police action was to remove the MOVE Organization, an anti-capitalist and deep ecology based movement mostly comprised of veterans of black liberation movements. MOVE had been a thorn in the side of city officials and the local ruling class for a decade. In 1978, a raid that resulted in the death of a police officer and the arrest and life imprisonment of 9 MOVE members, failed to destroy MOVE. By 1985, the city had made a decision that they would not fail again at liquidating the organization.

This Mother’s Day, remember those who were murdered by the Philadelphia Police in 1985, and drop a letter of love and support to the imprisoned members of MOVE who could only watch the news from their prison cells to learn of the fates of their loved ones.

More on the MOVE 9

For the last several years, June 11 (june11.org) has been commemorated as an international day of solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners, and specifically Eric McDavid (http://supporteric.org/), and Marie Mason (http://supportmariemason.org/).

This year, in solidarity with June 11th events across the world, the Denver Anarchist Black Cross will be hosting an evening event with scott crow, a long term anarchist community organizer from Austin Texas. (More on Scott below).

Dinner will be provided, as well as various educational materials. We’re also going to be encouraging some participatory after events, so, if possible, come prepared for a late night!

PLEASE NOTE! WHILE THIS EVENT IS IN SOLIDARITY WITH JUNE 11TH EVENTS, IT IS TAKING PLACE ON SATURDAY JUNE 8TH!!!!

—
scott crow is a community organizer, writer, strategist and speaker who advocates the philosophy and practices of anarchism for social, environmental, and economic aims.

He is the only son of a working class mother who started his political journey in the anti-apartheid, political prisoner and animals rights movements during the Reagan years. In the late 80s he fronted two political electronic industrial bands and through the 90s ran a successful antique/art cooperative business.

For over two decades he has continued to use his experience and ideas in co-founding and co-organizing numerous radical grassroots projects in Texas, including Treasure City Thrift, Radical Encuentro Camp, UPROAR (United People Resisting Oppression and Racism), Dirty South Earth First! and the Common Ground Collective, the largest anarchist influenced organization in modern U.S. history to date.

In addition to grassroots organizing, he has worked for regional and national organizations, including Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Ruckus Society and A.C.O.R.N. With his partner, he produced the documentary film Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation. These political activities lead to him being labeled a “domestic terrorist”by the FBI beginning in the late 90’s with investigations that continued for almost a decade.

He has appeared in various media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, Democracy Now!, Texas Observer, Infoshop, Left Turn, Anarchist News, Z Magazine, Austin Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Pacifica Radio and AlterNet as well as the documentaries Welcome To New Orleans, Better this World, and Informant. Public Radio’s This American Life called him “a living legend among anarchists” and the New York Times characterized him as “anarchist and veteran organizer… that comes across as more amiable than combative…”.

His writings have appeared in the anthology What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation ( 2006 South End Press), his book Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective (2011 Pm Press) as well as various radical print magazines and online sites over the last decade.

From his home in Austin scott recently worked at Ecology Action an anarchist worker-run recycling center cooperative, consults in building worker cooperatives, travels for speaking, and organizes projects. In his spare time, he and his partner bike around town, raise a barnyard of funny animals and dream of sustainable futures.

“Because one who forgets the captives of war completely forgets the same war.”

-Gerasimos Tsakalos, CCF member in prison.

The chapters of confrontation which we live as hostages of the state-prison-capital are many and lived daily, there are no pauses in war.

Domination crushes lives in the centers of extermination and isolation, in the places of wage exploitation, in the temples of indoctrination and lobotomy which serially create teams of managers, professionals of democracy, citizens of social peace, slave-sheep of the millitary-police complex which controls a large part of the planet.

But the multiform offensive resistance is not a pantomime nor a mere pose. it is a permanent act-option-experience which manifests in all moments and aspects of our lives.

The hunted individuals and collectives of liberation extend and bond, are never extinguished nor disappear.

Where some capitulate and return to the normality of a citizen of capital, others sincerely, and with everything, rebel.

Against all authority, against the prisons and jailers, their borders, the mercantile dictatorship, the false critics, various reformists, adaptive pseudo-radicals…against all that exists that robs us of life…

There are memories of resistance and subversive struggle where there is a thirst for justice…in a sterile high-security cell, in the beautiful darkness of a mountain lined with clandestine footprints, in anonymous urban sabotage, penetrating their guarded centers of power…in a poem-song, in a text-declaration, in an honest surrender to the heart…memory and subversion exist independent of the pounding waves of repression.

Our negations are infinitely more potent then their domination, charges, and threats, are proudly fed by our desires and necessities, by our indomitable dignity which we do not buy nor sell…we are willingly irrepressible, never forgetful!!

I think of and carry with me:

-Zoe, a young compañerita libertaria* who died April 30, 2009 handling an explosive device in an abandoned factory in Cogna, Chanbery, France while we were prisoners atUnidad 11 in Newken, Argentina.

-The three compañeras and two compañeros, political prisoners incarcerated since Dec. of last year in Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina as a result of the mobilization of popular sectors tired of their misery.

-Nicola Gai, Alfredo Cospito, combative anarchist prisoners held in Ferrara, Italy, for the attack carried out in 2012 against the executive director of Anslado Nucleare.

-Jaime Gimenes Arbe, an anarchist prisoner of direct action of Basque origin, held captive since 2007 in prison in Monsanto, Portugal and perversely mistreated in a regime of punishment who has been on hunger strike since April 1st.

-Every imprisoned individuality in the whole world who fights against power.

-The anonymous in insurrection, autonomous, and anti-authoritarians who attack, practice the revolutionary experience, and walk the path of the permanent offensive against all that oppresses us.

-Those who in solidarity  accompanied us this past Wednesday, the 24th, outside of the “justice center” in Santiago, attempting to demonstrate, and who were arrested by the pigs.

-To the hermanxs in the Argentine region who manifested as well on Wednesday outside of the Chilean consulate in Buenos Aires and at the doors of the Chilean capitalist retail trash called Fallabella.

-Those who conspire in minority sectors promoting conflict, calling for social war…I’m thinking of you and carry you with me…

“Because not one sentence will be perpetual and not one prison high-security” -Claudia López B.

-Hans Niemeyer, recaptured Thursday the 26th and clumsily indicted by the prosecutor and police in order to satisfy democracy’s anti-bomb thirst for vengeance.

-Carla and Iván locked up in their houses under the same capitalist thirst for vengeance.

To break with immobility and acceptance, to construct networks of complicity, to take back the practice and ideas of subversion and revolutionary solidarity…

For anti-capitalist internationalism, autonomous, and libertario…

Let’s go, walking together, it time to fight!!

Prisoners of the Social War…to the street!!

While misery exists, there will be rebellion!!

Against prison, the state, and capital….Total liberation!!

Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda

libertario prisoner

CAS – Santiago – Chile

April 30, 2013

WOS Note: Liberatario/a/x translates directly to libertarian, but does not carry the same connotation as in the english-speaking world, especially the US. The next best choice may be anti-authoritarian, but the term seems most accurate and eloquent left as is.

Information about the arrest of five anarchists on Tuesday noon, April 30th, the criminal proceedings against them, and the hunger/thirst strike of comrade Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis.

On Tuesday, April 30th, at around 4pm, anarchists Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis were arrested on Dekeleias avenue in the district of Nea Filadelfeia, as they were coming out of a cafeteria.

At the same time, a large police force stormed the café and caught the anarchist fugitives Argyris Ntalios —who tried to break out of the kettle— and Fivos Harisis-Poulos. Both comrades had arrest warrants pending against them since mid-February 2013 (after the double robbery in Velventos–Kozani and the incarceration of anarchists Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos, Dimitris Politis, Nikos Romanos and Yannis Michailidis).

Anarchist Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis was also arrested inside the same cafeteria in Nea Filadelfeia.

All five were transferred to the anti-terrorism service on the 12th floor of the Athens police headquarters. The two comrades that were caught out on the street, as well as the two that were wanted by the authorities encountered the violence of statist dogs in the anti-terrorist office. The fifth comrade was forced to stand for twelve hours handcuffed tightly behind his back —what officially is considered torture— and when he was taken into a cell (the white cells of the 12th floor), he remained handcuffed for several hours.

The same evening, the Greek security force put out a report that accused all of them of resisting arrest and giving false testimony —because the five anarchists refused to give fingerprints, profiles or DNA samples, which were ultimately taken by force. In addition, Naxakis, Sarafoudis and Hadjivasiliadis were charged with harbouring fugitives.

On Wednesday noon, May 1st, the arrestees were all transferred to Evelpidon courts, where the media crows were lurking, and were met with the comrades’ hostility. The comrades stood before prosecutor and interrogator without any formal indictment and (for some) without being allowed to meet with a defense lawyer in advance that would also be present in the hearing, what perhaps occurred for the first time in the history of similar cases. The judges applied their usual tactic to postpone the preliminary hearing for two days regardless of the arrestees’ wishes. Ntalios, Harisis, Naxakis and Sarafoudis refused to make any statement. On the other hand, Hadjivasiliadis demanded that he be heard immediately with the presence of a defense lawyer. His demand was dismissed, so the comrade stated that he has denied food and water already from the moment of his arrest, and he goes on hunger/thirst strike for as long as he be locked up in the white cells of the antiterrorism torturers. Lastly, he held the judges responsible for his prolonged custody on the 12th floor of the Athens police headquarters, where the cops were attempting only to ‘manufacture’ an accusatory brief against the three anarchists for whom no warrants were outstanding in order to ask for their pretrial incarceration.

On Wednesday evening, preventive detention warrants were executed against the two ex-fugitives, and Fivos Harisis and Argyris Ntalios were transferred to Koridallos prison.

On Thursday, May 2nd, Ntalios, Harisis, Naxakis and Sarafoudis were charged in past robbery cases on the basis of ‘findings’ from DNA samples that were forcibly taken by them. Additionally, an appellate judge who handles such cases issued preventive detention warrants against Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis. An indictment was presented to all five arrested in Nea Filadelfeia, including the accusation of ‘membership into a criminal organization with a view to committing robbery,’ in accordance with the Greek antiterrorist law, without exhibiting any direct evidence of premeditation or even intent, other than some orange juices served on the cafeteria table…

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the cops staged a psychological war on Hadjivasiliadis to make him stop the strike. They brought water bottles inside the cell, repeatedly ‘offered’ him food and water, and threatened him that he would stay there for many more days. Hadjivasiliadis and his lawyer insisted on his right to medical examination. A doctor came in at night, and assured that there was no immediate danger to him at this stage but his condition could deteriorate any moment. The doctor also told the human-guards to let the transom window of the cell’s door open, to help the striker breath more efficiently.

On Friday morning, May 3rd, the five anarchists were brought to Evelpidon courts once again, where only a few comrades and relatives were gathered in solidarity. Four of the accused insisted upon their refusal to make any statement. Then Ntalios and Harisis read a text in solidarity to striker Hadjivasiliadis, declaring that he is being held without any substantial evidence whatsoever against him. The judges had no basis to press criminal organization charges against the arrestees and set bail conditions instead for all five of them.

Nevertheless, Dimitris Hadjivasiliadis was the only one to be released, and thus stopped his three-day hunger and thirst strike.

Argyris Ntalios and Fivos Harisis were taken back to Koridallos. The Solidarity Fund for imprisoned and persecuted fighters (Greece) released their prison address:

Fivos Harisis-Poulos – Argyris Ntalios
Dikastiki Filaki Koridallou, A Pteryga, 18110 Koridallos, Athens, Greece

In the meantime, Yannis Naxakis and Grigoris Sarafoudis were still held as suspects in bank robbery case, awaiting further proceeding in the city of Larissa. According to mainstream media, these two anarchists were brought before an interrogator on Saturday, May 4th. They are said to be remanded and moved to Koridallos prison.

More updates as they come.

In late July of 2012 our friend Steve received a phone call from a man identifying himself as a FBI agent. He was told that a subpoena had been issued for him to appear before a federal Grand Jury investigating the vandalism of the Kenzo Nakamura Court of Appeals*. This phone call happened in conjunction with three other people being served subpoenas in Olympia and Portland, as well as house raids in Portland. Although Steve is a well known anarchist in the Northwest, who has been subjected to state harassment before, up until this moment he has not been served or indicated as a suspect of the ongoing investigation against anarchists.

However, his life has been severely impacted by the course of events. Hehas made the choice to leave his former life behind in order to reject the Grand Jury on his own terms. This means that Steve has gone without face-to-face contact with his family, friends, and loved ones for many months.

On that note, the investigation and subsequent repression is still very much alive even though former prisoners, Maddy, Matt and Kteeo are now free. The potential for criminal indictments is always a lingering and realistic possibility. Also, the effects of imprisonment and future threats of going back to prison are not something that ends once one has left the prison walls behind.

While Steve has been doing his best to adjust to life in a new place, it has not been an easy transition. He has already been physical and verbally harassed by the state forces in his new location, and without status and ability to use the local language, employment is very hard to come by. At the same time, he has been doing his best to keep his spirits high and is gracious for all the support and solidarity he has received from people thus far, and the new friends he has made. The fact remains that life inside capitalist society is expensive, and as of this point he has no income whatsoever. He is in a really rough spot right now, being thousands of miles away from his home and not knowing when he will be able to return. Please consider donating to Steve so he can take care of his rent, bills, transportation costs, and everything else this life forces us to pay for. As little or much as you can, anything helps.

*It is important to note that Steve stands in solidarity and complicity with all those accused of damaging the Kenzo Nakamura Court House.

Please donate whatever you can at:

wepay.com/donations/solidaritywithsteve

FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT: http://SOLIDARITYWITHSTEVE.NOBLOGS.ORG