Paris, France - A letter from Olivier, on remand since January 14

Prison La Santé
21/01/2010

We are not in jail for graffiti

We were arrested in the street, in the Belleville district, by the BAC (brigade against criminality). Two patrols were going around, knowing what they were looking for. In a bag, the cops found a spray and our fingers were a bit too dark for their taste. Our passage to the police station was not long, just enough for the cops to get out all their outfit of old tricks, less to force us to talk than to put pressur on us.
In the afternoon of the 13th, those of the SAT-Criminal Brigade (anti-terrorist section of the criminal brigade) pick us up, smiling. Therefore it is quite clear that the graffiti will be only an insignificant detail, a pretext to bring us down.
"Too bad, you'd stopped, we were finished with all that, but now you've started everything up again." Some attempts at auditions, for the form. Before that, houses searches to update their publications archives, to make a a bit of a mess. In offices, notes pinned up inform us of complaints by the Red Cross. We are soon fixed. Already in the police station of the twentieth district the cops were talking about a special meeting among themselves after a call from 36 Quai des Orfevres about the degradation of several Red Cross premises in Paris, the night of January 11 to 12. Other graffiti targeted the house of Justice and Law, in the tenth district. Anti-Terrorist Section showing their teeth for graffiti? There's something wrong there. The night of our arrest, graffiti was sprayed with messages of solidarity with the revolt these recents weeks in Tunisia, Algeria, against the state, whether democratic or dictatorial. So they questioned us about this, but also graffiti the night before, claiming that the subject was the same (it's true that very few people show their hostility to the state ...) and that expressions like "death to the State" have been found in both cases
Beyond these specific facts, they blame us for the continuation of our activities, our participation in struggles, and thus links of complicity and friendship forged during these struggles. In this context, prison to punish a violation of judicial control which forbade, for two of us, to see and communicate is clearly intended to destroy all forms of struggle and organization, beyond the informal democratic framework and its social control.
Criminal association, even if it's not formally mentioned in our case, remains the obsession of those who seize on any fact, even as "trivial" as graffiti, smoke bombs, posters to fit them into the mould "anarcho-autonomous" A very practical construction, to forcibly separate some, terrorize others, possibly identify the "leaders" of the "supporters", "theorists" and "billposters" "preparers" and "performers" in short according to the authoritarian and hierarchical model of the society we're struggling against, and that disgusts us in every way. This kind of pressure surges, at a time where some struggles against detention centers and all forms of confinement, for example, seems to be marking time, act as a "precautionary principle" to nip in the bud any attempt at conflict against what dominates us. The regular complaints from the Red Cross participate fully in this cops's offensive, never losing an opportunity to collaborate with them. Hand in hand for the management of prisons, hand in hand in the suppression of anti-authoritarian struggles. A little paint for these humanitarian with red hands, it's not a heavy price to pay ...
Beyond the particular practices and means used in the struggle (since both fires, targeted destruction, simple damage, collectives squats...) it's the struggle itself and what it is in terms of desires and perspectives (a world without exploitation, without money, without prisons, without a state) that power wants to stifle. This is anything but the consequence of a state, or "emergency laws". Freedom and democracy have nothing to do with each other. You have to be quite a liar to say the opposite. What pisses them off is that our rage, our revolt and our struggles have nothing to claim, nothing to concede, nothing to deny and nothing to beg for. We are happy to leave all that to the professionals and opportunists of politics. Likewise, our friendships, our affinities are not negotiable. The freedom we want is unconditional.
A slogan of the revolt in Kabylia said:
"You can't kill us, we're already dead."
The State may also fuck us in jail, but existing social relations already imprison us.
One thing that we do not forget: we have only one life.
Summarized: "No freedom for the enemies of power," they tell us.
We say "no peace for the enemies of freedom."
Olivier

A communique about the arrests in France and the solidarity to the revolt in Maghreb- a definition of Liberty among different revolts. CLIK TO READ.... polisson.noblogs.org/post/2011/01/25/communique-about-the-arrests/

Posted by SEVERRINO