"Los ideales anarquistas son sendas de humanidad: unen para un designio comun a los hombres mas distintos y distantes. Y nosotros somos eso. Y por eso en nuestras letras hay barros de todas las intemperies. Y cuestas y encajaduras propias de todas las marchas en linea recta. Y polvaredas tambien: las que levantan los perros que nos salen a ladrar..."
Rodolfo Gonzalez Pacheco
Companions who i consider to belong to my intimate circle of friends said that my last text, "On forced labour and other Rights" would be "ambigous" in relation to the theme of and about Rights. It would have been good, if this would have been more concrete (clear) and less hyronical, since what i wrote could lead to false interpretations towards a positive estimation of Rights and reformists struggles...
(...)
Often i have the impression that the term "reformist" or "defender of civil rights" is being misused, in order for one to distance him/herself or dismiss the solidarity and support for the ones who struggles and their struggles (if not immediately to insult them), especially in relation to prisoners (no matter if political or social) and the initiatives/tensions which they carry on inside prisons, upon the condition of being locked-up (not on the streets or under such life-conditions), or to ignore their own isolation in connection with the struggles there where they happen (no matter if in prison, in the ghettos and so on...).
How should we understand prisons? As the end that each rebel, revolutionary or proletarian should accept, when losing his or her own freedom because his/her activities/struggles (political, existential or material ones)/needs against the capitalist system and its political, social, juridical and economical order?
Does the unjustice, the exploitation, the abuse finish when in prison? Should the prisoner react "exclusively" stoically to the despotical and arbitrary tortures and conditions imposed by the screws and renounce to defend him/herself by any means (might the latter being "also" legal ones?).
Let us take an example: the screws beat you up (or beat you up and torture you regularly) or keep your post/books and make them disappear: or that they keep you for years in complete isolation, or refuse you the contact with the ones you love, or that they transfer you constantly to other prisons in order to finally de-associate you, de-personalize you, de-socialize you, and so on...; just to name a few examples (which i suffered/suffer since 24 years) and all this despite all the "Rights" one has to these things... Therefore, should prisoners renounce to a legal way and Rights, because this is reformist and not radical?
If we take in consideration these few examples (and in prison these are daily bread), therefore we can describe prisoners as reformists (who however know this better than anyone else, being victims and hostages of the bourgeois Right and legality), since they "arm" themselves with a pen in order to point out such things and sway themselves in the hope to have "fortune" to find an "office bearer" who decide to allow them the most stupid rights such like to have correspondence, visits and stop the isolation, release them since they served already their full sentence or, following a certain "Right", since they should come out because of their health, and so on.. (i say this only since prisoners being what they are stopped being "citizens with rights" and nobody, not even many "anarchists" are interested in the rights and life of prisoners or their families).
And since they often (or rather almost never) get such "Rights" applied, are prisoners, as i said before, not citizen-with-rights? It does not matter how many "Rights" prisoners or "citizens" possess on a theoretical level, there are no guarancies for their application...
But now... Rights and Laws are not the things anarchists fight for, since they know exactly the difference between Freedom and Rights, but something which results so clear for them, does not have to result equally clear for a "normal" person, prisoner, poor or the rascal from the ghetto...
Since i have been a proletarian, a rascal from the ghetto, a "recidive criminal" (and thousands thing more) before i became an anarchist, before i became, what i am today, you can be sure that i will put all the knowledges and experiences at service of all the ones who rebel against the system, in order for them to bring their on struggle against it forward.
Anarchists are not born thus, they rather become such... Anarchists use all palpable weapons in order to attack and destroy this shit system, might these be "legal" or "illegal".
There is one thing that the ones who, in one way or the other, serve the State and its institutions, its laws and doctrines, will have to keep in mind: you have your worst enemy in myself, since i scorn you with my full heart.
(...)
Perhaps it is still worth to clarify that i have been kind of invited to join the hungerstrike/protest happening in August, since i do not belong to the prisoners group Iv.I. (association for representing prisoners interests)...
Seen under this light, i do not understand myself as one who stays "above" or "in front" the other imprisoned companions, in order to teach them and even less to "conduct" them.
All in all, i accompany them in their "work" and in their path, i share with them my own experiences, in order to bring them a few step forwards (if they are able to) within their own intent, for not making the same "mistakes" which myself and other companions made during the time in the COPEL or in the APRE, as much as during the last collective experiences between 1999 and 2003...
To be in solidarity with different social struggles (on a national level as much as internationally) it remains always a question of each individual's estimation, who undertake to act in assumption from his/her own experiences, affinities and desires.
If one is in solidarity with these struggles, it is not about his/her own interests and visions, no matter of which kind (even less in the case of anarchists)... it is a question of love, of feeling bound or not, to affiliate rather than elevate above the very autonomy of the struggle, its forms of organizing and its participants...at least this how i understand it.
It has been said quite often, that to be in solidarity does not mean to share everything 100%...
The ones who see solidarity rather as a "political calculation" and not as an act of love and subversive complicity, does not understand solidarity in the way i do.
(...)
Among the 478 prisoners, who at this moment will undertake the hungerstrike between the 1st and the 7th of August (as much as i know), myself and Jose' are the only anarchists.
Who are we in order to tell them how they should organise and struggle? Don' t you think, companions (and we should take in consideration the fact that this hungerstrike-protest is an historical happening in Germany, in the sense that for the first social prisoner will self-organise), that we could all enrich ourselves, through our contributions, through our reflections, in sharing experiences in this field (as for example prisoners struggle in Spain, Belgium and Italy...) and try through this to elevate the general political and revolutionary consciousness, instead of critiquing their reformist/legalistic/defender-of-civil-rights character?
What distinguish us from the "others", if we are able to be in solidarity (each single one in the way he/she see as more appropriate) with the ones who rebel against the hydra who oppress us all, if we are not able to show them the richness and the tools of our ideal and their history, in order for them to make what they want out of them?
It is true that we ought to be critical (as self-critical) with all the things and questions which we see as contrary to our way of living, struggling, organizing and leading relationships among ourselves.
To be critical means to prove things with our own arguments, that also a small child can understand and not producing some shit discourse characterized by an academical tone.
To be critical does not mean to be unrespectful or insulting the ones which we see as equals within our rebellion...
As anarchist i do not feel inspired by the discourse (more or less radical, more or less "reformist"...) written/published by some (which is nothing more than a mirror reflecting the own ideas and ideologies, the culture or experiences, the attitude and so on, of its authors), but rather the context of the struggles, what these pursuit; their "protagonists" and the subversive potential of struggles and tensions... You know that things can be said in thousands different ways, but what they communicate, the message, remain the same.
(...)
I believe it must be quite comfortable to theorize and criticise when being in a position of conceptional "highness", faraway from the struggles, from the "impurenesses" of the ones, who rebel without manuals and professors of the "revolution".
It is instead difficult to translate into praxis, the things we preach and dream of...
Not without a reason, the ideas and theories are not the ones who will be punished and locked-down at most (at least not always), but rather their translation into praxis, their try...
(...)
After all i must make clear again that we will not reach justice, freedom, dignity and equality by using Right and laws.
Our weapons and tools are solidarity, mutual aid and mutual teaching, direct action, complicity, love to ours and freedom in all its forms; the permanent constancy to our projects, debates, moments of struggle and so on...
Therefore, please, let us not remain "only" to a superficial critic, as the ones directed to the letter of Pit and his communique' dated 15.06.08; in fact, considering how we understand many things, there are many points we could criticize in there...
Personally, i wrote him a letter (i doubt that he got it, because my post is blocked since one and half month) where i criticize the "hierarchical" forms of the association, i make clear my opinion on representants and "delegation" of tasks (on the end, that hierarchical organization is an enemy of freedom, of radicality, spontaneity and creativity within every kind of struggle/project) and i tell him how one could "build" a non-hierarchical, autonomous, informal etc. association.
I am not against all kind of organizational forms, but rather against any organization shaped by a hierarchical character, which stays above its associates and decide for them its direction, the forms of the struggle and so on.
The individuals are the ones who build an organization, and not the organization which "disciplines", changes and/or represents its associates, because through this one controls and leads the struggles, making them undangerous and easy for Power to be assimilated.
Through our experiences, readings and praxis by means of affinity and mutual knowledge, we build an atmosphere of complicity and network of informal organization...
From our different origins and experiences, we create our revolutionary creativity...
We are sure that every form for us to get organize (even if we have no names or abbreviations and are not indentifiable for the Dominion) remains the most natural in the world, because it does not obey an abstraction or "brain-wanking", but rather it is to be understood through our own forms and the world we are living in...
Our best theories we can take from our experiences, which are going to be incentivated by our desire towards freedom... we will not make a decalogue or a fashion out of them; nobody knows it better, which place he/she has in his/her own existence/life and what assails our freedom/interests/desires...
The social war gives his/her place to everybody... i know on which side of the barricades i find myself and against who i direct my weapons...
(...)
Every struggle is a dynamical process, which does not obey State's laws, but rather variables... a tension against the existent and the Dominion... we know also how to recognize the ones who, within this "apparent chaos", are moving like us or share similar desires...
If language helps me for something, than it is not for releasing fears or misery, but rather to reinforce our convinction and desire towards freedom...
In this long march we will become stronger and wiser, leaving behind us all the present rubbish's sellers who try to convince us of believing in certain values, while they live in mud and believe that they can resolve everything by prose.
There, where the enemy will be attacked, our laugh of complicity develops, the insurrectionary dignity arises (no matter if individual or collective), the libertarian hope blossoms and diffuses, since there is the place where our "nitrates" takes something in order to go further...
Everyone should do, whatever he/she sees as appropriate...
The solidarity is a revolutionary weapon.
!!Down with all the walls!!
Long life anarchy!!
Gabriel
Gabriel Pombo da Silva is a Spanish Anarchist locked down in Germany