Military drones buzz among the stars and clouds. A soldier thousands of kilometers away searches for targets to kill, emotions distant from the lives they are taking. A growing numbness to the present brutality and states propaganda that summons itself across our screens. The water and the land are objects to be further preyed upon. Like the cavernous pit of the coal mine we are being emptied and hollowed out in order to sustain capital’s culture of emptiness. Empathy, care and love which keeps our communities together are under attack for an individualized life under capitalism where everyone looks out for themselves.
What has changed from the last year to the moment we lay eyes on this text?
Increased surveillance, tightening of repression and criminalization of encrypted communications, the flames of war and genocide, the earth’s continual desecration. The world watches with a mixture of horror and apathy as the death toll climbs in Gaza and the invasion of Ukraine reaches its 3rd year. Roughly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are strapped to beds, tortured and beaten to death- held hostage in brutal conditions in Israeli prisons. In Sudan, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions are displaced while facing extreme famine as the civil war reaches it’s 16th month. The actually successful militant resistance to the military coup in Myanmar is being transformed by the military into a civil war with rising civilian casualties as the regime’s troops increasingly resort to scorched earth tactics.
Those of us living under the fragility of neoliberal ‘peace’ are expected to take political positions devoid of human feeling or meaningful action. How to break this artificial veil constructed to make ‘war zones’ appear a world away, when the weapon shipments, and the webs of diaspora, tell a different story? How to seize back our humanity and our agency, understanding the urgency while giving space to feel, grieve, and act, standing hand in hand against this monstrosity? And how to maintain this fabric of resistance that defies news cycles and nation state politics, recognizing the fights for survival and liberation against ongoing colonization and resource extraction, that are materializing globally outside of news spotlights?
What is to be done? With constant return we fumble with these questions. Empathy and solidarity is the strongest medicine against the current realities we face. Empathy and solidarity is why we are here- our hearts embracing these words. We choose to share the weight of grief and take steps toward action in this fabric of resistance that has been woven through time on this earth. Is it not our yearning towards the forces of care, creation and destruction that we gather around our fires? Is it not because we wish to understand and greet each others pain and seek freedom from oppression that we show solidarity with our comrades who are carrying the heavy weights of repression?
There are too many atrocities, too many beautiful spirits taken from this world to grieve them all. Among the bloodshed live the spirits of those who choose to resist against this hegemonic order, against the grinding wheels of genocide and colonialism. There are those who, throughout the turning of this earth, choose not to ignore the forces that prey upon free life. Many have chosen to greet these forces with fists clenched, a grin from cheek to cheek. I’m sure you share this too, maybe not smiling, but we are here again. With time, with strength and patience we deepen our constellations, we strengthen and weave new webs, alongside the earths cycles we change, grow, and learn.
With strength we make this call to action for a week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners. Let our words not die in our mouths but our ideas and actions be realized.
Organize solidarity events, film screenings, banner drops, discussion rounds, direct actions, radio shows, letter writings … be creative!
Let’s remember those who fought against this injustice and paid with their lives.
Let our comrades in prison not be forgotten and let’s show the warmth of solidarity!
No one is free, till all are free!
Please send us your events and actions to tillallarefree@riseup.net.