This week we will feature punk and metal projects from all over the place, mostly pulled from the site http://r-a-b-m.blogspot.com and http://thedarkskiesaboveus.blogspot.com which are longstanding blog featuring Red and Anarchist black metal.
But first in some recent news:
As we reported last week, Chelsae Manning was facing indefinite solitary confinement on some pretty seriously trumped up charges. After over 100,000 people signed a petition on her behalf she is now no longer facing solitary, but has been found guilty of all the four things she was being investigated for, and these are: 1 having an expired tube of toothpaste, 2 asking to speak to her attourney, 3 having an issue of Vanity Fair magazine, and 4 maybe accidentally knocking a packet of mustard onto the floor.
From her support page:
“We won an important victory by keeping Chelsea out of “indefinite solitary confinement;” however, this ruling of guilty on all four absurd charges is not without significant ramifications.
“Now these convictions will follow me through to any parole and clemency hearings, forever. I was expecting to be in minimum custody in February, but now years have been added to that,” Chelsea explained (via phone) after her recent hearing.
“As Chelsea’s lawyer, I am horrified and angry about these convictions. This was a star chamber where Chelsea had to defend herself in secret. These convictions will not silence her. She will only be stronger and we will fight that much harder in her appeal to overturn her convictions and her sentence,” declared Chelsea’s lead attorney Nancy Hollander.”
At this time, it’s horrifyingly clear to us at The Final Straw that if it weren’t for all the petition signatures and media coverage of this issue that Chelsae would indeed be thrown into solitary confinement indefinitely. So, keep it up everyone! It’s extremely important for people to keep talking about this issue. Also, funds are needed to keep her legal defense going, they are only a few bux short! You can see info about this case and how to give support at http://www.chelseamanning.org
At least 9 people were arrested after St. Louis police shot and killed an African-American 18 year old man, Mansur “Man-Man” Ball Bey, who was fleeing police while they attempted to serve a search warrant in the northern party of the city. In the wake of the killing, crowds poured into the street, where they were met with military police tanks and tear-gas. People cursed the police, burned American flags, erected barricades, and chanted “Black Lives Matter”. This is just one of the protests that have occurred since the year anniversary of Michael Browns murder at police hands in Ferguson, Missouri.
More information and personal commentary on this event can be found at the excellent news website http://itsgoingdown.org
From anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble’s support page and blog at http://anarchylive.noblogs.org on the situation of the Holman 3:
“St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama is the subject of a class action lawsuit filed by the Alabama Justice Initiative on behalf of prisoners housed at St. Clair. The focus of the lawsuit is the extremely violent atmosphere at the prison, the violent assaults inflicted upon prisoners by high-ranking and low-ranking guards. There has been a long train of assaults on prisoners by guards.
On June 17, 2015, prisoners at St. Clair called a halt to the unchecked assaults: by retaliating against two guards who were assaulting a prisoner. A crowd of prisoners beat the two guards, who have a long history of assaulting prisoners. Seventeen prisoners were swept up in the haste to quell the rebellion. Prison officials don’t know what prisoners took part in the rebellion. All seventeen prisoners were placed in segregation. Of the seventeen, three were transferred to Donaldson Max. in Bessemer, Alabama and three were transferred to Holman Max., and eleven are still at St. Clair.
The three prisoners – Brandon Lee, Johnathan Mallory, and Jamie Montgomery – transferred to Holman’s segregation unit, have not been charged and/or received any disciplinary write up for any institutional rule violation, but are continually being refused release to general population.
We need everyone that reads this to call the Warden at Holman prison and the Commissioner of the Alabama Dept. of Corrections, and demand that Brandon Lee, Johnathan Mallory, and Jamie Montgomery be immediately released into general population due to the fact that none of them have been charged with any rule infraction at St. Clair or Holman.
Call the below listed phone numbers. Continually call them until we get results.
Warden Walter Myers
251-368-8173
Commissioner William G. Sharp, Jr
to reach him by phone, dial 334-353-3883
or to fax him stuff you can use 334-353-3967”
From the Denver ABC website https://denverabc.wordpress.com/:
In summer 2013 members of several Anarchist Black Cross (or ABC) groups discussed the necessity of introducing an International Day for Anarchist Prisoners. For listeners who are unaware, the ABC is a long standing anarchist model for political prisoner support and also serves as an educational engine on issues pertaining to the prison industrial complex. Given there are already established dates for Political Prisoners Rights Day or Prison Justice Day, we found it important to emphasise the stories of our comrades as well. Many imprisoned anarchists will never be acknowledged as ‘political prisoners’ by formal human-rights organisations, because their sense of social justice is strictly limited to the capitalist laws which are designed to defend the State and prevent any real social change. At the same time, even within our individual communities, we know so little about the repression that exists in other countries, to say nothing of the names and cases involving many of our incarcerated comrades.
This is why we have decided to introduce an annual Week for Anarchist Prisoners on August 23-30, starting on this very day! We chose August 23 as a starting point, because on that same day in 1927 the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in prison. They were convicted of murdering two men during an armed robbery at a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Their arrest was a part of a bigger anti-radical campaign led by the American government known as the Palmer Raids. The State’s evidence against the two was almost totally non-existent and many people still today believe that they were punished for their strong anarchist beliefs.
Given the nature and diversity of anarchist groups around the globe, we have proposed a week of common action rather than a single campaign on a specific day making easier for groups to be able to organise an event within a longer target period.
Therefore, we call on everyone to spread the information about the Week for Anarchist Prisoners among other groups and communities and think about organising event(s) in your city or town. The events can vary from info-evenings, screenings and benefit concerts to solidarity and direct actions.
Check out the flyers in different languages. Please send reports of your activities to tillallarefree@riseup.net
This month is also historically significant as a yearly marker of anti-prison, anti-racist and anti-capitalist struggle in the U.S., known as Black August. Black August began in commemoration of the murder of Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden in the California Penal system between 1970 and 1971. “Yogi Bear” aka Hugo Pinell was a prisoner convicted of participating in the attempted uprising on August 21st 1971 at San Quentin in which George Jackson died. After suffering decades in the Pelican Bay SHU, he was recently released into general population and was killed by white prisoners. He served 50 years behind bars and struggling against the racist prison system. He is gone but not forgotten.
Also pulled from DenverABC.wordpress.com:
PKK and PAJK political prisoners in Turkey are now on the sixth day of their indefinite hunger strike.
On August 15, prisoners accused of being members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Party (PAJK) started an indefinite hunger strike with three demands. The day coincided with the anniversary of the first armed action of the PKK.
The prisoners are demanding that the Turkish state end its ongoing isolation of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been unable to meet with anyone from the outside since April. They are also calling for the bodies of YPG and YPJ fighters to be allowed entry to Turkey for burial by their families and for the “political genocide” operations against Kurds to come to an end.
The political prisoners have announced via their lawyers that they will continue their hunger strike until their demands are met. There will be a support action for the prisoners today outside the women’s prison in the Bakırköy neighborhood of Istanbul.