Stop Cop City + David Campbell on Antifascist Prisoners

This week’s episode features two interviews.

Stop Cop City
David Campbell on Antifascist Prisoners

Stop Cop City / Defend the Atlanta Forest

"Support Antifa Prisoners | #J25Antifa | Defend The Atlanta Forest | TFSR 22-07-03" — Download This Episode

First up, the struggle to Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cop City has been gaining momentum over the last year, in opposition to the building of what would be the largest police urban training center in the so-called USA in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd Uprising, alongside the construction of what would be the country’s largest film sound stage for Blackhall Studios. Coming up, you’ll hear Tony Lane of Defend Atlanta Forest talk about some of the issues involved, the ongoing organizing to stop the destruction of dozens of acres in this forest in the city in the forest, the ongoing info-tours around the country and upcoming week of action from July 23-30th, 2022.

David Campbell on Supporting Antifascist Prisoners

Then, you’ll hear an interview with formerly incarcerated antifascist prisoner, David Campbell, about his experience of incarceration for participation a street melee against fascists in January 2018 in New York City and about the importance of prisoner support and the upcoming annual International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners on July 25^th.

David’s former celly who could use some love:

Bruce Williams #21R0721
Orleans Correctional Facility
3531 Gaines Basin Rd
Albion, NY 14411

David also mentions the Resistance Committee in Ukraine and Operation Solidarity which include participation of anarchists and antifascists resisting the Russian invasion.

Announcements

Jason Walker Transferred, Needs Support

Incarcerated journalist, author and activist, Jason Renard Walker has been transferred to Connolly Unit in Texas’s TDCOJ prison system where he has a reasonable expectation of danger after credible threats of violence of which authorities are aware. There is an article explaining Jason’s situation and how to help at MongooseDistro.Com.

Comrade Z Transferred

Comrade Z, anarchist and IWOC organizer in Texas has been transferred and could use a few letters to make him feel at home in the new digs. You can write him at:

Julio A Zuniga 1961551
Wayne Scott Unit
4 Jester Road
Richmond, Texas 77406

Hunger Strike at Granville Correctional in NC

Prisoners at Granville are urgently asking for a mass phone zap to pressure NC DPS and the administration into granting their demands. There is a new phone zap on Tuesday, July 5^th as the conditions remain terrible. You can find a great writeup from the end of June on earlier stages of the protest and hunger strike at Granville (formerly Polk CI) here: https://itsgoingdown.org/nc-prisoners-organize-juneteenth-protests/

Contact:

Warden Roach, 919-575-3070, or michael.roach@ncdps.gov
Loris Sutton, prisons’ central region director, 919-582 6125, or loris.sutton@ncdps.gov
Todd Ishee, commissioner of prisons, 919-838-4000, ask to speak to Todd Ishee, or todd.ishee @ncdps.gov

Demands include:

remove Sgt. Couper, stop the police brutality and harassment
Ask what is the condition of Anthony Harris (#0957565) and the hunger strikers?
Why are hunger strikers and people on self injury watch being isolated with no bunks? does the commissioner know?
Why is Sgt. Couper assaulting prisoners every week or in altercations every day?
Why are you housing people with cancer?

A few tips for calls:

you don’t need to give your name or other info
record calls if possible
leave long messages on voicemail
call using *67 to block your number
call multiple times and disrupt their operations
remember that denial and obstruction are standard procedures for those that work there
report any and all info received and forward any questions to: atlantaiwoc@protonmail.com

. … . ..

Featured Tracks:

My Peaceful Forest by Roy Hamilton from Bill Haney’s Atlanta Soul Vol. 1
Σιγά μην κλάψω, σιγά μη φοβηθώ by Killah P from Ni Oubli Ni Pardon Vol. 1 (Action Antifasciste Paris-Banlieue)

. … . ..

Stop Cop City Transcription

TFSR: Could you please introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, or other identifying info you’d like to share?

Tony Lane: Sure. My name is Tony Lane. I live in Atlanta. I’ve lived here for about 15 years and yeah, I love it.

TFSR: So we’re here to talk about the effort to defend the Atlanta forest. Listeners may know Atlanta to be one of the largest urban centers in the southeast of Turtle Island in the so called US state of Georgia. Thoughts of a cityscape with honking horns and traffic, large buildings of commerce, busy pedestrian streets, may not fit into the idea of verdant and lush scenes of natural beauty. Can you talk a bit about the city, about the forest, and how they interact? And how does this shape the life of those who are living in Atlanta?

Tony: Sure, well, it’s immediately noticeable if you’re flying or driving into Atlanta that there’s trees everywhere. I mean, Atlanta has the largest tree canopy compared to any other major city in America. I think about 48% of the city has tree coverage, which is pretty incredible. So in a certain way, it’s a city like any other, but there’s 1000’s of acres of forest that you can explore here as well.

TFSR: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the history of the forest? Maybe the size of it, but also its former uses. I understand there was a jail there at one point. And also sort of what having such a canopy in a big city means for things like ambient temperature, water absorption, versus runoff and erosion, the air quality, and the general health of urban populations.

Tony: The parcel of land that is under threat is in the South River Forest, which is about 3500 acres of forest and that is beneficial ecologically to the city in a variety of ways. It mitigates flooding, it contributes to the quality of the air. Atlanta is shielded from the urban heat island effect much more than other cities, at least, because of this large tree canopy.

To speak on the history just a bit. It was Muskogee land, stewarded by the Muskogee until the early 1800’s When they were forcibly displaced. I don’t know how much history you want me to go into here, but it was sold in a lottery auction and run as farmland up until the early 1900s, when it was purchased by the city. It was run briefly as a municipal dairy farm and then turned into a prison. It was run as a prison up until the 1990’s. I think 1990 Actually. The conditions in the prison are totally horrid. There’s a lot of good research on this done by a local amateur research collective called the Atlanta Community Press. I highly recommend looking into that.

TFSR: You can ramble if there’s other pieces of history or other experiences, if you feel like sort of painting a picture of some of your favorite parts of the forest, having lived in Atlanta for a bit and being intimate with it.

Tony: It’s funny because there’s obviously a huge focus on the ecological aspect of the forest. It does help to filter the air and mitigate flooding, and so on and so forth. But it has a lot of use in the city outside of that too. The forest itself is like a huge place of importance for the ‘Bike Life’ community in the city. I would say probably up until the movement began at least, it was very common to see people riding dirt bikes and four wheelers through there, to see people riding mountain bikes are there. It’s also just a place that teenagers get away to to smoke weed and make out or do whatever teenagers do, walk their dogs, so on and so forth.

TFSR: Can you talk about what the proposed plan is and why people are up in arms about it?

Tony: Of course. So, the project is kind of two pronged. The city, and specifically the Atlanta Police Foundation is planning to build a police training facility on a large swath of the forest. Specifically, they want to build a mock city to train in urban conflict. The other side of the project is movie studios called Black Hall. Actually, they just recently renamed themselves to Shadowbox. They make movies like Venom, Jumanji, Godzilla, stuff like that. They want to expand their operation to build one of the biggest soundstages in America.

TFSR: Can you talk a little bit more about the Police Foundation. Is that a collaboration between some of the counties around there and the city police? Or is that just the Atlanta Police as this huge entity that that would be holding this facility? Would it just be local police that are training in that facility? Or are there like bigger implications to that?

Tony: The Atlanta Police Foundation is a slush fund. It’s run by private companies. Basically, it’s a way for private companies in the city and state to have kind of influence and say over city operations. So, the project is actually being built by the Atlanta Police Foundation, which is actually companies like Bank of America, Home Depot, Waffle House, even. The project is estimated to be about $90 million, and $60 million of that project is coming from private donors.

TFSR: What makes it a profitable venture? If these companies are pouring in this amount of money, it’s probably not just out of the fact that they love the cops. Where’s the money making for that part of it?

Tony: Of course. Atlanta, is really structured around these kinds of backdoor clientelist deals between private companies and the city. I think it’s a pretty straightforward way that these companies can buy influence and buy protection in the city. Ultimately, I think the city really has no other plans to mitigate some of the problems that it faces other than investing in police activity. I can say more about that, too.

TFSR: Would you? What kind of problems you’re talking about or alluding to?

Tony: Well, a big justification for this project is explicitly tied to the movement and 2020. So there’s plans for this project as early as 2017. But throughout the movement here in 2020, if listeners don’t know, the movement here was particularly strong.

TFSR: This is just to clarify, this is the uprising that came up after repeated police murders at the beginning of COVID. Like the COVID pandemic, right?

Tony: That’s correct. In Atlanta, an unarmed black man named Rayshard Brooks was killed by the police later on into the movement after the kind of initial phase of rioting and looting all over the country. That led to more clashes in the city, and nightly demonstrations at the third precinct here in Atlanta. Throughout the movement, there was internal strife between the police, mass sick outs, roughly 200 Police quit their jobs during this time. So the ‘Cop City’ project is among other things, is meant to explicitly address this kind of loss in morale amongst the police here.

TFSR: That makes sense as a recent need for the city to feel like it needs to do some sort of like urban combat. Can you talk about how the police interact with the city, like the population of the city? Sort of like a brief history of recent events. Do the police do a lot of raiding of homeless encampments? Are they going in and doing ‘no knocks’ in neighborhoods? What does it look like, the policing of Atlanta?

Tony: I’m not exactly sure how to address this, but maybe it makes sense to talk about the recent development in Atlanta. Especially since 2008, the city’s been pretty rapidly gentrifying. So that’s led to an unprecedented amount of evictions. Basically, the police, play the same role here that they do everywhere else, which is to protect the interests of the wealthy, to protect the interests of the business owners here.

Atlanta kind of has a unique relationship to the police and to the business class here. There was an intense amount of activity concentrated in Atlanta during the Civil Rights and Black power movements of the 60’s. Out of this struggle grew a particular model of social management that’s colloquially referred to as ‘The Atlanta Way,’ which entails cooperation between white corporate power structures and the Black Business Class. After the 60’s, the majority of the police department became Black, city council is majority Black, so on and so forth.

Since 2008, Atlanta has seen unprecedented gentrification and development due to investment from the tech sector, from the film industry, specifically, and that’s resulted in unprecedented amounts of evictions and repression of kind of low level criminal activity to make space for luxury condos.

TFSR: Yeah, that’s a really good answer. I’m glad that you could go into some of the history. That’s super interesting. Can you talk about where the development of the or destruction of that space is at?

Tony: I might back up a little bit if that’s okay. Before the movement around ‘Cop City’ began in the spring of 2021, there was a few different efforts to combat what was already happening there. There was ‘Stop the Swap,’ and that was in reaction to the Black Hall Studios swap of private land for public land. There’s the work of the South River Watershed Alliance. They specifically work around the river and how the city engages with it. Then there was ‘Save the Old Prison Farm.’

So like I said, there used to be a prison in the South River Forest that was closed in 1990. Since it’s been empty, there hasn’t been a clear trajectory for it in the city. At different times, the city has proposed turning it into a park. But otherwise, it functions the way that it does now, which is as a place where people walk their dogs, ride bikes, so on and so forth, and also dump trash.

So after it came out that APF was planning to build this massive police training facility, two times the size of the police training facility in New York City, for reference, local activists came together and kind of tried to create an umbrella platform so that all these kind of different initiatives that were already in the works, could link up with each other, as well as to produce new energy around this specific project.

TFSR: So you’re placing this in the context of existing struggles to defend and protect these common wild spaces in the city that people are benefiting from in all sorts of different ways, and past efforts at the announcement of the APF that this this destruction in this construction was going to be going on?

Can you talk a bit about when the actual attempted clearing of the forests started? And what the movement in the Atlanta area looked like? What were people doing to blockade it? I’m sure that there were a bunch of different things, whether it be like protests in front of corporate headquarters, or I’ve heard about forest blockades. Can you talk a little bit about what that looked like and how the how the police have reacted?

Tony: Sure. There’s been no mass clear cutting of the forest to this day. Luckily, activists have been able to take initiative every step of the way during this movement. So when the project was announced by us, it was never really publicly announced by the city or by APF, almost no work had been done. So the land that Black Hall wants to swap with the city has been clear cut. They’re in the process of turning it into a park. Michelle Obama Park is what they intend to call it. But so, activists, people who are interested in defending the forest have benefited greatly from taking the initiative here. Before really any big machinery was in the forest, people have been able to circulate through it and to learn the lay of the land.

Starting in the spring of 2021, people started doing barbecues, info shares, and all types of different events in the forest. This was before the city had actually approved the land lease to APF. So a lot of the early moments in the struggle, were oriented around putting pressure on city council to not approve this land lease. But anyways, all throughout this time people are circulating throughout the forest. Actually, a lot of DIY shows and parties had started to happen in the forest. Partially due to the pandemic, partially due to gentrification, a lot of DIY venues in the city have shut down recently. So that milieu has kind of found a new home in the forest where they are able to do shows for free without any type of intervention from landlords or the police.

TFSR: That’s pretty awesome. When you’re referring to DIY, some listeners, depending on their context might think that that’s specifically like punk. But just out of curiosity, what sort of shows or what sort of dance parties happened?

Tony: Yeah, all types of music really. The dance scene in particular has found a home here. There’s an array of different crews in the city who have hosted parties in the forest. The DIY scene here isn’t so structured around a particular style of music. There’s a lot of different stuff that’s happened there. The major way that we’ve been able to find out about the companies working on this project is through being present in the forest. People have been able to identify the companies actually involved in the destruction of the forest and in the construction of ‘Cop City’. That includes Brasfield and Gorrie, who we believe to be the general contractor, Long Engineering, which is one of their subcontractors, Specialty Finishes Incorporated, Quality Glass, and formally Reeves Young.

Reeves Young was one of the big companies involved that was targeted early on in the movement. They were subjected to call-in campaigns, people did demonstrations at the homes of people involved in the company, there was a demonstration at their office in Atlanta. Then a specific campaign arose against them called SRY, or stop Reeves Young. Within two weeks of that project starting it came out there Reeves Young had dropped out of the project.

TFSR: That’s awesome to be able to point to a success like that and be able to say ‘we did that.’ Are these companies that you’re referring to, are they all local to Atlanta or do they have subsidiaries or are they subsidiaries of other corporations that are in other places? Like I remember when we’ve done interviews in the past about the ‘Zone to Defend,’ the ZAD in France. Vinci was the big company that was pushing a lot of the construction and they had subsidiaries in different places. In fact, there were direct actions against I think a street car company or street street car manufacturing company, something like that, and also a highway extension that were being done by Vinci related company around Atlanta in solidarity with ZAD.

But yeah, can you talk a little bit about where these companies are based and how people have been drawing attention to them?

Tony: These companies, for the most part, are not local to Atlanta. They’re regionally based companies. Some of these companies have offices and projects all over the US. Atlas Technical Consultants has projects all over the US.

TFSR: I guess bringing it back to the defense of the forest, there’s a speaking tour right now going on on the West Coast, as well as various one offs around the country around the so called us that I found on the website ‘Scenes from Atlanta Forest,’ which is scenes.no blogs.org. I’ll link that in the show notes if if anyone wants to get in on one of these discussions locally. I think that’s an interesting approach to the idea of diffusing out the struggle against this one specific locality by informing people of what’s going on. This has been a longtime strategy in mass mobilizations or an eco defense struggles, has been to go to places and say, “Hey, here’s what’s going on. Here’s why you need to know about it. Come get engaged if you want to in various ways,” but also because of the diffusion of these companies that are profiting off of this and actually doing the on the ground work, because you’re not focusing just on the city of Atlanta or the APF or what have you. It’s sort of like, lends to an opportunity for people to bring home to different places where those companies are present or other projects that they’re working on to do solidarity in the communities that they’re in. And also, because these companies are engaged in this sort of destructive practice in Atlanta, if it doesn’t happen in Atlanta, if the project does not succeed to build Cop City, they’re just going to try to put it somewhere else. Those corporations that you mentioned, Waffle House, Bank of America, etc. They’re not local, just to the Atlanta area.

So yeah. Can you talk about what sort of solidarity actions have been taken or other locations that you’re aware of?

Tony: Well, I just want to reiterate that there is a speaking tour happening right now up the West Coast and up the East Coast. There’s a few dates in between those places. Definitely get plugged into those if there’s one happening near you. We want people to come to the forest. Like you said, we do not believe this is a local struggle. Police will be trained here from all over the country. It’ll be the biggest police training facility in the US. If you can’t come to the forest, then like you said, these companies have offices all over the place. So it should be easy to participate in whatever context you’re in.

There are so many actions that have happened outside of Atlanta. It’s hard to recount them. There’s been actions at the Brasfield and Gorrie headquarters in Alabama, there’s been solidarity actions in California, in New York, and Columbia. All over the country really, and outside the US as well.

As an aside, I think one of the novel things about this movement is that there’s an equal emphasis on the defense of the forest itself here in Atlanta, as well as an offense against the companies involved, and against the Atlanta Police Foundation. So we would like people to come to the forest and we think defending the forest physically is a big part of the struggle. But equally important, is to put pressure on the contractors and the subcontractors involved. Does that make sense?

TFSR: Yeah!

You mentioned there’s been blockades, occupations, and tree sits in the forest. Are they ongoing? I guess you may not want to give the cops a tip off by answering that question. I don’t know. But are these standoff occupations or are these the sort of thing where contractors are expected to show up to start doing work or cutting and then suddenly those trees have signs that maybe they’re spiked? Or that there’s someone up in the tree very clearly or suspended between two. What has that looked like so far?

Tony: So, the forest is continuously occupied. The activity of the police and the contractors changes almost on a daily basis. Months ago there would be maybe a week of work, or week of attempted work, and then nothing for several weeks. More recently, there’s been a lot of police activity every other day, maybe, the police do sweeps through the forest. Mostly just trying to find and destroy encampments out there. There’s been very minimal work recently. We think that’s due to the presence of people in the forest basically continuously.

TFSR: Are the cops employing a lot of the same infrastructure they’d be using to evict homeless encampments? I mean, around here, forested areas are often, if they’re near enough to the city, places where people camp because there’s shade, and there’s some protection from the elements and a little bit of like, privacy.

Tony: Yeah, exactly. And as a matter of fact, there are houseless people who live in the forest. Generally, there’s people in the city who circulate through the forest. So the police will come in and rip up tents, slash sleeping bags, dump out water, so on and so forth. Sometimes this is houseless people just living in the forest. Also it would it be right to imagine bikers using the paths in the forest while this is happening, I think generally that’s worked to our favor, and kind of lends itself to the novelty of the struggle unlike other land struggles is that there’s kind of an ambiguity of use in the forest. The police will find someone in the forest and there’s a good chance they’ll just tell them to get out of there, because they don’t know if they’re a part of the movement or if they’re just some kids or what.

TFSR: Yes, so that’s an interesting opportunity to make the job of clearing the forest by the cops as an action of urban cleansing, or gentrification. It’s sort of complicating the job of the cops doing that sort of thing in multiple ways, including by actively being in solidarity with folks that are trying to reside in that space.

Tony: Definitely. Another big tool that the movement has utilized that we haven’t talked about is the Week of Actions. So since the start of the movement, there’s been three weeks of action, not including the most recent one. Basically that’s just a kind of invitation to come host events in the forest, come be in the forest, and that draws out a lot of local people into the forest. So not necessarily people who are sleeping there every day, or who are coming out to police raids, but people who want to do fungi walks or people who want to do shows. Things like that.

TFSR: That’s interesting, because it’s also actively creating… I was listening to some podcasts that was like the socialist about city engineering and about reshaping cities in a non capitalist manner. I can drop a link in the show notes if I keep this. It was kind of interesting. I just listened to the first episode of it. But one of the things, one of the points that they made was how American culture didn’t develop around, I guess in some places in the northeast, it did, but like “American Anglo hegemonic culture” didn’t develop around having squares in the middle of cities where people would come and share space and share food and whatever else. A lot of it was based off of people living on the streets together and being neighbors. So you know, you’ve got your Sesame Street model where everyone comes down and shares space and what have you. So by redirecting folks into this space that maybe they didn’t even explore before, like you said, people are learning the terrain, learning the residents of the forest, making relationships, but also integrating it to some degree into their social life and into this cultural resistance that they’ve got going on. I think that’s pretty cool. That’s kind of novel.

Tony: Totally, I jokingly refer to the week of actions to our friends as our Woodstock. I think if you come, if you’re there, it makes sense. You know?

TFSR: There’s a week of action solidarity between July 23 and the 30th announced. What do you think’s gonna happen? Sort of more the same of what you’ve been expressing is going to be happening? How would people join up and participate in this?

Tony: We strive the whole time to create as open a model as possible for participation. The Week of Actions are kind of our attempt to do that in a certain way. If people want to host an event, they’re totally more than welcome to. If people just want to come and experience the forest, that’s fine, too. Generally is is a time where people stay in the forest. I think at the last Week of Action there was maybe 200 people staying in the forest throughout the week.

TFSR: Often when ecological, anti fascist, anti capitalist, and other struggles engage in a location, there’s a narrative that’s drawn that participants are outside agitators getting funding from some shadowy group and are often white middle class folks who have the time and the resources to engage. I wonder like, has this dynamic come up? Can you talk a bit about the wider who’s participating in the local struggle there?

Tony: There’s widespread local participation in the movement. There’s so many facets of it, that it’s impossible to be connected to all of them. There’s this narrative that, like you said, that it’s outside agitators or something of the like. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, if you drive around South Atlanta, there’s ‘Defend the Forest’ signs in people’s yards, there’s ‘Defend the Forest’ signs in businesses windows. I don’t know how else to put it: widespread local participation in the movement. Like I said, from the various kind of DIY cultures, to the kind of broader left. There’s new participation also frequently in the forest. It’s not uncommon to see people you hadn’t seen before or at various events to see groups or people who haven’t participated before. I don’t know what more I can say about that.

Just to speak more about local participation in the movement. The narrative from the police about the movement being made up of outside agitators, comes after the forest was violently raided by the police and a number of the people who are arrested had IDs from outside of the state. That day, I would say within two hours of the raid, a press conference was called by people in the neighborhood, maybe 50 people showed up. As soon as the press showed up, the police left and there was speech after speech from people in Atlanta, from people in the neighborhood, about support for the movement, denouncing the violent activity of the police, and so on and so forth.

It’s also worth mentioning that there’s been a meaningful engagement from the Muskogee in the struggle. There’s been two Muskogee summits in the forest, which is historically referred to as the Weelaunee forest. I believe both summits brought out hundreds of people, Muskogee returning to their ancestral lands.

TFSR: For folks that are considering this or considering seeing if there’s a local event that they can attend to learn more about it, or they want to just do their own research about it. Do you have any resources that you would direct people to on the topic?

Tony: Yeah! You can follow us on social media on Instagram or Twitter @DefendtheAtlantaForest. If you’re interested in the campaign about the contractors, you can visit, StopReevesYoung.com. And if you’re interested in donating, you can visit Opencollective.com/ForestJusticeDefenseFund.

TFSR: Again, that list of upcoming events is at least partially compiled on Scenes From the Atlanta Force, which is scenes.noblogs.org

Tony: Yeah, thanks for saying that.

TFSR: Well cool. Was there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you want to mention during this conversation? I was stoked to get to check out the folks that are putting on a presentation of it upcoming, I think in early July, in at the Lamplighter in Richmond were going to be showing this documentary Riotsville. It looks like it just came out last year or whatever. That’s super fascinating. Considering the tumultuous history of civil rights and Black liberation movements that you’ve mentioned, and the importance of locality of Atlanta in that struggle. It’s cool to look back 50 years and see this this bit of history that definitely leads into today. Especially the US training facilities, that there’s so much footage of there were military. Well, maybe you could talk about the documentary. Have you seen it?

Tony: I have seen it. Yeah, it’s a great documentary. Definitely would recommend checking it out. It shows firsthand, dated 50 years ago, what the type of training will look like that will be occurring here in Atlanta, which is basically just simulated riots. It’s fascinating.

TFSR: Yeah. Like the contextualized decision by the federal government to take the approach, even after these multiple Commission reports that would say, “Here’s why there’s urban unrest, here’s why there’s unrest in Black communities sparked often by the killing of someone by police or by the assassination of a civil rights leader. Here’s what happens. Here’s why it happens. Here’s how they could, if they had the interest, make sure this didn’t happen,” including some of the reports talking about how basically, people need food, shelter, housing, educational opportunities, job opportunities, just all these different social program type stuff, and administration after administration, just saying, “mmmmm or we could just train more National Guard to go out and bayonet them in the streets.”

Tony: I mean, from our perspective Black Hall Studios, action movie production, and police activity is kind of the state’s idea of the future. It’s like, people should sit at home and watch Netflix. And if they don’t, then we have a massive militarized police force to make sure that they do.

TFSR: Batons and circuses. Well, awesome. Thanks a lot, Tony, for having this conversation and for the work y’all are doing and it’s been great to chat with you.

Tony: Yeah, thanks so much.

. … . ..

David Campbell Transcription

David Campbell: So my name is David Campbell, a former Anti Fascist political prisoner and my pronouns are he/him. In January 2018, I was arrested at an Anti Fascist protest and black bloc against an alt-right sort of swanky evening party to celebrate the one year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration. That was in New York, in Manhattan. I’ll just go ahead and give you the whole thing, right?

TFSR: Yeah, totally.

DC: So I got arrested at this Anti Fascist protests that was was pretty mild, but one little pocket of it turned into a brawl late at night, like 1030 at night. There were maybe six people on each side. I participated. Some fascists started swinging on me and I got involved. At some points during this brawl a cop came around the corner, there were no cops around when it started, but this cop came around the corner and without a word he just kind of did a double take and surged toward the first person in black that he saw. That was me. He grabbed me from behind without a word, and threw me to the ground, and broke my leg in two places. He was a much, much bigger guy than me.

There was right wing media there, they were covering it. This cop has to justify the fact that he chose only me and the fact that he’s so much force, he has to cover the fact that he didn’t say, “Stop! Police!” like you’re supposed to. Also, in the course of the brawl, the cop didn’t know this at the time of the arrest, but I did lose my temper and I saw a fash he got on the ground and I went over and kicked him twice. Which is right, but also like it’s not a huge deal to kick someone. It’s like whatever. That guy went to the ER [emergency room]. He was knocked out and went to the ER, but he walked out. He was drunk and belligerent with the cops and wanted to leave the ER before he’s allowed to.

I went to the ER and spent like four days there cuffed to a bed. I got a titanium rod put in my leg. It’s still there. Then I got arraigned on all these crazy charges. I mean, really insane. The cop concocted this narrative that was completely fabricated. After a couple of months we get security camera footage and his narrative was completely thrown out. I was amazed that this did not matter that the cop had just made up a narrative. They were able to just backpedal and say something else was the case. Apparently that did not matter at all. He was clearly lying.

So I fought my case for about two years. It slowly became clearer and clearer that the Manhattan DA was really gunning for me. I was the only person they arrested, even though it was kind of a brawl. Everyone kind of was standing around rubbernecking after I hit the ground, because now there are two people on the ground and there’s a cop there. Not that I want more people to have been arrested, but that’s you would expect that right?

So for a number of reasons, a lot of factors converged. And the DA really wanted to make an example of me. This was the first time this had happened in New York. This was pretty early in the Trump years and a lot of black bloc on alt-right violence or vice versa was happening around the country. It’s Law and Order democratic politics, right? We’re gonna lock people up and you kids will stop this nonsense on our streets. So ultimately, after almost two years, I took a non cooperating plea on two violent felonies for kicking the guy twice while wearing a shoe. That was an important component of my plea, that I was wearing a shoe. Judge asked me that. He was like, “you were wearing a shoe when you kicked this man?” I was like, “Yeah.”

TFSR: You should have taken your crocs off first before kicking.

DC: Yeah, it was like a lightweight like mesh top like running sneaker. I was like, “Really?” I found that incredible. Why would I be wandering around Hell’s Kitchen at 10:30 at night without shoes on. But anyway, I took a non cooperating plea on two violent felonies to serve 18 months on Rikers Island, I served 12. I got a ton of incredible support, which is really I think the takeaway and what we’re mostly here to talk about today, right?

TFSR: Mmmhmm. Was that the event that happened where **Gavin McInnes had the samurai sword and stuff like that?

DC: No, actually. My event is often overlooked and I don’t really talk about the headliners because it’s like the mass shooter thing. I don’t want to give them a publicity boost. So I don’t normally mention the name of the events or whatever, because fuck those guys.

So the event I was arrested at was nine months before the event where Gavin McGinnis came out with a samurai sword and that was a whole thing. That was at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side, also in Manhattan. After that event, on the Upper East Side, there was a brawl between antifascists and Proud Boys, most in uniform. The Proud Boys vastly outnumber the Anti Fascist, I think it was like a dozen Proud Boys on four antifa folks. and The antifa folks ended up getting knocked to the ground and kicked and stomped on the ground.

Now police showed up while this was going on and just dispersed people. After some outcry on social media, police finally started making arrests of Proud Boys. They never found the Anti Fascist folks, never identified or brought them in. Which is great. So these two cases were kind of going on at the same time. Mine, where ultimately what I went down for was kicking a guy on the ground. It was just impossible to get around that. And the other case is the Proud Boy’s case, where he had problems who kicked and stomped people on the ground. There were like 10 Proud Boy defendants.

Amazingly the same DA’s office, the Manhattan DA ‘s office, gave most of them like five days community service, including one guy who had a prior felony conviction. Which you would expect them to go harder on (that’s all I mean by by saying that). The”most vicious” the ones, that they were really gunning for in that Proud Boy group were offered less time than I was ever offered in about half the time. So in like, eight months, they were offered a deal to do eight months on Rikers Island. It took me two years to get to do 12 months on Rikers Island. Those two, John insman and Maxwell Hare, two Proud Boys, turned down that offer, and went to trial, blew trial, and I think should be wrapping up their four year sentences upstate right now.

So those are not the same cases, but those two cases, my case and that Proud Boys Upper Eastside case, we were studying their case very closely, my Defense Committee and myself. My lawyer was skeptical of that as a comparison at first, but eventually she got on board and she even went to the trial of those two Proud Boys, and was like, “yeah, they’re doing this on both sides to make an example of left and right extremists. That’s what’s happening here and you’re the only person on the left. There’s no way around that.”

TFSR: You said that it was a democratic approach towards justice or whatever democratic…

DC: ‘Law and order Democratic politics.’

TFSR: For anyone who may not be… because we’re talking about this happening during the Trump regime, Trump was the federal government, the Democrat that you’re talking about is the Democrats like De Blasio, at that point?

DC: Cyrus Vance was the was the DA for a long time. He’s no longer the DA of Manhattan. Cyrus Vance was celebrated for subpoenaing Trump’s tax returns and securing the Harvey Weinstein conviction after years of pressure and ignoring that pressure and finally caving once it got to a certain fever pitch. But Cyrus Vance and his office, it’s all old school cop loving Law and Order Democrats. That’s what you do, right? You lock people up and be ‘Pro-choice.’

TFSR: People may have been thinking again, that Trump was in office as a Republican regime, the prosecution’s were being pursued by a Republican regime. That’s not the case in this instance. But it doesn’t really make a difference. When you look at the NYPD, and you look at the actual power structure in New York, the party difference doesn’t seem to make a huge amount. It’s all about keeping the machine running and maybe you’ve got a difference in some of the power players and instances, but everyone who’s got some money is getting a cut one way or the other.

DC: Yeah, yeah. I mean, hey man, a lot of people have kept me locked up and drew a paycheck to keep me in a cage. Black and brown working class people, vote Democrat all the way down the line, some of them have much more radical politics than that. That’s been the case in New York City DOC for a long time. Assata Shakur talked about that. A lot of people were pretty down with what she was doing. But guess what, they’re still getting the paycheck at the end of the month to keep her in a box, you know?

TFSR: This might be a good instance to bring up the prosecution of Proud Boys at a federal level happening in the United States. Again, this is under a Democratic regime. So some people on the Right are gonna say, “Oh, look, they’re just prosecuting people on the far Right, but nobody’s going after BLM, antifa, whatever, whatever, from 2020- 2021, or before that. Which is obviously not true, because if anyone listens to our show, they heard an episode a couple of weeks ago where we talked to folks who are supporting prisoners from the 2020 Rebellion.

There’s a concept that a lot of anti fascists adhere to specifically the anti-authoritarian anarchist wing of that movement, which is the ‘three way fight’ model, where you understand that the State and the Fascists are, sometimes they are directly aligned, sometimes they are in opposition to each other to some various degree, the State often wanting to be the mediator of violence, and wanting to get rid of extremes on one end or another. Whatever might destabilize their authoritarian rule. You can see that with Putin, for instance, in Russia where he has prosecuted and broken up far Right street movements only to accept the ones that are incorporated into the State, and definitely attacked antifascist and anarchists and other leftists, in the meantime. I wonder if you have views about this prosecution of the Proud Boys that’s happening here.

DC: I had a friend that supported me during my whole case while I was in. She’s a great person, her hearts in the right place, her politics are more mainstream liberal progressive than my own. She texted me one day with the news headline about Enrique Tarrio being charged with seditious conspiracy, saying it was a great victory or whatever. I didn’t get into it with her. On the one hand, it’s better than if the State was turning a blind eye to that, I think it would be much more dangerous if they were just acting like it didn’t exist at all. On the other hand, there’s a lot of collateral that comes with that. There’s a lot of things, once you start making it easier to lead repression campaigns against extremist movements on the far Right, come back around Boomerang-style on the far Left. What are you going to do? If it’s in the law and you can’t specify far Right. You craft the legislation or the administrative policy without specifying people’s exact political beliefs, right? That’s going to be on the books. It’s going to apply just as well if they want, and they will want at some point, to use it against the far left.

So we’ve seen this historically, things like the mask laws, mask laws that had been used to charge a lot of like black bloc folks and other folks wearing masks at protests for largely originally written to clamp down on the KKK organizing in public spaces while wearing a mask. You see a lot of that kind of stuff. There was a case in France in Lyon where the government forced an antifa group that was pretty active and doing some really badly needed work, Lyon has a huge fash problem, but forced the group to disband. They use an almost 100 year old law that was originally written to clamp down on far right extremist groups. It’s not just paranoia.

At the end of the day, it’s like… Man, I don’t know. I’m not going to shed any tears if Proud Boys go to prison for a long time. Although, don’t send people to prison, that’s stupid. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m very divided on it. I think it’s not a clear cut victory at all. There are a lot of risks with it. I think the important thing is that we have grassroots movements capable of pushing back on the far right. At least as well as the government. That involves everything from writing letters, making phone calls, to street fights, making art, infiltrating the groups, doxxing, building a broad cultural base of support. All that stuff. We have to get really good at that and make that really, really common in order to avoid the State needing to do that in the first place.

TFSR: And then that way we’re sapping power potential from both the State and from the far right. If we’re engaging more actively in these various different ways with our racist Uncle as the trope goes or our neighbors or whatever. We’re definitely stronger that way than simply relying on the cops to resolve our issues.

DC: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

TFSR: You got prosecuted, you went to prison… Can you talk a little bit about your prison time and how you were treated? And how other prisoners viewed you?

DC: Yeah. So I went to jail. I didn’t go to prison. This is like the most confusing thing because they’re not technically different than most of the rest of the English speaking world. Most people use them interchangeably in English. I went to Rikers which is a jail. But I was serving sentenced time, which is pretty rare. Right? So 10% of the people on Rikers are serving sentences. The rest of detained pretrial. Most people serving sentences in the US are in prison. So, the sort of time I did and the terminology that comes with it is a little particular.

I did 12 months on Rikers, it sucked. Don’t go to jail. Don’t go to Rikers… if you can avoid it. Also, don’t let the fash take over. There’s a cost benefit thing we have to do. Unfortunately, it’s built into the risk of antifascist work. You might get arrested, you might go to jail. My numbers came up and that’s where I went. But it was okay. I mean, I wouldn’t do it again, if I had the choice. Meaning, go to jail, I would still choose to go back to the protest that night and confront the fash.

It wasn’t a fun time, but I didn’t have any trouble from other prisons there in terms of my politics, or what I was in for. That was one of the things that when we were negotiating with the DEA, my lawyers and I, we brought up was that I can be in real danger, upstate upstate prison system. A lot of the guards are pretty fashy. They’re pretty small and don’t have a lot of power ,but there are branches of Aryan Brotherhood, you know, white nationalist groups and stuff like that among the prisoners. That could put me in danger. My case had a lot of really sensational coverage from right wing media. There was stuff on Twitter about how I should get the death penalty, or whatever. So I didn’t have any trouble like that Rikers, which is great.

I talked to a lot of guys in Rikers, who had done time upstate because people behind bars, they do a little time here, a little time there. It doesn’t work, people keep going back. So people who have been upstate, most of them said, “Yeah, you probably would have had some sort of trouble upstate, because of your case and it was so public. The guards are all very rural working class white folks who tend to tend to be pretty Trumpy.” So, I didn’t have that trouble at all at Rikers. The overwhelming majority of the guards and the overwhelming majority of the prisoners are working class Black and brown folks and immigrants living in the New York area, or from the New York area. Most of them were pretty down with what I was in for, even if they were pretty apolitical. Because, again, fascism sucks. Fascism has white nationalism as an essential component, right? Because not really any way around it.

So when I spoke with him about what I was in for, which is something that people asked me very often because I kind of stood out in Rikers. I mean, I’m a nerdy white looking guy. There’s a sort of suspicion about guys like me in jail, because guys like me don’t get jail time. The system is a white supremacist system that doesn’t really lock up college educated white folks from a middle class suburban background. That doesn’t happen very often unless you do something pretty dumb. So guys would be like, “what are you in for?” “Well, I beat up a Trump supporter at a protest.” After a while, word starts to spread. After I’d been in for six months, I started to have people coming up to me and be like, “Yo, I heard about you, that’s pretty rad.” Not all the time, but people I didn’t even know throughout my sentence would come up to me be like, “Yo, good job.” [laughs]

TFSR: Yeah. Better than the alternative.

DC: It’s much better than the alternative. The thing about serving time in jail, is that jail is much less comfortable than prison. I never been in prison, and don’t plan to go, but apparently there are more creature comforts. A lot of that, to my understanding, came out of prisoners rights movements and stuff, Attica ’71… It’s basically a way of buying off prisoners so they don’t organize and riot. Which I’m fine with. I’d rather have guys have more comfortable beds and be able to play guitars and stuff in prison, right? There’s not any of that stuff in jail. Guys who have been upstate and served prison time will tell you, “This time goes incredibly slowly and it’s just psychologically torturous compared to doing time upstate. You do time upstate and it flies.” You have so many activities and programs and things you can do, and little tiny creature comforts that you just do not have in jail. It’s crowded, there’s less this this sort of convict culture of respect, where you’re a professional criminal, like it is in prison. There’s some of that, but a lot of people are just like addicted to something and they stole a box of and Amazon trolley and now they’re doing eight months. It’s just the dumbest stuff that people are in for. It’s just a very rowdy chaotic environment.

It’s hard to focus. It took a lot of getting used to, but overall, I made it out okay. I had no fights, and I had no tickets, no infractions. I was inspired by Daniel McGowan, who had no fights, and no tickets and seven and a half years and CMU and the feds, and by David Gilbert, who had no fights no tickets in 40 years in New York State system.

TFSR: Who’s out!

DC: Who is out, free as a bird. Also Daniel, but that’s like old news. He’s out, which is awesome. But I was like, “Well, if those guys can do it, I can make it through on Rikers without a fight without looking like a pushover. There were times when I thought I was gonna have to fight. You know, there were times when I really thought I was gonna get a ticket. You just don’t know. They call it getting caught up. You get caught up in something, you’re doing six months, you have to fight for some reason to save face, because it’ll make your daily life insufferable if you don’t, something goes wrong and now you’re facing 10 years. That can happen, that sort of thing does happen. It didn’t happen to me. I’m very glad to be out.

I got a lot of support while I was in there. That’s the main takeaway for me, is that it’s just incredible. Obviously, the whole experience sucked, but the amount of mail, the amount of books that people were sending me, people that I wasn’t particularly close to beforehand, that would just take my phone calls at all hours. No matter what they were doing, they would just drop whatever they’re doing and talk to me on the phone. People that would come to visit me, including people I don’t even know, would come and visit me at Rikers. I got letters from all around the country all around the world. I got books sent to me by people from all around the country. There’s a fundraiser that all these strangers, people I’d had a class with in college years ago donating money to keep me going and to give me a little padding for when I got out. My defense committee is awesome, did an incredible job. Mad books, baby!

Books, that’s social capital in jail. You got books, you get letters out the wazoo, like, that’s huge. We will will talk about that in a minute. But even before I went away, my defense committee was able to reach out to a number of former political prisoners, and put me in touch with them, and have me talk to them about what it was like to do time as a political prisoner, because that’s a little different from doing time as a “normal prisoner.” It’s a little different in terms of experience. Yeah, but in general, you do get a respect boost. It might be cold comfort to anyone who’s facing charges for something that came out of a protest or something. But look, if you got to do some time, man, and you don’t cooperate with prosecution, you stick to your guns, you go in and you’re very clear about what you’re in for, you’ll get a little bit of a respect boost from people. Not everyone’s gonna care. You might still have some beef with people, but a lot of people are gonna be like, “Listen, I’m gonna pick somebody else to mess with, this person’s in for something they believe in.” That resonates with people, that resonates with people.

So that’s really the thing that sticks with me more than how much the experience sucks, which it did suck. But the solidarity that I got from the get go. Even when I was in the hospital, people were trying to send me stuff. I found out later that they wouldn’t let it through for security reasons, but it’s just incredible. Even after I got out the solidarity just keeps coming. A couple of months after I got out, some guy who had done time for ELF stuff like 15 years ago just gave me a bike. He was like, “Yeah, I’m just gonna give you a bike.” It was a great bike and I make good use of it. Stuff like that. I mean, you can’t make that up and there’s hardly even words to describe that sense of solidarity. So yeah, that’s kind of the the time that I did in a nutshell.

TFSR: I wonder has the movement done an okay job in terms of follow up with post release counseling or putting you in contact with people that have that experience to be able to co-counsel with each other?

DC: Yes, like the post release care. Yeah. So my support did not stop when I crossed that bridge, when I came home. My support has been incredible. A big part of that was a radical therapist that I met. Well, I didn’t just like, run into her in the subway. I was put in touch with her by my defense committee before I went in, before I even knew what kind of deal I would be taking. I was still fighting my case, and it was still very much up in the air if I’d be doing like 30 days community service or seven years hard time Upstate, or if it was like anything in between.

My therapist was incredible, stayed with me the whole time I was locked up. Took my calls. Came to visit. When they shutdown visits because of the first wave, (I was locked up during the first wave) my therapist came to visit me on video visits once they instituted those. After I got out, I went to travel a little bit as much as possible, because it was still pretty crazy COVID times then. I went in October 2019 and I came home in October 2020. So even though I was traveling and stuff a little bit, just around the country, when I got out my therapist was always down to do a session remotely. When I was actually in New York, she was always down to meet up. That’s that’s been really incredible.

Other friends and comrades checking in seeing how I’m doing, again fundraiser money to keep me going without having to just get a day job real quick as soon as you get out, like so many people do, has been huge. I’m very, very grateful for all the support that I’ve gotten. I’m very aware that this experience that I had is far from the norm. I mean, I was rubbing elbows and walking among people who live the real incarceration life. I was locked up and it sucks, but like, I’ve used the term “jail tourist” before, I’m kind of a “jail tourist.” Other guys, they’re there, there again. They know the ins and outs of it. There’s no safety net. There’s a landing pad for them when they come home. Guys are talking about getting out and going straight to the construction site where they know they still have a job. I mean, that’s insane.

TFSR: There’s no shame in the support that you got, obviously, but it could be looked at that sort of thing as like an ideal that we should expand. If there’s these structures that are causing harm to people who don’t have the safety nets, whether it be class or racial privilege, or recidivism.

DC: Yeah. Everybody deserves that. I’m not saying that I’m aware that my case is unique to have it be some white guilt thing. But I think this is the standard that we should be holding ourselves to for everyone. And listen, that’s not always easy. Some people in jail do fucked up stuff, but they still deserve support, and the care that makes people maybe not want to do those things in the future. Besides a lot of other big factors, societal factors that are harder to change. But yeah, I think the kind of support that I got, if everyone had that there would be much less difficulty for people doing time or coming home from it. That’s for sure.

TFSR: We’re talking about this in the context of the July 25 International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners. That’s a fucking mouthful right there. But J25. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that and about some of the components, and if you experienced that directly, that’s great. If not, things like letter writing, I’m sure was the thing that impacted you, and breakdown how that impacted you.

DC: Yeah, so July 25, International Day of Solidarity with Anti Fascist Prisoners started in 2014 I don’t know if you’re gonna get into all this, the history of it and elsewhere.

TFSR: Please do.

DC: It’s 2014, I’m pretty sure, started as a day of solidarity with Jock Palfreeman, an Australian man who was serving 20 year sentence in Bulgaria for defending two young Roma men against far right hooligan mob. He’s out now. Jock is out and did 11 years total. That’s the genesis of the International Day Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners and it’s grown to be much larger and to include pretty much anyone in for a conviction that they took in the course of something that expressly antifascist.

I did get a lot of support for J25 when I was in. But I actually forgot about it. I think I confused it with June 11, which is the Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners. I wasn’t really long term because I was doing a year. There’s no day solidarity for medium term anarchist prisoners. I was between 30 days and 10 years for sure. So, I got a bunch of mail for June 11. And was like, “Oh, that was cool.” It kind of surprised me. And then, I don’t know, I just like I, I just completely forgot about July 25. I started getting all this mail again, around the week of July 25 I was like, “Oh, yeah, there’s another day of solidarity. This summer really rocks!” I got a huge uptick in the volume of mail, including a lot of stuff that was people writing me for the first time. A lot of it was just stuff that said, “Keep your head up. I heard about you, I put $10 on your books, you’ll be home in a few months, you are doing great.” Stuff like that. And that’s awesome. Some 65 year old grandma and Bedstuy just wrote me a letter with like an inspirational quote. I don’t know where she found this thing, it was just printed. It’s like, that’s great. That melts my little heart. It’s incredible. That sort of stuff, there was definitely an increase in that around July 25.

I think there was a funding drive from the International Antifascist Defense Fund around the time. I think they put some money on my books around the time. It makes a big difference. I mean, besides obviously having a line of contact with the outside world, or having money to buy the things you need to commissary, or to buy the things you need or want once you get out, that sense that someone’s taken care of you because they know what you’re in for, and then not know what you’re going through, but like they get it. That’s huge. That’s huge. And your psychological well being, there’s no substitute for that. There’s no faking that.

That extends more broadly to receiving a letter in jail. When you do get a letter in jail, it’s this line of contact to the outside world. Obviously, it’s cool to get updates from people and find out what they’re doing their lives, have someone to talk to that’s not part of all the jailhouse politics and whatever, about what’s going on in there. But also, it’s like, people have not forgotten about me. Like, I’m worth writing to. The institution really tries to beat you down, and just make you a cog in the machine, just a number. Then it’s like, “No, people remember that I’m a full fledged human being and like there are interests that we share. They want to update me on things that have happened with people we both know and care about, or are total strangers.

My defense committee, again, best defense committee ever. We put up a website that went live the day I went in, and on it there was a list of things you could write to me about, my interests and stuff. It was just great idea. I cannot give a big enough shout out to my defense committee. They rock. One of the things was like, “tell me about the last good meal you ate. So I had strangers from London writing me about the lasagna they made it or something. That’s awesome. That’s really incredible. People took the time to do that, and consistently. Sometimes it’s a one off and that’s fine.

So there’s a sensory aspect to it too. Jail is a very bland, drab environment and when you send in something with a holographic stamp on it.. It’s like, “Ooh!” It’s the smallest thing, but it really makes a difference. It’s just kind of like if you see someone walking down the street in the outside world, in regular life, who just has a really loud, wild, fun style. You are like, “Wow, I’m glad that person just walked by me. That rocks.” It’s kind of like that. Those things do matter. There’s also the texture of the paper. Rikers has a pretty loose policy on mail, thankfully. So I was able to get a lot of different types, weights, colors, textures of paper.

There’s a social aspect to receiving mail. If you are getting piles of letters, and piles of books, and some of its international, people look over your shoulder, they can see it’s written in another language or something, people know. People talk in jail, people observe, and people talk. So people are gonna know one way or the other, they’re gonna find out one way or the other. You’re getting all this mail, all these books, some of it’s coming from faraway places, people notice that. So even if it’s subconscious, on some level, they’re like, “Well, a lot of people care about this guy. He’s not nobody. A lot of people think he’s worth communicating with.” It doesn’t mean you won’t have a problem with anyone again, but it increases your worth in those people’s eyes.

That extends to the guards, too. They know that you have people you can contact. They know that they can’t get away with everything with you and sweep it under the rug. Also it serves as proof of the political nature of your case, especially if you’re in jail like me, short term facility, a lot of people lie. A lot of people lie about their charges. A lot of people inflate their charges, where they change the circumstances every time they tell the story. This one guy… it went from he was arrested in a hotel room with a dime bag of crack to like he was driving across the bridge with three helicopters in pursuit…

TFSR: His Grand Theft Auto fantasy?

DC: Yeah just over a few days!

TFSR: It’s a very big bridge.

DC: Yeah… Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of that. Look, people are skeptical and sometimes rightfully so about what you say you’re in for. Well, you get all these radical books and letters and zines and stuff, it’s like, “All right, this dude is clearly into antifascism.” People sending you zines on anti racist action, they like get it. It’s like, “Alright, cool.” So there’s a lot that goes into getting mail in jail besides just emotional support, which is also huge. That’s a huge component. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

TFSR: I know it’s different in different facilities, like you’re talking about the stamps getting through, that’s great. North Carolina, PA, a bunch of states, and this is prisons as opposed to jails, it’s different from facility to facility with jails, county by county. But what can get in obviously, again, will differ. But with books, I’ve heard about people getting just a plethora of books, and then they’re able to loan them out to other folks. So while there’s like a social capital element, you’re also building sociality with other people. You’re maybe giving them a break from some of the monotony, the forced puritanical monotony of jail or prison, and also like making friends, or opening people’s eyes a little bit, or whatever. It seems kind of cool.

DC: Absolutely. Yeah. The books thing. I always had people coming up to me, asking me for books. “Yo, can I take a look at your books.” Some guy I didn’t even know, he’d been in the dorm for like two days. I hadn’t even spoken a word to this guy. He comes up to me one day he goes, “Hey, bro, I see you have a lot of books. Do you have any cool books about aliens?” “I can ask for some. if you want I can ask my friends to send me a book about aliens.” A couple of times, I did that too. Some guy, I forget what he was working on, he was non native English speaker, a Haitian guy, he was trying to practice his English and he wanted a dictionary. I was like, “Listen, man. You should have told me.” I asked my Defense Committee. They bought a used dictionary for two bucks and sent it into me, I gave it to the guy. I mean, you gotta be careful with that, because you can’t give everything to everyone all the time. Right? Then people see that as an opportunity to hit you up for anything they need. But yeah, sharing the books you get is incredible. Zines and stuff, too. I shared a lot of the radical literature I got with people.

And beyond stuff that you loan out to people to build social capital, to make life easier for them, to spread the radical ideas that you care about, there’s the social element of what you read and what people see you reading. Because, again, people see everything in jail. Everything’s in common, right? You are forced to live together. So, I’m a nerdy white guy and I’m reading Assata Shakur’s autobiography, people are like, “Okay, well, it’s probably not a total asshole.” It’s not just for show. I have been meaning to read that book forever. It’s a great book. I’m glad I read it. But people see that and people notice that stuff.

Sometimes Books Through Bars would send me a box full of books. Some of the stuff wasn’t really interesting to me. I think I got like a 900 page global history of soccer. I was like, “I’m not gonna read this.” I’m not. Nothing against soccer, I played it when I was a kid, but I’m not gonna. I have a bunch of books I need to read anyway. So, I gave it to the guy in the bed next to me and he was like, “Awesome!”

TFSR: That’s dope. Do you want to talk about the process of letter writing and keep in mind that as an old person myself, I have noted at letter writing events that sometimes people need a little instruction on how to write a letter, because it’s just not a thing that they grew up having to do?

DC: Yeah, totally. That’s one of the things that struck me when I first got mail in jail. It was so moving that I actually started to cry in the hallway. Thankfully, there was no one around because you’re not really supposed to cry in jail. It surprised me, because I’ve gotten letters before. I’m 35. I know what letters. It means a whole lot when you get a letter when you’re locked up.

So, if you don’t know what to write, first of all, I would advise you to just brainstorm like you would if you’re gonna send an important email. You don’t have to draft it out, but just put some bullet points down on a piece of paper. You want a beginning, middle and end. It’s the first time. Here’s who I am. Here’s what I do. Talk about how you heard about the case or not. Obviously, you don’t want to include anything sensitive, right? It’s probably not going to be read by anybody in the institution, but you don’t know. It also depends on who you’re writing to. I know some of the political prisoners that I write with now, the envelope is always cut open and stapled shut again. So, some bureaucrat has been been looking through that. My stuff was pretty lax at Rikers. There’s a whole lot that I got that I wasn’t supposed to have, in terms of letters, nothing serious. You just want to be conscious of what you’re saying, plot out what you’re gonna say beforehand, if it’s your first time introduce yourself.

In terms of the format, it varies a lot between institutions and jurisdictions. So, whether it’s a jail or prison, what security level it is, what state it is, what locality it is, whether it’s federal, whatever, but it’s hard to go wrong with a plain white sheet of paper and black ballpoint ink. That will almost certainly get through anywhere. Then, once you’ve established contact with the person you’re writing to, you can ask them in a letter written on a plain white sheet of paper in plain black ballpoint ink, “Can you get postcards? Can I send you pictures?” Things like that.

I think a lot of people are hesitant to tell the person about their lives because they feel guilty, saying like, “I went to the waterpark with my kids yesterday, it was awesome.” But like you don’t understand, it’s the opposite when you’re locked up. At least for me and most people that I know that have done time, which now I know a fair amount because I did time. People want to hear that. People live vicariously through you. That’s why I asked people to tell me about the last good meal that they ate and I have no regrets. I imagined a lot of delicious meals while I was locked up. That was actually helpful. So don’t be afraid to tell people what’s going on in your life and what you’ve done that’s good lately. I think a lot of people were maybe hesitant to do that. But that’s actually what people want to hear.

You can also ask the person, “What do they want?” If they don’t need books sent in, are there particular things they’d like to hear about? I just asked people to send me dad jokes or whatever, cat memes, printouts of cats. I love that shit. I’ll take it! So you can ask the person and see what they what they want. I write to Daniel Baker, I’ll talk about him in a minute. He likes lefty song lyrics, the more obscure the better. You print out some lefty song lyrics, and send them over to him, he’s really gonna appreciate that.

It can be a little daunting because people don’t want to take on this commitment that could last for a long time. You write to someone who’s doing 10 years or something people are like, “Wow, do I have to write this guy every two weeks for the next 10 years?” No, I had people who wrote to me and were like, “Hey, I need to take some time for myself. But you know, you come home in a couple months, it’s been real, keep your head up.” That’s just fine. I also had people who weren’t even able to give me that heads up. They told me, “I’m gonna try and write to you every week,” and then I never heard from them again. I have no ill will to those people at all. I’m just glad to have heard from them. That’s not a problem. I don’t know anyone else who’s done time either who’s like mad about somebody who didn’t write enough or only wrote for a couple months?

TFSR: It just seems like good practice to not try not to over-promise. You know?

DC: Yeah. I think that’s important. Trying to over-promise. Disappointment can be really crushing, when you’re locked up, especially. You don’t have that much to look forward to. So try not to over promise. That’s important. But I guess the thing that I mean to say here is if the idea of maintaining correspondence with someone for so long seems daunting, that shouldn’t keep you from writing a letter in the first place. You can just say, “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up. My life is very busy. This is kind of daunting to me.” Honesty is always great, right? Don’t let that keep you from writing that that first letter, if that is a factor.

TFSR: Well, do you want to talk a bit more about July 25th? And some of the prisoners that folks could be doing support for or communicating with or come into contact with?

DC: There’s a great article on It’s Going Down right now about stuff you can do for July 25th. A lot of it is like visibility stuff, you can do a banner drop, posters, stickers, wheat pasting campaigns are all great. You can do a propaganda pic like a rad pic. Get your your hoodies and your ski masks and what are those things called? Flares? That’s before my time. People weren’t standing around with flares when I got locked up. I don’t think so. That’s all publicity stuff. That’s all visibility stuff and that really matters. So if you have an explicit J25 support with antifa prisoners message, that stuff really matters. The It’s Going Down article also suggests dedicating a direct action to incarcerated antifa comrades. It’s a great idea. Don’t tell me about it. I’ll hear about it later. That’s fine.

TFSR: And that whole do a direct action, but don’t tell Dave, in solidarity with people that are behind bars. That’s a commonality of things that I like that’s come out.. I think it came out of the June 11 stuff is… one way that we show solidarity and support to the people that are behind bars for doing a thing is by acting in solidarity and doing the same sort of stuff that they were involved with that got them put away. They don’t have to know specifics, but getting a news clipping… that makes me sound old again too… getting a printout from an online news source saying, like, “Hey! Somebody faced off with this group of knuckleheads in so and so Pennsylvania,” like, whatever.

DC: Yeah, that stuff matters. I was locked up for the Floyd rebellion too. It was just incredible to be getting print outs of that stuff. It was a slightly different struggle. It’s like Black Liberation, but a lot of overlap. It was incredible to be getting that news.

What news you’re allowed to have is pretty heavily restricted in jail. I wanted this article about prisoners in Italy who were sticking it up, who were rioting over COVID conditions, would get rejected by security. So I asked my friend to send it to me in French. So she found a French version article and send it to me. All right, fine. There are no pictures or anything. So like, how are they going to know? I also get so much mail, they’re not going to read through everything.

That’s another thing, if you send a lot of volume, they’re probably going to get sloppy at some point. So another reason to send people lots of letters, is just to keep the haystack big. If you think the regular post office is not great. Imagine the jail post office. Things get lost, things bounce back for no reason, things get censored. That’s something that you do have to temper your expectations to meet. There’s going to be some some bumps in the road when it comes to writing people that are locked up, because the institution is not there to make it easy for you to be in touch with them.

Oh! A benefit punk show! Another thing you can do is throw a benefit punk show.

TFSR: Yeah, and if you don’t have the wherewithal to put together a punk show you can table, like asking the venue or the bands that are playing and putting up a table with some some info about Anti Fascist prisoners or radical prisoners, generally anti racist prisoners, and starting a conversation with folks, or holding a picnic, holding an outdoor food event is the thing that we’ve done in the past for June 11 around here in past years. A nice social gathering that also shares food that checks off a bunch of the boxes.

DC: Exactly. That stuff is pretty easy to put together. You can do it in a fairly short period of time. It’s enjoyable for people who come through whether or not they’re super political. I heard that there were quite a wide variety of people there. It’s just a very good scene. It was a really, really fun time. It’s doesn’t have to be punk either, you can put together a benefit experimental jazz concert, whatever you want. Where’s the intersection of experimental jazz and militant antifascism?

TFSR: There was Fred Ho, for instance. Do you know that name? Co authored a book, I’m forgetting the name of it, but also was a part of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble as well as the monkey orchestra. Both of these were communist. He was a Marxist socialist. There’s an article on Wikipedia about him. Got your answer right there!

DC: Thank you, it’s been bothering me for years. I scratched that itch.

If you don’t have the time or the inclination to write a letter, a lot of political prisoners have book lists. You can find a lot of people’s book lists on sites like Anarchist Black Cross Federation – ABCF.Net. There’s also New York City Anarchist Black Cross. It’s one of the larger and more active Anarchist Black Cross organizations. Anarchist Black Cross, if you don’t know, does a lot of radical prisoner, political prisoners support work, and did a lot of great work for me. Which I really appreciate.

TFSR: New York is a part of the Federation. The Federation has the war chest for supporting prisoners over the long term, which is amazing.

DC: Yeah, so another thing you can do, if you don’t want to write, send books, or do any of the visibility stuff that we talked about, you can just donate. People do need money for this stuff, and these organizations are good for it. They will forward that money to the place that needs to be. You have the international Anti Fascist Defense Fund. That is spelled with a ‘C’ because they’re British, which we won’t hold against them, but should come up if you google it spelled the American way.

TFSR: I’ll link it in the show notes too.

DC: There’s Certain Days, a great collective that produces a radical freedom for political prisoners calendar. Some of the members of the collective were incarcerated. I think they’re all out now. Most of them are out

TFSR: Xinachtli is still in at least.

DC: Xinachtli, Yes. Okay. Certain Days is great though. They have a lot of great info on supporting radical political prisoners.

As for antifa prisoners in the US, we have Daniel Baker. He’s serving four years and he’s got a year and a half left, I think, in the Feds for Facebook posts. He could definitely use books. His wish list is on the ABC website, letters, he loves to get letters. I write to him. Funds, so he has stuff to get by while he’s in and stuff live off when he gets out. Like I said, he loves lefty song lyrics. Any radical song lyrics he wants to end up we would love to have.

There’s Eric King. Eric King has got about a year and a half left as well. He is currently in USP Lee in Virginia, a maximum security federal prison, where there have been explicit threats on his life. So you can call them the North Central Regional Office of the BOP at 913-621-3939. You can spread that word, it’s on Eric Kings website. I think. He’s a great guy who loves to get letters. He’s often on mail ban, like I can never keep track of when he’s allowed to receive letters and what he’s not. So I’ll just write him a letter and see if it bounces back or not. But it’s a really nice guy.

There’s Gage Halupowski, who’s serving six years in Oregon State Prison, participated in one of these large scale street brawls between fash and antifa in Portland. Gage, I used to write to him, but I guess we kind of fell out of contact, but he seems like a really nice guy. He’s got, I think half his sentence under his belt by this point. So like I said, I haven’t talked to him in a while. But I think he’s doing all right, send him letters, send him support, raise awareness, if you can.

Internationally, you have the International antifascist Defense Fund. Amazing organization, does a lot of great work. Did a lot of great work for me. I really can’t speak highly enough of them.

I think a lot of people’s eyes are on Ukraine right now, understandably, so. There are a lot of Anti Fascist and anarchists involved in the struggle against the invasion of Ukraine. And they’re mostly lumped under the umbrella of the Resistance Committee. That’s the anarchist and antifascist coalition for direct resistance to the invasion. They’re funded by something called Operation solidarity. Anarchist Black Cross Dresden in Germany has a lot of good information. I think they’ve really like answered the call to be kind of a relay points for the struggles going on in Eastern Europe. They have a lot of great resources on the website. For support for Belarusian anarchists. There’s branches of ABC in Moscow and Belarus as well. But if you’re looking at to help out comrades who are really in the thick of it right now in Ukraine, I think Anarchist Black Cross Dresden’s website is a good place to get started.

There’s a case in Germany, someone in Lina E, it’s a woman who’s facing some pretty serious charges for allegedly being involved in a number of hammer attacks against Neo Nazis around Germany. I from what I understand stuff in Germany is pretty hot right now. I have very little information about this and what I can find online is all in German. My German is airport level at best. So if you speak German and find out what’s going on there, let me know. I think she was on trial recently, but I really don’t know.

TFSR: I’ll try to put some notes in the show notes about it.

DC: I would love it if you could dig up something on that. I tried to do a little digging, but even in French. I speak French, but there’s not that much. France, I think is okay right now. There was one comrade who just got sprung.

TFSR: Is that the instance of the veteran from Rojava who was facing terrorism charges along with a few other people, the cases got dropped except for against this one individual?

DC: Oh, Libre Flot. That’s the guy who got sprung. He’s out. He went on hunger strike and now he’s out. I think it’s conditional release. I don’t know if the charges have been dropped. But at least he’s not locked up. There were some people facing some serious charges. But thanks in part to funding from the International Antifascist Defense Fund, they all got off, which is great.

Then in Lyon, we had seven anti fascists that were allegedly members of the antifascist group that was ordered to disband by the government. They were facing really, really inflated charges for a street fight that came out at a protest with some far right French folks. They were facing a couple of years for the street fight and they got some funding from international Antifascist Defense Fund that enabled them to hire good lawyers, and they all got off. So you know, there are successes, too.

You know, sometimes, doing time is also in some ways a success. I mean, again, it sucked, but in some ways, I’m proud of my time. I didn’t have to give the State anything. I went in for something I believe in and ultimately, it was way too long for kicking a guy while wearing a shoe, but it’s way less than the State wanted to give me. We talked them way down. They wanted to give me years. So in some ways that’s a victory, you know? I try to see it that way, anyway.

I just want to give a shout out to my man Big Bruce. Big Bruce is a friend of mine from Rikers. He’s not a political prisoner, but he’s a really good guy, and he’s doing a two year bit in the New York State system right now. His name is Bruce Williams, he’s in New York State system. He’d love to hear from you.

Bruce Williams #21R0721

Orleans Correctional Facility

3531 Gaines Basin Rd

Albion, NY 14411

TFSR: I can put his contact info in the with that, or if you send it to me, I’ll definitely put it in the show notes and people can decide to write him a letter or put some money on his books or whatever.

DC: Oh, cool. Yeah, he’s a little hard nosed about getting money. He’s like, “I don’t want your money.” But he will appreciate it. Yeah, letters, books, whatever. I got Books Through Bars to send him a lot of stuff. He’s a really good guy. I was sleeping next to him, in the bed next to him, when when the first wave COVID hit. So he’s really good guy.

TFSR: Dave, was there anything else that you wanted to touch on?

DC: I don’t think so. I think that’s it. It’s been a real pleasure.

TFSR: Mutual.

DC: Sending solidarity to all the Anti Fascist prisoners locked up on the upcoming J25. Yeah, everybody else out there in the struggle, keep your heads up. I guess I’ll give you my my plugs, because that makes sense. One, I am on Twitter, but I don’t really tweet anything, but I’m there. Sometimes I get articles published about jail and stuff and when I do I usually make a little announcement on Twitter. It’s @AB_DAC. And you can find me there. There’s an email there too, that you can hit me up at. If you’re facing political charges, think you might do some time or you know someone who is and you just don’t know where to turn. You can hit me up. I’m happy to talk to you about it. A lot of people did this for me when I was facing time. So I’m more than happy to pay that forward.

I’m also trying to write a memoir about my time as an Anti Fascist political prisoner, because it was pretty wild. So I started a Patreon. It’s just Patreon DavidCampbellDAC. If you can help me get that written. I’m also in grad school right now. So I need some some funding to make this work. I’m making good progress. But that’s what I got to plug.

TFSR: That’s awesome. Thanks a lot for making the time on such short notice to have this conversation and thanks for bringing so much to the table. I really appreciate it. Oh, yeah.

DC: It’s been a real pleasure. It’s been a real pleasure.

The Final Straw Radio Podcast

Stop Cop City + Intl Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners

Stop Cop City + David Campbell on Antifascist Prisoners

Stop Cop City / Defend the Atlanta Forest

David Campbell on Supporting Antifascist Prisoners

David’s former celly who could use some love:

David’s links:

Antifascist Political Prisoner Support Sites:

Specific Antifa Prisoners Mentioned:

Announcements

Jason Walker Transferred, Needs Support

Comrade Z Transferred

Hunger Strike at Granville Correctional in NC

Contact:

Demands include:

A few tips for calls:

Featured Tracks:

Stop Cop City Transcription

David Campbell Transcription

A weekly Anarchist Radio Show & Podcast