As we enter into the 2025 Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, we’re sharing a discussion with three anarchists doing prisoner support in different national contexts, prompted by topics brought by the guests. You’ll hear first from Moshe of ABC Belarus, then Nicole of the Solidarity Apothecary and finally from Anya of Solidarity Zone speak on topics such as service work in solidarity, gendered dynamics of care work, difficulties in organizing ongoing and longterm anti-repression work from within exile and diaspora communities, burnout and self-care.
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ABC Belarus and Solidarity Apothecary are members of the new federation, Solifdarity.International that we spoke about in our August 10th, 2025 episode.
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Featured Track:
- The Sticks by The Budos Band from The Burnt Offering
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Transcription
Masha: My name is Masha. I’m speaking here as an individual, but I’m also part of the Anarchist Black Cross Belarus that has been supporting predominantly anarchist and anti-fascist prisoners in Belarus. And right now, we’ve got around 25 people behind bars, and eight of them are long-term prisoners with ten-plus-year sentences. Also, I was in a relationship with someone who had been in prison for five years. So it might also be useful for this chat where we are speaking about supporting prisoners and what it means for us to be a supporter.
Nicole: Hey, I’m Nicole. I use she/her pronouns. I’m based in the southwest of England. I am from a project called the Solidarity Apothecary. So I focus on supporting people experiencing state violence with herbal medicines. And I’ve been supporting people in prison for over 20 years now. My first boyfriend went to prison when I was 16, and just ever since, I’ve had different friends and comrades inside. And I won’t name the collectives other than the Solidarity Apothecary, because I’ve got my own podcast, so I can’t do this anonymously, unfortunately. But I’ve been involved in a bunch of different prisoner support projects. I have various close friends still in prison who I’m sure I’ll talk about through the interview, and their experiences and how it’s felt supporting them long term, as well as friends who have killed themselves or died in prison as well. Thanks for creating this conversation and this space to talk about all of this stuff.
Anya: I’m Anya. I’m here as an individual, but I’m also a member of the Solidarity Zone collective, which supports those imprisoned for militant anti-war actions in Russia, and mostly all these people we support face long-term imprisonment. And it’s an important conversation for me about long-distance support and about our resources and ability to restore ourselves.
TFSR: Awesome. Thank you all so much for joining and for being willing to share this difficult conversation and all the experience that you have. So we’re here to talk about these difficulties of doing anti-repression work, and in particular in the midst of bad dynamics in society and also repression. I wonder if each of you would talk a bit about the groups that you’ve participated in – you’ve already named some of them – who you’ve supported, and some more about your experiences around incarceration, if you have a history of it, if you’ve been close to people that have experienced that.
Masha: As I said, Anarchist Black Cross is a group that deals with anti-repression work and supporting currently imprisoned comrades in Belarus. After the 2020 big uprising in Belarus against a dictatorship that, unfortunately, wasn’t successful, and the regime still goes on, many of our comrades, including myself, the ones who did not end up in prison yet, had to leave. So we mostly now live in exile, and it makes it problematic actually to support prisoners from another country, and not being able to actually be in touch with them or the families, see faces of people, talk to lawyers and just generally, not share the same space and the same, let’s say, political landscape, with the people that are just left behind there. It’s one thing, which I think for us as a collective, but also as people, gives a lot of this feeling of “we have it better,” that we are not so affected by all this, but actually we are in our own way. And so it’s always this comparison, as in “oh, somebody is in prison for 20 years and I’m just there, living in a European country, and just waking up in my cozy bed” or something like this. In many cases, there’s no space to talk about your own experiences, such as the migration experience, living in exile, and not being able to see your family, or losing all these connections. But at the same time, a lot of guilt or shame for this, for not sticking around, or just not being strong enough. At least me, I felt it in my first year of exiled existence that maybe I should have stayed. It’s very much connected with the inability to continue your political activity as before, and now suddenly seeing yourself as someone who is not there anymore. I think in our case, the problem is mostly that throughout the history of our collective, and because of the security culture in the movement, ABC Belarus has always been an anonymous collective. So it’s never been like people would identify us as members, which made sense because police didn’t come for us in the first place. And this is why we also are able right now to continue the activities, but at the same time, in the movement, we started to represent that structure that would maintain the work – I would call it care work – for on the one hand, it’s political work, because anti-repression and supporting prisoners is political. But at the same time, it becomes a little bit like care work. We become this specialized force that is just maintaining, that is collecting money, that is thinking of how we don’t get burned out and keep doing that, while the rest of the movement can just do their thing.
I’m gonna start with that. I, as I said, used to be someone who was supporting not just my friends and comrades, but also a partner. And I saw what it’s like to see that person being released, and what prison does to a person, and how it’s important and invisible sometimes, all this work of re-socializing that person again. Not in a way that adapts to society, but in the way that adapts even to the movement, that is, 5 or 10 years more advanced than when they were picked up. That is another thing that I’m probably going to explore further. And it’s actually a little bit my fear – our prisoners who are stuck in Belarus right now, what happens after all these years with them when they’ve got out and the movement is literally inexistent, what happens to them and their political ideas. Are we a movement at that time or not?
So all these things are in my head, and I feel a little bit alone with them, because there’s no open space where things like that could be discussed on this level.
Nicole: Over the last 20 years, I’ve been in different crews, and sometimes it’s a small, anonymous, closed anarchist group supporting very specific prisoners who are in prison because they’ve taken some political action, whether that’s a riot, or whether that’s a campaign that they’ve had repression for or direct action or whatever. I forgot to say in an introduction I also did a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence when I was 21, which is where I met lots of close friends who I then continued to support. So then I was in this weird space of wanting to organize solidarity and build an abolitionist anarchist movement to just destroy the fucking prison system and the state. But I was then supporting a lot of people who were just in prison because of class dynamics or trauma, or because they’re a racialized person, and often would be pushing up against other anarchist groups that wouldn’t maybe want to support them because they weren’t “political prisoners.” So I’ve got this whole bugbear about that, around who gets solidarity and who doesn’t? I know that’s a whole other podcast episode. But I think that’s also meant that I’ve done a lot of family campaigning with prisoner families around IPP, the indeterminate sentences in the UK for public protection, which is a kind of life sentence for people where there’s no end date, and you get one for a minor crime. They’re not in existence in the same way anymore, but there are still thousands of people in and out of prison with this IPP sentence. So I’ve done a lot of solidarity work with families, trying to get their loved one free or support their specific person. And I think there’s this whole other layer of doing this work, as an ex-prisoner, because it’s what the comrade mentioned about, you’ve also experienced your own forms of repression, or you still are. I don’t have the experience of living in exile, for example, but I’ve got the experience of being raided and arrested and all of this stuff. And it’s definitely difficult supporting people in prison, because you know exactly what they’re going through. Just the things they describe, the things you’ve seen, people being attacked or hospitalized, or beaten and dragged into solitary confinement, just everything that when you interact with someone, it presses that button of your own trauma. And then, similar to this dynamic, I feel like through my 20s, I just was stuck in this pattern of like “I can’t enjoy my life or experience any freedom because my friends aren’t free, and people aren’t free. And why should I have a break if friends in prison are getting fucking tortured?” And so that led to a huge amount of burnout and a lot of trauma and distress and PTSD stuff, which I’ve now worked through when I talk about a lot, and I talk about herbal medicine in support for trauma and things like that. There are just so many layers. If you’re close friends with someone who’s inside, if you are in love with someone inside, it’s so different. But also, if you’re just a human being that cares about other human beings, and you’re seeing them suffer day in and day out, through sometimes the worst imaginable trauma, it’s hard. And I think the comrade mentioned before me, it’s extremely invisibilized, and I know we’ll talk about that more today. But your friend is somehow completely invisible and going through this traumatic shit, and then your support for them is also somehow completely invisible, without any validation that it’s difficult or necessary work. Because you do feel like you can’t complain because you’ve woken up in a bed, and you can go outside, and you can see the moon, and you can put your feet in the ocean, and your friend can’t. It’s like living some weird double life.
Anya: As for me, I started some years ago as a person who supports friends in detention, and since that time, I have participated in several groups in support of political prisoners and engaged in other kinds of political work. And when the full-scale war in Ukraine began, with a group of friends, at first, we found out that two guys were imprisoned with a very weird situation during the arrest, and we decided to try to find them and offer them our help. And that’s how our group called Solidarity Zone started. Then we found more and more persons imprisoned for direct action against the ongoing war, and in these more than three years, we supported more than 20 persons accused of such cases in Russia.
And for me, it’s important to care about the community as well, who is involved in this political work and the work of care. Because several years ago, I started to organize workshops on activist safety, and it became more and more relevant because of growing repressions and a growing sense of unsafety and vulnerability in communities and different activist groups. And now I see the dynamics I actually don’t in exiled communities and in those who are still inside Russia and working on the ground. I often see people in exile just lose all day energy on organizing, and for many of us, living doesn’t go smoothly. It may involve physical persecution, crossing the border through forests, and many people change several countries before being able to settle down for any extended period of time to be able to organize there. And of course, the difficulties common to any person with an immigration background also do not add any strength and energy for activism. As a result, the post-Russian communities are fragmented, not only by borders and oppression, but also by frustration, burnout, fears and different kinds of internal conflicts.
And secondly, it’s important to note that it’s often the same few people who are involved in the work of care for years, and of course, we have experienced much pain and disillusionment over these years, and have questioned our own labour, objectives, and values more than once. And as for the post-Russian context, I also see the split into talking heads from the activist networks and those engaged in invisible social reproduction itself. And surprisingly, it’s generally FLINTA persons.
TFSR: Just because a lot of the audience in the US may not be familiar with FLINTA, correct me if I’m wrong, but it refers to people, basically, who are not cis men.
Thank you for that. I was thinking because of the amount of experience in this chat, if at any point, right now, I’ve been conducting it like an interview, but if it wants to feel more a panel or a discussion where you all respond to each other’s statements with questions or what have you, I think that would be wonderful. So please feel free, any of you, to jump in at any point if you have a counterpoint, a counterexperience, or something to bolster what someone’s just said. Does that sound okay?
Masha: Cool. Thanks.
Nicole: Sure thing.
TFSR: Cool. Thank you. Otherwise, I’m just going to go along with the flow of the prompts that I sent. What happens when the movement is crushed and support is left within a few hands, often living abroad? What difficulties do you face when you’re hounded into exile?
Masha: As I said, I shared some background information about our movement, and I wanted to expand on the issue of how movements generally function, at least in my part of the world. I’m part of the anarchist movement, which means there’s no party system where people are accepted and then they can’t leave, or maybe they have some consequences before they leave, so it’s not so easy to leave, or we spend 20 years in one party. That doesn’t happen. So, mostly what we are facing is that people come into the movement. They stay there for some years, there is a huge rotation, because people get interested, then they leave. And sometimes they are leaving without even announcing that, and they don’t have to, because they’re not really responsible or accountable to anyone. It makes sense in this situation where you are maybe hunted by the cops all the time, and maybe at some point you realize that, “Okay, I’m interested in the ideas, but also that becomes too dangerous for me, or I can’t keep up with my work,” because, for example, in Belarus, anytime you’re getting detained, you’re also getting fired from work. And then you start looking for another job, and then maybe you have a problem, because there’s a KGB agent who sees you at a new workplace that says no to your application and stuff. So being part of that movement can also destroy family connections and stuff. So I understand why we were so few and that people are coming and going. But at the same time, when you’re exiled, that means for us as a collective, or basically any solidarity group, we’ve got people, our comrades, some are friends, some are partners, and then we are in exile, and then the movement, literally, it deteriorates in a way that it just dissolves itself because we cannot really influence anything in Belarus anymore, so maybe we form some collective around something else, or maybe people just start living their lives. Maybe people just go and work or study or move to other countries. And so what it leaves us with is that people who are not really part of any structured collective that said, “Okay, this is our task, and we want to support prisoners” just feel freer to just say, “Okay, I’m done with this politics, and I’m just living my life”, while the people that you knew are still behind bars. For me, it creates this weird dynamic that we are, in a way, expected, because people can leave only because they know there is some structure that would anyway be there and take care of it. And otherwise they might be feeling that it’s more necessary to say and do something about it. And also because we are not a publishing cooperative that would say, “Okay, we’re tired, or we don’t have ideas anymore, so we disband the collective, and that’s it.” Nobody suffers in this case; you just don’t have any more books. Or you start and stop a podcast, and that’s fine. But how about you say, “Oh, I’m supporting someone in prison,” and you cannot just say, in one year, “Oh, actually, we are dissolving the collective down because we’re tired.” Because the person you supported is actually still in jail. So it makes it a little bit impossible to stop or put on and off your activity, because it’s an external condition that is imposed on you. And when I was listening to what Nicole was saying, I realised that for all 20 years, she had someone in prison to care about, one way or another. And so it makes it literally like your whole life, there would probably not be any window where you can say, “Okay, now there is nobody that I need to care about.” And that’s horrible to hear, but also it’s a reality that we’re in. That is a challenge that I’m seeing, that sometimes when we take on and we say, “Yeah, we are going to put our energy into anti-repression work, then other people can just say “, I just don’t have to do anything, and I can move on.”
I’m not saying this to shame anyone or anything. I’m also not taking up any other struggles that some people might feel that are important. And I understand that, but it’s just this reality. And also in our case, the movement is not really big. Even in Belarus, we had some new people, some new blood. People are growing up, and they become interested. They’re students who are more radical and stuff like this. Being in exile, you can only count on your own diaspora. And this diaspora is very closed up in a way that there are no new people appearing, and there are no new interests emerging among them. And also, the diaspora is very limited in numbers, and the convictions that they have are completely different. So people are dying out in a way. But the cause never stops being relevant. And I think this is something that I’m struggling with in terms of asking myself, “Am I really ready to be in that collective for the next 15-20 years, because there’s more and more people getting their sentences extended, and will I ever allow myself to say, okay now I’m actually moving on, or I want to join another collective?” That also limits my own activism. I had to shut down a lot of my other collectives, or shrink my activity in anything that I might be really interested in doing as an activist, but I’m not doing it anymore, and not doing it so much, just because I have to focus on this one thing. It influences what an activist I am. Being stuck in that care work forever is maybe not what I wanted, but at the same time, I feel trapped in a way. I don’t know if anyone wants to comment on that, too.
Nicole: I’m happy to talk about that feeling of feeling trapped. I think that is a reality. And I recently had a baby, which has been amazing, but it was really putting a line in the sand for me, of “Hey, I matter. My happiness matters, other things I need to do in my life. There is life beyond prison, if that makes sense. And that’s been challenging, because now I just have a whole new form of care work on top of all the other care work that I was doing. But I think for anyone who wants to do prisoner solidarity work, it is worth saying that for a lot of people, it is a short or medium-term experience. Maybe a close friend is inside for a few years, which can still feel a really long time, and it’s a long sentence. But I’m also sometimes frightened of talking so honestly about it, because I’m like, “Why would anyone then want to do this?” If it’s so politically invisible, there’s no social capital to it; it’s just 99% invisible. Maybe there are some nice opportunities, traveling and meeting comrades, or doing speaking tours, things like this. I know that the ABC Belarus crew has lots of amazing merch. There are obviously amazing things that being involved in any movement brings to your life. But I just want people who are listening to reflect that you do have power to interact with it how you want, if that makes sense. I know some people who organize a lot of abolitionist stuff, in the so-called US against new prison builds, and they’ve consciously chosen not to have one-to-one intense support relationships with prisoners, because they can see how much it takes over that other stuff they want to do in terms of really bringing the system down. Maybe it leads on to the next question that you’d prepared, Bursts, about the gender of care work, if you wanted to introduce that, unless the comrade from Solidarity Zone has anything to add as well.
Anya: Yeah, for me, there are several things I would like to say about communities themselves, communities originating from Russia. I see just the beginning of building these connections and learning, for example, from Belarusian communities, because a lot of people used to leave after 2022 when the full-scale war in Ukraine began and repression started to grow. And I think it was a survival mechanism to build these connections between each other, because all of us ended up in very different places, very different contexts. And we had to interact with each other to help each other and learn how to build a movement, finally. And also, connections between people who stay inside these state borders and those who are outside and organize some parts of the work from here that we are able to do from here, I think it’s very necessary to constantly address this community inside, because if you don’t do that, you are just losing the mechanics of this repressive system and the logic of your political work, of your care work as well. And I can share the feeling of being trapped when you, as an individual or as a collective, have taken responsibility for this solidarity, and prison terms in the current Russian context can be 20 years, and it’s as if you can’t burn out or give up. And for me, it’s a scary and powerful thing at the same time. And I feel that I can’t choose any other field, because we are very few. We are 10 people in the collective, and thousands of criminal cases and hundreds against someone with whom we sympathise politically or personally, who we may know.
TFSR: Just to comment on what you all have said, too. As someone who has done anti-repression work for a while as well, including supporting individual prisoners, I’ll attest, it feels very difficult to see suffering and to put in boundaries, to say that this is as much time or energy or as many phone calls as I can take for a period of time, and not to feel burnt out. That’s very much my inclination is to just give it and see this increasing need on the other side, as the state increases or sustains its repression, to see that suffering and be like “Well, I’ve got five more minutes here,” or “I could take the day off of work, or I can do whatever.” It’s hard for me to recognize that I can’t carry everything, I need to be able to sustain myself through the next day, and if I burn myself, I won’t be useful to people. Just to throw that in, too. Moving on to the next prompt. Often, the people who offer support to incarcerated people are relatives or close friends. Most often the work is done mostly by women, like social reproduction or care work more widely. Can you talk about your experience of this?
Nicole: I’m happy to go on that one. It’s so interesting visiting prisons, because you see who the visitors are, and it’s always the mums or their devoted girlfriend or partner of a prisoner. And then you visit a women’s prison, and it’s so rarely the male partners. Most of them get ditched by their partners or whatever when they’re inside. So it does really compound that gendered effect. I think there are so many layers. It’s just so entrenched how we’re so socialized. I’m talking here as a cis woman, and we are so socialized into caring about everyone else’s needs and putting other people above ourselves from such a tiny age. I grew up with a single mum who had very severe mental health issues, lots of depression and suicidality and abusive boyfriends and all the things. And it’s not ironic, but it’s structural that I then ended up repeating these patterns in adulthood, where I’m just endlessly supporting people who are suicidal, mostly because of the state violence they’re experiencing. But I’ve been writing a piece which I haven’t finished yet, about solidarity versus codependency. Where are we getting our sense of self-worth from? And is that relationship healthy and nourishing, or is it reproducing oppressive dynamics? And maybe that blurs into some of the other questions you prepared, but I’m still untangling what it looks like in a relationship with someone when there is such a huge power imbalance. I’ve been the person inside who is dependent on my girlfriend visiting me, and the visits keep me going, and my whole day revolves around lining up in the queue and calling her for those 10 minutes of connection. So I know that pressure from the inside, but I also can see the pressure from the outside. It’s really challenging. Unfortunately, it is just a bigger pattern in the world in terms of patriarchy, of just women’s caring labor is just completely taken for granted and completely expected. That is part of the challenge with prisoner support. People in prison can sometimes- It’s a mix. Some people in prison don’t want to depend on anyone on the outside. They won’t have visits from their family. They’ll cut people off. They just want to go alone. That’s their trauma, a hyperindependence survival pattern. And other people will just really desperately seek support, because you fucking need it when you’re in prison. But that can often mean that there’s a lot of emotional pressure on the person on the outside. And maybe then it feels sometimes something you’re forced into doing rather than something you’re embracing with full consent, the way that you might be forced to do more childcare labor than you are hoping to do or expected to do. Or you’re the daughter, so you’re expected to take care of your elderly parents. Or you’re the only friend that shows up for friends with chronic illnesses or disabilities, or other forms of health challenges, blah, blah, blah. But I feel people listening to this probably know all the things about gender, but it’s just hard because it is just reproduced again in prisoner support. I know some incredible male comrades that do anti-repression work, but it is this thing of who does the sexy public talk where they get a bit more social capital, or a bit more adventure traveling around, and who does the visits and the phone calls, and they’re trying to support someone to not fucking kill themselves that day. And I think that labor is often excruciatingly gendered. But I’m sure that other comrades have lots to say as well. So I’ll stop there.
Masha: I guess I haven’t realized how my gender defines what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and how people see what I’m doing until recently, probably. But I guess I have experienced during when my partner was in jail, there were always people who never asked how you are. They always ask how the partner is, how the person in prison is doing. And most of the people would always want to contact me, but mostly these contacts were limited to actually asking this. As you said, Nicole, there is this power imbalance and power dynamics between the prisoner and the supporter, but also between the supporting person and the movement, because in some way, you become that point of contact for the whole movement, at least in Belarus, it’s like that. Because in Belarus, one cannot visit or call a prisoner unless they are their close relative, a wife or a mom or something. And so these people hold an enormous amount of power in this way. Maybe unwillingly, but basically everyone wants to talk to them and ask about the prisoner, because this is where the information flows from. And so basically what happened is nobody ever asked me about how I handle this. And back then, I was also in my 20s. Probably I wasn’t prepared for questions like that, and I wouldn’t understand why people would care about how I am, because I also felt I’m numbing myself in order not to feel anything. But also, after this experience was over, I also felt, in many ways, like an extension, forever, stuck with that label of a wife of someone. I was in a chat group with some other female supporters, most of them wives or partners of somebody who was in prison. We didn’t have a single man in this chat. So all of them said that the way journalists or the media, or even the anarchist media, ask something about a prisoner, is always focusing on the prisoner. And you’re always a partner of that guy, a partner of, a wife of that guy, a mom of that guy. And in many cases, the journalists don’t even give a name. It’s just enough for them to list you as wife, like “a prisoner met his wife,” and that’s enough. She’s a no-name. And in this way, it’s also a huge setback when somebody decides to break up during somebody’s term. I have heard from some women who decided to break up after the verdict, or just because they didn’t feel like being in this relationship anymore, or the breakup was initiated by the prisoner or something. But anyway, it was always like she was supposed to endure it; she was supposed to be a nicer woman because he had all these bad things happening to him in prison, and she’s on the outside, so she had to handle it in a better way. As Nicole was saying, just understanding that you can be happy, or you have the right to also care about your needs, is not there. And I think I felt that. It’s not that I wanted to break up, but I think that it was always in the background of “how dare I”. Not in that moment, you know. So all this women’s work is there, it’s real. And again, when the person is released, all the attention is for that person, and that person really easily and fast becomes somebody very famous, because everybody wants to talk to them, everybody wants to invite them, and then you are immediately forgotten. Even though, as we said before, before the arrest, for example, both of you were on the same level as activists in some collective. And I think that is something that we should take care of, also as a movement. For example, I haven’t heard any conversation or read any text where people who are supporting are talking about themselves, not about prisoners. There should be just more conversations about that. Including that would make it more reasonable for people to join. As Nicole was saying, it’s not sexy work. Nobody wants to do that because it’s not gratifying. One way to make it visible is through talking about this, and maybe it helps other people who are in a similar situation to understand that there are more people sharing this and create their own spaces to talk about it.
Anya: I often notice that when a woman is called a prisoner’s wife without a name, it’s quite common to say that it’s for her safety. Maybe she wants to remain anonymous, of course, without asking the person herself about her anonymity. I would say that Russian prison culture is very, very patriarchal, and this state, this construction is, I guess, much broader than prison itself, than prison system, and it’s a way that affects how we interact with prison and with prisoners, and how we tell their stories, and how we silence some stories and care less about them. And also, I would like to mention here a project I really love, which is opposing this structural problem of the invisibility of women in prison and the lack of support for incarcerated women. The project is called Zhenskiy Srok (Women’s Term), and there are two female activists who work to support women in prison, not only and not necessarily political ones. Because often women get huge sentences for self-defense, for example, or on drug charges, and often not even their own, but their partners’ or husbands’ drugs. And in most cases, they have absolutely no contact with the outside, not even with letters or calls. And personally, I see their persecution as no less political than one for speaking out. And the girls from Women’s Term, in most cases, are the only ones who help them with defense, with sending parcels and spreading the word about their cases. Of course, I would call everyone to check their work, subscribe to them, and support them in whatever way you feel you can. I see this project as a crucial example of anarchist solidarity in the Russian oppressive context. And now we see more and more cases against women, politically motivated ones. And I still see an imbalance between support given to men, even the number of letters, the number of articles, some public campaigning for men is much bigger than these activities for women prisoners.
TFSR: Because we’re approaching the midpoint of an hour, and I know that Nicole has to go soon, would anyone mind if I skip the next question for the moment, talk about burnout and invite Nicole to respond first, because I know that she’s done a lot of work on this topic?
Masha: I wanted to suggest the same.
TFSR: How do we identify burnout when it arises, and what skills have you learned to combat it, avoid it, or treat it?
Nicole: Ooh, juicy question. I think I’ll just share a little bit about my own experiences, and then what that’s led to, in terms of tools and connections and things. So after I hit maybe the 15-year point or something of really intense stuff of everything I’ve mentioned. I was literally visiting a prison every few days, three prison visits sometimes a week. I realized a third of my life was being spent in prison or traveling to a prison and then doing all this organizing stuff as well, and all prison-related. And my brain just popped, and my nervous system… I had a major nervous system breakdown where I just couldn’t leave the house. Every time my friends rang me from prison, I would violently vomit. It was really, really bad, and I think that was me neglecting the warning signs for a really fucking long time. But in that recovery period, I started literally blogging, writing random posts, I called it “Overcoming Burnout.” And I shared my journey of learning all about the nervous system and polyvagal theory, and what the fight-flight response is, and what cortisol is, and all these stress hormones. And how does this connect to gut health, and how does this connect to- I wrote a post called “Patriarchy makes me tired,” where I was talking about gender dynamics, and I talked a lot about class and, and it’s still really coming from this very white working-class English context where I’m still swimming in a sea of privilege, but, really talking about the violence and the trauma of the prison system and growing up on benefits and all of this stuff, and how it all connects, and blah, blah, blah. And it just went really viral around the world, and people really resonated with it. And so Active Distribution, this anarchist publisher, put it into a book called Overcoming Burnout, which I now sell, and the proceeds go to prison support, basically sending other books to prisoners. And it was this process that led me to really intensely study herbal medicine and do clinical training for four years with a school in Ireland, and do thousands of other studies and different courses about trauma and all of the things. And now I offer support to people as a herbalist, where I’m looking at how plant medicines can support people at various stages. Whether they are in this chronic, unrelenting, stressful situation, because I recognise it’s not just you, individually becoming calm, or sleeping well, or whatever, it is things that are outside of your control. And unfortunately, state repression is something that creates massive uncertainty and unprocessed trauma, and people live with constant threats of, for example, deportation. You can see all these ICE raids in the US, and obviously, they do them in the UK as well. So it’s people are living with this constant state of hyper vigilance and fear, which just wreaks havoc on the body. And there are whole fields of medicine that study- They call it in their statist language “social determinants of health,” but how racism affects your health. How does class affect your health? All of these things, so we can’t separate out the individual from these massive systems of oppression, but at the same time, and I had to learn it all back to front, if that makes sense, I had to learn that we can’t maybe change these massive systems of oppression overnight, and I know the limitations of lifestyle changes, but at the same time, there is a lot we can do, that we have to do to support ourselves, as human beings with a body. And I know people would maybe like to not have a body and emotions, but we do. So how do we tend to our nervous systems? How do we manage our feelings when we’ve had a really stressful phone call with a loved one in prison, or how do we cope with our friend’s cancer diagnosis in prison, or the death of our friend in prison? And how do we keep this work going? And I think there’s so much I’ve learned about practical interventions, supplements, nutrition, and the sleep cycle and trauma therapies. I literally have a whole online course about herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress, which no one is turned away for lack of funds. Hundreds of people join it for free, and I won’t go on a shameless talk about the course, but it’s a resource for people living in states of chronic stress and burnout, and how to work with plant medicines to recover. But in terms of identifying it, I think everyone has their own- I call them “fault lines” in my practice, so when I am getting run down, I’ll get a bit dizzy, I’ll have sort of vertigo and sinus issues. Someone else will have instantaneous loose bowels, or someone else will get neck pain. And I think we have all of these signs that our body is communicating to us that we need different things, we need rest, or we need more affection and intimacy or emotional support or just fucking sleep. But unfortunately, capitalism obviously just teaches us from a very young age to repress our feelings and ignore our bodies and not listen to those signs. So it’s a really life-changing process to become someone who’s aware of their own body and their own needs, and then, God forbid, once you know what your needs are, trying to access them when you’ve been socialized to think that they don’t matter, for example, which is a super gendered, class thing. But I’ve recorded the book as a podcast as well, so people can listen to it for free. That’s on my Solidarity Apothecary website. And I just want to say about burnout that it is a collective responsibility, and I’ve supported so many people go through repression from just the smallest thing, maybe it’s a one-off arrest that doesn’t go anywhere. And I’ve seen the impact of that stressful situation on their nervous system. And then I’ve supported people that have had huge, terrifying cases hanging over them for years, or people that have done 20 years in prison and got out, and have horrific PTSD. I’ve seen that spectrum, but all of these different people who have these different contexts, and we all just come back to the point that we’re just humans that have needs, and trauma ultimately shapes us in different ways. And we can’t recover on our own. For someone to get out of prison, you need to build a sense of safety. But how do you build safety if you don’t have any money and you can’t get a job, and even if you get a job, maybe it’s super precarious, and maybe you don’t have those close relationships and friendships and that social support. We’ve been talking this whole podcast interview between these tensions of how politically recognized prisoner support is, and does it feel a charity thing or whatever, but ultimately keeping a friend alive in prison, to me, felt the epitome of anarchism, because it was like “I am not letting the state kill another friend of mine.” Sorry, I’m very tender cause it’s the anniversary of my friend who killed himself in prison the day before yesterday. So it’s all a bit close at the moment. Lots of anarchist authors have written about the importance of love and relationships. And, ultimately, that is what we’ve got, if that makes sense. And a person in prison isn’t a fucking project. And that’s what’s challenging, is that projects give us structure and boundaries and shared responsibility, but it’s just not possible in a relationship, when you love someone so much to have that system, because we’re just human beings. And, Burst, you mentioned if someone’s called you from prison, you can’t be like “Oh, I have to go now, because I have this thing.” But I just wanted to plug that my friend Kevan Thakrar, a long-term prisoner in the UK who’s in literally the worst conditions of solitary confinement, and has been for a very long time, and he’s just really politically active in his writing and trying to encourage people to support prisoners. And we can put it in the show notes. He wrote a piece called “Prisoners are human beings,” where he critiqued how some people had made him feel when he was in prison. In terms of not replying to him, or treating him this someone to brag about that they’ve got a relationship with him or something, or, just so many different interpersonal dynamics. But I love his writing because he’s just really communicating how vulnerable you are in prison to the relationships that keep you going, and how that can be mistreated by comrades. But, thankfully, everyone on the call, you’re all amazing, dedicated people. So anyway, that was a long run, but I have to get back to the baby. Are there any last comments on that before I go?
TFSR: How do you recognize when you become looked at as a resource by the prisoners that you’re supporting? There was a message thread mentioned earlier about if a prisoner decides to rate you on Google Maps or Yelp as giving poor prisoner solidarity, or not sending enough resources, or whatever the expectations, especially when people are giving so much of themselves and at points, living at a lower economic standard than their comrades that are on the inside. But that’s not a thing that you want to share with the person on the inside, because you’re not trying to make them guilty, but they maybe don’t realize how hard you’re struggling and how much you’re not getting paid for this. It’s not like you’re working for a charity.
Nicole: I’m so lucky that my friends in prison have just been the best friends to me. Taylor’s the one who died, and because I met them in prison, there was this horizontal relationship at the beginning. And then I get out, and then I’m in a position of power somehow. But I’ve never felt taken for granted or dehumanized by them. But I think in other collectives we’re operating sometimes from a place of anonymity, and then it’s a little bit harder. I know, for example, experiences with comrades in Belarus, the number of people inside, and the economic pressure to fundraise for them every single month, so much bigger than what it is in the UK. And you can only spend a certain amount each month. We have a lot of fundraising pressure. But the stakes aren’t as intense. Humans are humans. And there will be difficult dynamics, like someone develops a crush on you, or someone else slags off someone else, or whatever. There are always these relationship challenges, communication challenges. I’ve never had pushback from a prisoner that we’re a charity or that. Think there’s always been an appreciation that support is very grassroots. And I think because it’s such a novelty to people in prison in the UK, most people I’ve met that I’ve organized support for, like IPP prisoners and things, they’ve never had support from anyone, most of their lives. And so to even just receive letters or to be added to a website, or for someone to organize a letter-writing evening. Taylor was trans, so lots of trans groups would organize letter-writing events and send him cards and things. People have no idea how much that meant to him and how different that was to a life of sheer fucking emotional neglect and abuse. People haven’t taken me for granted. I will probably get a backlash for this, but the thing that has frustrated me the most has been other so-called anarchist groups. Someone said about our particular crew: “You’re a bunch of lefty charity workers,” because we were supporting people in prison, and refused to repost action alerts for friends in prison who were IPP prisoners, or “social prisoners.” And that still puts rage in me, because how dare you? When you’re in prison, the difference between someone sending you money so that you can buy some fucking shampoo you like that doesn’t give you a rash. Or you can actually have a snack in the evening to take away the fucking hunger so you can sleep. That isn’t fucking charity work. Okay, I can see some critique of- I love working with prisoners who are really political, who are comrades, who want to build power in prison, who want to unionize, who want to do action alerts. My friend Sam inside is always passing me people’s details because they want to campaign, or fight against some injustice in the prison. Or whistle-blow on something. And I love that. And as anarchists, we should be focusing on organizing the prisoner class and supporting people to fight back against these systems. And that is much better than just “charity work,” but at the same time, I think unless someone has been in fucking prison, to me, they can just shut their fucking mouth if they think it is charity work. Because when you’re inside, I’m sorry, but a letter can sometimes be the difference between someone killing themselves or not, and that, to me, is why it’s so fucking important and should be so politically high up the fucking value ladder of what people think is politically important. There are amazing texts about the Anarchist Black Cross and its history with Anarchist Red Cross and supporting prisoners. And this is part of our legacies and our traditions. So it should be powerful, recognised, sacred work, in my opinion. I can’t remember what the second question was, but I really have to leave. I’m sorry.
TFSR: I think you got it. Thank you so much. You’re lovely. You do great work. Thanks.
Nicole: Very nice to see you all. Okay, take care. Have a good rest of the interview. I can’t wait to hear it.
Masha: Bye, Nicole!
Anya: Thank you, bye.
Masha: I just wanted to comment about that feeling of wanting to vomit when somebody from prison calls you, and you need to again offer some of your energy, and share some of your empathy, and do something about it and be on the supporting side. I guess I felt it. I didn’t feel it back when I was supporting my partner, but only now, when many of my friends and comrades are in prison, and suddenly I needed to start writing a lot of letters again, after five years of not dealing with anybody in prison that I know. I suddenly felt the same feeling that I didn’t want to write a single letter, and I felt so ashamed and so guilty for that, like “Come on, you’re here, you have time. Instead of scrolling through your Instagram, you could write a letter.” I wrote a few, just forcing myself to do that. But then I just realized I just can’t. And so it’s been five years almost, and I haven’t written letters anymore. I still feel bad about it, but I also realized that, okay, maybe I should just accept that this is my boundary on that, and maybe I should just accept that I was traumatized by those five years of supporting my partner and needing to write every day or every second day a letter and be there. It’s just flashing back to me. Maybe one way out of it for me was to actually accept that maybe I prefer to run a fundraiser for someone rather than talk to their relatives, or hear some frustration from a wife of a prisoner that I’m supporting. That should also be normalized, and we have to understand, and also put boundaries in the communication with the people that are involved in the support, that yeah, we are there, but also it’s not 100% that I can always be there for someone, and not with any type of activity, for example. Because you could make demonstrations. You can write letters. You can organize letter writing, you can fundraise. You can give donations yourself. And there are so many ways that you can be in solidarity with someone. And if you want to start doing all of them, you are not enough for that. What also is a little bit haunting me in this way is that I realized that my feeling of failure, or the fact that this movement collapsed, or it’s not anymore in the same shape and form as it used to be, or in the shape and form that I think the prisoners are expecting it to be when they are out. So I feel responsible for how the reality looks and for the world that they’re gonna see when they are released. I feel like I don’t want to talk to or see some of my friends or comrades when they are released, not that I don’t want to see them as people, but it’s more all these uncomfortable conversations about why we found ourselves in this situation, and how are they going to integrate in this world where there’s literally no comrades anymore that they know. I feel that, again, I am responsible for that, or I am responsible for leading them in this world, which I’m not. I don’t have to, but I think that the problem that I mentioned in the first place, that this feeling like a specialized force exerts so much pressure on me that I feel like it’s just me who can do that, and not other people. And if I am the person who says no to this, then I’m going to be the last person who ever hears this question. Like there are no other people, there are no other friends, there are no other comrades who could do things like me. Maybe I am too Mashacentric, in this way, because the world does not spin around me, and in the end, people have other friends and family. But that’s what I wanted to say about this feeling of not wanting to do certain types of activity. I liked how Nicole found her way out of burnout by writing. Because why she started writing about it, I guess, is because she realized, “Okay, this is really affecting me, and so I want to journal”, it’s a way of journaling. You’re writing about something you experience, and then you receive feedback from people who experience the same, or who say, “Yes, this is so important that you’re talking about this.” And then it becomes your passion work, and then you make it politicized. If we’re asking ourselves, what are the ways out? It is probably acknowledging that this is my limit. And now I’m going to talk about this limit so the whole world hears me, and I’m going to write or record something about it, and then I’m going to be in the conversation with the movement about it, and then maybe all of us get some useful stuff from it.
Anya: I had a funny story about letters and responsibility to write it. My ex-partner, with whom I started a relationship after he was in prison, the first question he asked me when we met for the first time was, “Hmm, you haven’t ever written me letters, right?” And I felt it was an attack on me, that I should write him letters, but I didn’t. And about burnout, I tried to keep forcing myself to slow down. And in fact, the more repressive it becomes, the more clearly you realize the impossibility of reaching out to all those you genuinely want to help. For example, I’m horrified by the thought that thousands and thousands of Ukrainians have been kidnapped and incarcerated in Russian prisons, and the community’s efforts are insufficient to even find each of them, and I feel huge responsibility in this case, but I’m learning to recognize that my efforts will always be not enough, which means I just need to do the best I can.
TFSR: I think that’s really insightful. We’ve got the question about toxic dynamics. Because you both addressed burnout, would it be helpful for anyone to readdress that question as a whole? Or do you think that was sufficient on the topic of burnout?
Anya: I think a big role in the emergence of service relationships between prisoners and activists was played, of course, by NGO policies, and their ideas of so called efficiency, and we as a collective get a lot, I would say, too many letters to the collective’s mailbox just asking for money or for a lawyer, even though we constantly remind on our resources, on socials or website, that we are just an ethical collective with crowdfunding sources and without our own foundation, and try to spread the message that anyone can organize a solidarity group on the ground. And often we get passive-aggressive replies in response to us saying, “You can’t help.” I think the Russian propaganda, which paints the image of activists and human rights defenders as some Western-funded agents, is also doing this trick. And for me, it’s not even clear whether it’s necessary to convince some mother of a prisoner that we are actually a group of anarchists who, in addition to organizing, often earn our living costs through other service work, and of course, moments like this make us wonder how and why we got to this point where the desire for solidarity needs to be explained to someone in pre-political categories that have always seemed obvious to me, to us. And of course, it’s angering and disorienting.
Masha: I guess you talked about the service and NGO stuff, rather than the toxic dynamics between supporters and prisoners. I can go on with this service perception of groups that give support. What I find problematic is that they strip you of a political element of your work. Because I said at the beginning, when we were forming the collective for us, it wasn’t like “Okay, we are now just wanting to support prisoners for the rest of our lives and not be activists in any other ways.” No, it was more like “The movement needs that. And so we make a division of activists who remain in the movement and who continue doing political work, because we also see it as political.” And I think unfortunately, after 2020, when we also had to restructure the work of the collective and partly operate in exile and stuff, we also became more like fundraisers, because there’s so many prisoners, and we mostly speak about them and about the money that they need, but also, in many cases the regime prevented the prisoners from talking to solidarity groups, to relatives and producing their political messages. So the trials were held in camera. The correspondence is banned in many ways. And basically, the prisoner becomes this apolitical humanitarian object, I would say, not even a subject. And then we cannot comment on their ideas, because it might be a problem for them. We stopped talking about politics in this way. And then we are also seen mostly as, that we can be approached mostly as “give us money or help us find a lawyer” and stuff like that. It changes your identity in this way. This is not something we want to do. But unfortunately, this is how it is. And also, I was meaning to ask Anya about this, because I think when I first got to know you and the collective and everything, and I realized, “Okay, you have two- Tell me if this is not something that you can or want to talk about publicly, but I’m going to ask about this. Okay, you and some other collectives said, “There is a way to donate to prisoners. And there’s also a way to donate to the collective, to the work and basically sustenance costs of the people in the collective.” For me, that was like “Oh, wow, is it even ‘legal’ to do something like this?” Because we’ve never asked ourselves in the collective, for example, if we can cover any costs. Can we use the money that we receive for ourselves? For me, that was an interesting approach. And I wanted to ask you, how is it going? How are people reacting to this? Are you actually receiving any donations for this work, because I think that this is exactly how we can see if people are even accepting this request for, “Hey, please finance us too, not as a salary, but just because maybe we cannot work while we’re doing this type of activism.” Also I realized how much the work of the collectives are neglected in this way, for example, when I’m comparing this to the Solidarity Collectives in Ukraine, right that are dealing with supporting the anti-authoritarian fighters on the front lines, I’ve talked with them, and they were saying that most of them need some more subsidies, some money from the outside to just keep living, because many of them lost their jobs, some of them are experiencing destructions in their homes, that are not covered by the state, and they need all this money. Some of them get depressed because of the fucking war that has been there for three years. And they’re still afraid or ashamed to ask publicly, for example, to post that you can also donate to our own needs. Because it is not enough, if somebody can die on the front line, they need the money, but not us. I was thinking about it, and if there are any foundations that can help in cases like this. Can they apply to the Anti-Fascist Defence Fund or the Anarchist Defence Fund? Actually, they can’t, because most of these funds support people who are repressed or have suffered something. And war is not repression. Like if your windows are broken because of a bomb, this is not something that any existing foundation that I know of can help with. This also shows how important it is to be in this community, that the community understands that this is not an individual case, that somebody doesn’t have a job, or somebody’s window is broken, or that somebody is depressed because of doing solidarity work for 10 years, or something like this. We started doing our work as a political act, so other people also have to recognise this and do some political acts towards us, because we are still comrades. So coming back to my question, how did it work? Does it work for you to get donations for the work you’re doing, Anya?
Anya: When we invented this call to our audience, we decided to separate donations from people for prisoners and for the collective. For the collective, we started a Patreon page, and all the donations we collect from other sources we spent only on prisoners’ needs. For me, it was the most clear policy for collecting money for us. And we started to do that because some of us ended up in not-so-sweet immigration, like, for example, mine, because I’m in Europe, and some part of our collective is in Georgia or Armenia, where they have no money from the state, or they even have no possibility to find paid work there. And it’s not only a migrant problem. It’s the same for Georgian and Armenian residents. There is not so much work that can cover your very basic needs, rent for your room or flat, and just a very basic menu for everyday survival. So we decided that we really need to support somehow those who are not in a stable situation. I also can’t call my situation stable because of other migrant troubles. It’s an important part to speak about that, that we do this political work and work of care, but we also need to be able to do that. And each of us, I think, knows that it can last for 10 years or more because of huge prison terms, and we don’t know if we can change our living environments for something better. So we need to survive somehow to keep on doing. And for me, it’s important to separate this call to prisoner support in different ways, like financially, with writing letters, with raising awareness and the call to help the collective to go on.
TFSR: Well, the last few responses addressed the prompt about how to socialise the work of prisoner support by finding ways to spread it out further among our movements, so that, in this very clear way, Anya was speaking of getting support in supporting others. That’s really important. Did you have any other thoughts on that before I prompt more about toxic dynamics that can come up with individual prisoners and challenging that?
Masha: Well, I think maybe what would be perfect for me is thinking about this whole concept of “labor division” in the movement, as something that is done on a rotation basis, or something that is not just like suddenly five people decided that they would like to do that, and other 10 people are doing another thing. So it would be perfect, in my ideal world, the movement would be deciding what it needs, in what form and for how long, and then it would basically send people to do the work there. On a rotation basis, understanding that doesn’t have to be always the same people doing the same work forever, but we can all learn how to be in solidarity, how to arrange lawyers. I don’t think it’s possible in the current situation that the movement is facing and the shape of the movement right now, I don’t think we’re ready to work on the collective level, especially in the West, where everything is so individualized and nobody owes anything to anyone anymore. Otherwise, this should be done by the collectives themselves, understanding how to make ourselves resilient in ongoing and long-term work. How is it going to be organized? If we all feel tired, what is our communication, what is our message to the movement about it? And so, rather than finding oneself in this lonely corner, like me, grumpy about some things, probably it makes sense to actually open up and talk to people and say it, and see the response. And then, if there’s no response, then you decide, okay, then I make my decision on an individual level. Am I able to go on, or am I just shutting down some projects, or some areas of activity? So that would probably be the best. But also, what I saw as the best functioning and efficient solidarity groups are usually the people who are the closest to the specific prisoner, because if it’s my friend, I’m usually more motivated to fight for them and wait for them as long as it takes, rather than I’m just joining and then unjoining a group. Maybe it would be better if there were little cluster groups for every prisoner that could, for sure, exchange and use the same resources, for example, rather than there would be one separate specialized group that is doing some things for all prisoners at the same time. That would be my wish, but I’m not sure it’s possible to.
TFSR: Do we want to address specifically toxic dynamics that come up with prisoners and prisoners’ families in terms of charity models, or where do we want to move from here?
Anya: I have a little addition to what I talked about before, which is that at some point, I can understand the prisoners’ relatives when they’re addressing us, we are a source of money. Because most of the prisons in Russia are located in very different regions, and unfortunately, the territory of Russia is too big, and obviously needs to be much smaller. And for prisoners’ friends and family, it can be unaffordable to travel to even visit the person. It’s also, for me, the point of keeping the connection with the movement, with others from outside, because in lots of cases, the families have no chance to meet someone in prison. And I can imagine how it affects seeking money, for financial help in the first place.
Masha: I have something to say about this power dynamics of making a prisoner a humanitarian project. But I don’t know if it’s the topic of our conversation, because it is about the dynamic, and this is what we as a collective have been fighting a little bit recently. But it’s not really about us. It’s more about people on the supporting side deciding what’s best for the prisoner.
TFSR: It feels like it could be, if you do want to talk about it, reflective of- There’s a lack of mutuality that sometimes can develop when somebody is viewed as a project or when we’re viewed as service providers. It does relate to that. So if you do want to go on into that a little bit, then that could be a good topic, and maybe we could have some closing thoughts after.
Masha: Cool, so in our experience as a Belarusian solidarity group supporting prisoners, it’s important to note that anarchists are not the only prisoners in Belarus who are convicted on political grounds. I think it’s several thousand. And so what we’ve been dealing with is that for many of the other prisoners and for their families, in many ways, the fact that somebody from their family gets in jail, they don’t look at this as a political case. They see it as the state is not fair to them, and they choose to either minimize the weight or the influence of the politics in this case, and say, “Oh, this person didn’t do anything, not like the other terrorists.” That now has created the dynamics in which part of this diasporic exiled movement that is intending to free all the political prisoners has started to promote this idea of like “Hey, we need to get back into the dialog with the regime and ask the regime to release all these prisoners that are just soft, nice, kitty cats that haven’t really meant what they did.” And this is usually done by the relatives, because, like I said, relatives in the Belarusian case, became the only point of contact with a prisoner. And so if relatives say, “Oh, our prisoner doesn’t want to be considered a political prisoner because it can harm them.” “Oh, stop writing, stop making solidarity actions, or stop publishing anything about that prisoner, because it can harm them.” What it does is basically it creates another shift, another imbalance in this support work, because suddenly the prisoner and their ideas, the reasons, the motivations why they ended up behind bars, what they feel, how they feel about what their family is doing on the outside, or what their solidarity group is doing on the outside, it becomes negligent and inexistent. And it’s expected from everybody else that we’re not going to publish anything about them, because this can harm, we’re not going to talk about their politics, we’re not going to call them anarchists, because this can be a problem. What we found problematic is that some families really want us, the solidarity group, to shut up about certain things. But we know our comrades, they would most probably be against this, but we cannot confirm it in any way because we are not relatives, and we cannot talk to them directly. It creates this problem that people, the family, however non-political it might be, sometimes it’s even anti-political, or the political views in the family can contradict the prisoner’s political views; they become a caretaker of the prisoner. And their message sounds louder in this way. And this is why we wrote a longer text, unfortunately only in Russian, about this idea of thinking what’s best for the prisoner, or thinking that, “Oh, we should do that, or we should do this.” And also, it creates a lot of divergence between different kinds of prisoners. And this is exactly what the state wants. It wants that the prisoners and their relatives are divided, and some identify themselves as “Oh, we did something unconsciously, we didn’t do it deliberately. Maybe we left a little comment online that was offensive, but we didn’t mean it.” And the others are like the real criminals; they kind of deserve to be in jail. And usually people with the shorter terms prefer to be anonymous, because they’re gonna get out in three years. And they don’t want their case to be publicized, while people who have stints of 20+ years, their families are usually the loudest because they don’t have this hope that the prisoner will be released sooner if they shut up, for example. That’s not going to happen. The idea here is that we, as a collective, are trying to always analyse how much we are playing in this power dynamics and how we end up treating or not treating our prisoners as these “cases” that we just work on, and we are waiting for this case to just be over. We are trying to check ourselves on that, but it’s also quite hard because the public or the families are expecting a completely different thing. The family doesn’t need you to stay an anarchist. They don’t need you to keep to your ideas. They just want you back in the family, and that’s it. And so for us, this is also where the “charitable” and political side of it emerges.
TFSR: Anya, is that a dynamic that you feel like commenting on, or should we just move into closing thoughts?
Anya: I see here actually two problematic, poisonous Soviet narratives. On the one hand, it’s like “Comrade Stalin, a horrible mistake has been made” [allusion to a letter of Nikolai Ezhov, a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, at the height of the Great Purge. Ezhov organized mass arrests, torture, and executions, but he fell out of favor with Stalin and was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge]. It is often reproduced by relatives of the prisoners, as Masha said about innocence and mistake in a criminal case and believing in justice, in our courts and our prison system, which surely can’t work as relatives want to imagine this system. And on the other hand, in relation to our everyday work, everyday political development, another narrative is about the glorification of shop workers and that we are not allowed to have breaks, not allowed to be tired. And the idea of shame because of the need to recover. For me, these two narratives intersect a lot in rhetoric around prisoners and around prison systems. We should work a lot, but we also should be as silent as possible, and we should gain resources, but not write anything that can cause harm to the prisoners and so on.
TFSR: Thank you all for participating in this conversation. I think that you’ve given listeners a lot to think about and hopefully talk about. And I wonder if any of you have any closing thoughts that you want to share with the audience before we end this call, or tell us where we can find out more information about the groups that you participate in and want to uplift.
Masha: I don’t have any more thoughts, just appreciations for creating the space, because I felt like I needed it. Even though I know both Anya and Nicole, and I could talk to them, but I didn’t, because that was not structured in any way. It’s showing that, even though we might know people who might go through the same, we are sometimes struggling with approaching them and learning from them, or sharing some emotional burdens with them. Because in my case, I just feel like, “Okay, that’s going to be just another emotional burden on that person, because they already are having so much on their shoulders.” So thanks for the space, and hopefully it was useful, not only for us, for me, but also for the listeners.
Our group first easily Googled, and you might probably leave some information in the show notes. It’s abc-belarus.org, and we’re welcoming donations, of course, and unfortunately, no letters will reach prisoners in Belarus. As I was saying about this decentralisation of solidarity, we have this project where we are inviting people to create a little solidarity group that doesn’t need to do much other than just gather donations on a monthly basis, and thus cover the expenses of one Belarusian anarchist in prison. That would be immensely helpful for us. Rather than fundraising for all of them, we could have a few groups that would take care of selected prisoners, and then it would lift some burden from us. If you’re interested, talk to us, contact us, and otherwise just stay safe and sane.
Anya: I also would like to say thank you for this conversation. It was really important to me, and I need to think about what we discussed. And I hope this will give some ground to multiple discussions about this labour of care and definitions of care, charity, solidarity, and political work. There are many ways to help each other. And maybe the only thing I didn’t mention yet is that help can be not only financial. In some cases, it can be inviting an activist group to use your lakeside house for a week and just get a chance to switch off from daily struggles. It can be not so visible, but I see now that we have no option to rotate yet, because we are too few, and maybe the only way to go on with this work is to care about each other and develop some ways to care, some dialog, discussion in the movement about ways to recover and mutually reinforce each other. As a collective, we can also be found. I can share links in the chat, and we have a lot of texts on our experiences which we are happy to share with others to involve others and inspire them to create multiple solidarity groups and care about anyone they feel a connection with.
TFSR: Lovely. I really like that idea of sharing lakeside houses with groups that you have respect for. I think that’s a really nice idea. So if anyone has a beachfront property in North Carolina that they want to share, they can contact the show hosts. We’re happy to do that, take advantage of it. Thank you, all of you, for participating in this conversation again. And yeah, solidarity!
Masha: Thanks for having us and organizing it.
TFSR: Yeah, pleasure.