It Could Happen Here - International Day of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

James and Robert sit down with members of the Anarchist Black Cross and the campaign to free Marius Mason to discuss solidarity with incarcerated anarchists”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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See you there. My chickens just come to me. You don't catch them. You just have to... Tox them. Yeah. It's love, not coercion. That is how you catch a chicken, which is not what this podcast is about, is it, Robert?

No, it's not. No, unfortunate. We're doing the Catching Chickens episode next week. But today we are joined by three guests. We have Ava, Mo, and Wode. And they're going to be talking to us about solidarity with anarchist prisoners and how you can do that and why you should do that and why people have been doing that for a long time. So would you guys like to introduce yourselves and just tell us your names and

any relevant affiliations and your pronouns? I'm Ava, she, her. I've been working with June 11th for about a handful of years now and been doing prisoner support for almost 10 years now. I'm Maura Meltzer-Cohen. Everyone calls me Mo. My pronouns are they or Mo. And I'm an attorney and I do a lot of work with political prisoners, people facing politically motivated prosecutions and incarcerated people who need gender affirming care. Excellent. Yeah, very important stuff. Hey, my name is Wode. I use he, him pronouns. I've been involved in prisoner support for 25 plus years and enjoying anarchist related activities for longer than that. So I think if we start off with perhaps explaining like what June 11th is and sort of the history

of it, why this is a day that people can show their solidarity with anarchist prisoners, that would be great. And just wonder if you want to talk about that. Yeah. So June 11th started as a day of solidarity with Jeff Lohrs when he was serving like a 20, 22 year sentence for torching some SUVs. But eventually he was able to get his sentence shortened and he got out. And at that point, Marius Mason and Eric McDavid were in prison with 20 year sentences for eco sabotage activity or in Eric's case being entrapped for such and so it eventually changed

to be about Marius and Eric after Jeff was released and then Eric McDavid also got out of prison and since then it expanded to all long-term anarchist prisoners I wonder like obviously we're in like April now people have a few months before June 11th and they might be interested in doing this. They might not know any people directly that are incarcerated or they might not have had any experience with that sort of in their close circles.

So if we start with like how people can show solidarity like to incarcerated people, I think that would be great. And so are there like things that people can do? How can they do that? Like, so that people, I think that would be great. So are there things that people can do? How can they do that so that people, I guess, people who are incarcerated can hear them or hear from them? Yeah, I mean, writing letters is kind of the classic go-to. There's also ways to communicate digitally or over the phone

with people locked up. Putting money on someone's books goes a long way. Everything is extremely overpriced in prison and monopolized by the corporations that provide those services. But I mean, if you're looking for people, you have stuff in common with, particularly political things,

kind of carrying on the struggle and including their name in those activities is part of that. And if you are in communication with them, talking to them about those things, getting their input and helping them feel included in those struggles goes possibly the longest way. Yeah.

I think that's such an important point because like when you're talking about someone, for example, who's been like entrapped by the feds or whatever law enforcement agency was responsible for it. Like you're you're talking about a strategic pattern that the state uses to clamp down on resistance. And the efficacy of that strategy is entirely determined by their ability to kind of break people and to break movements by both making people suspicious of each other and by, you know, locking up and damaging the people who are kind of most prone to action. And I think doing stuff like this, like not only helps kind of heal those, the distrust that is inherently planted by the state when they do stuff like this, but also helps the people who are kind of most targeted and who have suffered the most for the cause, not feel like they're swinging in the wind, you know? Yeah, I think it helps mitigate the fear of repression and arrests and

especially things like terrorism enhancements yeah when people know that like they're not they're not going to be alone when they're in prison even if it is for decades like there's going to be people supporting them and writing them and fundraising for them and like including them in their projects like the entire time yeah i would say too that anytime a movement or something becomes more effective, they become the focus of the state tends to sharpen on them. And a lot of the prisoners that have been supported around the June 11th Day of Solidarity were involved in environmental and animalids activities that were particularly effective and particularly destructive in a positive sense, particularly like the ALF and ELF actions in the 90s,

but on this very intense repression in the early 2000s that came to be called the Green Scare. Yeah, kind of our theme for this year is that that repression like doesn't work all these like movements and struggles and activities continue um even despite that kind of repression like there's still you know activity um in defense of the earth and animals um and land defense and there's still like um really militant queer self-defense and there's still a lot of like a ton of activity against police and against racist police violence and murder. And like as much of those, as much as

those things are repressed, like it doesn't stop them and they just keep getting stronger. I think the only thing I would add to that is one of the most important things about doing political prisoner support or prisoner support in general, is that the state really does work to criminalize politically motivated behavior and politically motivated beliefs, which functions pretty effectively to distract from the central message of social movements, whatever social movement it may be, and providing prisoner support and continuing to keep people who are in prison apprised of those struggles, continuing to engage in those struggles, can really function to refocus on that central message, even despite the fact that state repression is a very effective drain on movement resources and a very effective distraction from movement messaging.

the speed and uh like severity with which the state kind of cracked down on that and attempted to infiltrate it attempted to create suspicion attempted to create fear um was like i think most people listening might be familiar with that even if they're not familiar with the green scare or like previous incidents and it's not um just like i know we have people listening in other countries this is not just a america thing right like british cops literally fucking married people uh in the like in the early 2000s it's part of their undercover situation um one of them also went to clown school which is funny uh that is a charming story yeah it's one of the not to refer to the police academy that way yeah i guess they all went to clown school in a sense

yeah so yeah we'll do we'll do our long promise clown block episode one day Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

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and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Mo, I know you have some insight into Mario's case as his lawyer, right? So could you explain a little bit about about that case if people can understand

like how a politically motivated prosecution works in the uh supposed justice system that we have uh so just to clarify i represent marius now and i do advocacy for him while he is confined i was find. I was not his criminal defense attorney. So Marius was active in the very late 90s and early 2000s. And the investigations that were going on at that time in the state repression that was focused on the movements against environmental degradation was deep and concerted and went on for many, many years. And that's sort of what we refer to as the green scare, right? The criminalizing of environmental movements. And I talk about criminalized behavior and criminalized identity a lot. So I'm actually just going to take a second and explain what I mean by that. Yes, please.

So the criminalization of identity refers to where law enforcement and the state are policing, monitoring, targeting identity rather than unlawful conduct. And the criminalization of belief, similarly, refers to the state targeting people on the basis of their beliefs rather than on the basis of unlawful conduct. So movements, social movements, there's a very long and well-documented history of social movements being criminalized by the state, even in the absence of any unlawful behavior. least targeted, infiltrated, and many federal grand juries and setups and entrapments and successful prosecutions stemmed from that criminalizing of environmental movements. And Marius's case was among those. Basically, the state managed to turn Marius's former partner into an asset, um, and effectively charged him, prosecuted him for, um, several acts of, um, politically motivated, uh, destruction of property, all of which were calculated not to harm human beings. He pled guilty and was sentenced in 2009. Had the offenses to which he pled guilty not been perceived as politically

motivated, he would have probably gotten about seven years because the prosecution argued that his behavior was politically motivated, which I mean, I think is true. which increased the severity of his punishment on the basis of how serious an offender he was then deemed to be. The prosecution asked for 20 years. The judge imposed 22. So here's an example of how beliefs are criminalized. At his sentencing, the judge and the prosecution both invoked and referred to what I think most of us would view as really unremarkable political behavior in ways that really cast it as very sinister. And so Marius's contact with people who were on his support committee, who were engaged in various kinds of civil disobedience, about which Marius likely knew nothing, was cast as Marius being in continued contact with people engaged in crimes,

which was a violation or would have been a violation of his bond conditions. And on the basis of that claim that Marius was violating his bond conditions by being in touch with these people, who again were engaged in what I think most of us would see as completely unremarkable civil disobedience, constitutionally protected political behavior. This was one of the bases on which the judge imposed this sentence that was even longer than the prosecution had asked for. And there's a number of other examples of this kind of criminalization of routine political behavior, one of which is very significant, which is that when Marius finally went to prison, he started a reading group. And based on the content

of the books that they were reading, he was transferred from a lower security facility pretty close to his family to a facility and not just a facility, but a particular wing of a facility, which was the administrative segregation unit at FMC Carswell in Texas, which was much, much farther from his family. father from his family and was involved all kinds of extremely stringent conditions that I would argue were First Amendment violations. So, you know, we see not only the really intense surveillance and targeting of social movements, but the really disproportionate punishments and sort of retaliatory behaviors all the way down, all the way from investigation through to incarceration and conditions of confinement. That's atrocious, obviously. So I wonder, when you receive those, maybe perhaps we should first explain what a terrorism enhancement is in case people aren't familiar. It is a, what's called a sentencing enhancement, and it allows, it authorizes, or in some cases requires a judge to impose a harsher sentence for behavior that's intended to, I don't remember what the exact language is, but it imposes a harsher sentence for unlawful acts

that are intended to intimidate or coerce the public or public institutions. Okay, so that's what increased, like, nearly tripled that sentence in that case, yeah. And was that specifically, like, because he'd expressed like anarchist ideas or just because it was like his actions were in sort of furtherance of that earth liberation front kind of goals i think it was explicitly because it was an elf associated

action yeah right yeah it was part of this crackdown on, on environmental movements. It's similar to what we're seeing in Atlanta right now, like right down to the terrorism enhancements. What we're seeing in Atlanta right now is actually a little bit more astonishing just in terms of, first of all, we're not really seeing necessarily a terrorism enhancement.

There is a statute that criminalizes what they are calling domestic terrorism. It operates similarly, right? There's a predicate act. And then if it's politically motivated, you know, so you could, for example, potentially have something like politically motivated trespass, right? Or politically motivated graffiti. Right. Or politically motivated graffiti. And they could charge it as domestic terrorism. The enhancement is a is a sentencing mechanism. But it certainly is not new. What we're seeing in Atlanta, I would say, is it is a continuation of the same kind of targeted policing efforts to chill social movements efforts to disrupt social movements to isolate people to fractionate movements

it's the same kind of thing that we have seen really since the beginning of policing in this country and that makes a lot of sense when you consider like the uh the role of the police within the state and the goals of some of these social movements right which we're probably to have to explain that in detail for people to understand what's going on so like with these people facing you mentioned a couple of the other people who had faced political prosecutions and were incarcerated and then had their sentences reduced. Maybe we could explain like how that was able to happen, right?

Because that's obviously like a desirable outcome. I don't know the legal things that happened for that, but it was like in the courtroom kind of a solution. Okay. Yeah. I'm curious just kind of in general, since you've all had more contact with these folks who are incarcerated and have been kind of the victims of this, this state violence, when they talk about like,

what is kind of meaningful to them in terms of outside connections, in terms of like, you know, what we're talking about here. What kind of stuff do they bring up as like having a positive impact on on their mental health, on their kind of ability to endure what they're what they're going through? First, I would say that communication is a big thing, like being able to talk to people, to write with people. is a big thing like being able to talk to people to write with people um and you know a long-term like regular correspondence is great but even just like little messages of solidarity can be really meaningful um material support is always huge like that's going to make somebody's time a little bit better if they can get stuff off a commissary you know buy enough stamps all those things um but a thing that I hear a lot is like, people want to see the, the projects and the struggles that they're involved in continue.

Um, so if that's like defense of the earth, if that's against the police or, or whatever it is, like people like to see that, um, cause it's, you know, it's not just about their own case, but yeah, about those movements that they come from. And, um, or if somebody is's you know it's not just about their own case but yeah about those movements that they come from and um or if somebody's you know radicalized inside these things that they have um committed to and and been written from participating in in a huge way not entirely but you know people like to see to see that continue and see um see victories see like creative attempts and um things like that. That makes a lot of sense, I think.

So for people, I know, I'll sometimes write to incarcerated people for various things. And it can be quite difficult to work out the process of doing that. And it can be especially difficult. It was especially difficult during the worst of the

COVID kind of lockdowns and such. I was trying to write to a guy in one federal, in Terre Haute, and they wouldn't let the person email me because they claimed that the keyboard was like a high touch surface and this, yeah, right? Which people getting covered in in this facility all the time uh but how how would folks go about like let's say they wanted to to write to marius and just say like um you know we wanted to express the solidarity and and say sucks that this is happening to you or whatever how would they go about doing that there's a couple of things that are specific with marius that i I will want to tell you, but you can go to, if you Google inmate locator BOP, you can search Marius's name or the name of

any other prisoner. And you'll basically end up with, it'll show you their information, including where they are confined. And you can usually click on the name of the facility, and it will take you to the website for that facility and show you how to send mail to the prisoner. There's also if you go to nycabc.wordpress.com or any of the other anarchist black cross websites. NYC ABC is my home chapter, so that's the one I'm familiar with. But if you go to the anarchist black cross websites, there are zines and I think a whole list that is pretty well updated of all of the anarchist political prisoners and instructions on how to write to them. One of the things that is on those websites that I would highly encourage you

to take seriously are instructions about how to responsibly write to people who are under increased monitoring and surveillance while they are being confined, because retaliation against prisoners, even for things that the prisoners themselves have not done, is very commonplace. And so if somebody, while we very much want to make sure we keep in touch with people and give them news of the outside world, including news about their social movements, one thing that can happen is that those letters simply will not be delivered. And another thing that might happen is that the prisoner themselves may face disciplinary consequences formally or informally, just as a result of having been the intended recipient of that news. So, you know, I would say, as I often say, discretion is the better part of valor in this instance. I think you have to have a kind of a first do no harm attitude about this, where like

at the end of the day regardless of like your anger or your desire to talk about you know certain uh things your your primary concern here has to be not making things worse for somebody who's already in a terrible situation yes and and i would also like to point out that prisoner mail is monitored. Oh, yeah. And so among other things, you might be making things worse for yourself. Yeah. So I would be cautious and circumspect about what you write to people whose mail is being read. The other thing is, with respect to Marius in particular, unfortunately, in order to get mail to him, you still have to dead name him. And if you want to hear more about that particular set of struggles, I'm happy to talk about it. But suffice it to say for now that if you go to

supportmariusmason.org, there should be some instructions about how to write to him. And I'll make sure that the support group puts up clear instructions. But unfortunately, you do have to put his dead name on that envelope or it will not get to him. It's extremely frustrating. Yeah, it can be really annoying, especially if you're trying to look for somebody using the locator and it has a gender notifier and it's not the correct gender notifier and yeah

um that can be difficult uh but like yeah it's an effort worth making right and it really can help someone who's going through a difficult time yeah and people do have really specific interests apart from movement work as well um and, Marius paints, he sent me this incredible, he sent me a number of paintings over the years. I have one, actually, that I think I shared with you earlier, Sacco and Vanzetti, that he made. He sent me a really great portrait of Jimmy Page once. He also recently sent me a beautiful scarf that he had knitted or crocheted i guess um people have hobbies people have interests and they're happy to talk about those things as well yeah that's what makes us like a whole person right and i think having a little bit of that helps you to

keep that little part of yourself in in a where it could be a difficult place so yeah hopefully people can send crochet letters should we have some keen crochet listeners. This is probably the part of the podcast where we stop and make ourselves amenable to capitalism by doing an ad break. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente. It's Honey German. And I'm bringing you Gracias Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game.

If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community,

and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture

in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. I wonder, like, what can people do on June 11th? Obviously, like, people should keep on this

ongoing correspondence. I think that's really important. And I was speaking to someone from their Leonard Peltier, free Leonard Peltier group the other day, and I know a lot of people write to Leonard Peltier, and I know that that's a great source of strength for him, especially as he's aging in prison. I was wondering what people could do on June 11th to sort of further discourse, spread the word, take actions of solidarity, what kind of things do people do? June 11th activities, actions in, actions in solidarity, uh,

really run the gambit. Um, you know, it's been very popular to have like a barbecue or a benefit show, um, things to raise money. And then there's, um, actions that more, have more in common with, um, why some of these people were incarcerated. Uh, and like, if you check the website, june11.org, there's a list of previous actions that people have taken and the whole gambit of activities that people have participated in.

I know with the revitalization of this as an international day of solidarity, there was an interest in trying to think outside the box more. You know, it's difficult to, like, no one's going to reinvent the wheel. Or, you know, maybe that's as much as they're doing. But there's a variety of different activities. And last year's theme was sort of like doing something different than you might normally do to just diversify what is happening. One of my dreams for June 11th is for it to be an opportunity for our movement prisoners to be integrated into other things.

So it doesn't have to just be, oh, this is like the prisoner support activity or like we're just going to write letters but you know people do things like art shows um like mo mentioned like a lot of people paint a lot of people write poetry and to integrate that into like maybe already have like you know a community around poetry readings or something like that um and just to bring that into into into whatever little corner of the world or whatever kind of activities that we're already involved in, for these things to reference each other, right? We reference our prisoners and they can reference these things that are happening outside that are integrating them. One of the things that since I've been involved, that since I've been involved,

a lot of times we try to elicit or solicit statements from the people we represent. I have been to a number of really wonderful June 11th activities that have included an art show, a number of punk shows in various people's basements. And I think as just an individual, I mean, first of all,

I think it's a great opportunity to do community building, to do letter writing. But I think it's also something that even if you are, you know, relatively isolated, you know, you can just make a commitment today, I'm going to send five bucks to somebody's commissary um yeah i think i was looking back at one of marius's previous june 11th statements and one of the things he referred to was um a civil rights attorney that he'd worked with was asked, you know, what does the movement need most? And he responded, everything is everything. Meaning, you know, anything, any advocacy that you do in one area will redound to the benefit of all of the rest of us and all of the other areas. And I have found that to be true. And I have found that specifically to be true even in terms of the legal effects of doing advocacy for Marius has had really huge benefits

for other trans folks who are in prison who I've represented. And then doing advocacy for those folks has had really incredible benefits for Marius. So, I mean, I think it is materially the case that, you know, you struggle where you are, you do what you can on June 11th or any other day. And, you know, you move the needle. Yeah, I think that's very, it's well said. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's very, it's well said. Yeah, absolutely. You know, June 11th is specifically for people who have long sentences. And that's really about like the increased risk of just kind of like falling to the back burner as there's new like waves of struggle and, you know, new emergencies and crises all the time. This is an opportunity to like really take a moment to really focus on that memory.

And so I hope with June 11th, we can like kind of build bridges like generationally, you know, like I wasn't really around when Marius, you know, during the green scare and Marius got arrested. And it's something that I learned about and got involved in later. And I hope that, you know, with new people that we meet to new people who like we share projects with, we can tell them about our prisoners. And also, you know, where I happen to live, there's occasionally I meet somebody who used to know Marius from, you know, 20 years ago. And so kind of in both directions, like into the past and into,

into the future, like, yeah, just trying to spread awareness about these people. Yeah. I think that's super cool. Yeah. I think it's, it's so important to look at this as part of a long struggle and that's, you know, what you and Moira are both talking about in terms of it's, it's building connections it's um it's kind of this like the sedimentary layer uh uh that that creates the actual foundation for for positive change and you know we we have there's this kind of hollywood brain thing i think we all have where we're we get bent out of shape when when change doesn't kind of come in the form of these kind of calamitous moments and kind of culminations of struggles and stuff. process of showing up for the people who are casualties, you know, who are being, who are being, who are suffering the most for it. And part of it is kind of the, the, the, the way in which

that allows you to kind of build networks of solidarity that are the necessary foundation for continuing the struggle. Absolutely. I, I would say that in the years that I've been doing this work, one of the most important parts of it is being really consistent in showing up for the people who are being horrendously punished, because that's the only way that everybody understands that they will be taken care of. Right. But speaking of winning, I do have an update, if you have a second, on another June 11th prisoner, Eric King. Yeah. From my beloved colleague, Sandy Freeman,

who represented him successfully recently and got a not guilty verdict for him after he was charged with assaulting a corrections officer, which is, I mean, if you know anything about federal indictments, a magnificent coup. So Eric currently has a Klan Act conspiracy and Bivens lawsuit pending against more than 40 state defendants. His team is trying to achieve release from the ADX via a writ of habeas corpus. He's not currently getting access to communications, visits, or programming, not currently getting access to communications visits or programming. But he is still strong and resilient.

And his recent victories are an object lesson in the fact that we really can fight back and win. Please donate to his support fund and please uplift what is happening because this is the future for anti-fascists in the Bureau of Prisons. Nevertheless, we do continue to struggle and sometimes even to win. And I think our stories of triumph are not frequently enough told. And so one thing that we could do this June 11th is try to gather all of those stories and make sure that those stories do get told. I think it's really important, like you said, to see these little victories

and not to see it as distinct from a broader struggle. If we want to do anarchism and build ways of taking care of each other outside of the state, then we need to take care of people who are victimized by the state. And this is part of doing that. We're proving we can do it by doing it, right? And like Robert said, we're not going to storm the Winter Palace necessarily.

We can build our power in different ways. And this is a way of doing that. I'm thinking of like in more international like cases i know for instance that um where i come from the british government fucking loves to put uh people who volunteered to fight for the ypg in prison or their parents if they send them money for food which yeah great country but i know that like all over the world i can in spain and catalonia where i've lived like this is a thing too. Are there any other international cases that you want to draw attention to?

Sure. Currently, right now, Alfredo Caspito in Italy has been on hunger strike since October against the particularly isolating and particularly repressive 41-piece prison. It's what he calls a non-life in there. It's a prison that was primarily used against mafia bosses, but, um, you know, in the classic state misinterpreting, uh, anarchism has considered Alfredo a leader and, and, and particularly, and so locked him away, um, without access to almost any means of communication. And, uh,

and so he's, he's had a lot of health problems as a result of this. You know, he was originally locked in, um, for shooting a nuclear executive in the knee, uh, after some particular callous remarks from him following the Fukushima disaster. And, um, and that nuclear companies has ties with the larger war machine, the manufacturing of weapons for war. And he's caught other charges while being in prison

for previously alleged activities, including just being an anarchist, essentially, kind of what you talked about, straight criminalizing political sensibilities. You know, Italy has been doing that. Chile has been doing that previously against people like Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar, who have been in and out of prison for years now and are currently facing more charges for allegedly sending bombs to police training facilities and such down in Chile. And in your own England, Toby Shone is someone who got out recently after receiving terrorist charges for allegedly being involved in

an anarchist website called 325 and financing terrorism through accepting donations for their work and things like that. But he did not get convicted of that. He only got convicted of some minor drug charges. And so he's been released to kind of a

halfway house now, but they continue to try to mess with his terms of release because of his politics, because he's an anarchist and unrepentant. They continue to try to mess with him, essentially. On the website, junileven.org, there's a page with information about a lot of prisoners both in the u.s and internationally um you know a little bit about them most of them has their address if there's a support site with more information that's linked to it as well okay it's a good place for people to look anything else you guys wanted to get to to discuss like issues for incarcerated anarchist people or I guess other ways to support incarcerated people? cages that are the federal facilities and the state and local and county facilities are all dealing with the same kinds of isolation and deprivations. And a lot of them have even less

support than some of our long-term anarchist political prisoners. And so, you know, I understand this is a program about June 11th. And of course, I want to uplift June 11th. But I would also like to suggest that to whatever extent you can get involved in just prisoner support. I think that more support for more prisoners is always a good thing. support for more prisoners is always a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Be in the streets in whatever, by whatever means, fighting the society that makes prison a necessity is, is the longer game, right? Yeah.

You know, related to, to what Mo was saying, I wanted to mention another long-term anarchist prisoner, Michael, Michael Kimball, who is in Alabama and just thinking about like how how supporting him has resonated to like so many other people in prison in Alabama like the way that he has been able through the support of you know some of his friends on the outside then support like so many other queer people that he's with um in alabama and been able to like collectively organize and like share radical history like you know they have a have a role in it too and and our support for them can like resonate far beyond just an individual

yeah i think that's a great point yeah and other things to mention um we have a fundraising goal for Marius this year of $2,500. We're trying to get some bookstores on board to have some June 11 stickers, donate a little bit of money. So go to your local bookstore, InfoShop, Redspace, etc. Nice. Is there any other resources you guys wanted to plug? Social media, is there anything that people can follow to find out? You can follow Marius's support on Twitter at support Marius. There's also an Instagram that I think is at support Marius Mason. I would also like to plug the concept of not talking to cops.

Smart. June 11th also has some social media presence. It's really only regularly active on the Mastodon account. And it's just at June 1-1 at June 11th. Yeah. That was fantastic. Thank you very much, guys. Really appreciate your time.

Thank you all. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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