Justice through defiance: political prisoner support work and infrastructures of resistance

Abstract

This essay outlines the justice work done by the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) in the US, an organization that provides material and symbolic support to political and politicized prisoners. The history of this organization is briefly explored to contextualize its current composition, tactics, and goals in its mission to support political prisoners, as well as the way its driving philosophies distinguish the ABC from other organizations that are engaged in political prisoner-related issues. Unlike more well-known, mainstream organizations that use a human rights discourse, the ABC contributes to an overall 'infrastructure of resistance' to defy systematized exploitation. This essay situates this project within a broader anarchist strategy to creatively and actively construct justice alternatives that work to establish mutual aid and needs-based economies.The political prisoner has opposed unjust laws and exploitative, racist social conditions in general, with the ultimate aim of transforming these laws and this society into an order harmonious with the material and spiritual needs and interests of the vast majority of its members. -Angela Davis, 2003, letter from Marin County Jail.Anarchist utopianism places primacy and political energy on creating immediate and tangible social changes. Instead of relying on deterministic and temporally distant definitions of utopia, mutualist cooperative initiatives focus on creating alternative infrastructures that directly satisfy personal needs and the welfare of the larger collective. A mutual aid and needs-based economy enables people the ability to take control of their lives and to participate meaningfully in the decision-making processes that affect them and others. Unfortunately, as most observers of modern social life in the United States understand, there are complex structures of domination and oppression that severely undermine human relationships and the ability to fulfill personal and communal needs. Angela Davis, in the above quote, speaks to those politicized individuals who have defied hierarchical, unjust rules of law that usurp collective autonomy. Some of these individuals engaging in direct justice do *

Contemporary anarchist and anarchistic movements

“…In lieu of capitalist exploitation, profit‐seeking, and competition, anarchists propose strategies of mutual aid. For example, the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) creates infrastructures of resistance to capitalist inequity, while emphasizing the generous impulses of solidarity and support between people—ABC's goal is to provide mutual aid for arrested and imprisoned anarchists and other political prisoners (Hackett, ). In pursuit of a radically egalitarian society, anarchists have advocated the reclamation of public space from authoritarian and profit‐motivated behaviors.…”

“…Explicit anarchists often include the word “anarchist” in their literature, external discussions, and even their organizational names. For example, the ABC is an international network of political prisoner aid collectives that identifies as anarchist and seeks to support anarchist prisoners, as well as other liberatory political prisoners and prisoners of war (Hackett, ).…”