Anarchist black cross at the London anarchist bookfair

The Brighton and Bristol Anarchist Black Cross prisoner support groups will both have stalls at the London anarchist bookfair, this Saturday 24 October. We’ll be alongside the comrades from the Campaign against prison slavery, and Haven Distribution books to prisoners. Come along and have a chat with us, find out more and pick up some interesting info and prisoner’s details.

Brighton and Bristol are also hosting the following workshops:

Spanish prisoner on hungerstrike for 88 days

Amadeu Casellas is a Spanish anarchist who has been in prison for over 25 years, thats 5 more than the Spanish legal maximum to be in prison, and 5 more than his original maximum sentence. His ‘crimes’ all relate to expropriation, the robbing of banks to fund the workers and other social movements in the late 1970’s, just after the death of the fascist dictator Franco and the end of his regime – a regime that stole the funds and property of countless Spanish trade unions and individuals, as well as murdering many of its people.

Prisoner’s blog rattles Ministry of Justice

Shepton Mallet prisoner Ben Gunn’s blog has got the Ministry of (In)Justice all in a tizzy, and his blog is only 23 days old.

The blog is believed to be the first, or at least the only current blog, to be updated by a serving prisoner. Of course, he doesn’t personally post new articles to the blog, because as a prisoner he has no internet access. So he writes them by hand, and then gets friends to post the articles up on his blog for him.

The MoJ insist that Ben Gunn’s blog breaks the rules. He disagrees: “In 2008, the justice minister, Maria Eagle, told MP Sion Simon that prisoners could blog, subject to the rules of correspondence. Yet despite my complying with the law and ministerial pronouncements, the prison service is now reverting to its old habits – attempting to squash the vocal dissenter.”

Not guilty? Get your DNA wiped!

The growing retention of people’s DNA by the state, from birth upwards, often when the individual is guilty of no crime, is just one aspect of the ever growing authoritarian state and prison society controlling our daily lives.

Good news then that some people who have had their DNA taken, and then found not guilty (or never charged), are getting their DNA wiped from the state’s databases – even if a most well known case is Tory MP Damian Green. Now Liberty, with the backing of Dianne Abbott MP, are going to try and remedy some more cases of wrongly held DNA. Here’s an invite from them that may be useful, not just for innocent activists, but for innocents everywhere: