| | Introductie | Nieuws | Contact | Steun & Adressen | Teksten | Achtergrond | Dossiers | |
On Sexual Predators, Accountability, and the Anarchist Black Cross
- A Letter to We Never Sleep, Bulletin of the Anarchist Prisoners Legal Aid Network (APLAN}
Dear Comrades,
Many thanks to the outside support group and to the prisoner contributors for another excellent issue of We Never Sleep.
Obviously the issue surrounding our attitude to sexual predators is one the outside support group feels is important and needs to be addressed. Personally Im a little surprised its come up at all. Ill give my own views below, but in terms of issuing a provisional statement, all Id say is dont duck or fudge the issue. Dont, like some Anarchists do, confuse libertarianism with liberalism, and liberty with license.
A while back we in APLAN found ourselves debating who membership should be open to, whether it should be open only to Anarchist prisoners, or basically to just anybody who came along. My own position was that APLAN should, as its name suggests, be for avowedly Anarchist prisoners, but supportive of the wider prison struggle.
In the debate that followed I never got round to writing about what I feel is an important issue. When we become Anarchists we dont just adopt an intellectual credo, we also pledge ourselves to BEHAVE according to Anarchist principles. As Anarchist prisoners we are ambassadors for a movement, and will be judged at least as much by our behaviour as by our politics. We can call ourselves what we like, but if we are to be worthy of the name we also have a responsibility to behave as Anarchists in all our dealings with the State, with the prison authorities, with other prisoners, and with each other. As part of a network, and of a wider movement, we as Anarchist prisoners have a responsibility to maintain the highest possible standards. A prison informer (for example) can spout Murray Bookchin until the cows come home, but to me hell still be an informer, not an Anarchist prisoner, and not a comrade. We may not be wholely defined by the crimes for which weve been convicted, but we ARE defined by our actions and behaviour.
Im not sure what Jerome White-Bey means when he says, "We are all rapists. We have all committed sexual assaults, etc." Maybe its a metaphor of some kind, I certainly hope he doesnt mean it literally. Whatever the excuses given by its perpetrators (and their apologists), rape and sexual abuse is some of the most horrendous behaviour imaginable. It certainly falls a long way short of the standards we should expect from Anarchists.
Johnathan Vandersloot asks if hes being discriminatory to think sexual predators shouldnt be part of APLAN. Sure youre being discriminatory Johnathan, and so you should be in this instance, rapists are not some kind of oppressed minority. "Picking and choosing" is NOT oppression.
However well-intentioned, Joe Zabick is for me talking liberal nonsense when he says that the very suggestion that APLAN should discriminate against rapists is "bourgeois, reactionary, and objectifying". I "deal with hearts and minds, with human beings" too, it doesnt mean that I think all the people I deal with should be in APLAN. Being an Anarchist prisoner (as opposed to someone who is simply interested in Anarchism) does not give us a "privileged status", for most of us it simply means we get more harassment and more seg time.
For most of us, propagating Anarchist ideas is important, and we believe that others have the capacity to learn about Anarchism and to become Anarchists. Itd be great if all the capitalists, cops, judges, dictators, fascists, and all those opposed to us saw the error of their ways and converted to Anarchism. But a lot of them probably never will - If things were that easy we wouldnt need to supplement education with revolution. So while Im happy to share my ideas with anyone, it doesnt automatically follow that I want to organise alongside them.
Its the same with sexual predators, maybe they can change, become better human beings, maybe even make amends for the terrible harm theyve inflicted on others. But I think thats primarily a matter for their victims to decide, (few of them will be so easily "rehabilitated"), and it is with them that my empathy lies.
I dont know what the recidivism rate for rapists is over there, but over here its horrendous. So forgive me if Im suspicious of the rapist or child-molester who gets hold of a few Anarchist publications, undergoes a jailhouse epiphany, and unilaterally declares, "Hey its OK, I havent raped anybody in a while, you can trust me, Im REHABILITATED!" For me theres a world of difference between that person and someone like Free (Jeffrey Luers) for example, who came to prison an Anarchist, whos imprisoned for principled actions, and who by maintaining his integrity and refusing to grovel to the Enemy ended up with 22 years.
That said, the issues of "innocence" and "rehabilitation" are 2 very different ones, and need to be dealt with in quite separate ways. The situation there may also be very different from the prevailing one here. In British prisons (with few exceptions) rapists, paedophiles, child-killers, police-informers, and suchlike are housed in cell-blocks entirely separate to the main prison population. They have the same facilities, but are segregated for their own protection, and at their own request. A rapist choosing to go on "normal location" is literally taking his life in his hands.
Jimmy Wright was active as an Anarchist outside prison, and partly as a result of this was fitted-up on a charge of raping another adult male (an extremely unusual crime in British law .) When he came to prison he could have chosen the easy route, and gone onto protection, but he didnt. Nor did he choose to keep quiet about what he was convicted of. He came straight onto the landings of a high security prison, and said, "Heres my papers, this is my case, this is what Im in for." Nobody who has read about Jimmys case believes he is a rapist, he was very obviously fitted-up. As a prison militant, somebody who has continually stood up for his own rights and those of others, the Enemy have moved him from prison to prison, continually trying to isolate him and inciting other cons to attack him. However, Jimmy not only remains unbroken and determined to clear his name, he has won respect from other cons wherever he has been. Jimmy Wright does not claim to have been "rehabilitated", he is innocent, and (like all miscarriage of justice victims here, myself included) is punished daily for it, not least by spending longer in prison than if he were guilty. I presume its the same there, the "rehabilitated" rapist gets parole, while the miscarriage of justice victim stays in jail. Rehabilitation and innocence are two very separate matters.
I have in the past criticised groups who have circulated lists of prisoners without bothering to check them out first. Indeed when I first saw the list being circulated some years ago by the British ABC network I was horrified. Because unlike the ABC I actually knew most of those listed, and along with a few staunch prison militants (none of whom were Anarchists) were listed rapists, cell-thieves, informers, and every kind of low-life scumbag imaginable, together with others who were simply chancing their arm in the hope of a hand-out.
There are real dangers involved. Some years ago the ABC in Australia were supporting a prisoner who nobody had bothered to check out properly. He turned out to be a serial rapist, and when he got out he attacked and raped a female comrade.
APLAN is not just a list of prisoners, it is a network of Anarchist prisoners and their supporters, and it has a responsibility to ensure that prospective members fulfil the appropriate criteria. I want to know I can trust my comrades, and if thats important to me it should be a hell of a lot more important to those of you sharing the same jail system.
Moving on, I was very interested to read the New Draft Proposal for an ABC Network. One issue I think still needs to be addressed though is the question of accountability. This may not be something that has come up over there so far, but it certainly has over here where lack of accountability led directly to the collapse of the British ABC network, as well as causing a great deal of wider harm.
Prisoners are in a vulnerable position, but currently, certainly throughout much of Europe, any clueless idiot can in theory proclaim themselves to be an ABC group, and subsequently cause all sorts of problems. While we neither want nor need a monolithic organisation, there has to be some form of accountability. In recent years individuals within the now defunct British ABC network were able to set up a structureless tyranny which disempowered the bulk of the membership, and did nothing for prisoners. They engaged in a slanderous and extremely malicious campaign to undermine support for an Anarchist prisoner (myself), and they misappropriated and misused funds supposedly raised for the direct support of class struggle prisoners. Finally when they were challenged to explain this and other completely unacceptable behaviour they refused to do so in writing, and then repeatedly failed to attend conferences and extraordinary meetings arranged specifically to deal with these issues. They simply sat back and thumbed their noses at the rest of the ABC network. The networks continued dithering and prevarication, and its inability to deal with this situation led to the resignation of a number of affiliate groups and of long-standing individual members, which eventually triggered the networks complete collapse. Prisoners, the Anarchist movement, and the ABC itself are not best served by essentially dishonest revisionist attempts to sweep this shameful episode under the carpet (as some people have tried to do.)
The free federation of autonomous groups is our chosen method of organisation, but some minimum standards need to be set, otherwise the actions of a few individuals have the potential to discredit everyone else. Stealing from prisoners, telling lies about them, working for the State, such things cannot be acceptable, and while it shouldnt need to be, this does need to be made clear. If Anarchist prisoners need to maintain the highest possible standards, so too do the organisations supporting us.
I should make it clear that Brighton ABC, whose address was advertised in WNS, and who are currently the only British ABC group, were nothing to do with the disgraceful situation described above. The group had resigned from the network (as later did Belfast ABC, Leeds ABC, Huddersfield ABC, ABC Haven, and others) after a disagreement with London ABC, but before the worst behaviour occurred. While the group apparently then went into decline it was re-launched with new members some time after the collapse of the network, and since then has done some very good work.
As always, there are many other issues Id like to raise and discuss, but as Ive already taken up a lot of space Ill confine myself to a brief report.
Here there was (and still is) a great deal of popular opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan, with many large demonstrations (up to 100,000 people) against it. There is also widespread revulsion at the treatment currently being meted out to the prisoners at Camp X-Ray (Guatanamo Bay). Nevertheless the State has, as there, used September 11th as a pretext for introducing unprecedented repressive legislation, including indefinite detention without trial of non-British terrorist suspects.
Within the British prison system there have recently been a few islands of resistance in an ocean of overall repression and (prisoner) apathy. There were riots at 2 privately-run jails, Dovegate and Altcourse, though only involving between 60-100 prisoners in each case. At Full Sutton prison on 2 occasions around 250 prisoners refused to be locked in their cells in protest at deteriorating conditions, staying out until 10.00pm. In the segregation unit of Parkhurst prison, prisoners smashed up their cells in protest at brutality. Over in Ireland, Republican prisoners also staged a sit-out protest, and ended up fighting with the riot squad.
The monthly hunger protests in support of the Turkish prisoners have been going on since June. While the statement signed by myself and John Bowden reprinted in WNS was obviously written as a specific address to British prisoners, it would be great to see solidarity spread as widely as possible. I already know that Harold H Thompson has joined the protest.
Love and best wishes to all of you. Stay strong and keep fighting.
Always in struggle
Mark
22nd January 2002, Whitemoor Prison.
Dear Comrades,
Many thanks to the outside support group and to the prisoner contributors for another excellent issue of We Never Sleep.
Obviously the issue surrounding our attitude to sexual predators is one the outside support group feels is important and needs to be addressed. Personally Im a little surprised its come up at all. Ill give my own views below, but in terms of issuing a provisional statement, all Id say is dont duck or fudge the issue. Dont, like some Anarchists do, confuse libertarianism with liberalism, and liberty with license.
A while back we in APLAN found ourselves debating who membership should be open to, whether it should be open only to Anarchist prisoners, or basically to just anybody who came along. My own position was that APLAN should, as its name suggests, be for avowedly Anarchist prisoners, but supportive of the wider prison struggle.
In the debate that followed I never got round to writing about what I feel is an important issue. When we become Anarchists we dont just adopt an intellectual credo, we also pledge ourselves to BEHAVE according to Anarchist principles. As Anarchist prisoners we are ambassadors for a movement, and will be judged at least as much by our behaviour as by our politics. We can call ourselves what we like, but if we are to be worthy of the name we also have a responsibility to behave as Anarchists in all our dealings with the State, with the prison authorities, with other prisoners, and with each other. As part of a network, and of a wider movement, we as Anarchist prisoners have a responsibility to maintain the highest possible standards. A prison informer (for example) can spout Murray Bookchin until the cows come home, but to me hell still be an informer, not an Anarchist prisoner, and not a comrade. We may not be wholely defined by the crimes for which weve been convicted, but we ARE defined by our actions and behaviour.
Im not sure what Jerome White-Bey means when he says, "We are all rapists. We have all committed sexual assaults, etc." Maybe its a metaphor of some kind, I certainly hope he doesnt mean it literally. Whatever the excuses given by its perpetrators (and their apologists), rape and sexual abuse is some of the most horrendous behaviour imaginable. It certainly falls a long way short of the standards we should expect from Anarchists.
Johnathan Vandersloot asks if hes being discriminatory to think sexual predators shouldnt be part of APLAN. Sure youre being discriminatory Johnathan, and so you should be in this instance, rapists are not some kind of oppressed minority. "Picking and choosing" is NOT oppression.
However well-intentioned, Joe Zabick is for me talking liberal nonsense when he says that the very suggestion that APLAN should discriminate against rapists is "bourgeois, reactionary, and objectifying". I "deal with hearts and minds, with human beings" too, it doesnt mean that I think all the people I deal with should be in APLAN. Being an Anarchist prisoner (as opposed to someone who is simply interested in Anarchism) does not give us a "privileged status", for most of us it simply means we get more harassment and more seg time.
For most of us, propagating Anarchist ideas is important, and we believe that others have the capacity to learn about Anarchism and to become Anarchists. Itd be great if all the capitalists, cops, judges, dictators, fascists, and all those opposed to us saw the error of their ways and converted to Anarchism. But a lot of them probably never will - If things were that easy we wouldnt need to supplement education with revolution. So while Im happy to share my ideas with anyone, it doesnt automatically follow that I want to organise alongside them.
Its the same with sexual predators, maybe they can change, become better human beings, maybe even make amends for the terrible harm theyve inflicted on others. But I think thats primarily a matter for their victims to decide, (few of them will be so easily "rehabilitated"), and it is with them that my empathy lies.
I dont know what the recidivism rate for rapists is over there, but over here its horrendous. So forgive me if Im suspicious of the rapist or child-molester who gets hold of a few Anarchist publications, undergoes a jailhouse epiphany, and unilaterally declares, "Hey its OK, I havent raped anybody in a while, you can trust me, Im REHABILITATED!" For me theres a world of difference between that person and someone like Free (Jeffrey Luers) for example, who came to prison an Anarchist, whos imprisoned for principled actions, and who by maintaining his integrity and refusing to grovel to the Enemy ended up with 22 years.
That said, the issues of "innocence" and "rehabilitation" are 2 very different ones, and need to be dealt with in quite separate ways. The situation there may also be very different from the prevailing one here. In British prisons (with few exceptions) rapists, paedophiles, child-killers, police-informers, and suchlike are housed in cell-blocks entirely separate to the main prison population. They have the same facilities, but are segregated for their own protection, and at their own request. A rapist choosing to go on "normal location" is literally taking his life in his hands.
Jimmy Wright was active as an Anarchist outside prison, and partly as a result of this was fitted-up on a charge of raping another adult male (an extremely unusual crime in British law .) When he came to prison he could have chosen the easy route, and gone onto protection, but he didnt. Nor did he choose to keep quiet about what he was convicted of. He came straight onto the landings of a high security prison, and said, "Heres my papers, this is my case, this is what Im in for." Nobody who has read about Jimmys case believes he is a rapist, he was very obviously fitted-up. As a prison militant, somebody who has continually stood up for his own rights and those of others, the Enemy have moved him from prison to prison, continually trying to isolate him and inciting other cons to attack him. However, Jimmy not only remains unbroken and determined to clear his name, he has won respect from other cons wherever he has been. Jimmy Wright does not claim to have been "rehabilitated", he is innocent, and (like all miscarriage of justice victims here, myself included) is punished daily for it, not least by spending longer in prison than if he were guilty. I presume its the same there, the "rehabilitated" rapist gets parole, while the miscarriage of justice victim stays in jail. Rehabilitation and innocence are two very separate matters.
I have in the past criticised groups who have circulated lists of prisoners without bothering to check them out first. Indeed when I first saw the list being circulated some years ago by the British ABC network I was horrified. Because unlike the ABC I actually knew most of those listed, and along with a few staunch prison militants (none of whom were Anarchists) were listed rapists, cell-thieves, informers, and every kind of low-life scumbag imaginable, together with others who were simply chancing their arm in the hope of a hand-out.
There are real dangers involved. Some years ago the ABC in Australia were supporting a prisoner who nobody had bothered to check out properly. He turned out to be a serial rapist, and when he got out he attacked and raped a female comrade.
APLAN is not just a list of prisoners, it is a network of Anarchist prisoners and their supporters, and it has a responsibility to ensure that prospective members fulfil the appropriate criteria. I want to know I can trust my comrades, and if thats important to me it should be a hell of a lot more important to those of you sharing the same jail system.
Moving on, I was very interested to read the New Draft Proposal for an ABC Network. One issue I think still needs to be addressed though is the question of accountability. This may not be something that has come up over there so far, but it certainly has over here where lack of accountability led directly to the collapse of the British ABC network, as well as causing a great deal of wider harm.
Prisoners are in a vulnerable position, but currently, certainly throughout much of Europe, any clueless idiot can in theory proclaim themselves to be an ABC group, and subsequently cause all sorts of problems. While we neither want nor need a monolithic organisation, there has to be some form of accountability. In recent years individuals within the now defunct British ABC network were able to set up a structureless tyranny which disempowered the bulk of the membership, and did nothing for prisoners. They engaged in a slanderous and extremely malicious campaign to undermine support for an Anarchist prisoner (myself), and they misappropriated and misused funds supposedly raised for the direct support of class struggle prisoners. Finally when they were challenged to explain this and other completely unacceptable behaviour they refused to do so in writing, and then repeatedly failed to attend conferences and extraordinary meetings arranged specifically to deal with these issues. They simply sat back and thumbed their noses at the rest of the ABC network. The networks continued dithering and prevarication, and its inability to deal with this situation led to the resignation of a number of affiliate groups and of long-standing individual members, which eventually triggered the networks complete collapse. Prisoners, the Anarchist movement, and the ABC itself are not best served by essentially dishonest revisionist attempts to sweep this shameful episode under the carpet (as some people have tried to do.)
The free federation of autonomous groups is our chosen method of organisation, but some minimum standards need to be set, otherwise the actions of a few individuals have the potential to discredit everyone else. Stealing from prisoners, telling lies about them, working for the State, such things cannot be acceptable, and while it shouldnt need to be, this does need to be made clear. If Anarchist prisoners need to maintain the highest possible standards, so too do the organisations supporting us.
I should make it clear that Brighton ABC, whose address was advertised in WNS, and who are currently the only British ABC group, were nothing to do with the disgraceful situation described above. The group had resigned from the network (as later did Belfast ABC, Leeds ABC, Huddersfield ABC, ABC Haven, and others) after a disagreement with London ABC, but before the worst behaviour occurred. While the group apparently then went into decline it was re-launched with new members some time after the collapse of the network, and since then has done some very good work.
As always, there are many other issues Id like to raise and discuss, but as Ive already taken up a lot of space Ill confine myself to a brief report.
Here there was (and still is) a great deal of popular opposition to the bombing of Afghanistan, with many large demonstrations (up to 100,000 people) against it. There is also widespread revulsion at the treatment currently being meted out to the prisoners at Camp X-Ray (Guatanamo Bay). Nevertheless the State has, as there, used September 11th as a pretext for introducing unprecedented repressive legislation, including indefinite detention without trial of non-British terrorist suspects.
Within the British prison system there have recently been a few islands of resistance in an ocean of overall repression and (prisoner) apathy. There were riots at 2 privately-run jails, Dovegate and Altcourse, though only involving between 60-100 prisoners in each case. At Full Sutton prison on 2 occasions around 250 prisoners refused to be locked in their cells in protest at deteriorating conditions, staying out until 10.00pm. In the segregation unit of Parkhurst prison, prisoners smashed up their cells in protest at brutality. Over in Ireland, Republican prisoners also staged a sit-out protest, and ended up fighting with the riot squad.
The monthly hunger protests in support of the Turkish prisoners have been going on since June. While the statement signed by myself and John Bowden reprinted in WNS was obviously written as a specific address to British prisoners, it would be great to see solidarity spread as widely as possible. I already know that Harold H Thompson has joined the protest.
Love and best wishes to all of you. Stay strong and keep fighting.
Always in struggle
Mark
22nd January 2002, Whitemoor Prison.