There are many times where the harsh awareness of our weakness to express ourselves like we would’ve wanted comes, with its dithyrambic countenance of a winner tightening our hearts. It always irritated us to limit our manifestation of desires, let alone to just trap them with just ink in a piece of paper, transforming them into words that are being repeated so often, that their power has begun to perish from the burden of this almost typical repeatability. But there are also some words, that no matter how much they get worn down by their repeated use, they keep radiating by the glimmer that camaraderie gives to them. Words that give you strength, that give smiles upon our faces, that break through the imprisoned solitude. Words like solidarity.
We would’ve of course preferred if these words were accompanied by the vital strength of an action, an attack, the intensity of a fire in the dark, the sound of an explosion, the twisting of a bullet in a barrel. And if nevertheless the grey reality of captivity deprives us of similar choices and opportunities, we want to at least hope that the warmth of our words can impart a bit of the strength of our feelings in order for our imprisoned comrades abroad to feel the power of solidarity which we feel for them.
So we are writing for our anarchist brothers and sisters in Chile that are being held as hostages of justice, accused for the incendiary attack at a police research department in November 2014 – also known as the PDI case- whose trial is expected to commence after another postponement in 28/11. Maria, Natalia, Amaru, and Felipe our thoughts are with you and we wish you within our hearts to have strength during your trial. We’re hoping that the awful days of captivity to soon be an unpleasant past that you’re leaving behind.
We’re also writing for our Italian anarchist brothers and sisters that were arrested and accused within the framework of the Scripta Manent Operation and especially for the comrade and member of FAI- Olga Cell, Alfredo, as well as for the comrade Anna who lately won their fight to end the special solitary confinement conditions that were brought upon them. A fight using their own bodies as pawns and barricades, since they’ve risked their lives through hunger strike. We want to wholeheartedly express our happiness for their victory that may look small to some people, but to us it means everything since we’ve been through similar choices ourselves. Besides, victories like these, regardless of being small dots in the map of the total liberation perception of a prisoner, at the same time, they don’t cease to be “breaths of freedom” in an already suffocating environment.
So from within our cells we’re sending this signal of solidarity, and at the same time we’re winking at all the comrades who endure the torment of captivity, because of the choice they made in the struggle against domination. We know by experience now that when solidarity is genuine and authentic, it can escape from the soulless paper to travel thousands of kilometers, and punch through fences and walls in order to give warmth to the hearts of the prisoners by reminding them that they are not alone. That someone else, close by or far away, is thinking about them, worrying about them, feeling the actions that were trickily attributed to them or the actions that they proudly claimed as a part of the overall geography of the anarchist struggle against authority. This by itself is enough to fill with strength a political prisoner, lend him/her a mental uplift and strengthen his/her resilience. This is the only way that solidarity fulfills its purpose, which is no other than to form with one way or another, a crack of the time in captivity.
The members of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – FAI/IRF
Michalis Nikolopoulos
Harris Chatzimichelakis
Damianos Bolano
George Nikolopoulos
Panagiotis Argyrou
Theofilos Mavropoulos
