Greece: Statement from CCF comrade Christos Tsakalos for June 11th

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June 11th is an international solidarity day. A day against oblivion. A day for all those who are missing from the streets.

For everyone of us that learned to count our steps within the prison yard and divide our day between locking after locking and our night in tallies.

At the same time, June 11th is a day of war. It’s a day of rebellion because law and order may rule but they do not reign.

The existence of anarchist prisoners reminds us of the existence of the anarchist war. A war that sometimes burns slowly and sometimes blinds the sky with its fires.

Every war has its losses. There are comrades that were lost to cop’s bullets or from a bomb that “was in a hurry” to explode…

Comrades that will not be beside us in the next conspiratorial rendzevous.

And then there are those who got caught in the enemy’s snare. An enemy that is baptized in democracy and takes revenge with prisons and courts.

A democracy that likes to carry its captives as trophies from prison to prison, in special conditions, charged with dozens of years of punishment…

Inside the cell, a question that slaps you often visits you…

– “Was it worth it?”

They say that if your enemy doesn’t chase you, you must be doing something wrong…

Transports, special courts, special conditions of solitary confinement, hunger strikes, prohibition of visits, arrests and imprisonment of relatives, new trials, attempted prison escapes..proof that we didn’t give up…

The prison may take away our freedom, but we carry the war against authority within us, in every prison transport, in every cell search, in every locking of the door.

And sometimes, when the prison walls seem to grow taller and every locking from the guard echoes inside your head, you know that you are not alone.

You know that it didn’t simply happen to you, it isn’t just bad luck that you were caught.

You know that you are the continuation of a thread, a story that began with the rebellion of Spartacus and even more before that…

You know that there are others like you within the cells of Chile, in custody in Mexico, in prisons in the USA, in FIES status in Spain, in vague detention in Germany, in supervision of thought in Switzerland, within special cell-blocks of isolation in Italy, in underground solitary confinement in Greece, in conditions of barbarism in Russia, in captivity in Poland…

And this gives you strength…you feel like an accomplice.

And all of us are connected with bonds of memory and perspective.

Memory for those who were imprisoned, tortured and executed before us in far more difficult times, and perspective for those who continue the thread of history walking against the hands of authority’s clock…

So…the answer to the question is…

– “YES, it was worth it and if I turned back time, I would do the exact same thing again, a thousand times.”

And if someone asks again..

– “But the prison, isn’t it a defeat?”

The answer is simple…

– “Victory is defined by the life you live…That’s why we are winners.”

Christos Tsakalos, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / FAI-IRF
Underground Cell Block of Korydallos Prison

(via Radiofragmata Translation Project)