To be present together, in this miserable city, to gather, out in the cold, to demonstrate, outside of this horrific building, against this attempt, to correct all those who reject the laws of the metropole; to be a nuisance, to cause a scene, to disrupt, or prevent, or block this non-life which flows all around us.

A normality of millions inside locked cages

A network of public and private enterprises to manage these bodies

An entire infrastructure, constructed and maintained, of bare life behind bars.

“Come, not to appeal to authority, speak truth to power, or any other contrivance, but rather to stand arm in arm with comrades and show direct solidarity to those on the other side of the wall.” (NYC ABC)

Jerry Koch, who has been inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center since May, is not just our comrade, he is our friend. He is someone we care about, we miss, and someone we trust. In a recent statement he wrote, “It is during truly difficult times that reveal what lives in the core of people, and that knowledge can sometimes be incredibly painful. But so too can that knowledge make us stronger; I take comfort from those of my fellows who have also refused to be made into subjects of this place. My own resistance is far from unique. It is found in those who have always said NO to those in power. My refusal to cooperate is my contribution to this tradition of defiance to arbitrary and repressive power. I will not cooperate. I will not be institutionalized. No compromise in this.”

It is not just the prisoners who hate this world, it is those that feel the cold steel of all that places them there. The authority which maintains these present conditions cannot be reformed or negotiated with, only destroyed, superseded, and overcome.

In June we wrote, “Jerry has accepted his incarceration for us. And not just the us he knows, or the us that live in New York City, or the us that live in the United States, or even the us that are still alive today. But the us, NOSOTROS, LOS LOBOS, that take revolution seriously, that recognize our federal government and its logic to be the leading cause of suffering in the world, and therefore deserving of no one’s cooperation, participation, or assistance as they perpetuate misery… Resistance is not a matter of critique or opposition to this or that, but rather the construction of a force, of a life, against this world. For Jerry to accept his incarceration is to take seriously this force, this life, and for us, we who are in solidarity, is not just to be in solidarity with Jerry, but in solidarity with the us that will build this life together.”

12/31/13

Nosotros, Los Lobos