To the uncontrollables
Order must reign: this is the motto of all power. And we know very well what it means by order: its massacres at the frontiers, its exploitation at the workplace, its terror in the prisons, its genocides and wars, its pollution of our bodies, its devastation of everything that is beautiful and free, its invasive ideology in our minds and its despondency in our hearts. In Brussels power has been making a quality jump. We are referring to the shops for eurocrats, new loft apartments for the rich, cops which are multiplying like bunnies and surveillance cameras that pop up like mushrooms after the rain season, new malls and an urban development plans to reinforce control, the message remains clear; order must reign and the poor, the excluded, the clandestines, the criminals, the rebels, we are the undesirable in this city, only worth anything if we obey, break our backs at work and then snuff it.
Today, one of the most symbolic projects of power in Brussels is the construction of the maxi-prison, the biggest in belgian history. The shadows of its walls and the desperation of its cells will serve as a severe menace to all those who toil to survive in this world, who don’t remain within their imposed ranks, who rebel to oppression. A grim place where to put the undesirables, those who are detrimental to the glorious march of economy and power; a place which reflects all the structures where the violence of power materializes, just like in detention centres, in psychiatric hospitals and in police stations,… – and why not, also the malls, the institutions, the streets of a city which have become large annexes of a huge open air prison.
To struggle against a maxi-prison therefore means to take back a glimpse of freedom. To impede its construction means to strike the path of power towards more control and more submission. To sabotage its realization is to open the horizons of struggle which breaks with the resignation, the best ally of the powerful. But we are neither stupid nor naïve. To struggle against the maxi-prison means to battle against everything it represents, a battle which is not confined to legality, but which arms itself of all weapons it deems fit. It is a battle which we ourselves lead, in a self organized and autonomous way, without political parties nor official organizations, without elected nor future politicians.
The last years of struggle against the maxi-prison have seen a wide range of initiatives of struggle in the neighbourhoods of Brussels (far way from the spot lights of the news and the stench of institutions), of direct actions against those responsible for this project (construction companies, architects, engineers, politicians, police officers and bureaucrats) and of sabotages in every angle of the city and of Belgium. Uncontrollable, because they do not conform to the imposed limits of democratic power, unmanageable, because they spring from a free initiative that does not obey to any hierarchy, ungovernable, because it refuses any dialogue with power in order to recreate spaces of real and free dialogue among individuals in struggle. Qualities that cannot be compatible with any form of power, and therefore hold the sweet taste and the proud charm of freedom. Three characteristics capable of irrupting into ongoing social conflicts, anywhere a line of demarcation is drawn between power and its opponents, in the life and struggles of each one of us.
All of this sticks in the gullet of power. It does not like that we speak about it, that we discuss it, that we propose it, that we act in this direction. If only a few weeks ago journalists dumped tons of shit on the struggle against the maxi prison (against anyone who struggles in a self-organized and autonomous way against power), in the early hours of Wednesday 10th of June 2015, federal agents kicked down the door of four houses of comrades and of Le Passage, the space of struggle against the maxi-prison in Anderlecht, to carry out a raid and to confiscate the words of struggle that power cannot tolerate. A repression whose objective is to clearly attempt to break this struggle which manages, through words and acts, through fliers and fires, through direct action and attack, during the day or the night, with few or many, to create an opening. These judicial maneuvers reflect the repression which constitutes the daily life of all the undesirables of Brussels and of the entire world: from tortures in police stations to homicides in prisons, from the drowned refugees in the Mediterranean to the people dying of exhaustion from work or of asphyxiation by merchandise.
If power sows fear to be able to better control and govern, “c’est reculer que d’être stationnaire (*)”: we thus affirm the joy of freely struggling, the pride in the ideas which stand in opposition to their morbid projects, and the solidarity among those who long for the dream of a world rid of power.
Let’s continue the hostilities against everything which suffocates us.
No step back: let’s attack the maxi-prison, its builders and defenders!
Courage and determination to those who fight against power and for freedom!
[June 2015]
Some contacts:
Le Passage
Space of struggle against the Maxi-Prison
rue Rossini 11 – Anderlecht Bruxelles
(opened Wednesday and Saturday between 17:00 and 20:00)
Ricochets
monthly bulletin against the Maxi-Prison
news about struggles against prisons
* a line from the song “Le triomphe de l’anarchie” by Charles d’Avray (1878-1960): “to stay still means making a step backwards”.