Against the maxi-prison and the world that needs it

About the acts of sabotage aganist the high speed trains and an army base

When darkness surrounds the neighbourhoods, immersing the city into a territory under siege – supreme affirmation of state power and its ideology –, it is easy to succumb to total resignation. When the trumpets of war and massacre are braying, crushing the struggles for freedom to leave only space for the fight between two powers that want to impose themselves, it is easy to think that everything is lost. When the media bombings are hammering the message of order, pushing all shouts of refusal and rejection towards the margins, it is easy to stop thinking by yourself and letting yourself be swept away by the bloody current.

And yet… This last week, the state has been aiming for a complete adherence to its values, threatening with brutal repression all those that don’t bend. Faced with the jihadist gangrene which has devoured, first and foremost, the revolutionaries of so many countries (Egypt, Syria, Libya) – revolutionaries which have courageously risen up against the regimes and for freedom, and which all the states in the world have preferred to see massacred with statist bombs or slaughered by jihadist executions –, the state has been striving to affirm the triumph of its vision on the world: a horrifying world of capitalist exploitation and statist oppression. The state is now trying to decree that the only war everyone is called to participate in is the war between him and an islamist competitor, thereby attempting to bury the only war which we, revolutionaries against all power – be it statist or religious – are ready to wage: the social war against oppressors and exploiters. And the state takes the occasion to reinforce its repressive arsenal. House raids around the clock. Tightening of the laws. Adaptation of the constitution to impose electronic bracelets to the ones threatening its order (and don’t think that the revolted, the revolutionaries will be excluded from their black list). More means for the cops and the secret services. Arrests in abundance of people without papers and rebels. And beyond doubt as well an acceleration of the militarisation at the borders and the construction of new prisons, such as the maxi-prison in Brussels.
And yet… not all has been lost, the resignation continues to be as sick as it was a week ago, the necessity to think for yourself, outside of any canon, is the only possible way to demolish the ideology of the state and its competitors.

Two acts of sabotage took place in Belgium, two acts of sabotage during one single night. Two acts which announce that the fight for freedom can and must continue, here and now, even if the conditions are getting more and more difficult and the fields of confrontation will be less favourable. Two acts which show the abyss separating the state as well as those who think like a state (as is the case of the supporters of the new caliphate), both of them always ready to commit massacres, to sow terror to preserve or conquer power; an abyss thus which separates them from the ones fighting to break the hold that power has on all of us, those who go to the attack to liberate, not to subdue.

Two acts of sabotage, in the night of the 29th of November towards the 30th of November.
The first one was a sabotage, on four different spots, of an international high speed train network (TGV, Thalys, Eurostar). By putting fire to the optic fibre cables along the rail tracks close to Ath in the province of Hainaut, the complete train circulation has been paralysed for more that a day long. A day on which the international delegates and the ministers needing to speed to Paris for a summit were blocked, a day on which the executives of companies, the eurocrats, the directors have been cornered in the station watching the screens announcing the cancelling of their trains. This act of sabotage shows us that by using simple means it is always possible to cut into the veins of power and its men, of its networks of transportation and data. And in the disorder thereby created, spaces are opened up which are not saturated by the speech of power, spaces where freedom can take a jump.
The second act of sabotage was aimed at no less than a military base, one of the most important ones of Belgium, where the Special Forces of the Belgian army and the military secret service are stationed, in Heverlee in the province of Flemish Brabant. Covered by the night, the saboteur(s) penetrated the base, avoiding systems of control and patrols, to trap five army vehicles with home-made fire bombs. The ignition system seems to have defected but the message cannot be more clear: you are occupying the streets of Brussels, massacring people in different countries over the world because the state orders you to do so, you are sowing terror with your uniforms, your armoured vehicles and your weapons of war, but you will never be out of reach for an act of sabotage. A single act has managed to ridicule the aura of the army and its grand master, the state, and this in the middle of a state of emergency. An act which somehow proposes to all who are sick of their wars to attack directly on the spot where they are produced: in the military bases, in the arms and security companies, in the technological research centres. An act which can only belong to the deserter of all wars, but who doesn’t renounce the one of the social war against the war of power.

It is easy to abandon, but it is always at reach to continue. Faced with the war for power, lets blow strongly on the hot beds of the social war against all power. There are struggles going on which will face difficult times in the future, the struggle against the borders, the struggle against the maxi-prison, the fights against austerity measures and the capitalist reorganisation. Lets strengthen them so that they become points of reunion for the deserters, the indomitable, the rebels. And may acts of sabotage continue to illuminate the darkness.

The walls of the Prison of Forest resonates loudly…

When we hear the echoes that pierce through the walls of the Forest prison, when we have suffered it’s confinement in putrid cells, when we visit someone close completely ruined by their detention, there is only one possible sane reaction: the scream of rage.

The years pass and the suicides and deaths in this Brussels jail link together, the scandals that occasionally erupt disappear as quickly as they appeared and detention conditions only get worse. The years pass and every day this prison remains standing, we somehow all become accomplices to these atrocities by the state inflicted against detainees, in the name of the Law and Order. Of course, we don’t forget there are those who bear more responsibility: politicians, prison officers, execution guards, doctors who cover up abjections with their silence, companies that make money from this prison. But the shadow of Forest weighs on us all. It exists also because we continue to accept it’s suffering.

You see, the line between inside and outside is not as transparent as you might believe. When by our silence or by our resignation we endorse the existence of a place so abject as the Forest prison, next to our homes, the walls transpire to be not thick enough to rid ourselves of all responsibility. Prison is an issue that concerns us all, whether we like it or not.

So it’s clear. What we talk about here is not to depress us, or even to “feel sorry” over the fate of detainees. It is a scream of rage, because it alone could be able to stop what’s happening behind the barbed wire of the Forest prison. It alone could take the burden and return some air into these infected cells. It alone could liberate us, we who are outside – or rather still outside, because unlike bosses, the banker and the rich; the rebel, the excluded, the exploited, is likely to meet prison along their way – but one who feels the shadow of Forest.

So the scream of rage. We emphasise some rage, not a call for help. What sense would it have to address the politicians or administrators of this world to ask them something? What good would it do, to still speak to their officials, whom for years have actively endorsed the atrocious situation at the Prison of Forest? Rage is not trying to convince the higher-ups, it seeks to finish, immediately and by itself, a situation that is unbearable. Everything else, even the charitable initiatives with the best of intentions, contributes only to continue the situation.

And it goes even further. Today, the State shamefully asserts its atrocious conditions at the Forest Prison to promote it’s plan to build a maxi-prison in Brussels. By playing on the disgust that we feel faced with how it subjects detainees, it wants to make us swallow an even greater imprisonment project. More humane, it says. To deal with overcrowding, it says. To finally close the Forest Prison, it says. In the meanwhile, until the maxi-prison is built, that is to say for at least some years to come still, the situation at Forest will remain as it is today. How can you believe that these people who for years have been able to use Forest prison to break thousands of people and condone the atrocities inflicted against detainees, won’t do exactly the same once their new prison sees the light of day?

To rid ourselves of the last illusions over the State’s humanity, we have to understand why the Prison of Forest is what it is today. It is neither an accident, nor the result of a tragic course or an unfortunate abnormality. It’s a choice. A choice by the State to inject docility into the neighbourhoods of Brussels with the disposal of such an instrument. To terrorise those who are bound to break the law… Make no mistake, a new prison would have exactly the same remit. If the State today can take less “atrocious” forms (while considering that locking someone up is in itself already torture), tomorrow, to better fulfil its function of punishment and terror, it again hosts teams of tabasser guards, cells for three or four, destruction of the detainee by illness and the lack of hygiene… the Forest Phantom haunts any prison, whether new or old.

The scream of rage is also therefore a scream loaded with the future. To not accept it today, is to prepare to not accept it tomorrow. That is why we must close Forest now. We have to close it. To demolish it so that it can’t be rebuilt. By the force of our rejection and violence of our revolt. The ruined.

Unhealthy, unlivable, the Prison of Forest must become unmanageable. Inmates can get started with revolts and rebellions, but also with sabotage. Forest Prison is so dilapidated that water pipelines sabotaged and broken electrical circuits could make it uncontrollable (which automatically would implicate its closure, like at Verviers prison almost four years ago). On flooding and flooding, encouraging those close to us on the inside to accelerate the closure of Forest by sabotage; let’s be at their side for them to feel our complicity and solidarity.

On the outside as well, we can place our grain of sand to fuck up the vicious circle. Policymakers, collaborating institutions, the companies that profit; the collaborators of this repressive work aren’t protected by walls or barbed wire. They are often found at the corner of our street. When we give them back the daily possible amount, their daily amount of endorsing and sowing the terror that reigns in the Prison of Forest… When it kicks off with riots in Forest prison, reconnecting with a not so distant past, when we took to the streets, stones and molotovs in our hands; we also riot in the streets of this necropolis.

If by ourselves we are to immediately demolish Forest prison, this certainly isn’t to accept a new maxi-prison tomorrow. These two battles, against these two prisons, go hand in hand. In their hearts, they are freedom and solidarity. That’s what makes them extremely explosive.

State of siege in Brussels. Hundreds of soldiers stationed throughout the city, thousands of police strolling through the streets of the European capital. The schools and universities are all closed, the transport network is almost completely paralysed. The streets are deserted, fear haunts the soul. Controls, machine gun to the head, are multiplying. Not only has space been saturated by the forces of power, but also minds it seems. And perhaps things are even worse.

The days when European States could go to war anywhere in the world striking blows, occupying, opening up new markets, wildly exploiting and plundering resources while preserving their own territories from acts of war, if perhaps not exactly the same at least in the same logic, seem to be over. The war has struck right in the heart of the French capital, and will not go quietly. And the logic of war advocates striking into the crowd. As all States have done since the beginning of their existence, against their own subjects and those of other States. As all those aspiring to conquer power and impose their domination have done and continue to do. Be they Islamic or Republican, democratic or dictatorial. For it is by trampling on freedom, the freedom of each individual, that dominion imposes itself. Authority and freedom are mutually exclusive.

So war against war. The saturation of the mind by power’s discourse eliminates all spaces of struggle for human emancipation, or at least pushes them even more to the margin than they were before. The mobilization aims to be total. Either with the State or with them – anyone aspiring to something else, who struggles against oppression and exploitation, all the thousands and thousands of rebels and revolutionaries who have been murdered and massacred by established States or those under construction, which continues around the world, must now be seen to be out of the game. Thousands more await their turn to be sacrificed on the blood-soaked altar of power.

Who is responsible ? Need we remember where the phosphorus bombs that burned Fallujah were produced, who delivered computer technologies to the secret services of the regimes of Assad, of Sisi, who trained the pilots that bombed Gaza? Need we remember how cobalt and silicon are extracted from the depths of Africa for technological gadgets, how all the consumer goods found on the shelves of supermarkets and shops are produced? Need we remember how civilized capitalism manages its hundreds of labour camps, from Bangladesh to Mexico? Where the sinister shadows of the drones that strike around the world come from? How and in the name of what thousands of people have been drowning in the Mediterranean for years now? So, say it, who is responsible?

But if our rebel eyes rightly look up to find the answer, they should also look within ourselves. For in the time to come, and already in the times that are and were, by our passivity we are complicit in our own oppression. And this passivity is not merely the inaction of the body, it is also the brutalization project programmed for decades by the power that deprived us of the tools to understand reality, to understand our rage. That deprived us of any sensitivity other than that required for the needs of the moment, of any capacity to dream. It was from there, this program of human reduction, that today those who decide to commit massacres come from, to participate in the power game, to kill themselves too. It would be foolish to have believed that their slaughter would target the powerful and their structures. Modern warfare in a world bloated with technology and remote massacres no longer allows such subtleties, if such subtleties could ever have existed in the minds of men at war.

In the districts of Brussels under military occupation today, it must be said, everything has been used to buffer social revolt, to make shock absorbers of the rage against a terrible, cruel world. Whether it’s courses of citizenship and the promotion of democracy (while dropping bombs), whether it’s the control mechanisms offered by religion, whether it’s the massive doping by technological gadgets: anything rather than revolt. And sometimes this game also escapes the hands of power, as is happening today. And here come the strikes into the crowd. Especially if the fiction of a heavenly reward appears that has held millions of slaves under the yoke awaiting the promised redemption for centuries, right up to today. Somewhere, the decades that the Belgian State has used Islam to appease spirits, to keep control of the communities of the excluded, to manage social contradictions, is now turning against it. But perhaps even more against the possibility and the prospect of liberatory revolt.

In the face of the militarisation of space and of minds, in the face of the war that States and those aspiring to power are dragging us into; and knowing that we will be pushed more and more to the margins, the effort should focus on the absolute refusal to play their game. And this refusal also implies the rejection of the rules they are in the process of imposing. Don’t make any noise today. Stay at home, so within the ranks. Give way to the terrorists of democracy and the terrorists of the caliphate. It will be difficult to break the occupation and break the rules of this game, for sure. The choice of the deserter, of those who refuse to go to war for the powerful, has always exposed them to every kind of repression. But who knows if on the margin we will find other rejects, other deserters, other excluded, other sacrificed with whom to sabotage the ongoing war with whom to struggle, headlong, for ideas refractory to all power. Who knows if in this margin, in this corner, the proud international defying all authorities will be reborn in the midst of a world torn by civil war?

If the last thing we will renounce is precisely the desire for freedom and the dream that can sharpen our mind, make our hearts beat and arm our hands, we must simultaneously make the effort to look reality in the face. The spaces are shrinking, blood is already flowing, it is flowing today and will flow more, the fight for freedom and revolution undoubtedly has hard times ahead. The conditions under which the revolutionary struggle must develop are deteriorating. And after the massacre of the popular uprisings of recent years in many countries, they are also reaching us who find ourselves on the European continent, where each one will face a question with possibly terrible consequences, but full of challenges: in spite of everything, are we ready to fight for freedom?

Some anarchists
Brussels, 23 November 2015

With the works ready to begin, the State is still determined to complete the maxi-prison project. It is raising the spectre of repression against those who fight. It must defend this huge investment, part of a greater plan of a dozen more new jails.

Its objective is obvious: lock more people up, for longer.

These measures are not only reserved for the prisoners inside. The turn of the screw is also spreading outside: harsher and harsher conditions of survival, thousands of people thrown out of benefits, new uniforms swarming around everywhere, surveillance cameras on every street corner … The maxi-prison is just the icing on the cake.

What then? Either we let ourselves be locked up in our shitty lives, or we attack, with the means we consider suitable, all those who are forging a barrack-style existence for us: from the builders, architects, engineers and services providers of the maxi-prison, to the policy makers responsible, and all those who make money from the business of security and confinement.

But also by disrupting their order, adding our wayword touch to this city that they would like to have policed and with no life other than that of merchandise.

It is not by coating our struggle with a new coat of paint that we’ll put a spoke in their wheels. On the contrary, what they have to fear is a movement that escapes them completely, where small groups, with no political party or leader, decide for themselves where and how to attack.

No recipe, but a mixture with an explosive potential: a diffuse uncontrollable proliferation which, through self-organization and direct action, can knock down the walls they are building around us.

Let’s rip against all those who put bars on our lives!

[A poster pasted in Brussels, November 2015]

Donwload this contribution to Frequenz A (anarchist podcast) here in English:

Struggle against the maxi-prison in Brussels

Our environment is constantly changing. And slowly but surely, almost imperceptibly, we also change with it. The environment changes us. It influences our gestures, our understanding of our times, our movements, our desires and our dreams.

Look at this city. A place that is in a constant state of change. Power keeps erecting malls and prisons, occupying the neighbourhoods with thousands of new cameras and additional police stations, building condos for the rich and pushing the poor further out of town, improving public transportation so that everyone can arrive everyday on time to their place in the economic system. Yet – and the defenders of the system know it all too well – the occupation of the territory by all these infrastructures remains quite relative. Within the time span of a few wild nights, an insurging crowd could, technically speaking, reduce all of it to ashes. It is exactly because of this that the real occupation – the long lasting occupation which guarantees the survival of oppression under different forms, throughout history – lays somewhere else. It lays in our heads.

We grow up in a certain environment, and without pity this environment tries to determine our imagination. This is exactly the goal of the powerful, with no consideration to the time or the expense necessary to transform the city of Brussels into their image. In the end, not only do they want our daily activities be conducted to the service of this environment, but that also our thoughts are limited to these frames. To the point where our dreams remain within the cages that this environment traps us in: citizens, consumers, employees, prisoners, petty criminals/dealers, always on the margins…
It is right there that the real victory of Power lays: in the moment where all the memory of revolts demolishing cages is erased. In this city, not too long ago, these revolts were often breaking through the daily routine. Cops were lured into ambushes, police stations assaulted, video-surveillance was sabotaged, the toll gates of the metro system put out of order, entire neighbourhoods were made dangerous for all sorts of uniforms, mutinies in prisons, with echoes of solidarity on the streets… Power wants us to forget these possibilities, so they become less and less seized. Because once they are forgotten they simply cease to exist. It is a constant struggle to keep these possibilities open, to push them further, to invent some new ones and to put them into practice. It is a constant struggle to regain our imagination and our memory, because it is them that can be the fuel of an uncontrollable fire against oppression, or to stifle any possible outbreak. Direct action in all its forms is our weapon. Like a crowbar prying open the gates of our imagination, she keeps our thoughts alert and our actions ready for combat.

There is nothing but the offensive game that can make us really dangerous for the established order. Let’s imagine what seems impossible and let’s do what seems unthinkable.

[Translated from Ricochets n°9, August 2015]

It has been a while now since the first and last contribution to Avalanche from comrades in Brussels about the struggle against the construction of a maxi-prison. The idea of this second contribution is not to repeat the same basic analytical elements and so on you can easily find back in Avalanche issue 1, but it is an attempt to go a bit deeper into some problematics concerning this struggle in particular and insurrectionist specific struggle in general.
Today we have arrived at a moment on which a path of two years and a half of struggle against this morbid project of the state lays behind us. Old complicities got lost, new ones have been forged. Some illusions were broken, enabling us to get a clearer look upon what needs to be done, giving us an opportunity to sharpen our ideas and practices. Only by putting one’s ideas into practice one can search for proper ways to overcome certain obstacles, a true confrontation between the fantasy and the reality is what brings us closer to a better understanding of where we need to light the fuse and lighten up the meaning of our ideas.

Some changes in the social context

During the last year, some elements have changed in the social context we are acting in, elements considered important to highlight.
First of all, since last winter the army has reappeared in the streets in Belgium, permanently protecting symbols of possible islamist attacks. After the assassination of two presumed islamists during a house raid in Verviers, terror alert against cops and cop stations rose to the maximum level, causing Brussels cops for several weeks not to patrol alone, but always with two cars, as well as upto today cops wearing machine guns standing outside of the cop station, cops controlling every entry in the palace of justice, cops wearing machine guns while patrolling in the streets.
Next to these advancements of repression (in the anti-terror climate many more of tehse “advancements” were made), we would like to draw some attention to two movements of social unrest. Firstly there is some protest against austerity measures, generally firmly controlled by the reformist ass-licking trade unions, but getting wild in November last years. Thousands of people from different horizons in a battle against the cops for several hours on what is generally considered to be an ultra boring head counting walk of the unions. This event at the borderline between several neighbourhoods where we are agitating can be considered as a blow of fresh air in the repressively pacified context of Brussels. A cop motorbike on fire as a reaction against cop brutality which triggered the whole thing, 112 cops to the hospital, some burning cars serving as barricades, some vandalism. If this moment of joy has been heavily condemned by all unions (some of them even collaborating with the pigs), it has equally shown to many that anger and the will to revolt are burning underneath the unions pacifying project.
Secondly, during the last year a movement of coordination between people without papers has been growing, creating a road of demo’s (it should be mentioned that there has been a wild demo after an arrest, something very unusual), occupations, protests and so on. Next to the demand for a general regularisation, there is as well a critique of the borders present, attention given to the mass grave in the Mediterranean, and a will to close the deportation camps and stop all deportations. Both signs of social unrest mentioned here are considered relevant to our struggle, building bridges between our struggle and the agitation around us. We are not looking to educate anyone, but the more trouble on the streets the better, as well as we imagine interventions of extending the conflict, trying to open ip the horizon for a more explosive situation.
A last new element to take into account is the Zadist occupation of the terrain of the future prison, a coalition between civic neighbours, ecological activists, zadists from all over and some rare individuals with whom we have more to share as well as few comrades, but this story is such a mess that we will not deepen it out but will come back to it later on when talking about desolidarisation.

A solid ground

What can be said is that two years and a half of agitation (with different means) in certain neighbourhoods has created a firm base on which much can be imagined. Silence around this project of the state has definitely been broken through our proper means (although there are still always people to meet who didn’t hear of the maxi prison yet, we can say that the word maxi prison has become common language in certain parts of Brussels, indicating the importance of what a small group of comrades can do, since maxi prison is an invented word that will mark the prison with a taste of struggle even when build), and the proposal of self organisation and direct action against this prison and the ones responsible is circulating. The distribution of the monthly newspaper “Ricochets” gets its recognition.
After some moments of reference in the struggle (the occupation which took place in 2013, an attempted demo and police occupation of the neighbourhood in 2014), some comrades decided to open a point of reference in the popular neighbourhood Kureghem (Anderlecht). In “the passage” permanences, debates, dinners and other activities around the subject of the maxi prison and imprisonment in general are taking place, creating occasions for people from different horizons to meet up and give some direction to their refusal of the repressive offensive and state logic in general.
If one wants to make a quantitative evaluation of the project, counting the heads of people passing by at every opening time, one has not understood the qualitative meaning of this space. If we are not talking about masses, we are referring to interesting encounters between rebels, critical thinkers, unsatisfied people and anarchists discussing the means of refusal of this world. When people who would never have met meet each other in the context of a struggle, something interesting happens. And here we are not talking about meetings between representatives of political groups but of individuals who understand the need of opposing to this project and the state in a direct way. Off course, the struggle doesn’t take place in between the four walls of a room and the interest of such a place to meet and coordinate depends on the quality of the fight in the street.
So news of the struggle is crossing the streets of some neighbourhoods, be it by posters or by mouth to mouth communications (sometimes leading to very exaggerated stories, for example turning a small confrontation with the cops into a riot or the breaking of the windows of a collaborating engineering office during a wild demo into a shooting drive by) as well as news about things happening that never reach the media (e.g. confrontations with cops) comes to our ears through this space. Taking part in some of the dynamics of these neighbourhoods opens up perspectives of mutual understanding and solidarity.

The silence of the mass media

The police on its side off course doesn’t appreciate anarchist’s attempts at social unrest and insurrection and doesn’t want to make propaganda for the proposal of self organisation and sabotage against this maxi prison. Nevertheless, media silence has recently been broken for some moments. (let aside the tiring attempts of the civic neighbourhood committee of Haren -where they want to build the prison- trying its very very best to attract media attention towards their political program against the what they continue to call “mega prison”) In the advent of the last meetings between important people to arrange the last official documents to get the last permissions needed to start the construction, the main architect of the maxi prison starts shedding his tears in all media who are willing to listen about a fire bomb (inflammable liquid + gas) put at his house last winter (so some months before the news reaches the media!). Whereas in the first interview the bastard denies all responsibility, afterwards he changes tactics and states that he doesn’t understand what can be so bad about the construction of prisons. This news triggers the sensational appetite of the vultures of the media, for the first time starting to talk about direct actions that took place against the ones making profit with this project, pointing the inculpating finger towards anarchists that are called terrorists. The infamous architect states that all companies involved have had to deal with troubles so far.
In the middle of this hysteria (journalists discovering the existence of combative anarchism as well as a struggle of two and a halve years against the state and its repressive program for Brussels), the houses of some of the people in the commission that decides to give the permission to build or not get tagged. Panic hits the responsible assholes and at least one of them publicly claims to resign her job. The public meeting of the commission itself gets massively surrounded by cops and can only be attended after an identity control and control of your bags. Half of the member of the commission are sitting in the dark so that the media cannot take images of their faces. Lastly, in the middle of the mediatic spectacle, a group of 15 to 20 people (according to the media) enters the federal buildings agency and destroys the model of the future prison once and for all! Maybe our good friend and architect de Wachtelaere has thereby understood that he should not have been crying in front of the video cameras, since the echo of action inspires more action. In the aftermath of this episode, the decision of the commission was delayed several times with some politicians publicly declaring that actually they as well are against the project (yeah right!), until the day of anti terrorist house raids in 4 houses of comrades and in “the passage”.
Before we get to this point, we want to clarify that even if the mass media have off course a very wide reach (until the cells of the prisoners), the spectacle is consuming everything it touches and that it is the autonomous practice of news and ideas diffused by comrades as well as discussions between individuals (comrades or not) that give true meaning to the struggle and not the mediatic echo spread by vultures horny for excitement in their boring life. To end this chapter on mass media we would like to point out that at least three citizens of Haren have publicly dissociated themselves from all vandalizing activities, and this in the name of the inhabitants of all of the village (well, we do not have to doubt about their willingness to be politicians themselves), as well as two “occupiers” of the Zad have done in the name of their Zad (yep). For everyone who is convinced of the use of direct action, it seems wise to stay far away from these politicians who prefer to talk to magistrates (who by the way started to oppose against this project as well, what a mess!) than to the people destined to be thrown inside of this future atrocity. This kind of people are a danger to everyone willing to throw a stone and should be identified as such. The state discourse of “the good and the bad” is being repeated by these scum bags.

Houseraids

A few words then about the house raids that took place under the pretext of “incitement to terrorist acts” and “membership of terrorist group”. The police raided four houses of comrades and the passage, emptying all places from any agitation material: stickers, posters, leaflets, booklets, banners, newspapers and what more. This act of sabotage is a sign of the state declaring repression towards our insurrectionary project. They want to cut off our legs and frighten the people who are in one way or another standing against the state’s dream of prisons everywhere. They want to scare away people from the passage, they want to make people afraid to say what they think, they want to impeach the conversation about attack against the bastards of this world, they want to eradicate the thoughts about revolt. Against this terrorism of the state we can have only one answer ready: let’s continue to disturb them with all of our heart. Now that we are still outside we must do anything we can to break the social peace in this rotten heart of darkness, in Europe’s capital where we see the contradictions of this system of oppression and poverty, of wealth and power in front of our nose everywhere we go.
As a reaction towards the house raids, comrades got together into an inspiring dynamic and prepared a gathering for a few days later. The police once again occupied the territory to intimidate and scare away people. It must be said that the police is a pain in the ass, but let’s not forget the encouraging words of a man met during a distribution of the call for the gathering, encouraging words amongst many others: “I take off my head for you people. You still have the courage. There is a lot of defeatism over here, and people are even afraid to say what they think.”

And so…

This struggle has never been evident, nor easy and in the future it will certainly not become more easy. It is a struggle that was build upon many years of agitation activity done by comrades concerning the topics of prison, deportation camps and others. The state will do its best to not only put some people into prison, but to destroy everything what has been built with many effort, to erase the history of insurrectionary and combative anarchism. Adding to that, we don’t always notice the signs of social unrest because they are hidden, be it silenced by the cops or unnoticed because of social isolation which is a condition of the modern times.
But even if we are not always aware of the consequences of our acting, get discouraged by an ambiance of seemingly overall resignation, get scared by the pigs,… Brussels is boiling of anger and we must be prepared. The social context of this small country we are living in is heading towards a disaster (if we are not already living it) and we can be sure of a future explosion. The maxi prison is only one element in the global picture but the attack against the one’s responsible is a clear indication for everyone in conflict with the state and its insulting daily practice. This struggle can be a reference of self organisation aiming at the attack of the miserable conditions and the institutions suffocating life, and exist in the imagination and memory of people. It can give courage to others eager to fight without politicians nor compromise, people tired and sick of this world and letting the anger come out. This is what the state wants to crush, this is what we are putting ourselves at stake for. There is a potential in this struggle, a social dimension which can make things uncontrollable. There are so many people who have read the pamphlets, have seen the posters, have heard and discussed about the fight against this prison, creating a swamp in which it becomes difficult for the cops to understand what is going on, as well as growing seeds of ideas in the heads of many.
For let us be clear: the struggle against the maxi prison is not a struggle of anarchists against the state, it is the struggle of a social refusal of the daily attacks by the state, of a life between the four walls of a prison city. This social refusal can turn into a claw at any time, scaring the cops away, making the politicians pee in their pants as was seen before in England, in Syria, in Turkey, in the USA and in so many other places. If during these strong moments of massive self organization some clear ideas upon how and where to hit the enemy are present, the state is in serious trouble. This is why we should not give in to the police pressure and start hiding our ideas. Because our ideas are stronger than dynamite, are seeds that can help things to seriously go out of control. The social spreading of self organization and direct action is the worst nightmare of the state and everyone willing to control the protest.

[Published in Avalanche n°5, July 2015]

The Belgian State has been announcing it for some time: building 13 new modern and efficient prisons.

As part of this new master-plan the State wants to build a maxi-prison in Haren, northern Brussels. It is intended as the largest prison in the country, a genuine prison town that would include five different prisons on the same terrain. It would then lock up at least 1,200 men, women and children.

With the fight against the construction of this monstrosity raging on, this 48-page publication features analysis and a chronology of attack from the past two and a half years of struggle against this project.

Download the publication from Person(s) Unknown from their website: http://personsunknown.noblogs.org/post/2015/07/12/the-struggle-against-the-maxi-prison-in-brussels-a-chronology-of-attack-antagonism/

The Belgian state want to build a new prison in Haren, north of Brussels. It is supposed to become the largest prison in Belgium, a maxi-prison [a massive prison-complex], a genuine prison town that would include five different prisons on the same terrain. Like other new prisons built in the last two years, this one in Brussels would also be developed by what is called a “private-public partnership”. This means that the construction and management of the prison is entirely in the hands of private companies, and that the State rents out for 25 years to these companies, after which it eventually becomes state property. Therefore you don’t have to look far to understand the huge economic interests that this project represents.

The maxi-prison will also be the first Belgian prison where it will be possible to lock up vast numbers of people at the same time (the complex composes of 1,200 cells), for men as for women and children. A court established within the prison is intended to help limit the detainees movements even more to a minimum.

The construction of this atrocity is the icing on the cake of the “master plan” designed by prior governments, envisaging the construction of approximately nine new prisons, throughout the country. This plan is sold to the public as the ultimate answer to overpopulation, and the advanced breakdown of certain prisons, as a major step towards more humane confinement, with more attention to the integrations of prisoners. Such a manoeuvre became almost inevitable for power, seeing that for years the prison world has been plagued by escapes, hostage-taking of prison guards, refusal to go back to the cells, large and small uprisings. In addition, detention conditions have led to several international authorities slapping the Belgian state on the wrist. They therefore want to do away with the disorder, revolt and international attention. But all this ‘out of a hat’ humanisation discourse in times of supposed crisis, to ensure that the public accepts this enormous influx of money for imprisonment, is obviously absolute bullshit. This is only contemporary packaging for something ancient; the power that sharpens its repressive weapons even more; to shelter itself, to defend its system, to preserve its direction towards more control and oppression.

In different ways we currently inject money into the Justice System of Belgium. There are not only the thousands of new cells, there is also the extension of electronic tagging, house arrest, community service, fines, etc. For the state, it is not to humanise its punishments, but instead to extend them to all those who continue to re-enter DIY structures to stay out of the lap of justice. In greatly increasing the prison capacity and expanding the possibilities for alternative sentencing, they want to give us all the possible means to have more of a grasp in society; in order to punish even more people and lock them up in prison, their accommodation, with a job, or financial debts.

And the powerful understand more than ever that the achievement of this goal is not only by the traditional foundations of the repressive apparatus. If we look at the city of Brussels, we see that the maxi-prison is not the only project with the objective to control people, to determine their behaviour in different ways, to influence and to limit their daily lives. To the far remote corners of the city, the projects that evidently grow like mushrooms: the construction of new police stations to the installation of more CCTV, additionally by the increased presence of police in the street. The extension of the European district to create an extremely well controlled public transport network, that must bring the workforce living outside of the city quickly and efficiently to their workplace. The construction of temples dedicated to ever-growing consumption, the implementation of new expensive accommodation in the poorest neighbourhoods, so as to achieve “social cleansing”. All these brilliant inventions are nothing more than instruments with the sole aim of keeping people in line, or to force them to toe the line, and; to target, humiliate, hunt or lock up those who can not, or who consciously refuse. The new maxi-prison in Haren and the urban renovation in Brussels are two sides of the same coin.

It’s been almost two years since the first leaflets expressing a radical opposition to the construction of the prison were distributed in Haren, connecting the umpteenth repressive project of the state directly with the slow but certain transformations of the city into a large open-air prison. Since then, the struggle was born which has experienced many different initiatives and intensities: leaflets, posters, tags, gatherings, occupations, demonstrations, sabotage and direct action. All these initiatives breath an anti-political attitude, and are an invitation to each and everyone to also go on the attack, into direct conflict with the powerful and their plans. They also claim autonomy of the struggle, encouraging everyone to organise themselves when, how and with whom he/she/they deem best, in direct confrontation against that which oppresses us.

The construction of the maxi-prison in Haren will never be prevented only with words. Imagination, ideas, perseverance, passion and acts of each and everyone of us can fuel a fire that not a single project, of any stronghold of power, is able to resist. Continue to explore the paths, taking action.

Published in Ricochets, n° 1, November 2014

On your marks

At the end of February 2015, the state hired a company to install fences around the terrain of the future site of the maxi-prison in Haren, north Brussels. Workers with an excavator, accompanied by some police, then began to fence off the area so they could “be ready to work away from curious prying eyes.” [1] Another company started demolition work of a former industrial site that is also located on the land of the future construction site.

These are undeniable signs that the project of the maxi-prison is progressing and that the state wants to step up a gear to erect the largest jail in Belgium. And it’s hard to not understand their message when they get started… installing fences to protect themselves and placing surveillance cameras in the village of Haren. The construction of this prison will inevitably bring the militarisation of the area.

Get set

If the Cafasso consortium (which includes the companies Denys, VK Engineering, Buro II & Archi+I…) [2] will have to wait until June for the last necessary permits, while waiting, the state prepares us with a few bad-tasting jokes. Also in March, there will be a “public inquiry” where citizens are asked to give their opinion on the project (who can still believe these kind of things?). In any case, it will then be especially easier to intimidate them to “shut their mouths” and to portray the radical opponents as “extremists” and “terrorists”… The state prepares and wants to be ready to impose by any means necessary their project.

And us, are we ready? Has each and every one of us, those who are fighting against this maxi-prison and the world that it produces, reflected on what will be done to defeat this plan? The possibilities are numerous: actions against constructors to attacks against those responsible, blockages of the daily routine to wild demonstrations, etc.

Go!

It seems likely that the start of construction will not be far away. Will they start before summer? It’s very possible. [3] It’s now and at every moment that we must harass them and put a spoke in the wheel. But when work begins, rather than be discouraged, intimidated and declared defeated, it will be an opportunity to take new steps in this dance that is the fight against this horror.

When the builders and machines arrive on the ground in Haren, let’s propagate chaos in the streets of Brussels, in the neighbourhoods where we live and struggle. To mark this move, and give them a glimpse of what will follow – what we hope and are working on – throughout the construction of this horror. By lighting the fires of revolt in the neighbourhoods, we undermine the pillars on which any plan of the State ultimately rests upon: resignation and passivity of the oppressed. And it’s from there that the assault to destroy this maxi-prison goes away.

PS: Companies that have started to prepare the ground in Haren to build the maxi-prison are: Van Kempen (demolition work, Antwerp), APB (asbestos removal, Brabant) and Verbruggen Groep Mol (fences, Antwerp).. Without all these collaborators, the maxi-prison could never be built. A word to the wise…

Translated from Ricochets n° 4, March 2015

[1] In the last week of February, a group of people brought down nearly half of the 400 Heras fences surrounding the site of the future maxi-prison

[2] The prison contract is a private-public partnership between the federal government and the Cafasso consortium, that will build and manage the infrastructure of the prison and then lease it to the state. The Cafasso consortium is; Denys, FFC Construccion, Buro II & ARCHI+I (Belgium/France), EGM Architectes (Netherlands), AAFM Facility Management (Belgium/Netherlands), M.O.O.CON Advisers (Austria/Germany), G. Derveaux Ingénieurs, Typsa (International), Marcq & Roba, Vialia Sociedad Gestora de Concesiones de Infraestructuras (Madrid), Macquarie Capital Group (International), VK Engineering, Dr. Andrea Seelich (Vienna), and the Building Agency of the Belgian federal state. Targets are located in Belgium unless referenced otherwise. Other companies involved in building new prisons in Belgium: Eiffage, BAM, Cordeel, Interbuild, Willemen, BNP Paribas, KBC Banque, GDF Suez, Sodexo, Cegelec, ABN Amro, Socotec and Eurest.

[3] The building work is intended for 2015, with the completion date set for 2017.