Teixeiro, 12-06-2013
Dearest comrades, I received your letter ‘Salute from the intermediate conference 2013’ and I welcome this conference on building class solidarity. It is about solidarity for us revolutionary prisoners and for those who could become such in time under the burden of the daily repression of the Prison System.
For me revolution is not something that concerns few people but something that concerns all those who for one reason or another were born on the other side of the barricade.
Therefore it is something that implies the possibility and necessity to let in as many prisoners as possible, considering that the condition of being prisoners is the ideal to spread revolutionary solidarity. Clearly I’m aware of the difficulty of involving the prisoners who’ve never been revolutionary in this project.
Here in Spain, where I’ve been locked up since 1996, there have been several struggles with which we tried to promote solidarity among prisoners… the struggle for the abolition of the FIES regime and the struggle against long sentences and life sentences.
Since October 2011 a campaign against torture and abuse in prison has been in place. Common actions carried out since the beginning were a symbolic hunger strike on the first day of each month, complaints to the Congress of Deputies (political responsible for the continuation of torture and deaths in prison), to supervising judges, to the Defensor del Pueblo (the institutional guarantor for prisoners) and to the committees for Human Rights in Geneva and Strasbourg. A reformist struggle. After one year and a half the campaign is continuing, but it didn’t succeed in increasing the number of participants.
At the moment we are 51 prisoners who actively participate, scattered in 20 different prisons. We all have juridical support, a success never seen in the past, not even at the time of the very hard struggle against the FIES regime.
The judicial support we managed to get helps the prisoners who are in this struggle and suffer the reprisal of the Prison System, and not the prisoners whose only interest is to solve their own problems while they don’t empathize with the problems of other comrades. As you can see, we too are compelled to make distinctions … sadly… it’s not what we wanted but there’s no space for personal problems or for false revolutionaries or rebels.
In the past we had bad experiences as we left the door open to everybody, convinced that anyone who endured the burden of imprisonment could be considered revolutionary only because they were prisoners… but reality showed me this was a mistake… In principle we have the duty to leave the door open but those who want to get in must struggle. Finally, summing up and speaking for myself, I’ve got a good opinion of the examples you make of solidarity and support without forgetting those who (as I said before) are not known revolutionaries but struggle for their rights. They ‘should be allowed to take part’ too. The result of a struggle comes out not only by one’s own participation but also by the number of people that one manages to convince.
A strong hug of solidarity to all of you who struggle for a New World.
Claudio Lavazza
Translated from Italian by b.porco dio
http://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=15927