The Cassa AntiRepressione delle Alpi Occidentali was born in autumn 2000 with the aim of coordinating fundraising activities between anarchist realities and individualities of the Alps and the Piedmont plains, activities destined to anti-repression interventions and to expressions of solidarity with the prisoners who have contacts, friendships and affinities with the realities and individualities involved. The prerequisites that led to this initiative, and which have remained intact up to this day, are the necessity of constantly engaging in the resistance against the blows unleashed by repression and the necessity of ensuring that those who end up in prison or are subjected to other restrictive measures continue to have the support of groups and individuals who know about the prison system and don’t consider the Law as a value in itself. We are well aware that activities of resistance are not sufficient, and we’ve never thought of relegating our tensions against a society that produces laws and prison bars to charity work; however we think that activities of resistance are inseparable from other practices and methods that share the same goals and are set against the same enemies.

We think that only the complementarity of methods of intervention can lead to greater completeness and efficiency in an anti-repression trajectory of struggle and solidarity… in short, we think that starting from solid and constant basis we can engage in more precise and efficient critical interventions against repression and the system that generates and administers it, as the experiences of similar movements in other countries and contexts teach us.

The criteria in the choice of interventions, situations and prisoners to whom we send our contributions are never adopted according to a rigid scheme of evaluation: as this is an instrument linked to a local area (and therefore shared by comrades who are not geographically far from one another), it has made it possible to engage in discussions throughout the time, and decide to intervene or not to intervene in the situations brought to our attention. It is important to point out that the fund doesn’t count on limitless resources, so it can’t always guarantee a continuing contribution to each prisoner with whom it establishes a contact: according to the circumstances, therefore, it is necessary to decide about priorities.
We have been sending the money of our fund to revolutionary prisoners, rebellious prisoners, prisoners ‘in need’ we learnt about by other prisoners, and even ‘social’ prisoners from our towns and neighbourhoods we know directly and with whom we have relations of respect or friendship. We’ve been contributing to other solidarity funds and affinity projects here and in other countries (Iberian Peninsula, Palestine, Argentina, Greece, Kurdistan, Russia) and intervening in campaigns of solidarity with situations and individuals persecuted by the law, and also helping prisoners’ families with travel costs towards visits and legal expenses.
Besides money contributions, the fund is used to create information material, organize interventions and initiatives and support activities such as purchase and dispatch of books and various publications to be sent to prisoners.

The fund is made with proceedings raised during initiatives of support, and with contributions and donations (also coming from realities and individuals of other areas). The running of the fund is based on shifts undertaken in turn by the comrades involved: this is a method we think appropriate so that tasks and responsibilities don’t fall on the shoulders of the usual people or the activity of resistance of the fund isn’t badly affected by personal or repressive vicissitudes.

The choice to adopt such an instrument has decisively proved useful, as demonstrated by the relations and contacts it allowed us to establish with a number of prisoners throughout jails in various countries, and by the many occasions when having funds allowed us to promptly intervene in emergency situations.
Moreover the initiatives we took part in allowed us to develop the discussion on repression, prison and revolutionary solidarity, even in contexts and places where these arguments were not always taken for granted.
Therefore we believe that the continuation of the fund and the creation of funds of local resistance in other areas are important steps towards the growth of a constant, widespread and efficient anti-repression activity.

A thousand ways, one and only goal… freedom!

Cassa AntiRep delle Alpi Occidentali

Contacts:
Circolo Culturale Barbarià
Via Umberto I 2
Mentoulles
10060 Fenestrelle (TO)
Italy

Publications:
Biblioteca Popolare Rebeldies
Via Savona 10
12100 Cuneo
Italy

E-mail: cassantirepalpi@autistici.org