Next month is the annual June 11 day in solidarity with anarchist prisoners. There is a new call to action and new zines and resources on the June11.org website.

The following excerpt from the call does a wonderful job of articulating the rationale behind the day:

We hope that June 11 revitalizes solidarity for those comrades facing the longest sentences and builds momentum against the cages they’re locked in. Recent struggles against the expansion of these cages continue to demonstrate the expansive possibilities of solidarity. In situations of prison construction, by weaving together locals, residents, and prisoners who would both be harmed by a new prison. Or, in the case of the hunger strikes against the new C-Type maximum security wings in Greece, by knitting together prisoners from different groups, outside radicals, and family members. The potential of subverting the state’s plans for restructuring prisons opens another front in the struggle, beyond supporting individual comrades and organizing to help prison rebellions. These struggles are currently proliferating in the US, from the opposition to the new youth jail in Seattle or the construction of the ICE facility in Gary, Indiana, to the community fight against the maximum security facility in eastern Kentucky. Let’s link these experiences together in order to strengthen ourselves, whether we’re inside or outside the existing prisons. Successfully challenging the restructuring of the prisons and the existence of the Maximum Security and Communications Management Units, particularly through the combined power of organizing inside and outside of the walls, is a clear step towards the power to destroy prisons and the society that requires them.

The struggle against prisons must take many forms. It must be both slow and steady and fast and unpredictable. Supporting imprisoned comrades requires diligence, patience, and time to grow real relationships. Our imprisoned comrades remain in the struggle, and we will continue to support them and conspire with them in whatever ways we can. But we also want to relentlessly attack the infrastructure and logic of prisons, to become complicit with struggles inside and against prisons. June 11 can be many things: a fundraiser; an opportunity to spread tbe word and raise awareness; a chance to connect personally with longterm anarchist prisoners via letter or phone; an intervention to begin struggling determinedly against a prison construction project; an attack; a chance to find a crack in the structure of prison society and exploit it.

Whether by yourself or with a hundred comrades, we hope that you take action this June 11: against prisons, and in solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners. Thank you for all the solidarity you show, on June 11th or any day. It means everything.