Letter from Jock Palfreeman in response to the CCF proposal for a “Black International”

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Greetings and solidarity
To all the prisoners of war we call comrades.

My name is Jock Palfreeman, I’ve served almost 4 years of a 20 year sentence for defending two Roma against a nationalist attack of 15. I was charged with the murder of one and the attempted murder of another. My case is documented further at  freejock.com and I don’t wish to waste words on it here.

For almost 4 years now I’ve been officially kidnapped in Sofia Central Prison – state of Bulgaria. The realities of my case censured from the bulgarian public by a state sponsoring media. I stay strong and look forward to the next 16 years as I know with all the essence of my being that what I did was right.

Prisoners of War are not victims of injustice like the “liberals” speak about in their self-justifying wank. We are willing enemies of the capitalist state and their organs.

Prison should not be glorified as a prisoner knows there is nothing glorious about prison. We are quadriplegics, deaf, dumb and blind. But this is an admittance of success imparted by the state.

Protests are sanctified by the capitalist state as the state knows that all protests have parameters and within these perimeters the demands of the people are annulled. I would be so arrogant as to presume that many incarcerated comrades who took up means of direct action did so after several wasted years of shouting in endless marches to the bemusement of the petty bourgeois shop owners. Indeed the only benefit of this wasted time in our lives is that we now understand that it was wasted.

Protestors are not jailed as they pose no threat to the status quo of the capitalist elite. In this regard we must ask ourselves “why are we in prison?”. Exactly as we do pose a threat to the status quo. Incarceration is the state’s ackowledgement that we challenge their legitimacy to control our lives. Due to this knowledge I wake up (almost) every morning with a smile. Although our enemies still sit on the throne of oppression, that throne is shaken.

We as prisoners of war should draw further strength from those who came and went before us. From the Greek students who stared down the guns of the state as they invaded the universities to the miners in Australia at the Eureka stockade. What we share with these people spanning through history as well as national or cultural bounds is that we’ve all declared “enough is enough” despite the real potential of death or capture we’ve all followed our conscience first.

We became enemies of the capitalistic state as we refused to live under their submission without resistance. Although we are in “prison”, we always were, as the comrades outside still are. The cameras recording our lives, secret files collected on us, infiltrations of our organizations, police attacks and murders, censorship and brainwashing. The only difference between the state inside the prison walls and outside them is quantity. The crimes of the capitalist state that are committed against the outsiders are the same committed against us insiders and the crimes committed by the state within the prison walls you can be certain are committed against the outsiders. The only difference is the quantity of the same oppression.

Specifically I’m speaking to the comrades who have never been incarcerated. Every attack or set up you’ve experienced at the hands of the state agents, we experience it every day. Every beating you’ve experienced, we experience it every day. Every time you’ve felt hungry, we experience hunger every day. Every time you’ve experienced a cold night, we experience it every night of winter. We share the exact same problems inside and outside of prison, but the state uses the separation in prison to focus its tyranny. In prison it’s purified and concentrated.

As we share the same tyranny as our comrades outside we also share the same hopes and dreams. I remember EVERY act of solidarity with my case. My heart jumps with joy with every blow against capitalism. I sing the Internationale and I smile. Because I know there is no end, but the end of capitalism. When I think of the comrades from the Cospiracy of Cells of Fire who showed such extraordinary solidarity I feel a pain of guilt in my heart that comrades were sentenced so harshly for their acts of solidarity. Yet instantly my heart rejoices as I know why they did what they did. I know they knew the repercussions of their actions before committing them. It was wholeheartedly and consciously that they decided to show solidarity in the only meaningful way possible to so many prisoners of war.

Relatively out of context, I’d like to highlight my problems that affect me in prison. Although pan European solidarity has been shown (including direct action) there still remains a total lack of solidarity or direct action within the state of Bulgaria. Not a single murmur of solidarity from where it should be expected the most. My proposal or idea is to export resistance from where it is plentiful to where it is lacking. All too often I read about solidarity actions being committed in different states to where the issue is located. But Bulgaria seems to be a complete black hole on the european map of resistance. With the cross workings of european states, including Europol, N.A.T.O. and businesses, we too must be more prepared to contribute to “foreign” actions. We must be more prepared to seek out the enemy behind any borders s/he is hiding behind, despite cultural, lingual or national differences. How is it possible that Greece is on the brink of revolution, yet in Bulgaria hordes of fascists burn the houses of Roma unopposed? I stopped asking the question “where are the bulgarian comrades in Bulgaria?” many years ago. Now I ask: “Where are the greek comrades in Bulgaria?”. How can such a thing as a state border be such a separator of a movement that claims it holds no value for borders? Our comrades in Eastern Europe are greatly outnumbered. In Bulgaria there is no resistance to fascism, only the empty words of the “liberals” who have the nerve to call themselves anarchists. As far as I know, I’m the ONLY anti-fascist in prison in Sofia, you might think that is a good thing, but it can’t be forgotten that we are their enemies; the lack of anti-fascists in bulgarian prisons is reflective of the lack of resistance.

Although I have no contact with the Cospiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), or the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), I recognize that they are part of an effective minority. While the “liberals” try to negotiate with the non-negotiable, the organisations like the CCF and the FAI are the only ones who scare the plump politicians. The CCF and the FAI are the physical manifestations of the desires of many who are too scared to realise them.

The obvious evolution is the Black International, whereby the states that hold our prisoners of war will know that we will not be forgotten as numbers on files in a prison archive. As we pay with our lives, that state should not be held any less accountable for their crimes then they hold us accountable.

LONG LIVE THE CCF, UNTIL THE WORLD STOPS SPINNING RAGE FROM THE CAGE

Comrade Jock