from vivalaanarquia, transl waronsociety:
On August 14th, in the framework of the Bombs Case investigation, a series of particular houses and Squatted Social Centers (CSO’s) were raided. In this way, the constant threats leaked by the press for several years–seeking to arrest whoever had perpetrated a series of explosive attacks–were made real.
After more than 5 years of investigation, everyone arrested that day was presented as guilty, accused of financing terrorism, placing explosive devices and belonging to an illicit terrorist association.
For many years since the unfortunate death of our compañero Mauricio Morales on May 22, 2009 near the Prison Guards School, the squats were syndicated as responsible for the explosive attacks. This was in order to fill the lack of information about the authors of the attacks, to satisfy the need to present suspects, and to calm the critiques from the upper echelons of power toward the lack of investigative progress. The media hysteria had to be satiated and the doctrine of national security had to be applied.
After the police’s assault, a space was evicted and closed down: the Sacco and Vanzetti Squatted Social Center and Library, an occupation where we functioned as a collective for more than 8 years. Our name was criminalized, our ties persecuted and our solidarity efforts–for the State and its repressive agents–made synonymous with terrorism.
Threats, insults and accusations flew, the prosecution even went so far as to speak of the space as a “Center of Power,” in an absurd attempt at revenge, looking to nullify our open and clear anti-authoritarian position.
So while some compañerxs confronted prison, others had to flee, our space was devastated and destroyed by the police bodies and our library was ruined. After the seizure in which many hands were involved, we lost track of a ton of material, so while some books were presented as evidence in the trial, others were sold in established bookstores or put out at free fairs.
Finally after 9 months of prison and an incredibly long trial, the result ended up being acquittal for the compañerxs.
Now, almost three years since our forced closure, we have decided to take up our work again and to open the Library, since we were finally able to recover a minimal portion of our material. The repression made it that some members of our collective took different decisions and paths; we decided to continue with the project of building this Library.
Our efforts are directed at finding a space soon that will allow us to put the Library into operation and be able to thus create the fruitful exchange of collectivization of books, experiences and knowledge. History shows us how much learning derives from books, in the ups and downs of the struggle, in the decisive moments of repression, material written with ideas of freedom will always be a contribution along this path.
Our project will always remain away from usury, accumulation and private property. These books are ours, but an “ours” that is born, grows and strengthens from the collective, in a project many left for dead, but which continues to live against all prognosis, agitating with intact memory and will.
The books and written material that we as the Sacco and Vanzetti Library have are not for our personal enjoyment or pleasure, not for the fetish of bookshelves full of books. This material, obtained through the efforts and contributions of many individuals, serves, contributes and strengthens itself only in the circulation among those who invest interest and assume a commitment of solidarity.
This is why we urge the donation of books or any other material that contributes to the development and spreading of the ideas that deny in practice any authority. We call for the overcoming of the fetish of personal libraries, and for concretely contributing to the affinity Libraries. In the same way we make an appeal for the return of the material that some compañerxs may have from the library, whether because they rescued it after the eviction or because they were never able to return some book checked out before the closure.
As a brief evaluation–from the library–of the repressive period experienced during the Bombs Case, it seems to us that there was a lack of spaces and instances with a clear anti-authoritarian focus to defuse and confront the ploy coming from the repression. We say this because the State fell upon some persons and spaces which maintained collective discourses and which in like form should have been collectively defended. Not making oneself responsible for the defense of these ideas contributes to centering the repressive focus only upon the compañerxs on trial.
“If one falls, ten arise” is a phrase that demands realization, in discourse as much as in deeds. If power strikes some seeking to frighten the rest, the minimum that can exist from this diffuse milieu is the refusal to internalize, in theory and practice, the lesson that the powerful are dictating.
In this sense it would have been valuable for the rest of the spaces and libraries that existed at that time–many of them even cited in the prosecution’s accusation and politically investigated, indicated as centers of power–had had a more active participation in a process that also involved them.
But we are likewise clear on the fact that the solidarity and gestures of support expressed were always the light that cleared the way, the friendly hand extended to support and raise us up. With this strength we remain and decide to continue forward. The ones who defied the forgetfulness that power tried to impose on spaces, compañerxs and ideas knew to maintain their perspective of anti-authoritarian struggle.
We make ourselves responsible for our experiences and we assume ourselves as part of a historical legacy of struggle against every form of domination, we see and will see life through this prism. We continue to be a horizontally developed collective based in free association and affinity.
Neither raids nor prison nor the threatening weight of sentences and years in the shadows can ever stop our desires to fight, we would never ingratiate ourselves to the structures of domination or the logic of authority.
Their ridiculous ruse to criminalize books and use them as evidence at trial is the continuity of the burning of books in dicatorships and the Inquisition, which shows us the potential for danger that books possess for their capacity to arouse minds and inflame the desire for freedom.
In spite of everything experienced, we keep our fists raised, in open struggle against every form of domination.
For the multiplication of the initiatives and will to fight!
Biblioteca Sacco y Vanzetti
…Books for the battle
bibliotecasaccoyvanzetti@riseup.net
http://bibliotecasaccoyvanzetti.wordpress.com/
