Dispatches from behind bars. Political prisoners speak out.
The
official story is that the United States has no political prisoners.
The reality is that there are hundreds of people rounded up, placed
behind bars, and kept there for inordinately long sentences because
of their political beliefs and activities. A project of abolitionist
Josh Davidson and political prisoner Eric King, this book is filled
with the experience and wisdom of over thirty current and former
North American political prisoners. It provides first-hand details of
prison life and the political commitments that continue to lead
prisoners into direct confrontation with state authorities and
institutions. The people Josh Davidson has interviewed include former
radicals and Black liberation militants from the sixties and
seventies, current antifascists, nonviolent Catholic peace activists,
Animal and Earth Liberation Front saboteurs, and more. Their stories
are moving, often tragic, yet deeply inspiring.
Collectively,
these people have spent hundreds of years behind bars, and their
experiences speak directly to the cruelty and immorality of our
prison and so-called criminal justice systems. Although their
sentences and the conditions they have endured vary dramatically,
this wide range of voices come together to embody what bell hooks
called “a legacy of defiance.” It is this legacy—of tirelessly
struggling to right today’s wrongs and create a better
tomorrow—that the prison system tries, yet fails, to extinguish.
Royalties
from book sales are split between the Anarchist Black Cross
Federation’s Warchest, which provides financial support to
currently imprisoned political prisoners, and the family of political
prisoner Eric King.