This year marks 25 years in a row that prisoners and supporters have participated in the annual event known as Running Down the Walls (RDTW), often running or walking simultaneously in many cities and prisons at once.
RDTW is a non-competitive 5K run/jog/walk/roll to raise awareness and funds for political prisoners as the primary fundraiser for the ABCF Warchest Program with a portion of funds raised also supporting local groups of the organizers’ choosing– see event details below for specifics. Over the years, RDTW has raised *tens of thousands* of dollars and lots of awareness around the struggle to free political prisoners. Find a local event or participate remotely and ask your comrades, family and friends to sponsor you to make the positive impact of the 25th anniversary bigger than ever!
Chicago September 15th – 5pm MCC Chicago – 71 W Van Buren MARCH & RALLY – 5K MARATHON – BIKE & RUN – BANDS & DJs
Eugene, OR September 15th – 1pm Owen Rose Garden (300 N Jefferson Street) near the river (follow signs)
Los Angeles September 15th – Registration begins at 10am Echo Park Lake – 751 Echo Park Avenue
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Lowell, MA September 15th – 11am Boarding House Park – 40 French St.
Mexico City, Mexico Saturday September 14 10:00 am San Juan de Aragon Forest. Access 8 (on Av.608, leaving Metro Bosque de Aragon) Registration: $50 (to support Jorge Esquivel @YorchLibre )
New York September 15th – 2pm Prospect Park- Lincoln Rd/East Lake Drive, east of the Terrace Bridge
Olympia, Washington St’cas Running Down the Walls Sunday, September 15. Noon at Heritage Park Participation fee: 1 hr wage – no one turned away for lack of funds Shirts: sliding scale 10$-20$ (BYO shirt, they’re printed on site) Pre-run group warm up stretching & post-run prisoner letter writing and vegan grilling. Contact:[email protected]
Philadelphia (shirts shipped worldwide for remote participants) September 15th – 11am sharp (Yoga warm-up at 10am) FDR Park Registration deadline is September 1st (use link above)
Portland, OR September 15th – 11am Tilkum Bridge (East Side)
Tampa, FL — In a deeply troubling move, a federal court today sentenced pro-choice activists Amber Smith-Stewart and Annarella Rivera to 30 days in custody and 60 days of home confinement and Caleb Freestone to 1 year and 1 day in federal prison for Conspiracy, while dismissing two counts under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, 18 U.S.C. §248. This unprecedented use of the FACE Act—originally designed to protect abortion clinics and their employees—has been twisted to prosecute activists protesting so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which are in many cases religious-run facilities that actively work to manipulate and prevent people from accessing abortions. The crimes these defendants have admitted to and took responsibility for would normally result in a state or municipal court misdemeanor for graffiti. Caleb Freestone’s longer sentence was attributed to minor activism he had been arrested for wheat-pasting flyers on private buildings–the charges were later dismissed but the court heavily punished him for it.
The Federal Judge from the Middle District of Florida, Virginia Hernandez Covington, at one point inconceivably asserted that spray painting the outside of a closed fake clinic building was more threatening than fire bombing and causing a fire at an abortion clinic. Judge Hernandez Covington stated that the fear the crisis pregnancy center workers felt was in some way more serious than hurling two molotov cocktails at a legitimate health provider. Lawyer for Amber Smith-Stewart, Lauren Regan, Director of Litigation and Advocacy at Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), pushed back on this statement with the Judge eventually conceding, “They’re both bad.” This colloquy with the Court exposed the clear bias against the reproductive justice activists. Regan provided extensive evidence and argument regarding all of the FACE Act prosecutions and sentences around the country. “These reproductive justice activists are the first pro-choice people to be prosecuted under this statute after pressure was applied to the Department of Justice by Florida politicians. They are also the first to be prosecuted for minor property damage that occurred when there were no patients or workers around. Anti-abortion defendants that firebombed clinics or had repeated violations of blockading patients trying to enter Planned Parenthood Clinics got less punishment than our clients did today.”
In the summer of 2022, Amber Smith-Stewart, Annarella Rivera, and Caleb Freestone spray painted three anti-abortion centers in Central and Southern Florida. The defendants previously admitted to tagging these facilities that Planned Parenthood calls “fake clinics,” with the following messages: “If abortions aren’t safe than niether [sic] are you.” These protests came in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and were borne out of frustration and grief over the rollback of abortion rights in the United States in the wake of the overturned Roe v. Wade precedent. The defendants were arrested for spray painting messages on fake reproductive health facilities in Florida, which the government argued were “reproductive health service” providers under the FACE Act — a position highly questionable given that, To our knowledge, there are no licensed medical providers at these “clinics.”
Rivera, a long-time advocate for reproductive justice, expressed disbelief at the extent of the government’s response to the graffiti, stating “I’ve supported and raised two children by working in my chosen field of ob/gyn healthcare. When not working, I’ve spent countless hours escorting patients to and from clinical appointments for their safety and the safety of our workers. Simply put, women’s health and the ability to choose their own path is my passion and calling. I never thought that the act of spray-painting a fake ‘clinic’ would result in the FBI violently raiding my house or that I would become a pawn in the fight for a person’s right to bodily autonomy—something an overwhelming majority of citizens in the United States believe in.”
Smith-Stewart added: “In hindsight, I understand that the slogans we spray painted in 2022 could have been taken as a threat which was not our intent. The real threat here remains the assault by a vocal minority against a person’s right to choose. This is where the real danger lies. The Dobbs decision puts lives at risk. People seek abortions for a multitude of reasons, and the decision to terminate or carry a pregnancy to term should never be made by power brokers in Washington, D.C. In my case, my own life would be at risk if I was subjected to a forced pregnancy.”
The use of the FACE Act to protect CPCs, which often operate with the intention of dissuading or manipulating people from obtaining abortions, is a gross distortion of the law. Defense counsel for Smith-Stewart, Ms. Regan, condemned today’s ruling: “This case marks a dangerous shift in the misuse of the FACE Act, twisting it from a law designed to protect abortion providers into a tool for punishing those who stand up for reproductive rights. The government’s claims are a gross overreach. Using a statute intended to safeguard access to abortion to criminalize protest against anti-abortion centers undermines justice and bodily autonomy. This should alarm anyone who believes in the right to choose and the fight for reproductive freedom.”
The sentences handed down today send a chilling message to those standing up for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, but CLDC will have your back and we will continue to support Amber Smith-Stewart, Annarella Rivera, Caleb Freestone, and all those fighting for a better world. Thanks to Michael Maddux, attorney for Caleb Freestone, and Vanessa King, attorney for Annarella Rivera.
I’ll be joining the 5km Running Down The Walls event in September that is organised by our comrades across the Atlantic in the United States. This initiative is another date in the calendar that can help build a revolutionary narrative that prisoners and those outside can participate in together. It promotes physical training and fitness with a mindset of solidarity in struggle. These kind of events give us strength and development. A huge shout out to all those taking part. I write this during the International Week of Solidarity for Anarchist Prisoners, in combative memory of the state murders of Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston 1927. P.S. A greeting also to the rebel prisoners in Italy, I heard of the revolts even here in high security.
Running is a form of meditation for me, while trying to nail a 9 minute mile I find myself at peace, watching the gravel track under my feet like the surroundings of a locomotive. I reminisce of watching friends train for peace and dignity run and run for salmon. Long distance running is an indigenous tradition. I run with you today and everyday in solidarity with all political prisoners and prisoners of war. I stand with all and with indigenous people everywhere fighting for their ancestral sights and rights and land back. Today I pray to creator I will be joining you all next time in person to run alongside y’all. Keep up the fight, break down borders push and run down the walls!!
We are a small community of queer, transgender and non-binary prisoners here at FMC Fort Worth, and so we recognize the necessity and power in solidarity. As a marginalized faction of an already disenfranchised population, we suffer an added layer of discrimination within the prison system. We can’t get certain jobs, or live in certain Units or eat with certain other prisoners……we are often mocked by both other prisoners and staff for our orientation or gender. This could be suffocating – but we find our voices in supporting each other. We are glad to walk today with our free sisters, brothers and siblings to celebrate our connection and to dream together of a future where no one is incarcerated and all are free. To paraphrase the astronaut’s famous phrase: one small step for any one person, but one giant step for all of us together…until ALL are free! Thank you for your solidarity and support, towards an end to cages.
Marius Mason
M. Mason #04672-061 FMC Fort Worth P.O. Box 15330 Fort Worth, TX 76119
SOLIDARITY DECLARATION 25TH ANNUAL RUNNING DOWN THE WALLS EVENT ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS FEDERATION SEPTEMBER 15, 2024
As a long-time recipient of economic support from the WARCHEST FUND of the ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS FEDERATION (ABCF), let me extend my gratitude for your persistent support and let you know that I have appreciated your consistent support down through many years of struggle, given the circumstances. Texas prison does not compensate prisoners for their slave labor, and, even if it did, I would never participate in contributing prisoner labor to a slavery institution with deep roots in white settler colonialism, white supremacy and the African slave trade, as Professor Gerald Horne, University of Houston History and African American Studies Department, archived in his excellent book, THE COUNTER REVOLUTION OF 1836: TEXAS SLAVERY & Jim Crow AND THE ROOTS OF U.S. FASCISM, 20220, Int’l Publishers, New York; and to a “criminal justice system” that targets people of color for genocidal mass incarceration, and used to repress radical political movements seeking freedom from the chains of capitalist, oppression, movements we are a part of, the government and the ruling class always seeks to destroy in maintaining its tyranny over society and the rest of the world, more pernicious and naked in the Deep Jim Crow South. We thank ABCF for being true to its principles, and for supporting the “prison movement” and those of us imprisoned as a result of our direct actions in fighting back against predatory neocolonialism, capitalism, and imperialism, from within the belly of the fascist beast.
I am a renowned Chicano political prisoner, supported by prominent advocacy groups like the National Jericho Movement in support of POWs, political prisoners, New York City, among other groups as a target of COINTELPRO’S NEW LEFT repression in its war against Chicano militancy and dissent, for my lifetime work of political activism, outside and inside prisons walls, see www.freealvaro.net; CAN’T JAIL THE SPIRIT, Comm. Against Marion Lockdown, 4th Edition, 2022; I am now going on 23-plus years in consecutive supermax solitary confinement in one of AmeriKKKa’s most racist and repressive supermax control unit prisons in the nation, so described by psychologist/lawyer Dr. Craig Haney, who testified on behalf of the Texas prisoner class in the prison conditions case in Ruiz v. Johnson, 37 F. Supp. 855, at page 908, a case I was a witness for the prisoner class against the state, legal victories we won, but changes were few and short, as the capitalist system will never allow true freedoms within a system of injustices and prisoner slavery, a prison system that has surpassed California prison as the largest prison system in the nation, “…consistent with the state’s historical tradition of harsh punishment, one that cages an astounding proportion of the state’s minority population,” in the words of Professor of Law and Sociology and Northern Illinois University Michael C. Campbell, quoted in his excellent essay, POLITICS, PRISONS, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT: AN EXAMINATION OF THE EMERGENCE OF “LAW AND ORDER” IN TEXAS, at 45 LAW AND SOCIETY REVIEW 631 (Sept. 2011> You can read about the unspeakable horrors of the brutalities and dehumanization of prisoners in Texas, that continues to this very day, despite all the epochal legal victories prisoners won in the celebrated prison conditions case in the Ruiz litigation. See also 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980); TEXAS PRISONS; THE WALLS CAME TUMBLING DOWN, Martin & Olsen, Tex. Monthly Press, 1983.
Fascism is on the rise, domestically and internationally, leading the way is the hypocritical and manipulative government of the United States, calling itself the “champion of human rights” and “moral leader of the free world,” as its prisons run rampant with racism as held by a panel of the UN Special Rapporteur on September 26, 2023, and as blood drips from its genocidal murderous class, of men, women and children as enabler of the Israeli zionist bombs exploding in encampments of displaced Palestinians, having nothing to do with terrorism, nor attacks against the Israeli populace, supported by our taxpayer dollars of the U.S. imperialism war machine. Humanity mandates that oppressed people within the juggernaut of “head of the snake fight imperialism.” We must call it as it is, and never sugar-coat these atrocities against oppressed humanity, nor bury our heads in the sand like a cowardly ostrich, pretending that it is not happening. We must build unity and solidarity amongst liberation movement organizations that stand in opposition to U.S. imperialism, and support the defenseless Palestinian masses entitled to the return of their occupied territories, a struggle we link to our struggle of the oppressed Chicano people to the return of our stolen lands, for reparations and for prosecution of past and current war criminals responsible for massacre of innocent people in sustaining their criminal empire of capitalist and imperialist slavery, as the rolling class continues to destroy PLANET EARTH with their carbon emissions fossil fuel industries, seeking world domination and conquering all world markets for excessive enrichment of their ruling class and its oligarchical empires.
We encourage ABCF to continue to lead the way, support its political prisoners, as well as all oppressed and colonized nations domestically and around the world, as the Nobel and generous work done in collecting monies to support the Palestinian masses in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, starving and being this moment butchered by Israeli zionist and U.S. imperialism bombs. LET OTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS PAY HEED TO YOUR INSPIRING ABCF WORK AND YOUR PERSISTENCE BY WAY OF SHOWING THE WAY TOWARD OUR FREEDOM BY EXAMPLE.
SUPPORT THE WARCHEST FUND OF THE ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS FEDERATION! SUPPORT THE PRISON MOVEMENT AND OUR IMPRISONED FREEDOM FIGHTERS! ISRAELI ZIONIST PIGS, OUT OF THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP! MUERTE AL COLONIALISMO, CAPITALISMO, IMPERIALISMO, YANQI! FREE PLANET EARTH!
– Xinachtli Chicano political prisoner MCCONNELL SUPERMAX CONTROL UNIT – BEEVILLE, TEXAS HONORING BLACK AUGUST MARTYRS, AUGUST 2024!
Write: Texas Department of Criminal Justice Alvaro Luna Hernandez #255735 Post Office Box 660400 Dallas, Texas 75266-0400.
Sisters and Brothers and all beings we love and fight for. I Oso Blanco thank you so much for coming out this year. I love you all and cannot make it without you all as a whole. For one is never bigger than the whole of everyone. We must acknowledge that. Run down these walls! RUN THEM DOWN TO DUST! It has never been worse inside these prisons. We must run down these walls and free all life. We must reach deep down within and hit the internal switch. The switch of power in our sacred heart realm. We must activate the warrior of fire inside of us all. Things on the inside of federal prisons have gotten much worse in the last year. The system is broke and they nearly starve us much of the time. We are always on the hunt for food. And we are suffering a much higher pattern of violence against prisoners by staff. Things are more serious than ever and I have close to 30 years in federal prisons. This is my second case that’s federal, so I’ve seen the extreme decline in federal prisons. It’s time to really truly rise up and run down all walls forever. It’s time to put in the real and serious work action.
On July 23rd Casey was indicted by a federal grand jury on three charges all relating to the same incident. Two of the charges allege destruction of property by fire/explosives and carry a 5-20 year sentence each if convicted. The third charge alleges possession of an unregistered firearm and carries a maximum of 10 years (note: “firearm” here is referring to the alleged destructive device, not a gun). Casey’s lawyers have officially agreed to represent them in federal court.
Casey is back in Santa Rita in federal custody and expects to remain where they are for the time being. All the transfers and changes in custody were jarring and Casey will hopefully be able to finally settle into a routine. Alongside their already rigorous usual studies they have been pursuing their own legal self-education in preparation for their ongoing case.
In observance of Black August, Casey will be participating in FLEA days along with one other person from their pod- 24 hour fasts in commemoration of New Afrikan revolutionaries on the days they were assassinated. Here is more information about the history of Black August for those wanting to learn more!
People across the country have been putting out beautiful statements of support! These are so important as they demonstrate the incredible love people have for Casey for their years of commitment to community, solidarity, and mutual aid.
The support team has also been working on launching a crowdfunding campaign for Casey, so please stay tuned and start thinking about how to mobilize your networks or throw a fundraiser yourself! Updates will come soon. We can currently already accept large donations from individual donors in the form of checks, please reach out for more information to make this happen.
If you would like to write Casey, you can do so at:
Casey Goonan #UMF227 Santa Rita Jail 5325 Broder Blvd Dublin, CA 94568
Casey is still excited to receive mail including updates on news and current affairs as they have been feeling cut off from the world.
As a reminder:
– Do not discuss the case. Casey is still pre-trial and receiving mail concerning their case can seriously endanger them.
– Do not valorize Casey. They are a person and a member of our community, not a symbol or martyr. Casey isn’t looking for praise, but rather to maintain correspondence.
– Do not write anything you wouldn’t want Fox News, a cop, or a judge to see. Assume that intelligence and law enforcement agencies are reading your letter.
– As you correspond with Casey, they may send requests aside from books or commissary. Please coordinate directly with Casey’s Support Committee regarding additional asks.
If you wish to help keep money on Casey’s books, there are several ways to do this:
– At the jail via the TouchPay kiosk in the lobby.
– Sending a money order in the mail. The money order must be made payable to “Casey Goonan #UMF227” and there must be no other material in the envelope. No cash or personal checks will be accepted.
– Online with a credit card via one of the vendor platforms run by GlobalTel such as accesscorrections.com or connectnetwork.com. You will have to create an account. If the platform offers different fund options, the fund you want to get Casey money for commissary is called the “Trust Fund”.
Your ongoing support is so needed and appreciated. To receive these updates by email, message [email protected]
Please start Black August off by joining the Abolitionist Law Center on Tues., August 6th [from 6:00-7:30 PM ET] for a webinar “Overcoming Death By Incarceration: The Path to Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
This webinar will present important information on the path to freedom for one of our longest serving political prisoners. Topics to be discussed include legal strategies and updates in Mumia’s case, commutation, International Advocacy and compassionate release.
The panel includes:
Saleem Holbrook, ALC Exec. Director;
Bret Grote, ALC Legal Director;
Ghani Kempis Songster, former Juvenile Lifer and organizer;
