english

english

3th of March 2018, JVA Cologne

One month and one week locked up in Köln’s prison.

Many times I would have sworn and complained about how slow time goes on in prison. And it does. But it’s still hard for me to believe that I have spent so much time in here.

I guess that as many other parts of your life - your perception, your reactions, even your feelings and emotions - prison deforms time until you kind of miss the notion of it. You just keep going, and time keeps going. But I can still feel it’s way too much.

You locked me up for standing in a tripod. You sent me to jail with 8 other people arrested the same day for similar reasons, because we decided to stand in a place you didn’t want us to be.

But I’m very aware this is not just about me, nor about us, but about everyone fighting for a change.

Because the forest fight, as any other direct action fight, says more about environmental protection than all the crap you can talk about in your parliament’s discussion, your political campaigns, or your COP23’s meetings.

Because a simple blockade can be much more effective, and make bigger changes, than waiting for the commitments that you make and never accomplish, or for the trials that are always late, or unsuccessful, when trying to stop a project.

And so you decided to send us to jail, to try to make us scared of taking part in a fight again and maybe also to try to make other people scared too.

I have to recognise that I was quite scared of prison two month ago, and quite afraid when I was told we were getting in. I knew it was a possibility, but until then it was just a threatening shadow I thought I might not have to experience by myself.

And suddenly I had to face it, and wondered if I would stand it, and how it would affect me. And now it’s been five, almost six weeks since, that moment, so I decided to make a balance of the whole situation.

First thing I experienced was your demonstration of power. With your huge and totally oversized police raid, you kidnapped me and took me away from the people and the places I love.

You put me in jail, not assigning me a lawyer, so he could not visit me, and blocking the visits and letters, so I could not get any information from outside.

After a week, the lawyer came, after ten days, letters arrived, after few more days, the first visit. And so I could knew that legal work was being done, that there was plenty of people in solidarity with us out there, that the rest of the people arrested on the same day were ok, and I felt more accompanied than ever.

If you were trying to isolate me, to make me feel lonely, you totally failed.

After that, and so far, I haven’t been able to receive any book from the library, or to join any of the activities (though I have presented many written requests for all of them - 5 „Antrag“ for the books, one every week, 2 for the German lessons, 4 and 2 weeks ago, and 1 for the gym, last week. Never got any answer to any of them).

You also took my clothes that day I arrived, also asked to get them back, and in this case I did get an answer: no.

But still I could read letters, and some of the content they sent me, and arrived to me, got „German lessons“ given by some inmates that have been helping me with that, and also got some clothes from an inmate that was getting released, and didn’t need them any more and from some people who arranged them from outside, and a visit brought to me.

You have also been systematically blocking many of the content (magazines, books, zines) that people have sent to me because we are not allowed to receive it from outside, we can just get prison’s books (not me though) and because „they talked about fighting“.

Yet, with all the time to think that I got, and all this experiences, I’ve become more convinced than ever of how mean, useless and fucked up the prison system is, and how important are both the fights against it and the solidarity, inside and outside the prison.

So, if you were trying to make me forget about it, or to break me down with all this, you’ve failed too.

Not to talk about the latest legal movement: first the judge denying my hearing, while accepting it for the other 3 UP’s to finally send them all back to jail.

A soap opera to give us some hope and then make us feel disappointed again. And the most recent, and the nastiest: police lying to the court saying that I had a knife in my jacket when I was arrested. Reading this made me feel so, so angry that I haven’t been able to be worried any more.

And so here I am, writing all this experiences and feelings down, to be sure that I don’t forget them, unable to be worried or scared any more, just angry, and waiting for all this comedy to finish - and, sooner or later, it will have to - so then I can get out, be free again, and go where ever I want to, do whatever I want, either you like it or not.

And as finally, the balance is not so negative - or at least I don’t feel so -, and I still thing all this prison time you are giving to us is aimed to scare the other people who also stand and fight for what they believe, or that are willing to do so, I decided to share this letter with everyone and hope it can be helpful to make you fail on that too.

Greetings and love to all the free, wild people.

Loath and rage to the whole repression system and the state.

Still standing, angrier than ever,

Foot (UP2)