This essay is a review of The Failure of Nonviolence: From the Arab Spring to Occupy by Peter Gelderloos (Seattle: Left Bank Books, 2013) by Gabriel Kuhn; it first appeared on the Alpine Anarchist website. When, some months ago, I read on thegild.blogspot.se that Peter Gelderloos was among someone’s “favourite activist writers”, I wasn’t …
Editorial by Ed Mead “If we give in the terrorists win.” That is essentially what Secretary Beard told the mediation team. He said there will be no negotiations with prisoners or their outside representatives. I write this on August 4th, just four days before the hunger strike has gone on for a full month. Things may …
The above image is a self-portrait of Billy “Guero” Sell, hunger striker who died at Corcoran state prison on July 22, 2013. CDCR attempted to cover this up, not even informing prisoner advocates it met with in the following days that a death had occurred. When outside supporters were informed …
The above drawings are by Billy Sell, who died on hunger strike on July 22nd after repeatedly requesting and being denied medical care. These drawings appeared in Prisoner Express (Anthology 8 and Anthology 9), a newsletter “To promote rehabilitation by offering inmates information, education, and the opportunity for …
The Rock is a newsletter produced by former political prisoner Ed Mead, devoted to documenting and supporting the prisoners struggle, specifically in the context that was created in the 2011 California hunger strikes, and which continues to be created in the current mass action. What follows is the most recent …
The following essay was first published over twenty years ago; it is one of several texts which will be republished later this year by Kersplebedeb in a volume with the provisional title, Snapshots from the Scene of a Crime. It is being posted on this site ahead of time as …
Editorial by Ed Mead Censorship California’s written regulations require that CDCR issue the written reasons for a rejection or censorship of any publication. Those regulations require that the publisher be notified within 15 days of the rejection. California Prison Focus received notice of the rejection of their last issue of Prison Focus from Pelican Bay about …
This is a new pamphlet, translated and published by Kersplebedeb, which can be ordered from Kersplebedeb Leftwingbooks.net. The following is the preface i wrote for it: The following essay, by the Belgian revolutionary communist T. Derbent, is an unusual and valuable contribution to understanding, renewing, and rebuilding the revolutionary option. …
Editorial by Ed Mead As many of you may know, I am also the editor of the Prison Focus newspaper, a position I’ve held alone or jointly for the past thirteen years. Prison Focus #39 was mailed out to readers in early March. This week California Prison Focus received word …
An excerpt from Loic Wacquant’s Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Duke University Press 2009), pages 59-73: The Gaols of the Subproletariat: An Experimental Verification It suffices, to discern the extrapenological functions served by the outsized extension of the US carceral apparatus even as crime plummeted for …