Asheville, NC NYE Noise Demo: Jail Is a Disaster Every Day!

Report back from recent New Year’s Eve noise demonstration in Asheville, NC. For a full round-up of events, go here.

Photo via Ken Jones

In most ways, the noise demonstration held on New Years Eve outside of the Buncombe County Detention Center in Asheville, NC was typical: a crowd of people in celebratory and rebellious mood making a racket so that folks inside the jail would know they were not forgotten. This annual tradition has been a staple of our community in Asheville since at least 2016. But this year, the shared experience of Hurricane Helene and our community’s mobilization for disaster response made the event feel all the more relevant and visceral.

Organized by several local collectives, the event was framed to highlight the daily disaster of jail and our wider carceral culture and landscape. Speakers discussed how incarceration is used by the state to maintain a disastrously unequal and structurally violent society, and the ways in which Helene only intensified these dynamics as folks inside were cut off from assistance and communication even while networks of mutual aid flourished on the outside. Speakers from the local bail fund shared how the group took action during and after the storm to break down some of this isolation, and shared a short presentation on how to visit people in jail and put money on their books, in conjunction with a New Years Day action to put $1 on the books of every person in the jail (an amount that, while small, is meaningful, as it allows the recipient to make a 10 minute phone call).

Another speaker shared about his experience the previous year, when he was locked up in the detention center, and how much it meant to him to hear people making noise outside that night. In joining this year’s march, he said, things felt like they were coming full circle. He also spoke to the ways that the system profits off of incarceration, and pointed out that mass incarceration has its roots in slave patrols and how racism continues to be baked into this system today.

Another local collective, Tranzmission Prison Project, set up a letter writing table for people to send letters of encouragement and solidarity to Luigi Mangione, as he spends this NYE in a jail cell.

Once the speakers wrapped up, the rowdy crew – complete with radical marching band–set out to make noise in front of the jail. As we rallied near the entrance, messages such as “Prison is an ongoing disaster,” “End weekend lockdowns,” and “We say no to HB10, Solidarity with immigrants” were projected on an upper wall, where they would be visible to people inside through their windows. Folks inside flashed their lights, some of whom had prepared for the action in advance by learning and teaching others how to roll up their bedding so they could see out the windows.

Some jail employees came outside to frown uselessly at us for a few minutes, but neither this nor the brief presence of a lurking police cruiser deterred the festive ruckus.

After making a lot of noise, the crowd paused to listen to some more remarks. A comrade with pending charges spoke to their experience of being jailed for over 90 days and how important it is to get sustained support from outside. Another person shared details about a new anti-immigrant state law that compels county sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, and how this new policy will increasingly make the jail the local “face” of a racist federal agenda and a site where fascist state violence is carried out.

All in all, we kicked off 2025 by showing what a community that is ready to support each other in the face of disasters – natural and otherwise – looks like, and had a bit of fun!