Filed under: Anarchist Movement, Incarceration, Political Prisoners, Publication, US
Bill Dunne is a long time anti-authoritarian and anarchist prisoner who since 1979, has been doing time for his involvement in an armed attempt at freeing a comrade from imprisonment. Please download and distribute this up-to-date support flyer for Bill Dunne and let us never forget our comrades on the inside.
DOWNLOAD FLYER HERE
Get to know Bill Dunne, a political prisoner who has been a prisoner of the state since 1979.
According to the ensuing state and federal charges, I and a codefendant and unknown other associates of a San Francisco anarchist collective had conspired to effect a comrades armed liberation from a Seattle jail and attempted to execute the plot on October 14, 1979. The charges further alleged the operation was financed by bank expropriation and materially facilitated by illegal acquisition of weapons, explosives, vehicles, ID and other equipment.”
After long subjection to atrocious jail conditions and three sensationalized trials, I got a 90 year sentence in 1980. I subsequently got a consecutive 15 years as a result of an attempted self-emancipation in 1983. The aggregate 105 years is a parole when they feel like it sort of sentence.”
Ever since 1982 when Bill Dunne was banished into internal exile in the federal prison system from the Washington state system he had never seen a medium security federal prison until 2014 when he was moved from USP Pollock to FCI Herlong. Since that transfer, he has been in three different medium security federal prisons in California. In those three years Bill has gotten a lot of support, but has had to persevere through a lot along the way as well. First, he received a 15-year hit at his parole hearing in late 2014 which means he won’t get another formal parole hearing until the year 2029.
While he was still at FCI Herlong Bill was sent to the S.H.U (secure housing unit) pending an investigation after an anonymous note was said to have been received saying Bill was planning an escape. It seems much more likely that the administration was attempting to stop Bill from litigating by putting him in the S.H.U. Once a lawyer got involved Bill was moved from the S.H.U at FCI Herlong to general population at FCI Lompoc. Most recently Bill had a brief health scare while he was in the S.H.U at FCI Lompoc when a guard found him passed out in his cell he was then rushed to an outside hospital and Bill gained consciousness soon after.
Bill has never stopped struggling since his arrest and imprisonment in October of 1979. The Washington state system sent him to the federal system simply for editing WPNS (Washington Prison News Service), a prisoner run newspaper. After the escape attempt in 1983 he was eventually sent to the notorious control unit of U.S.P Marion that existed at that time which was essentially a prison within a prison. After arriving there in 1985, he was there for the next 7.5 years. While he was there he edited the Marionette, an important newsletter that exposed the destructive conditions of that prison. The Marionette grew into Prison News Service which was a paper that was much more broadly focused.
Also, in deep solidarity with all political prisoners and the movements they all do come from Bill has contributed to projects that work to help give a voice to political prisoners and help provide material support as well. Some of those projects include 4strugglemag (4strugglemag.org), and Running Down the Walls, an annual 5k run fundraiser where all the money raised goes towards prisoners the Anarchist Black Cross does support work for.
In Bills words: “I am also happily atheist, anti-sexist, anti-racist, globalist, anti-authoritarian, environmentalist, anti-imperialist, democratic (little d). However, none of those sufficiently characterizes my politics over the others that I can define myself by any of them alone. Rather than a gaggle of competitive identities, my vision of the road to revolution encompasses all of them as necessarily synergistic strands we
must weave into a new social fabric.”
One of the easiest, and most important things we can do to support political prisoners who have kept the struggle alive after they’ve been captured and during their incarceration is expressing support and solidarity through writing a letter or getting together with a group of comrades and filling out a greeting card to send off.
Bill would love to hear from all supporters, and he’d especially enjoy receiving any printed-out news articles pertaining to the struggle or even general world events that you two could engage in a discussion on.
August 3rd is his birthday, a great opportunity to express solidarity and to let him know you’re thinking of him.
Here is the most current address:
BILL DUNNE
#10916- 086
FCI VICTORVILLE MEDIUM I
P.O. BOX 3725
ADELANTO, CA 92301
As Bill always says: “The Future Holds Promise”
For more info on Bill Dunne and other political prisoners, please visit:
thejerichomovement.com