June 11, 2018 Statement From Eric King

Anarchist prisoner Eric King address the upcoming June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Long Term Anarchist Prisoners. For more info on how to support Eric King, go here. 

I’ve got a lot of shit to say. Not right now per se, but in general there is a lot I like to talk about, and a lot I want to get off my chest or vent about. The environment I currently am held in is not conducive to radical or ”liberal” conversation topics. Me lamenting about vegan food options isn’t an interesting topic here in the politically west coast. My tongue is developing callouses I bite it so much around here. You’ve gotta keep yourself cool and out of bullshit, and the best and safest bet for me is often the mute button.

This is why I love my support team, and why I love people who write and support me. They turn my mute button off, they un-muzzle me. I can laugh with the people who back me when a rogue Anarchist helicopter crashes itself to kill all the soldiers on board. I can celebrate Herman’s release, or cry over the loss of more Palestinian life. I can get challenged on my views and ideas, I can be heard and recognized as another human being with ideas and feelings and beliefs. Something that very rarely happens in here. It is one of the biggest blessings I have, being able to share stories, share feelings, and share life with other human beings that can see past these walls.

One of my long term friends/supporters has been doing this really amazing thing recently, that I feel can very much potentially help spread prisoner support, and that is posting my writings to different ‘write in’ things. Submitting my writings to different groups web pages or blogs or zines, any of it. To me this is huge because it gives an opportunity to reach beyond the die-hard prison support community. Maybe someone new will see a submission, which will lead them to my website, which maybe sparks their interest further and they check out Bill’s or Michael’s team, this helps the entire community. It gives the chance to reach more people, people who may haven’t cared before but reads this one time, and it changes everything. Spark a change in their mind, to let them know that the struggle doesn’t stop when we are locked up, that we don’t stop existing as actual people inside prison, as opposed to just prisoners existing.

Recently I have received letters from different college and MIDDLE SCHOOL classes. Their teachers have encouraged them to reach out to political prisoners to further understand different struggles and what people go through while in prison. Isn’t that fucking amazing? Those teachers are doing what our support teams do, what our comrades do, spreading our voices and our stories, which carries the struggle past these walls, which hopefully inspires a deeper interest in ending prisons and supporting people who have fought against the system that holds them up. There is so much potential in being able to spread our voices this way.

Reaching outside our own community feels to me like an incredibly valuable, and important aspect of prison support. I want my mom to recognize Jennifer’s name, I want my non-political friends to know who Sean or Sol or Marius is. That is important. The more our teams and supporters spread our stories and our words, the more chance we have of getting more support and more anger towards this system. The more support we have the further our voices spread, the more we are shielded from our enemies in blue, the more we are kept human.

Thank you to everyone who has supported anyone behind bars..fist raised for Herman.

Until all are free…

EK
(A)
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