Philadelphia Sabotage Actions Target Corporations & Banks Profiting Off Prison Slavery

The prison strike is now in it’s third week and shows no sign of letting up, as every day brings new updates of continuing prison work stoppages, hunger strikes, and demonstrations.

On the outside, those supporting prison rebels have waged a continuous campaign of solidarity with the prison strike, including holding public events to write letters and watch films, as well as street demonstrations and noise demos outside of prison walls.

In Philadelphia, sabotage and vandalism against corporations benefiting from prison slavery has also taken place. CBS in early September reported:

Vandals shattered windows at the Starbucks in Rittenhouse Square Monday morning. The store located at 18th and Spruce Streets was the center of controversy earlier this year. The vandals left notes inside the coffee shop that referenced the ongoing prison labor strike happening across the country. 

The vandalism received wide coverage in the media, and drew attention to the ongoing prison strike, connecting it with a racist incident at the same store last year, where two African-American men were arrested while waiting for a business associate.

It’s Going Down also received the following anonymous communique which takes credit for other actions of sabotage in Philadelphia against other companies involved in prison slavery. It reads:

We want to claim responsibility for the following actions:

-Slashing 16 tires on 8 Comcast trucks.
-Sabotaging 6 card readers of Wells Fargo, Citizens Bank, and Bank of America.
-Slashing 2 tires on a prison guard’s personal car.

These actions were done over the course of about a week in solidarity with the national prison strike and international week of solidarity with anarchist prisoners.

We chose these targets because they profit off of people being locked up and we wanted to strike those who directly or indirectly hold the prisons together.

–Comcast has a contract with ICE.
–Wells Fargo has a contract with ICE and also invests in prisons.
–Bank of America profits off of prison labor [and has ICE contact].
-We don’t know what’s up with Citizens Bank but fuck them too.
-Attacking a prison guard’s car needs no explanation.

Solidarity is more than something we save for a day on our calendars. It needs to be more than empty words. To us it is a personal choice to not shrink away from discomfort and to make the struggles of others a part of our own path, to face the challenge and upon recognizing how steep and heavy it is, deciding to walk toward it anyway.

To read the full communique and to learn more about anti-prison struggles in Philadelphia, check out Philly Anti-Capitalist, which is updated throughout the week.