This Year We Free ‘Em All: Report Back from Noise Demo at Pima County Jail

Report on noise demo on New Year’s Eve in so-called Tucson, Arizona. To see a full roundup of noise demos on NYE across the US, go here.

On New Years Eve 2023, the three-foot thick concrete walls and double razor wire topped fences of the Pima County Jail once again proved ineffective barriers to our collective action of reaching those locked inside.

As we gathered outside the jail walls, we screamed, banged pots, played instruments, exploded fireworks, and blasted music, while those on the inside flashed the lights on and off in their cells to let us know our message was received. Through these actions we achieved direct communication without the consent of their captors, without complying with the ridiculously strict mail policies that recently banned sending letters inside, and without paying the parasitic companies that charge us to make calls to our loved ones inside while nosey pigs listen in on our intimate conversations. For an hour and a half the walls of the Pima County Jail gave, and direct communication was possible.

While we acknowledge the content of our message was limited by the form that it needed to take, we commit to deepening our relationships to those inside by any means imaginable. Our creativity is our weapon and we engage in dual political development and struggle with our imprisoned equivalents. While the prisons and jails are spaces of concentrated state power, oppression, harm and premature death, we know they are also spaces of deep study, creative innovation and militant confrontation. We strive to match those on the inside in our study and struggle by chipping away at our side of the wall–sometimes incrementally and sometimes with a bulldozer.

We will continue to construct wrenches of delay and disruption to destroy the possibility of a new jail here in Tucson. We will continue to send our message unmediated by bureaucrats and elected officials, who attempt to constrict our resistance through biased digital forms and surveys. We refuse to give our directives to them to dilute and manipulate for their own interests. We will not stand in line or wait around for their crumbs and lies.

We will do the hard work of collaborative direct action as we did on NYE when we took over Silverlake Road near the memorials of three people who lost their lives in the jail. With road flares, construction signs and a rowdy crowd we created a street barricade. As cars sped out getting dangerously close to comrades, we had each other’s backs, tightened our formation and rearranged our barricade. If the county intends to expand the carceral space of the Pima County Jail with a new jail building, we will collectively take militant action to put up barriers to that process and commit to caring for each other in that process.

We will reach towards each other, as we have the knowledge of what our people need and the strength to make it a reality. We will not get sucked into interpersonal and relational drama or discouraged by the time it takes to weave webs of connection and trust between comrades. We are creating a connected battlefront, finding pathways to collaborate with those who may favor different tactics or play separate roles in the revolution.

We will free our minds and hearts, making space for a radical love of the struggle and of our comrades, of a reciprocally nourishing relationship with the land that allows us to reclaim the innocence of finding love in the mud and in the wind. Our fears will not trap us, we will acknowledge and walk through them in sync. We will embrace a messy, fierce, abundant sweetness that connects us more wholly to each other. We will continue building momentum and power side by side so that we can find the cracks in the system and bust them open into oblivion. Join us.