Thomas Tripp article

This is a statement by Thomas Tripp (1978-2007) that he wrote for the Break The Chains Conference that happened in Eugene, Oregon, in the Summer of 2003. Tom wrote several articles that appeared in Break The Chains newsletter, Green Anarchy magazine, on infoshop.org and elsewhere.

Thomas Tripp - Statement of Solidarity with Break The Chains Conference:

Around the world, repression daily increases, not merely repression against anarchists, but against ideas, against the natural world, against freedom in all of its forms. Our comrades - both anarchists and those who don’t yet know themselves to be anarchistic, but only see themselves as lovers of freedom - are gunned down in the streets, beaten down in alleyways and of forest floors, run down by bulldozers while defending children. Evil goats in the state house, even while battling in the streets.

More and more often, however, the prison cell is becoming the most concrete _expression of state repression. The state believes that all forms of dissent can be silenced with a prison wall, that the simplest way to deal with the disillusionment and rage that is sweeping the globe is to criminalize everyone: the poor, blacks, whites, Natives, protestors, peacekeepers, militants: the state seems to believe that if you are not wielding the truncheon you should, at the very least, be receiving the blows.

Day by day the walls go up, the razor wire is strung, the towers are “manned.” Prisons spread like sores across the face of the land, popping up to the tune of deranged economist’s screaming “economic recovery!” One by one the lives of all of us - from comrades in the struggle to those just struggling to get by - are touched, and sometimes shattered, by the current reign of terror embarked upon by the state.

I don’t need to quote the numbers to you - I’m sure most of you know the statistics by heart. Many of you have done time yourselves and know first hand how prison attempts to leech away from you all that is good; how every function of the prison system is designed - not to curtail “crime,” nor to rehabilitate, whatever that means - but only to perpetuate the existence of the prison system itself.

Eugene Debs once said, in effect, that without solidarity, nothing can be accomplished, but that with solidarity, there is nothing that we cannot achieve. In the battle for freedom which we wage against the state, solidarity is our truest, most powerful weapon. Our individual and collective acts of guerrilla warfare (on every level from cultural guerrilla warfare to actual fighting in the streets) are essential and must continue and increase. However, it’s when we assert ourselves en masse, when we wield the weapon of solidarity, that we can really see the state tremble in its jackboots.

The prisoner support movement has been using the weapon of solidarity for many years to chip away at the foundations of the prison-industrial-complex, engaging in the twin joys of community and struggle. The prison authority of nearly every single state quake with fear and hatred at the mention of the anarchist prisoner support movement - and this only serves to show how strong we have become, and how much stronger we become every year! How much we grow.

All of you attending this conference understand the strength of solidarity. You all know that the struggle for freedom in which we are all engaged begins within the hearts of each of us and that the struggle cannot end until the walls of every prison have been reduced to mere dust and rubble; until sunlight falls full on the faces of unchained prisoners. Our struggle will not be finished until every soul in prison walks free. I wish I could be with you all today, working out new tactics and strategizing to achieve our common goal. But, unfortunately, the state still has its talons on me - for the moment. Instead, I thank you all for having the courage to take up the fight, and for having the strength, in solidarity, to see our struggle through to the end.

Thank you.

Thomas Tripp

#12032560, TRCI

82911 Beach Access Rd.

Umatilla, OR 97882