When environmental and animal rights advocates are sentenced to lengthy prison terms—many as “terrorists”—they depend on the support of friends, family and the larger activist community. They need money in their commissary account. They need books and magazines. They need visitors, phone calls, and perhaps above all else, according to many current and former prisoners I’ve interviewed, they need letters: sometimes mail call is the only thing to look forward to in prison. The support, or lack of support, of these activists also sends a message to the government and to other activists.
But doing all this prison support work can be time consuming and draining. Base-line decisions have to be made about what, at bare minimum, qualifies a prisoner for support from the wider activist community. And lately, many activists have been struggling with what disqualifies a prisoner from receiving support.
Chris “Dirt” McIntosh attempted to burn down a McDonalds in Seattle, in 2005, and is serving an eight-year prison sentence (his guilty plea dropped it down from a minimum of 30, as the government was pushing to use “terrorism” laws against him). The crime was claimed by both the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front.
1) McIntosh has adopted White Supremacist views whilst in prison. A number of people have contacted ELP saying that McIntosh has started to associate with a racist gang and has even gone as far as to get a racist ‘white power’ tattoo. In a letter to one of his supporters McIntosh enclosed a photo of himself and referred to his tattoo which was not visible in the photo. He told another supporter how he would show off his tattoo upon his release from prison.
[As an aside, that’s quite a strikingly different prison experience than, for instance, http://www.myspace.com/andystepanian Andy Stepanian, who just sent a letter celebrating the work of the Black Panthers and urging animal rights advocates to support the San Francisco 8. “The Panther fed our mornings with free breakfasts and our hearts with power. The Panther took this love and handed it to our captors like Valentine’s flowers. The Panther stole the hearts of the ghetto and white privilege alike.”]
2) McIntosh, through his Social Darwinian beliefs, thinks that ‘might makes right’, or as he puts it in one of his letters “supremacy to the strongest”.
3) McIntosh has told at least one female supporter that it is okay for a man to rape a woman (under his ‘might makes right’ theme).
4) ELP has had it confirmed that since going into prison McIntosh has abandoned his vegetarian diet and has reverted to eating meat.
I have never spoken with McIntosh, but
on his website there are some notes along those lines. In October, 2007, he wrote that he had asked to be removed from prisoner support lists because “I had become frustrated and disillusioned by the resistance to evolution within the struggle… Also, I don’t understand why the foremost natural law - might makes right - is not held paramount.” He then had a change of heart, saying “I need mental and emotional support.”
Wii’nimkiikaa removed its site from resist.ca as an act of solidarity with those ‘Green Scare’ defendants who have chosen not to collaborate nor snitch on others. ‘Wolves Not Sheep’, the archive of the Vancouver Native Youth Movement also removed its site from resist.ca at the same time for the same reasons.
I’ve read one irresponsible call for activist sites to boycott Resist. This takes criticism and differences of opinion to a puritanical level, which I can’t support. Our radical tech infrastructure, as well as much of our alternative media, are in a precarious situation already. Organizing a campaign to disrupt a radical ISP over a difference of opinion is in my opinion just as bad as snitching.
What do you think? What are the bare-minimum requirements for supporting “Green Scare” prisoners?
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