Letter from Climate Prisoners

Saturday, January 02 2010 Infoshop News

This is a letter written by friends who are still imprisoned in Denmark.
Also check out the prisoner support website – Cop-enhagen.net

Something is rotten (but not just) in Denmark. As a matter of fact,
thousands of people have been considered, without any evidence, a threath
to the society. Hundreds have been arrested and some are still under
detention, waiting for judgement or under investigation. Among them, us,
the undersigned. We want to tell the story from the peculiar viewpoint of
those that still see the sky from behind the bars.

A UN meeting of crucial importance has failed because of several
contradictions and tensions that have shown up during the COP15. The
primary concern of the powerfuls was the governance of the energy supply
for neverending growth. This was the case whether they were from the
overdeveloped world, like the EU countries or the US, or from the
so-called developing countries, like China or Brazil.

At odds, hundreds of delegates and thousands of people in the streets have
raised the issue that the rationale of life must be (and actually is)
opposed to that of profit. we have strongly affirmed our will to stop
anthropic pressure on the biosphere.

A crisis of the energy paradigm is coming soon. The mechanism of the
global governance have proven to be overwhelmingly precarious. The
powerfuls failed not only in reaching an agreement on their internal
equilibrruim but also in keeping the formal control of the discussion.

Climate change is an extreme and ultimate expression of the violence of
the capitalistic growth paradigm. People globally are increasingly showing
the willingness of taking the power to rebel against that violence. we
have seen that in Copenhagen, as well as we have seen that same violence.
Hundreds of people have been arrested without any reason or clear
evidence, or for participating in peaceful and legitimate demonstrations.
Even mild examples of civil disobedience have been considered as a serious
threath to the social order.

In response we ask – What order do we threaten and who ordered it? Is it
that order in which we do not anymore own our bodies? The order well
beyond the terms of any reasonable “social contract” that we would ever
sign, where our bodies can be taken, managed, constrained and imprisoned
without any serious evidence of crime. Is it that order in which the
decision are more and more shielded from any social conflicts? Where the
governance less and less belongs to people, not even through the
parliament? As a matter of fact, non-democratic organisms like the WTO,
the NB, the G-whatever rule beyond any control.

We are forced to notice that the theater of democracy is a broken one as
soon as, one approaches the core of the power. That is why we reclaim the
power to the people. We reclaim the power over our own lives. Above all,
we reclaim the power to counterpose the rationale of life and of the
commons to the rationale of profit. It may have been declared illegal, but
still we consider it fully legitimate.

Since no real space is left in the broken theater, we reclaimed our
collective power – Actually we expected it – to speak about the climate
and energy issues. Issues that, for us, involve critical nodes of global
justice, survival of man and energy independence. We did marching with our
bodies.

We prefer to enter the space where the power is locked dancing and
singing. We would have liked to do this at the Bella center, to disrupt
the session in accord with hundreds of delegates. But we were, as always,
violently hampered by the police. They arrested our bodies in an attempt
to arrest our ideas. we risked our bodies, trying to protect them just by
staying close to each other. We value our bodies: We need them to make
love, to stay together and to enjoy life. They hold our brains, with
beautiful bright ideas and views. They hold our hearts filled with passion
and joy. Nevertheless, we risked them. we risked our bodies getting locked
in prisons. In fact, what would be the worth of thinking and feeling if
the bodies did not move? Doing nothing, letting-it-happen, would be the
worst form of complicity with the business that wanted to hack the UN
meeting. At the COP15 we moved, and we will keep moving.

Exactly like love, civil disobedience can not just be told. We must make
it, with our bodies. Otherwise, we would not really think about what we
love, and we would not really love what we think about. It’s as simple as
that. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

How the COP15 has ended proves that we were right. Many of us are paying
what is mandatory for an obsessive, pervasive and total repression: To
find a guilty at the cost of inventing it (along with the crime perhaps).

We are detained with evidently absurd accusations about either violences
that actually did not take place or conspiracies and organizing of
law-breaking actions.

We do not feel guilty for having shown, together with thousands, the
reclamation of the independence of our lives from profit’s rule. If the
laws oppose this, it was legitimate to peacefully – but still
conflictually – break them.

We are just temporarily docked, ready to sail again with a wind stronger
than ever. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

Luca Tornatore – from the Italian social centres network “see you in
Copenhagen”.
Natasha Verco – Climate Justice Action
Stine Gry Jonassen – Climate Justice Action
Tannie Nyboe – Climate Justice Action
Johannes Paul Schul Meyer
Arvip Peschel
Christian Becker
Kharlanchuck Dzmitry
Cristoph Lang
Anthony Arrabal