Kite Line

In this episode we air a recording from the final talk of the Pittsburgh Anti-Repression Convergence, which served as a space for activists, political prisoner supporters, and former political prisoners to strategize against repression in the context of social movements, with an eye towards total liberation for the earth and all of it’s inhabitants. We’ll hear from Sheila, who defines and discusses anti-repression, counter-repression, and movement defense.

They began their presentation with Diane’ Di Prima’s REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #8:

Everytime you pick the spot for a be-in

a demonstration, a march, a rally, you are choosing the ground

for a potential battle.

You are still calling these shots.

Pick your terrain with that in mind.

Remember the old gang rules:

stick to your neighborhood,

don’t let them lure you

to Central Park everytime, I would hate

to stumble bloody out of that park to find help:

Central Park West, or Fifth Avenue, which would you choose?

go to love-ins

with incense, flowers, food, and a plastic bag

with a damp cloth in it, for tear gas, wear no jewelry

wear clothes you can move in easily, wear no glasses

contact lenses

earrings for pierced ears are especially hazardous

try to be clear

in front, what you will do if it comes

to trouble

if you’re going to try to split stay out of the center

don’t stampede or panic others

don’t waver between active and passive resistance

know your limitations, bear contempt

neither for yourself, nor any of your brothers

NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us

shoving at the thing from all sides

to bring it down.

This week, we are sharing a piece created for Montreal community radio station CKUT, on the show Other Worlds on Earth. The piece provides an excellent analysis of the case against Krystal and Peppy, two organizers in Pittsburgh targeted by the FBI and who are alleged to have acted in solidarity with trans people. After their analysis and introduction, Other Worlds on Earth interview one of Krystal and Peppy’s supporters. This support work has been both vital and difficult, since Peppy has now been held in jail for more than a year, due entirely to alleged conduct at a demonstration.

The escalated repression aimed at Krystal and Peppy is part of a society-wide crackdown that affects far more than just political activists. The shredding of environmental regulation due to the Supreme Court’s Chevron reversal goes hand-in-hand with the brutal shutdown of refugee claims at the US-Mexico border, throwing the balance of state action decisively away from any claim that it is protecting us, by reducing toxicity or slowing the climate crisis, and orienting it towards police violence. The massive police funding increase since 2020 leads not only towards the construction of big, useless megaprojects like Cop City, but also to the escalation of racial violence as emboldened police attack Black children. On the 4th of July, Pittsburgh police attacked a 14-year old child. Tanisha Long described the incident this way:

“Tonight the Pittsburgh police handcuffed and detained a 14 year old child claiming that he was a missing child. They picked a Black child off the street, decided he was the missing child, handcuffed him, and ignored the fact that his mom was on the phone telling them it wasn’t him. They put their hands on advocates, an attorney, and other minors.They pulled a taser on me for asking questions and recording. They told the crowd they weren’t allowed to be near.”

This experience presents disturbing echoes of the police attack on three Black children in Bloomington earlier this week. Police are emboldened but also understand that significant portions of the population have grown to distrust and hate them, leading them to take aggressive measures to stop bystanders from filming them and to prevent crowds from gathering in response to their violence. Before the feature on Krystal and Peppy, we will share a press release from Bloomington abolitionist group Care Not Cages regarding the police violence here earlier this week.

After our news, we are sharing the final installment of our conversation with Leon Benson, who was recently exonerated and released after decades in the Indiana prison system.  Leon is an inspiring organizer who fought for freedom for other prisoners, organized self-education circles inside, and has, since release, jumped into important community empowerment projects.  We were grateful for the opportunity to speak with him.

This week, we spoke with an NYU professor about the Gaza encampment movement there. Through this conversation, the global stakes of place-based struggles come to the foreground, as we wrestle with balancing local demands for divestment versus the way the camps themselves are resonating in Gaza; Palestinians seem most excited by the fact that a solidarity struggle is underway around the world, not that particular demands are being made to particular universities. This question highlights the global character of anti-colonial and abolitionist movements, since the possibility of local struggles overflowing their particular, reformist bounds, and “organizing their space in the most radical way possible” offers their most important contribution to an international momentum.

Eight days ago, students and others established a tent camp – a Liberated Zone – at IU’s Dunn Meadow, as part of a national rising tide of protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. Within hours, Indiana State Police arrived from Indianapolis and attacked the students, injuring dozens and arresting 34 students and faculty. The protesters were undaunted, rebuilt their encampment, and faced a repeat assault that Saturday. The repressive apparatus reached this level of violence across the country, with dozens of camps and occupied buildings facing militarized incursions by police. This begs the question of why the state turned so quickly to naked violence, even compared to previous movements that have had to face down and defeat police violence. Many have pointed to Cop City and similar police training facilities, which have worked since the 2020 George Floyd Uprising to prepare cops to squash anti-racist protest. We have covered the Stop Cop City movement previously on Kite Line. There is certainly an intimate relationship between prisons, police violence, and this country’s long history of racist repression. We spoke to local IU faculty and other movement participants about this sequence and what it says about the future.

This week, we focus on two people who are studies in dignity in the face of state repression. Jack Mazurek was arrested in Atlanta yesterday and charged with arson. These allegations stemmed from an attack last July on police motorcycles, which was rooted in the movement against Cop City. He is standing strong despite the serious charges against him, as people around the country mobilize in his defense. After addressing Jack’s charges, the rest of the episode features Leon Benson, who survived decades in Indiana prisons, organizing against the guards and admins despite terrifying repression, and who emerged unbroken and exonerated a year ago.

For our first episode of the new year, we wanted to begin sharing an interview with Leon Benson. In this conversation, he covers his release from prison, reflections on the treatment he received from the authorities, and his work on the outside.  This is a special privilege for Kite Line, since we have aired Benson’s work and thought many times over the years, since he was a leading organizer and thinker inside the Indiana Department of Corrections.  We are thrilled that he has been released and are excited to share news of his ongoing work to challenge the prison system. In this segment, he shares the story of what led him to be arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. We will continue this interview in our next episode.

You can hear previous episodes with Leon and his family members:

74 | You Can’t Force the State to Abide by the Law

253 | Truth Never Dies

122 | Leon Benson in His Own Words, Part One

123 | Leon Benson in His Own Words, Part Two

125 | Staying in Touch: a Conversation with Leon Benson

In this episode, we have our monthly round up of prison disturbances, as compiled by Perilous Chronicle. Afterwards, we have a conversation with Sophia Johnson, also known as Candle, who is an anarchist writer who currently serving a sentence in Oregon. In this conversation, she talks about writing in prison, and her ongoing struggle to receive adequate health care.

Since 2021, a diverse movement in has challenged the construction of Cop City, which is slated to destroy Atlanta’s South River Forest.  The forest is also known by its Muscogee name, Weelaunee.  The movement has created new intersections between abolitionist and environmental politics, since it is defending a forest with important ecological elements for the surrounding Black community, in order to protest the creation of new police training facilities.

In the movement’s latest phase, a new coalition called Block Cop City made an ambitious proposal for mass, non-violent action.  That action forced the city to suspend construction that day- and as of our airdate- has not resumed in the days since.

Here are selections from the statement issued by Block Cop City about the mobilization:

On November 13th, a bold and joyful procession of roughly 500 people marched along a public road to the proposed Cop City construction site. Holding banners and giant puppets, and accompanied by drummers and a brass band, Block Cop City activists reclaimed Atlanta’s rich civil rights legacy from politicians who continue to tarnish it with every voter disenfranchised and each tear gas canister thrown. Despite the violent response by police, activists minimized arrests and harm through careful planning, extensive preparation, and close attention to lessons learned from generations of revolutionary struggles against repression and authoritarianism.

Despite numerous stated commitments from religious leaders and city officials to honor the right to protest, armed riot police terrorized the crowd with tear gas grenades, attack dogs, clubs and ballistic shields.

As other protestors took to planting tree saplings in the Weelaunee Forest, journalists were forcibly separated from the crowd and threatened with arrest by police. We condemn this infringement of these journalists’ rights as well as the arrest of protestors including the Indigenous activists arrested while visiting Tortuguita’s altar in the Weelaunee Forest over the weekend.

The movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest is undeterred by today’s police aggression.

Photo credit: Mia Beach

On today’s Kite Line, we are sharing more research conducted collectively by Micol Seigel’s Inside-Out class. Last spring, this course brought together students at Indiana University and students held by the Indiana Department of Corrections. This presentation is focused on the tension between surveillance and sousveillance, a term for when apparatuses like social media and smartphones are turned around and used against state violence and official abuses.

Thanks to the students who wrote and recorded this project.