This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On Thursday, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move signals their commitment to the White House over their prior support for the measures.  The Miccosukee have always considered the Florida Everglades their home. So when Republicans in Congress voted to expand the tribe’s land base under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act—legislation that would transfer 30 acres of land in the Everglades to tribal control—the Miccosukee were thrilled. After years of work, the move would have allowed the tribe to begin environmental restoration activities in the area and better protect it from climate change impacts as extreme flooding and tropical storms threaten the land. “The measure reflected years of bipartisan work and was intended to clarify land status and support basic protections for tribal members who have lived in this area for generations,” wrote Chairman Cypress in a statement last week, “before the roads and canals were built, and before Everglades National Park was created.” The act was passed on December 11, but on December 30, President Donald Trump vetoed it; one of only two vetoes made by the administration since he took office. In a statement, Trump explained that the tribe “actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” after the tribe’s July lawsuit challenging the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center in the Everglades.  “It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.” When a tribe regains land, the process can be long and costly. The process, known as “land into trust” transfers a land title from a tribe to the United States, where the land is then held for the benefit of the tribe and establishes tribal jurisdiction over the land in question. When tribal nations signed treaties in the 19th century ceding land, any lands reserved for tribes—generally, reservations—were held by the federal government “in trust” for the benefit of tribes, meaning that tribal nations don’t own these lands despite their sovereign status.  > Trump’s veto “makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance.” Almost all land-into-trust requests are facilitated at an administrative level by the Department of Interior. The Miccosukee, however, generally must follow a different process. Recognized as a tribal nation by the federal government in 1962, the Miccosukee navigate a unique structure for acquiring tribal land where these requests are made through Congress via legislation instead of by the Interior Department. “It’s ironic, right?” said Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “You’re acquiring land that your colonizer probably took from you a long time ago and then gave it away to or sold it to someone else, and then years later, you’re buying that land back that was taken from you illegally, at a great expense.” While land-into-trust applications related to tribal gaming operations often meet opposition, Fletcher says applications like the Miccosukee’s are usually frictionless. And in cases like the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act, which received bipartisan support at the state and federal levels, in-trust applications are all but guaranteed. On the House floor on Thursday before the vote, Florida’s Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “This bill is so narrowly focused that [the veto] makes absolutely no sense other than the interest in vengeance that seems to have emanated in this result.” The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), did not respond to requests for comment. In July last year, Gimenez referred to the Miccosukee Tribe as stewards of the Everglades, sponsoring the bill as a way to manage water flow and advance an elevation project, under protection from the Department of the Interior, for the village to avert “catastrophic flooding.” “What you’re asking is for people in the same political party of the guy who just vetoed this thing to affirmatively reject the political decision of the president,” Fletcher said. The tribe is unlikely to see its village project materialize under Trump’s second term unless the outcome of this year’s midterms results in a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Studies show that the return of land to tribes provides the best outcomes for the climate.

SOLIDARITY ACTION LINKS SANREMO WITH UK DETAINEES HELD ON REMAND OVER PALESTINE ACTION CASES ~ Blade Runner ~ Italian anarchist prisoner Luca Dolce has joined from his cell in Sanremo the coordinated hunger strike that began in British prisons on 2 November — the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Britain’s colonial pledge that set the machinery of dispossession and genocide in motion. The British hunger strikers, held on remand for alleged offences linked to Palestine Action and all without conviction, say they will refuse food until Elbit Systems shuts its UK sites. Elbit, long targeted by Palestine Action’s factory occupations, remains Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. Alongside the strike, the prisoners have launched Prisoners for Palestine, an initiative to collectivise detainees charged over actions in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. At least six prisoners across Bronzefield, New Hall, Pentonville and Peterborough are currently refusing food as part of a rolling action involving dozens who have pledged to join. Since the proscription of Palestine Action earlier this year, the British state has been using remand as a form of domestic counter-insurgency. One of the six strikers spent September on hunger strike after authorities withheld her mail and removed her from her job in the prison library. Today the strikers report censorship of letters, phone calls and books, and say treatment has worsened since the ban — a predictable result when a political movement is reclassified as “terrorism” and handed to the state’s extremism apparatus. From Italy, Luca Dolce made a statement that cuts through the mainstream line that hunger strikes are simply protests about conditions: “The struggle against prison and the military techno-industrial system is essential for a struggle of broader scope, of revolutionary and internationalist resistance. … I stand by their side with serenity and resolve.” Dolce also salutes Palestinian prisoner Anan Yaeesh in Melfi prison in southern Italy, another target of isolation and transfer tactics meant to erase political prisoners. According to Dolce, whether Yaeesh remains on strike is unclear. The British state insists these prisoners are merely defendants awaiting trial. But their captivity functions neatly to suppress a movement that has repeatedly exposed and disrupted the UK’s arms pipeline to Israel. The hunger strike makes visible what the legal process tries to obscure: this is political imprisonment in the service of a war economy. The strikers aren’t appealing for prison reform. They are refusing to cooperate with the machinery designed to put militants out of action. And the fact that prisoners abroad are joining them only underscores the point they are making from their cells: the death machine is international — and so the resistance must be too. The post Italian anarchist joins UK prison hunger strike appeared first on Freedom News.

Women are the fast-growing population of incarcerated people. And if Republicans get their way, more pregnant women will be joining their ranks. That’s because conservatives are behind a growing push to criminalize pregnancy outcomes nationwide, in part by giving full rights to fetuses. And while abortion opponents have long claimed they do not want to criminalize abortion-seekers themselves, since the Supreme Court’s 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade, a growing number of conservative lawmakers have begun introducing bills that would treat abortion as homicide and criminalize abortion-seekers. These laws will likely put more Black and Latina women behind bars, who are already imprisoned at higher rates than white women.  President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is also ensnaring pregnant immigrant women: A report issued last month by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) alleged that officials identified more than a dozen credible reports of the mistreatment of pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, which included not receiving adequate, or even urgent, medical care and being denied food. The Department of Homeland Security has disputed those allegations, saying in part, “Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review.” These recent events make Rebecca Rodriguez Carey’s new book, Birth Behind Bars: The Carceral Control of Pregnant Women in Prisons, incredibly timely. Based on in-depth interviews with nearly three dozen women who were incarcerated in prisons throughout the Midwest while pregnant, the book provides rare insight into the experiences of pregnant women behind bars—an issue that lacked federal data until the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) issued its first report on the state of pregnant women in prisons earlier this year. But even the exact number of pregnant women in prisons remains unclear, in part because incarcerated women do not always have access to pregnancy tests: The BJS report, for example, cites more than 320 in state and federal custody in 2023, but past research from scholars and advocates has estimated about 3,000 pregnant people are admitted to U.S. prisons annually. “This invisibility,” Rodrigeuz Carey told me, “really contributes to systemic neglect.” In her book, Rodriguez Carey, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Emporia State University in Kansas, counters this historic invisibility by relaying women’s experiences being pregnant, laboring, and giving birth while in prison. Some stories convey the despair and desperation you may expect: Some women recounted purposefully committing crimes in order to be pregnant in prison rather than on the streets; others recalled falling into postpartum depression after being separated from their babies after giving birth while incarcerated. But the book also spotlights the surprising ways women managed to cultivate hope, by hosting makeshift baby showers and making plans for how they would make their children proud once released. I spoke with Rodriguez Carey via Zoom last month about the state of abortion access in prisons post-Roe, the persistent problem of shackling incarcerated people during childbirth, and what most surprised her during the course of her research. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.  I was struck by the fact that some of the women you interviewed deliberately committed crimes in order to have their basic needs for food, shelter, and medical care met in prison during their pregnancies. What do these women’s experiences indicate about the state of pregnancy care in the US more broadly? Well it’s really, really bad care when you have women who are seeking refuge in a carceral system. And that’s not to say that that the care in prison is optimal care by any means, but for those who are living at the margins of society, who are in extreme poverty and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, don’t know where they are staying each night, for them the mark of being a good mother is to ensure that those basic needs are met. And so that means turning to our criminal legal system. It’s really interesting to me that the incarcerated population are the only group of people in the US that are constitutionally guaranteed health care—that really says something.  > “There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the > criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. “ You have some prisons being more progressive with their efforts to provide wraparound services, but then you have other prisons where there’s not a lot of prenatal and postpartum care, and so there’s really just a wide variation of care there from state to state, and even from facility to facility. I think that speaks to the larger picture of inequalities in the US. There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. Even before the Dobbs decision that revoked the constitutional right to abortion, accessing it in prison was difficult. Only two percent of participants in the BJS report had abortions; other research has found an even lower rate. What sort of barriers did incarcerated people face when Roe was still the law of the land? Many states have laws that prohibit any sort of state funding to go toward abortion. That includes travel—so if an incarcerated woman is looking to access an abortion out of state, typically you have to have a correctional officer accompany that woman. That would require state funding, to be in a correctional van for transportation and to provide the salary for the accompanying correctional officer. Many women who are incarcerated may not know that they are even pregnant until they come to prison, if they are living on the streets, for example, and haven’t had access to routine health care in some time. And so by the time they learn of their pregnancy, it’s often too late, because many states have laws that regulate the number of weeks that an abortion can be performed. Many pregnant women in custody remain shackled while laboring and giving birth despite the fact that leading medical groups have denounced this practice. What did your interviewees say this experience was like for them?  They felt like they were caged animals. When you are in the state of giving birth, you are extremely vulnerable. You’re not necessarily at a risk of fleeing; there have been no documented cases to date of a woman trying to escape while in labor. Many of the women that I interviewed had cesarean sections, so they were on the operating table, numb from the waist down—you are not going anywhere at that moment. Most women who are incarcerated are there on non-violent crimes, and even if a woman is pregnant who committed a violent crime, she’s not necessarily posing a risk to society while you’re in that vulnerable state of childbirth, where your legs are in stirrups and you have a correctional officer often in the room. Many of these correctional officers are men, and a lot of the women I interviewed talked about how they had experienced sexual abuse growing up, so that adds just another layer of harm when you’re in this very vulnerable state, often in layers of undress or completely naked. Most states have laws on the books now restricting shackling during delivery. But how widespread of a problem does this remain?  It’s really hard to say. A state may have a policy, but then we know that the policy is often different from the reality of what takes place. Many states that have issued restrictions on shackling still leave it up to correctional officers if there is a point of threat or perceived harm. And I think when we look at the different layers here, of who is more likely to be considered harmful or posing a risk to society, that’s women of color. So you still have these tropes that are persisting behind bars. What about prison nursery programs that allow mothers to parent their newborns in prison—what benefits do they offer and why aren’t they more common? [Editor’s note: There are currently eleven state-run prison nursery programs, plus two more operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons.] The first prison nursery program has actually been in place since 1901, so this is not necessarily new. Women who go through a prison nursery program and have access to that oftentimes there are reduced recidivism rates, there’s improved maternal mental health and fetal health outcomes. Otherwise they’re meeting their children, and they’re saying goodbye all in a span of 24 hours, and so that’s going to have negative health implications for years to come.  There are no national mandates or standardized policies governing the incarceration of pregnant women. As a result, it’s up to individual states—and even specific correctional facilities—to decide whether to invest in such programs. Unfortunately, awareness among policymakers remains limited. Prior to the 1900s, reformatories often emphasized family bonds, allowing incarcerated women to live with their newborns—much like today’s prison nursery programs. But by the 1970s, most states moved toward a more punitive approach, passing legislation that effectively eliminated many of these programs. Some of your interviewees used their incarcerations during pregnancy as a “transformative period” and sought to “optimize pregnancy and birth outcomes” despite their circumstances. Can you say more about how they did so?  Many of the women that I interviewed had been pregnant before. Some of them had also been incarcerated before, but this was the first time they were both pregnant and incarcerated. Many of them talked about how being pregnant and incarcerated was rock bottom, and that this was very much a wake up call to do right by their unborn child. Many of the women interviewed talked about how during previous pregnancies they were out on the streets, doing drugs, getting into trouble left and right. And so when they were in prison, it was really this time where they could focus on their pregnancy. So that was really special for them, and it was a time where they were doing their best to take advantage of different programs and initiatives that they maybe had access to in their prisons, like pregnancy support groups, for example, reading all the books and trying their best to implement that advice. The women talked about how when you’re incarcerated, all you have is time to think and make the best choices for your unborn child. Is there anything that surprised you in doing this research? I think one of the biggest takeaways from me was how much hope is found inside prisons, where you have women coming together, given the absence of maternal healthcare, given the absence of institutional resources and support, creating their own networks of community and care. Food was a huge topic; pregnant women in prison don’t have access all the time to regular and nutritious foods. So you have other women who are incarcerated helping them out and coming together and saying, “Hey, I don’t want my baked potato, you can have it because I know you’re pregnant and you need these calories.” Women are also taking pregnant women, especially the younger ones, under their wings, and saying, “be sure to get a job in the kitchen while you’re incarcerated, because that way you have regular access to food.” So you see these informal networks of support. After a woman gives birth, she’s sent back to prison, often within 24 to 48 hours of giving birth and asked to fall back in line as if nothing has happened, even though her world has just been rocked. So you have women who are incarcerated really coming together and rallying around the pregnant women to provide that support and care. What gives you hope for pregnant people in prisons and their newborns?  The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center in Topeka has a program called Play Free, which allows incarcerated mothers and grandmothers to spend a day at the children’s museum playing with their kiddo, free of these cages and environments that are not child- and family-friendly at all. It’s been really great to see the transformation, where it started just as a partnership with the Topeka Correctional Facility, and has since expanded to the men’s facilities in Kansas. You have incarcerated fathers as well, and centering the children in all of this is important.

This story was originally published by Popular Information, a substack publication to which you can subscribe here. The Federal Communications Commission will no longer enforce a rule capping the price of prison phone calls, according to an announcement made Monday by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. The move suspends a 2024 FCC decision that capped the price of in-state phone calls at 6 cents minute for prisons and large jails and 7 cents per minute for medium-sized jails. Before the decision, a 15-minute phone call could cost as much as $11.35 at large jails in some states. Under the 2024 rules, those same phone calls would cost 90 cents. This week’s FCC announcement states that the suspension of the 2024 rules will apply until April 1, 2027. But it also says that the FCC will use that time to consider making permanent changes to the rule. Carr claims that the 2024 rules, which started going into effect on January 1 on a staggered basis, are “leading to negative, unintended consequences.” > The current system incentivizes prison operators to award contracts to > companies that charge exorbitant fees. The 2024 FCC decision followed the passage of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022, which gave the FCC authority to regulate the price of in-state phone calls from prisons and jails. The legislation was named after Martha Wright-Reed, who spent two decades fighting for lower prices for prison phone calls as she struggled to afford spending over $100 per month to call her incarcerated grandson. At times, Wright-Reed had to skip medication payments and even cut back on groceries in order to afford the calls. In 2000, Wright-Reed sued CoreCivic, a private prison operator, arguing that the company’s exclusive contracts resulted in excessively high prices. Monday’s statement was blasted by FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who argued that not enforcing the 2024 rules violates the Martha Wright-Reed Act, as the law directed the FCC to “implement the statutory provisions not earlier than 18 months and not later than 24 months after the date of its enactment.” Gomez said that the FCC is making the “indefensible decision to ignore both the law and the will of Congress.” Incarcerated people have said that the high cost forces them to choose between spending money on phone calls or purchasing personal hygiene items, or even shoes. One mother told CBS News in 2020 that she and her husband spent “$14,268 over the past two years” so that their incarcerated son could make phone calls. On top of the exorbitant per-minute rates, incarcerated people are charged additional fees, including as much as $4 to connect the call, which could be charged multiple times if the call drops. In 2024, the FCC estimated that capping the price of phone and video calls “would save incarcerated people and their families, friends and legal teams about $386 million.” The Prison Policy Initiative estimated that the industry costs families of incarcerated people “nearly $1 billion a year.” Studies have shown that visitation and phone calls from family decrease the chances that an incarcerated person will commit another crime. So why is the FCC suddenly suspending the lowered price caps for prison phone calls? Follow the money. The high cost of prison phone calls is a cash windfall for the private prison industry, which spent vast sums to help elect Trump president. The companies that provide prison telephone services offer kickbacks, known as “commissions,” to prison operators to secure lucrative contracts. This means up to 50 percent of the money incarcerated people spend on telephone calls is routed back to the company or government that operates the prison. This system incentivizes prison operators to award contracts to companies that charge exorbitant fees, creating a larger pool of money for kickbacks. For private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic, kickbacks from telephone service providers are a lucrative revenue stream. How much money do these companies make from commissions? The industry no longer discloses those figures. But in 2012, according to SEC filings, the GEO Group made over $600,000 in site commissions from phone services. That figure is likely much higher today. The FCC rule on phone rates would have ended this practice, banning kickbacks for prison operators. But, like the caps on phone charges, the kickback ban is now on hold. During the 2024 campaign, GEO Group, through its PAC, was the first company to make the maximum contribution to Trump’s campaign. The same day, two top GEO Group executives, CEO Brian Evans and board chairman George Zoley, each donated $11,600 to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee. Later, a GEO Group subsidiary, GEO Acquisition II, donated $1 million to Make America Great Again PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC. GEO Group used the subsidiary to evade a federal law that prohibits government contractors from making political donations. After Trump won, GEO Group and CoreCivic each donated $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration committee. Both Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and Attorney General Pam Bondi have previously been on the payroll of GEO Group. According to his federal financial disclosures, Homan received consulting fees from GEO Group in 2023 and 2024. Homan was not required to disclose the exact amount he was paid by the GEO Group, except that it was more than $5,000. Bondi worked as a lobbyist for GEO Group in 2019. In the order delaying the rule, the FCC explicitly cited the “financial burdens” imposed on prison operators through inhibiting their ability to collect commissions. The FCC claims that, without the ability to receive commissions or charge high prices, many facilities would stop allowing incarcerated people to make phone calls. This conclusion is largely based on claims made to the FCC by the corporations profiting from the existing system.

WE DON’T HAVE LONG BEFORE OLD-FASHIONED AUTHORITARIAN STATE CENSORSHIP IS EMPLOYED TO STOP US TALKING ABOUT ONE OF THE MOST SHAMEFUL EPISODES IN RECENT LABOUR HISTORY. We react to the Labour Party’s decision to not just ban a non-violent campaign group, but also the voicing of any public support for them or their actions. We can only do so in the gap between the Commons vote earlier today, and its confirmation by the Lords tomorrow … The post Anarchist News Review: The proscribing of Palestine Action appeared first on Freedom News.

THE FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER TALKS ABOUT HIS ANARCHISM, THE 325 PROJECT AND RESISTING THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL JAILS THAT SURROUND US ALL. ~ Interviewed by Elizabeth Vasileva ~ You recently spoke about the importance of solidarity and connections, between prisoners and with their supporters on the outside. Can you give us any examples of this kind of mutual or collective empowerment in the pushback against prison’s continuous repression? Shortly before I was released in 2024, violent cell searches by a tactical unit of prison guards known as the National Search Team took place on C-wing of HMP Garth in Leyland, where I was being held. The NST took over the wing with dogs and riot gear. Cell by cell the raid took place with a lot of pointlessly brutal drama. In ones and twos we were handcuffed and placed in a locked wet room. Some prisoners were beaten, abused and a lot of our things were trashed. Some of the guys fought back, flooded their cells, banged their doors or played music really loud as a protest. The next day the whole wing refused to go back into their cells after the early morning unlock hour. As a cacophonous and unruly mob we demanded the immediate return of seized items, the replacement of damaged items and denounced the violence. This lead to the screws backing off. There was nothing at that moment that the screws could do because we all acted together, and without any leader. At the end of the lunch period, the stop-out ended. Similar things happened in my experience when one of the prisoners was killed by depression or hopelessness. Demonstrations outside the prisons where I was held also were a strong experience that had an impact upon the guards and us. Especially when the fireworks exploded across the night sky and the comrades outside were militant. I found other prisoners to be generally supportive of each other in the roughly anti-system and criminal environment. Whenever I was transferred or moved to a different cell, the local guys usually would come to check if I was okay and if I needed anything. I helped other guys with their legal cases or prison admin, and tried to find common points of interest and subversion. We’d try to back each other, and if I had some problem, the guys would be voicing their demands too. There’s refusals and kick-offs being made in most of the prisons around the country each day about conditions and treatment. I lost track of the number of prison labour refusals and walkouts I heard about when I was inside, they are very common, as is getting on the netting that separates the landings to protest about treatment and poor conditions. When I heard that comrades outside were carrying out revolutionary solidarity, that is when I felt our power inside the prison, I can say. From hearing about the direct actions with the Adream case in Chile, France, Italy, Indonesia and around the world, to the phone-call interventions that I was able to make from inside prison to meetings of comrades on the outside, I could feel the warmth from the comrades. Also knowing about the censored letters and books, the solidarity funds and benefit events, it was great. For readers who don’t know 325, what can you tell us about the project and its content? 325 is an anarchist network of counter-information and direct action. In November 2020, Dutch counter-terrorist police took down the nostate.net server which held the 325 website, upon request from their German and English colleagues. The website was a long-running information clearing house of general news, reports, communiques, publications, event listings, etc. Mostly the website covered Europe, Latin America and South East Asia. 325 is also a hard-copy magazine which comes out on an intermittent basis, and dozens of publications have been published by the collective, including the newsletter Dark Nights, which has it’s own website. Over the years, 325 has participated in an evolving participatory international network based on direct action and the support of prisoners, as well as providing space for various tendencies of anarchist, anti-capitalist and anti-civilisation groups. In recent issues of the magazine the analysis has shifted slightly to the profound new industrial changes in production and technology, such as artificial intelligence, life sciences and automation. The archive of the 325 site is an important document of social and armed revolutionary struggle over a number of years in Europe and internationally. The project started in 2003 and continues. I first saw the term ‘anti-psychiatry’ in 325. There is a lot to say about the intersections of this agenda with anarchism, but you could also just tell us about why at the time you thought it was important to bring it forward. It was a collective decision that was formed from different influences on the early group in Brighton. I can mention our experience of altered states of consciousness and the shattering of imposed social conditioning. Some of our original group had experience of psychiatric/psychological controls and secure units, and we were all interested in the use of psychoanalysis for political repression, the work of Wilhelm Reich, R D Laing, the Socialist Patients Collective (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv – SPK), and anarchist analysis of the relationship of the individual to post-industrial society. Our comrade from Switzerland, who took part in an early anti-civilisation network in Europe in the 2000s, wrote the anti-psychiatry manifesto Reclaim Your Mind: An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill, which features in the first 325 magazine. Whilst there have been some different perspectives on this manifesto in the collective over the years, overall the position taken is that society drives pathology, medicalisation is ultimately harmful, as is incarceration. At the Anti-repression gathering organised by the Anarchist Black Cross at the Cowley Club in Brighton last March, a comrade from Sweden described how comrades are being placed into psychiatric care rather than prison by the authorities, thereby trying to de-politicise their cases in the spotlight of the public arena and forcing them into medical ‘treatment’ for their anarchist ideas. It was a tactic that the National Security Team and the Counter-Terrorist Police tried to apply to me during my incarceration and when I was released under controls. It is very important to bring this forward as these kinds of controls are being used routinely by these agencies, and they will seek to apply this to anarchists and the radical left where they can. Legislation is continuously narrowing the scope for non-violent expression of discontent, with harsher sentences for mass- or even small-group disruption, and police powers to disperse non-violent crowds. While Climate Camp organisers were pre-emptively raided, the far right attacks last summer were not foiled. How come the British state is so obsessed with the crumbs of resistance from below in the middle of a global fascist takeover? Well, we can never underestimate the smallest expression of dissent and rebellion, they all have power. If the regime doesn’t suppress the sparks, the wildfires will begin. Even if I disagree with the positions of the bureaucratic part of most of these groups, it gives me pleasure to see their successes and I want to see it escalate into a revolutionary movement. Any protests that are effective will meet repression. From prison I saw on TV the escalation of property destruction against arms companies dealing to Israel during the ongoing Gaza genocide, the shutdowns of the motorways and destruction of Barclays Banks. The radical left, ecologists and anarchists are basically the only opposition in the UK. Since it was wrong-footed by June 18th Global Day of Action in 1999, when the London Met were surprised by multi-million pound damage anti-capitalist riots, the state has made it its goal to manipulate and dead-end the social movement. The question of tactics and energy inside the movement, of small group actions and of mass protests that could have the capacity to pose a real danger to national security through creating situations that are out of the control of anyone- that requires our willingness to organise and link our struggles, that’s our challenge. If we want a revolution, that will require continuous subversion and insurrection. This system is invested in war, murder and genocide, it’s not going to be stopped by voting or protests alone. The British state has always been part of the global fascist takeover, the regime is constantly preparing for urban riots, acts of terror, individual and mass revolts. The comrades who often form part of the underground groups, they usually come through the social movement, and so the state will invest a lot of time and energy into looking into who forms part of these movements and which directions these movements are taking. The British left seems so divided over internal issues, accelerating burnout and further fragmentation. How do you think we can build solidarity effectively and support each other, inside or outside the criminal penal system? I don’t consider myself part of the British left, nor do the comrades in our circle. Leftism is part of the electioneering circus, and has capitulated to the mass media and corporations, to militarism, high-technologies, trans-humanism, nuclear energy, statism. That being said, I don’t think you’re speaking about this. Our group withdrew from the social movement in 2011 and took a nihilistic position, we are only active in our groups and not in the social centres or the activist campaigns. That’s another conversation, but from what we have been through, essentially; stop pointlessly fighting with each other over toxic issues and excluding each other. Understand how the system constantly recuperates and infiltrates our anarchism. Learn to communicate with each other. Learn from your interactions with each other. Learn to value your time and that of others. Share skills, time, energy and money, if you can, with real projects that need support. Learn to give criticism and to receive it. Learn to sever ties and forge them. If you cannot work well with others, work alone. Put your ideas into practice. This will strengthen our space. If you are part of a group or not, you can write to prisoners, support their campaigns and maintain an interest in the anti-prison topic. Meet face-to-face and do things in the streets if you are able. Make links in the local area and if you are active on other issues, remember those who end up behind bars, it could be you. If you have the capabilities, help do admin or organise demos, cooking, putting people up, flyposting, graffiti, leaflets, zines, stickers, night time excursions. Don’t think that other people are going to do it for you, do it yourself. If you can’t do any of those things, live your life in the most beautiful and free way you can, and don’t give up on your dreams. Let’s take part in and build a real culture of resistance and mutual aid. What is the most effective way to show solidarity and support people who are in prison or have recently come out of it? What did you find most helpful? The revolutionary action, this is the most important way to support people inside. This is the first principle. Directly freeing the prisoners and carrying out the anti-state and anti-capitalist struggle. Second are the material conditions of imprisonment. It costs money to fight legal cases, pay for food and provisions, pay for visits, travel to the prison, arrange the situation of the life left behind outside etc. This can’t be done by the prisoner at all. It needs a collective effort. When prisoners are released they continue to need support with housing, money, travel, food and so on. Police, probation and the parole board have more power over an individual if they do not have support from their close ones or the movement. On release I was helped a great deal by my comrades who provided me with money, a vehicle, housing, clothes etc. Third is the solidarity campaign and raising awareness to large numbers of people. This campaigning must include also making sure that the imprisoned know about what is happening on the outside and putting pressure on the prison administration, or any private companies involved. When I was locked up, I was not able to receive much news, due to the censorship I was imposed with, but whenever I heard about a demo or a solidarity action it always provided me with a lot of strength, and to be able to speak about it with the other guys enabled me to show practically that the anarchists exist. We have to prepare for larger numbers of us going to prison, I read that currently there are dozens of prisoners from the social movement—climate change and Palestinian solidarity. They are facing the same or similar conditions I was imposed with, through the terrorism schedules and Counter Terror Police investigations. In my case I was not even sentenced for any terror charges but I was still held under an anti-terrorist regime and there was nothing really that either the lawyers or the movement could do about that. This situation is not going to get better unless we are active and create a stronger tendency of struggle. Currently the anarchist movement in the UK is not able to provide adequate support to its prisoners. The solidarity action groups are almost non-existent. There needs to be a real effort to connect the struggles of all of us who are targeted by the prison and criminal-justice system. You spoke about abolishing prisons in your talk and the horrendous living conditions inside. Do you think that is one of the main areas anarchists should be focusing on? What are the important battles for our movement in the next few years? Everyone will have different areas they want to concentrate on, but yes, I think that the anti-prison topic is an important intermediate struggle that has the capacity to not only create significant damage to bourgeois society, national security and the police-state, but create experience in confronting very difficult issues and finding allies in working class communities. Prison has a clear racial and class basis and at the moment the prison system is breaking, the situation is not going to be resolved any time soon either. A start could be the fight against prison labour and the construction of new prisons. As anarchists, we don’t want to simply abolish prisons, but destroy the state itself, in this case an old decaying post-Imperial regime that is determined to never relinquish its power. So, I’m in favour of any actions and campaigns from the radical left and the anarchists that strike it. The social movement has been largely active on the same issues for years with little success, most of the battles we face now, we will still face in the future, but it is made more bitter by the neo-fascist atmosphere and the new technologies. The important social battles I see coming all pertain to poverty and exploitation, and are the results of the new asymmetric state of war, technocratic capital, rising artificial intelligence and the ecological collapse. I think that nothing should be taken for granted. We live in a changing world and the resurgence of internationalist struggle and the next generation of social war is what I am placing a bet on. Thank you for your time. Strength to everyone. For a black international. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article first appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Freedom Journal The post Wildfires will begin: An interview with Toby Shone appeared first on Freedom News.

Around 8:30 p.m. on March 8th, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia and a student leader in last year’s protest encampments, was returning to his University-owned apartment after an iftar meal when he was arrested by Department of Homeland Security agents. Khalil, who is Palestinian, is a legal permanent resident and green card holder, his lawyers say. His arrest marks a dramatic escalation in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on free speech.  > “ICE agents wrongfully arrested Mahmoud Khalil, claiming his student visa was > revoked—even though Mahmoud is a legal permanent resident” “This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump posted on Monday afternoon, personally taking credit for Khalil’s arrest. “We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again.”  On Sunday, the US Homeland Security X account posted that ICE arrested Khalil for leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” in order to enforce Trump’s January executive orders on “combatting anti-semitism.” (“Aligned to” is a term that is not used in the US law on “inadmissible aliens” referenced by Trump’s executive order; as of now, there are no reports Khalil has been charged with a crime.) As we have previously reported, Trump promised to deport student protesters during his campaign. This is his administration’s first explicit attempt to do so. According to public detainee location data, Khalil was taken first to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in New Jersey, then to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. His lawyers and wife spent Sunday scrambling to find him. “ICE’s arrest and detention of Mahmoud follows the US government’s open repression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia University for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza,” Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, told press. “The US government has made clear that they will use immigration enforcement as a tool to suppress that speech.”  In Trump’s first term, Columbia declared itself a “sanctuary campus,” saying it would not turn over student information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Last year, the Manhattan university’s campus was one of the epicenters of mass student protest calling for divestment from companies that do business in Israel, among other demands. The university has, for now, not commented on the arrest.  The day before Khalil’s arrest, the Trump administration announced that they would be “pulling $400 million in grants” from Columbia as part of the “joint task force to combat antisemitism.” ( The task force was launched February 3rd and has produced no reports.)  Members of a Columbia-donor WhatsApp chat, including Trump advisors, celebrated the funding changes. “One group chat member wrote on Friday that they ‘can’t wait for the rest of the funding to be cut,’” as Natasha Lennard of The Intercept reported. This group chat reportedly includes professors who discussed deporting pro-Palestinian foreign students and faculty. By the time DHS officers showed up at Khalil’s door, right-wing commenters on and off Columbia’s campus had been agitating for his arrest for days. Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor banned from campus for harassing pro-Palestinian students, posted on X thanking Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the withdrawal of funding—and directly encouraging him to take “strong action” against Khalil individually.  Khalil’s lawyers disagree. “ICE agents wrongfully arrested Mahmoud Khalil, claiming his student visa was revoked—even though Mahmoud is a legal permanent resident (green card) and not in the US on a student visa,” Greer said. “Confronted with that fact, the ICE agents detained him anyway.” Khalil is reportedly in a repurposed prison, owned by private-prison company GEO Group. A petition calling for his release has gained over one million signatures in the last 48 hours, and a protest is planned outside ICE’s office in downtown New York on Monday afternoon. 

On a call with investors earlier this week, Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp—fresh off a week of stock surges—was euphoric. “We’re doin’ it!” he yelled, arms spread wide. “And I’m sure you’re enjoying this as much as I am!”  The “it” in question? It seemed to be a reference to enabling President Donald Trump’s administration to carry out mass deportation and police surveillance domestically, while aiding the “West” globally—actions that, “on occasion,” Karp said on the call, may involve the need to “kill.” “I’m very happy to have you along for the journey,” the CEO said. “We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”  “Palantir is here to disrupt,” he continued. “And, when it’s necessary, to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” (Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.) Google Finance This type of rhetoric isn’t new for Karp. In 2020, he made headlines doing the same thing: announcing that Palantir was used “on occasion to kill people.” Founded in 2003 by Karp and Trump donor Peter Thiel, Palantir supplies data analysis software—called “spy tech” by its critics—to governments and companies. That software has reportedly been used to help generate “kill lists” for the Israeli Defense Forces, target immigrant families for deportation from the United States, and enable rogue employees to spy on co-workers. Karp made Palantir’s relationship to violence more forcefully evident in his latest letter to shareholders, released Monday. In the document, he quotes political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, who famously wrote that Hispanics cannot assimilate into American society. “The rise of the West was not made possible ‘by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion,’” Karp says in the letter, “‘but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’” Karp is not the only one cashing in on Trump’s plans for territorial expansion and mass deportation. Stocks for the GEO Group and CoreCivic, two of the nation’s biggest private prison firms, jumped after Trump was elected and again after he was sworn in. While the Federal Bureau of Prisons has lessened its reliance on private prison companies in recent years, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has recently extended contracts with both companies. A GEO Group spokesperson said in an email that the company is investing $70 million to increase “housing, transportation, and monitoring capabilities” in anticipation of the new administration’s “immigration law enforcement priorities.” “This is, to us, an unprecedented opportunity to assist the federal government and the incoming Trump administration towards achieving a much more aggressive immigration policy,” GEO Group founder George Zoley said on a November earnings call. CoreCivic told Mother Jones that the company “does not enforce immigration laws, arrest anyone who may be in violation of immigration laws, or have any say whatsoever in an individual’s deportation or release.” Since initial bumps in stock prices, as Axios reported, there has been some fluctuation—in part because Trump has talked up outsourcing incarceration. The president has discussed plans to use Guantanamo Bay and jails in El Salvador to house deportees, including American citizens. Google Finance Google Finance Elon Musk’s DOGE also may be creating enrichment opportunities for those who make money from helping the US deport immigrants. Karp said Musk’s slash-and-burn effort to reshape the federal government would be “very good” for his company, which generates about two-thirds of its US revenue from government contracts, according to the Financial Times. “I think DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government, and that’s exactly what our commercial business is,” said Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar.  “There’s a revolution. Some people get their heads cut off,” Karp said. “We’re expecting to see really unexpected things, and to win.” 

A selfie of father and son. Courtesy of Robert J. Rosenthal

Today, President Joe Biden announced that he will commute the sentences of almost 1,500 Americans for non-violent offenses—the most ever granted in one day. Those affected by the commutations are people released to in-home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, whom some Republicans have pushed to send back to prison. Biden also announced that he would pardon 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes including drug offenses.   As I previously reported, there has been pressure on Joe Biden to use his clemency power more broadly in the final months of his term—which intensified after he pardoned his son, Hunter. More than 130 civil and human rights organizations have called on Biden to commute the sentences of those on federal death row before he leaves office. Biden has openly opposed the death penalty, and those commutations would prevent the execution of 40 people—who, instead of being killed, would serve out the rest of their lives in prison.       Groups have also called on Biden to free more people serving time for nonviolent offenses. Drug Policy Alliance, a non-partisan advocacy group, recently asked Biden to commute the sentences lengthened by the racist disparity in sentencing between powder and crack cocaine, which has disproportionately affected the Black community; the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit working for the release of all marijuana prisoners, joined members of Congress in November on the Capital Steps to call on Biden to rectify what they called “draconian sentences given by judges” in an accompanying letter to the president. In response to today’s announcement, the Last Prisoner Project’s executive director, Sarah Gersten, said in a public statement, “We are heartened to see the President using his clemency power more robustly, and are eager to see more action before he leaves office. It’s clear from the White House’s statement that the administration sees nonviolent drug offenders, and particularly those impacted by unjust cannabis offenses, as a critical category of clemency recipients deserving relief.” Biden’s announcement implied that more clemencies should be expected, saying that he will “continue reviewing clemency petitions to advance equal justice under the law, promote public safety, support rehabilitation and reentry, and provide meaningful second chances.”