Message #3903

[Bad Penny]

One more VERY important matter I failed to mention:

In all the actions I've participated in, we've always had people who were not immediately involved in the action who stood by to serve as auxiliaries, to provide legal assistance, legal witnesses, bail money, transportation, and food for those released from jail (gaol for those of you on the other side of the creek).  (As our movement seems to lack terminology consistent with this distinction, I'll use the monastic term "interns" for those actually testing the unlawful state activity, and "externs" for those standing aside in aid.)  The lack of externs in support of the Freedom Riders was probably the greatest single error of the original CORE action, which allowed their people to be trapped, surrounded, and without aid.

We must also keep in mind that, rather than winding up in police lockups or city jails, we may well find ourselves, in deference to the PATRIOT Act, sent to concentration camps with no recourse to due process of law.  Once again, this is a possibility we must be willing to accept if we refuse to accept bankster criminality.

There actually used to be a benefit to being in a concentration camp, in that inmates were generally in possession of the very latest news.  One of my personal favorite stories was related by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his great work "Arkhipelag GULAG", where the prisoners were lined up to report to the commander's office.  One inmate pleaded to be allowed to the head of the line, in so excited a manner that the rest of the prisoners relented, and allowed him to skip to the head of the line.  Once before the camp commander, the prisoner pointed to the portrait of Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria (the head of the Soviet secret police) displayed behind the commander's desk, and said : "You are displaying a portrait of an enemy of the people!"  You see, that morning, Lavrenti Pavlovich had been arrested by Khrushchev and Zhukhov, and charged as an enemy of the people, and the prisoner had discovered this fact even before the camp commander had.

We must be aware that, on the model of Guantanamo, the American concentration camps of today are designed, in the knowledge of this possibility, to isolate prisoners and to torture them in such a manner as to completely change their personalities and to freely confess to ridiculous accusations.

Once again, the question is posed: do you want to be a stooge for these sadistic criminals, or to be one who breathes one last gasp of truth into the air?