Letter for the International Week of Solidarity With Anarchist Prisoners 2022 by imprisoned anarchist Toby Shone

“Does this rising generation know that those who inaugurated the 8 hour day were put to death at the command of Capital?”
Lucy Parsons, The Haymarket Martyrs, November 1926

“Although we are not reformists, the struggle to obtain improvements in one’s immediate situation (wages, housing, health, education, occupations etc) sees the anarchists present, but they do not see these struggles as ends in themselves. They push the exploited towards this form of struggle so that they can develop the elements of self-organisation and refusal of the delegate which are indispensable in order to develop direct action at all other levels.”
Alfredo M. Bonanno, What are Anarchists?

Despite being in prison, news occasionally reaches me of the many repressive operations and terrible circumstances that our comrades are confronting. That’s why I am in agreement with the proposal once again put forward by the Anarchist Black Cross for a week of solidarity at the end of August. This date is chosen to mark the State murder of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. We cannot give in to resignation or become complacent in these times. It is more important than ever to explain and make accessible the anarchist analysis and to put it into practice immediately.

Anarchism is internationalism, self-management, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct action: incisive, voracious and alive. That’s why our spaces are raided and evicted, our publications seized, our communities hunted, beaten, imprisoned and killed around the world.

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Besançon (Doubs): The medical and judicial powers are relentless against Boris

In April 2020, our comrade  and friend Boris set fire to the antennas of four cell phone operators, as well as those of the cops and the gendarmes on the Mont Poupet (Jura). Identified by DNA present on a bottle cap, he was incarcerated in September 2020 in the prison of Nancy, then sentenced in April 2021 to four years in prison, two of which are unsuspended. In a public letter written from prison*, he defended his act by his desire to oppose the increasing digitalization of our lives through direct action, with all the control, environmental and social ravages it implies. In August 2021, he was seriously injured in a cell fire, and has since been in the hands of the medical authorities. On the judicial side, his imprisonment was lifted at the time of the appeal trial of the following September (postponed sine die), while an enquiry, still in progress, was entrusted to a judge in Nancy in order to determine the causes of the fire and to investigate the eagerness of the screws to let our companion suffocate in his cell.

Alternating between artificial coma and semi-consciousness for a few months, Boris could not make his own decisions. The doctors were not without mistakes in their diagnoses, but always with unwavering confidence. At the beginning of March 2022, Boris was transferred from the “Grands Brûlés” wing of the Metz hospital to the intensive care unit of the Besançon CHRU, which in April decided to get rid of him by sending him to another unit that was not well suited to his situation, without his opinion having any importance. This decision, which had serious consequences and meant the abandonment of active care, was essentially motivated by the fact that no favourable evolution of his state of health was observed, following miserable statistical criteria. Clearly, these criteria take absolutely no account of the particular individual to whom they are applied in an absolute and chilling manner, even if he expresses his fierce will to continue to live and fight to get better. Taking advantage of his current quadriplegia, and despite the fact that he is able to speak, lucid and combative, the doctors decided not to resuscitate him if a new serious infection occurred. It was only by protesting and writing letters that they had to take into account his will to survive and resume a minimum of active care.
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