
“From the life of a prisoner” – letter from the anarchist N. from the JVA Aichach
Everything in this society in which we are forced to live, that makes life hostile and inhospitable, becomes visible in the place that it invented in order to remind all people, nonconformist or conformist alike, what awaits them if they step outside of the boundaries: prison. A place that acts instead of or in addition to execution: the death of time. Buried alive in a tomb until the day of resurrection; cut off from loved ones, the living world and our bodies’ natural impulse to move through the world freely. Reduced to a number in the smooth functioning of a machine; administered, surveilled, educated.
The first time one is trapped in this machine, one wonders how familiar everything is. There are those who say: “it isn’t punishment, it’s education.” And they are right. However, what they overlook is that our first encounter with prison isn’t when we are imprisoned. But rather that it is a part of our life from the very beginning: in kindergarten, school, in the hospital; later in the office, the factory, the barracks, in the retirement home. Categorized and sorted; accustomed to the ticking of the clock and the rhythm of the machine since childhood. Squeezed into concrete caves, cut off from the pulsing rhythm of life and death. Reduced to a function in the system, trained to measure the earth and its inhabitants according to the monetary value that can be squeezed out of them. Filled with ignorance or even disdain for all forms of subsistence and self organization.
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