Besançon, France: “Update on the top-flight chair for Boris”

At the beginning of March, a four-page write-up was published detailing the history of the Besançon anarchist Boris, from his attack in 2020 in the Jura against two telecoms masts used by cops and mobile phone operators, through his incarceration in Nancy prison, his sentencing to two years in prison and two years’ suspended sentence, and his public letter written from the inside in which he defends his act, to his long hospitalisation following a cell fire that left him tetraplegic. And finally the fight to get out of the palliative care ward where he was buried. Since then, the comrade’s conservatorship procedure launched against him by the doctor of this department has been cancelled following legal appeals, and Boris has spent the last six months in a care and rehabilitation centre (CRDD) which has enabled him to make somehwat of a recovery.

In this text we also launched a call for financial support, with a view to enabling a return to the streets and the sunlight for Boris – far from the bed and the devices that have kept him pinned down for too long under the neon lights of a hospital room – for the purchase of a custom-made vertical electric wheelchair.

Now, Boris’s numerous wheelchair tests with the occupational therapist of the SSR have been completed, and the company’s quote has just arrived in June: 35,000 euros after deduction of the “social security share”! In the meantime, in just four months and thanks to the solidarity that has come from many places – anonymous individuals and public initiatives (concerts, debates, karaoke, canteens) or solidarity funds – nearly 22,000 euros have already been raised for the topflight chair. Big up to all of them, from Bielefeld, Munich and Hamburg (Germany); from Ghent and Brussels (Belgium); from Portland (United States) and Canada; from Italy and Greece; but also from Besançon, Caen, Cévennes, Dordogne, Drôme, Marseille, Poitiers, from Paris, Toulouse… and elsewhere.

We are therefore currently 13,000 euros short of the complete purchase of the chair, even if its manufacture has just been kickstarted without waiting, with the help of temporary loans from comrades. Meanwhile there is still a bureaucratic funding request underway for definite, the amount and timing of which remain uncertain. In view of the urgency, we are now relaunching our call to collect solidarity funds for the operation “A topflight wheelchair” for Boris, because in any case, the comrade will still need money for many other aids besides the chair alone, to allow him to gain more autonomy and/or comfort.

The comrade remains coordinated with two places to collect the remaining cash, which can always be sent by cheque or transfer (write to retourausoleil at riseup.net), or be deposited at:
Bibliothèque Libertad – 19 rue Burnouf – 75019 Paris
Librairie Autodidacte – 5 rue Marulaz – 25000 Besançon

Anarchists in solidarity and complicity with Boris,
July 2023

from Lille Indymedia