« What else...? Social war »*

Invitation text : In light of our comrade who has been held in the Haren maxi-prison since early November 2025, arrested by cops a few streets away from 3 patrol cars smoldering in the night, we talk about revolutionary solidarity. News flash : the comrade will appear before trial on Wednesday May 20th. A call to solidarity has been published here (2). The comrade is kept in jail with limited contact to the outside, read more here (3). Presentation by comrades from Kalimero - Solidarity fund for prisoners of the social war : When repression knocks at our door, at our comrades' door, we are often taken by a wave of emergency. Those situations indeed call for consistent material support : bringing stuff to the jail, contacting lawyers, asking for visitation permits, eventually contacting the family, finding money, or watering their plants. And all of that on top of sleeping very poorly. This support is necessary and it's the everyday life of many people who have an incarcerated loved one. Sometimes it petrifies us. It can also impact the struggle dynamics on the outside because we are scared to make it worse for the person inside and for ourselves. Because we are unprepared — we didn't have those discussions beforehand, or because we've got stuff laying around we don't want nosy pigs to put their hands on. But it also makes us angry, and we feel like we would do anything to get our comrade out. But those reactions can also make solidarity that much more difficult. For anarchists and rebels to feel in solidarity, it doesn't help much to position oneself as a simple victim, nor as a super perfect anarchist who knows no fear. That would only create unbalanced relations. Either charity or admiration. For solidarity to express itself more broadly, others have to recognize themselves in the actions targeted by repression. Without presuming whether the accused are innocent or guilty, because those categories belong to the state and its judicial apparatus. It is easier to start from our own reasons — like explaining why it speaks to us that police cars are being attacked. We can then develop a discourse that reminds us it's not only about everyone hating the police, but also about the possibility to attack it. We prefer to act according to our own temporalities, to be where they don't expect us. The state is less afraid of a handful of anarchists, even were they very determined, than of the diffusion of their ideas and practices. That's also why limiting ourselves to a symmetrical, lost battle with the state doesn't allow us to enter into dialogue with other rebels. We enter into a cycle where the state takes revenge on anarchists. Anarchists respond in a sterile dialogue. We get tired, prison destroys bodies and minds, we specialize and isolate. That's why it's all the more important to create the conditions to continue our projects and our struggles with our perspectives, including the necessary question of solidarity. Texte de présentation de Kalimero, fond de solidarité avec les prisonnier.es de la guerre sociale : Quand la répression arrive, on est souvent pris dans un cercle d'urgence et de soutien matériel. Amener des affaires, demander à voir l'avocat, les parloirs, prévenir la famille, l'argent, ...nourrir les plantes, et en plus mal dormir. Tout ce soutien est nécessaire. C'est le quotidien de plein de gens qui vivent en prison ou qui ont leur proche incarcéré. Parfois, ça pétrifie. Ça impacte les dynamiques de lutte parce qu'on a peur : peur de mettre la personne qui est déjà dans la merde encore plus dans la merde, peur pour soi. Mais aussi parce qu'on est mal préparés. Parce qu'on n'en a pas discuté ensemble, parce qu'il y a des trucs qu'on ne veut pas donner à ces mains curieux... On a la rage. Ça nous fout vraiment la rage. Ça donne envie de tout faire pour que notre pote sorte. Ce soutien peut aussi empêcher certaines formes de solidarités. Car pour que les anarchistes et les révoltés se sentent solidaires, il ne sert à rien de se placer uniquement dans une position de victime, ni à l'inverse en super-anarchiste sans faille et sans peur. Ça ne créerait que des relations déséquilibrées. Soit une forme de charité, soit une forme d'admiration. Pour que la solidarité puisse vivre plus largement, d'autres que les anarchistes doivent se reconnaître dans l'acte dont le compagnon est accusé. Sans présumer si la personne accusée est innocente ou coupable, car ces catégories appartiennent au pouvoir. Il est plus facile d'exprimer ces raisons à soi, à l'extérieur de la prison. De dire pourquoi ça nous parle, par exemple dans le contexte où une voiture de police est attaquée. On peut alors développer un discours qui permet de rappeler que non seulement tout le monde déteste la police, mais surtout qu'on peut l'attaquer. On préfère agir selon nos propres temporalités, être là où on ne nous attend pas. L'État a moins peur de quelques anarchistes fussent-ils déterminés, que de la diffusion de leurs idées et de leurs pratiques. C'est aussi pour ça que s'enfermer dans un combat perdu d'avance et symétrique avec l'État ne permet pas de dialoguer avec les autres révoltés. On entre alors dans un cycle où l'État se venge sur les anarchistes. Les anarchistes répondent dans un dialogue stérile. On s'épuise, la prison détruit les corps et les esprits, on se spécialise et on s'isole. C'est pour ça qu'il est d'autant plus important de créer les conditions pour continuer nos projets et nos luttes avec nos perspectives, et notamment la nécessaire question de la solidarité. A few words on the discussion that followed, based on personal and partial notes. We were around 50 people on a Sunday afternoon in Ghent to gather around this question. Some were new to anarchist ideas, some were familiar with them, but all were present with a genuine interest in the question at hand. The presentation on solidarity gave way to a - at first hesitant, and in the end rich - discussion on solidarity and what that could mean to us. A letter from the imprisoned comrade was read. We talked about the possibility to connect with other rebels on the subject of anger towards the police. We talked about what solidarity could mean with people we don't know directly, beyond giving money. Solidarity as a breach of isolation to bring out words of rebellion that exist inside and are often suffocated there. Solidarity as a way of keeping ideas and practices someone is accused of alive and spreading. Solidarity as a way of not only spreading our comrades' ideas but as an opportunity to reflect on one's own ideas, one's own way of thinking about the world we live in, as a way to recognise oneself in the acts someone is accused of. The beautiful solidarity as a way of feeling responsible for the act someone else is accused of, to not let them exist in isolation. Someone remembered the struggle that had existed more than 10 years ago to oppose the building of the prison in Haren the comrade is now imprisoned in, and more specifically the ZAD (zone à défendre) on the - then still green land and soon to be gray building site and now prison. This experience was linked with new plans for more prisons and detention centers in Flanders and Wallonia, the ever increasing overpopulation in each prison and the ever found « solution » of building more prisons instead of liberating people. Someone remembered the question of how the construction of the Haren prison outside of Brussels was linked to the open air prison which is the city of Brussels. We talked about the necessity to bring out flyers to the streets and talk about our rage for this world and its oppression with others who are angry aswell and might be more sensitive to our words. We talked about the shifts in what people find acceptable as means of struggle, of the necessity to talk about the roles of judgement, prisons, institutions in our lives. Organisations in support of or in solidarity with prisoners were mentioned : Getting the voice out (who gets out voices of prisoners in detention centers), the anti-repression fund Marius Jacob, the « FAC » (Fond anticarcéral, against prisons and detention centers). All 3 in Belgium. Kalimero Paris (solidarity fund for prisoners of the social war), La Rache in Lille. A solidarity fund and an open anarchist assembly with prisoners, to share struggles of anarchist prisoners, in Greece. We talked about the wish to overcome distinctions between « political » and « social » prisoners, about the continuity of repressive systems inside and outside of the prison walls, about the difficulty to maintain long lasting bonds of reciprocal solidarity beyond single topic campains, often involving raising money or raising awareness over repressed people linked with struggles elsewhere (Kanaky, Palestine, Sudan,...). We questioned how those bonds could mutually transform our lives. A comrade presented a translation in solidarity with 9 people who were imprisoned for a wild demo against ICE in Texas, USA, last year and recently found guilty. We talked about the solidarity in acts and words against the police whose violence runs through the whole of society and whose means of killing us are manyfold : with their guns and their cars and their knees and their bare hands. Violence which can't be reformed nor controlled. * A joke that only those present will understand ;-)