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Do not be intimidated, do not demobilise! All our solidarity with comrade Vicente!

category brazil/guyana/suriname/fguiana | repression / prisoners | press release author Monday February 09, 2015 17:39author by Federação Anarquista Gaúcha - FAG Report this post to the editors

Comrade Vicente, like other militants and fighters from other organisations, collectives and ideologies was not the first and will not be the last black and anarchist youth to be sentenced in this racist Brazil. Thousands of black and poor men and women are exterminated and condemned daily by the military police and the racist and bourgeois justice system.

It is to them that our militant solidarity is and will be directed alongside every worker with whom we raise our fists. We will not be intimidated and in every street march, picket, strike and occupation we will be shoulder to shoulder with all those who struggle!

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manifportoalegre_2.jpg

Do not be intimidated, do not demobilise! All our solidarity with comrade Vicente!

Comrade Vicente, like other militants and fighters from other organisations, collectives and ideologies was not the first and will not be the last black and anarchist youth to be sentenced in this racist Brazil. Thousands of black and poor men and women are exterminated and condemned daily by the military police and the racist and bourgeois justice system.

It is to them that our militant solidarity is and will be directed alongside every worker with whom we raise our fists. We will not be intimidated and in every street march, picket, strike and occupation we will be shoulder to shoulder with all those who struggle!

January 2015, the eve of the resumption of struggles against the increase in transport fares and in defense of 100% public transport in Porto Alegre, we received news of the sentence given to comrade Vicente, militant of the FAG (Gaúcha Anarchist Federation) and a social militant with the Porto Alegre Bloc of Struggle for Public Transport. Vicente is being sentenced to one and a half years in prison for damage to public property and environmental crimes. "Crimes" that he would have committed in April 2013 during a demonstration of the Bloc of Struggle in front of the Porto Alegre City Council. This is the first conviction in Porto Alegre and for us it is a clear attempt to intimidate and instill fear among the group of fighters and organisations that are reinvigorating struggles at this the beginning of 2015. A political and historic expediency used by the dominant sectors of our city and around the world: the incarceration of those that rise up. We will not demobilise and our solidarity will be militant and in the streets!

And the criminalisation continues…

The fact that the sentence was communicated to us just one week before the first Bloc of Struggle for Public Transport protest of the year is anything but a matter of chance or due process of the judicial power. It kicks off the year and at the same time starts interfering in the cases that have been being processed since 2013: adding names to some, new crimes to others. The sentencing in this context seeks to have the same effect as a rubber bullet or stun grenade: an attempt to intimidate and break the struggles in the streets that dare to question the profits of the business owners and the already clear conspiracies between the companies and the public authorities.

The situation is far from being an isolated case: for whoever thought that the situation of criminalisation had been exhausted due to the decline of street protests after the World Cup in 2014, the recent movements of the governments and repressive apparatus indicate the contrary. In Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and a number of other cities in Brazil that started the year with demonstrations against the increase in bus fares the repression has used the same expedients against protesters: tear gas, rubber bullets and arbitrary arrests. Rafael Braga Vieira, of Rio de Janeiro, who until then was the only person sentenced for the June 2013 protests remains imprisoned and in Porto Alegre cases are once again underway, new names are added and now the first sentence is given without any evidence. It's the old bourgeois justice system taking sides in a struggle between oppressors and oppressed that is far from over.

However, the struggle and organisation of those at the bottom of society did not start today and will also continue. Mobilise the youth, workers, the homeless and the peripheral (marginalised) communities. The 2013 street demonstrations opened new possibilities in the gestation of experiences of organisation and of struggle that the whole of the combative and anti-capitalist left needs to help foster and advance, discarding old vanguardist, sectarian and imposing practices that unfortunately still permeate the discourses and practices of many organisations. We believe that only in this way can we build the social force that, from below, will give rise to mechanisms of self-organisation and plant on its horizon the need for the social transformation of society as a whole. A true front of the oppressed and downtrodden in solidarity with any and all imprisoned, tortured, assassinated and disappeared comrades.

2015: advance in organisation, surround with even more solidarity those that struggle!

The selectivity of the penal system becomes evident in this case. Throughout this process that began with more than a dozen people accused for the damages made in a demonstration with more than a thousand people, we saw them archive all the suspects one by one, holding accountable the only black boy of anarchist ideology that was among the accused and that now includes another black male from the PSTU (Unified Socialist Workers' Party). We know that the central motive for this conviction is of a political-ideological nature but we cannot omit the fact that the black color of the accused is an important factor.

The latest cases have been highlighted by the criminalisation against anarchist collectives and movements. In 2013, we had our public spaces invaded and our books confiscated, going through heavy processes of investigations where what was assessed was our position in relation to subjects such as authority, government, police forces and other subjects important to the anarchist ideology. Pamphlets, posters and literature were annexed in the cases, as if they were circumstantial evidence that would show some sort of role for our ideology as intellectual mentor in the vandalism and looting that took place in the demonstrations of 2013, which included more than 50,000 people in Porto Alegre.

Comrade Vicente, like other militants and fighters from other organisations, collectives and ideologies was not the first and will not be the last black and anarchist youth to be sentenced in this racist Brazil. Thousands of black and poor men and women are exterminated and condemned daily by the military police and the racist and bourgeois justice system.

Solidarity with all comrades persecuted for struggling!
For an end to the Military Police!
Our anarchist ideology does not lend itself to caricatures!

Federação Anarquista Gaúcha – FAG – Gaúcha Anarchist Federation

Translation: Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

Related Link: http://www.federacaoanarquistagaucha.org
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