sent from Italy, full of love and solidarity:

Freedom is beautiful

Freedom is beautiful, how many beautiful things does freedom have!

A beer, a kiss, a blue sky without bars in the middle,

the rays of the sun that beat on our skin in these first days of spring.

In short, freedom is just nice.

However, many friends and many friends, many comrades, cannot enjoy all
this.

Because they are imprisoned by this “justice”.

And it is to them that our thoughts must go.

Each one of us in his own small way can do something…

We can send letters, help family members, and, above all, we can go to
court.

The trials are focal point of the judiciary. T

he judges, strong in their power, distribute years of prison

like candies in proceedings that are often only farcical.

The logic of power is always the same, isolating, dividing, breaking bonds.

They know that one man is easy to fight.

That’s why attending the processes is so important,

to make it clear that if they touch one they touch everyone!

Let us show solidarity with those arrested and on trial!

Peike, Kostantin, Evgenii and everyone else who may will follow!

United we Stand!

Fabio

you need to judge about a man today. You described him as an ‘aggressive criminal’ and as ‘disrespectful towards human dignity’. I personally don’t care with what attributes you label me. I am just a guy with a strong will.
First of all i want to say that the ladies and gentlemen of politics, police inspectors and prosecutors probably believe they can hinder the dissent on the streets if they arrest and lock up a bunch of kids.
Likely they believe that prison is enough to hold back the rebellious voices that arise everywhere.
Likely they believe that repression will stop our thirst for freedom. Our will to create a better world.
Well, these people are mistaken.
They are wrong. History proves that as well.
As i, many young people had to live through trials like this one. Today it is Hamburg, yesterday it was Genoa and before that Seattle.
With all ‘legal’ means and ‘judicial measures for the trials’ they try to limit the voices of rebellion that arise everywhere.
In any case, however the decision of the court, it will not change our protest. Many young man and women who are driven by the same ideals will continue to go to the streets everywhere in Europe. And they will not care about the prisons that try hard to get filled with political prisoners.
But let us get to the point, judge, prosecutor, jurywoman, juryman, juvenile probation officer.
Let’s get to the point.
In relation to the matter i am accused of today, i will use my right to stay silent, as you can imagine.
But i want to say something about the motives of why a young worker from a remote town east of the foothills of the Alps came to Hamburg. He did this to express his disapproval of the G20 summit.
G20. The name alone is somehow perverted.
20 people, man and woman, who represent the richest industrial nations of the world gather around one table. They all sit together to decide about our future. Yes, i said it right: ‘our’ future. My future, the future of all people who sit in this room today, as well as the future of 7 billion people more who live on our beautiful earth.
20 people decide about our life and death.
The population is of course not invited to this nice banquette. We are nothing more that the stupid flock of sheep off the most powerful in this world.
Submissive audience of this theater in which a handful of people hold all humanity in their hands.
Judge, i have thought about it long before i came to Hamburg.
I have thought about Trump and his United States of America who, under the flags of democracy and freedom, think of themselves as police of the whole world. I have thought about the many conflicts that the American giant instigates in every corner of this planet. From Middle East to Africa. All for the goal to get control over one or the other source of energy. Not so important that always the same ones die: civilians, women, children.
I also thought about Putin, the new tsar of Russia who systematically violates human rights in his country and who laughs about every form of opposition.
I thought about the Saudi Arabians and about their terror on which their government is founded and with whom we western countries make huge business.
I thought about Erdoğan, who tortures, kills and locks up his opponents.
I also thought about my own country, in which every government puts out new laws that nonstop cut the rights of students and employees.
In short, they are that, the headliners of the grad banquette that took place last Juli in Hamburg.
The biggest war mongers and murderers our present-day world knows.
Before i came to Hamburg, i also thought about the injustice that destroys our planet. It seems almost banal to me to repeat that 1% of the richest population of the world is as wealthy as 99% of the poorest population together. It seems almost banal to me to repeat that the 85 richest people in the world are as wealthy as 50% of the poorest population together. 85 people compared to 3,5 billion.
Just a few numbers that are enough to get an idea,
An then, judge, jurywoman, juryman, prosecutor, juvenile probation officer, i thought about my city before i came to Hamburg: i thought about Feltre. That is the place where i was born in, where i grew up, where i want to live. It is a small medieval town that lays in the eastern foothills of the alps like a jewel. I thought about the mountains that color pink at sunset. I thought about the beautiful landscape that i am lucky enough to see through the window of my home. I thought about the stunning beauty of this place.
An then i thought about the rivers in my beautiful valley that are violated by many companies, who want to get allowances to built waterworks for power, never mind the damage they will inflict on the environment and the population. I thought about the mountains that get befallen by mass tourism and became a horrible military drill ground.
I thought about this beautiful place in which i live and which gets sold off to ruthless profiteers. Same as many other valleys in every corner of the planet in which beauty gets destroyed in the name of progress.
So, urged by all these thoughts i had decided to come to Hamburg and to demonstrate. To come here was more a duty than a right for me.
I found it right to rise against this conscienceless politics that chases our world into the abyss,
I found it right to fight so that at least something in this world would get a little bit more human, more dignified, more just.
I found it right to go on the streets as a reminder that the population is not a flock of sheep and that it needs to be involved in decision making.
The decision to come to Hamburg was a decision of interest. It was the decision to stand on the side of those who fight for their rights. It was a decision against those who want to steal it from them. It was the decision to stand on the side of the oppressed, and against the oppressors. It was the decision to fight against the smaller and bigger powerful ones who treat our world as if it was a toy. And who do not care that it is always the rest of the population who has to pay for it. I have made my decision and i am not afraid if there, unjustly, will be a price i have to pay for that.
Nevertheless is there something i want to say to you, if you believe me or not: i do not like violence. But i have ideals and i decided to fight for them.
I am not done.
In a historical time in which everywhere in the world new borders arise, new fences with barb wire are raised and where walls are built from the alps to the Med, is it wonderful to me that in a single city thousand young people from every part of Europe are ready to go on the streets together. Beyond all borders. With the one goal, to make the world a little better than as we found it.
Because, judge, jurywoman, juryman, prosecutor, juvenile probation officer, we are not the flock of sheep off twenty powerful rulers. We are women and men who want the right to decide about their own lives.
For that we fight. And for that we will continue fighting.

ABOUT G20 AND THE SUMMITS OF STATES AND CAPITALISM

In this kind of situations we basically have always two different issues in front of us:
The Summit and all prime ministers, capitalists, dictators and delegations of politicians who gather there. The city where the Summit happens.

I think we can’t and we shouldn’t even pretend to preview everything that would happen in a context like this, but we can share two partially different analysis that worth in general.
We can see the power of capitalism only in its decisional centers or we can also think that capitalism is a matter of the whole relationship that creates in society.

In any case I think that G20 or similar are simple vulgar displays of power that deserve some kind of open rebellion within the circumstances. However if we consider the second point of view we clearly can see how the modern metropolis are the same favorite playground of capitalism and they represent our very first cages. Modern metropolis are oppression and exploitation in themselves. They are not only the places where we can see the main presence of cops, banks, real estate agencies, courthouses, shopping-malls etc. They are really the boundaries of our daily life. Metropolis are the places that shape our relationships in a moneywise way, they’re the places where we buy and we sell our bodies, the places that define our alienation with consumerism, technologies, where we buy products done by slaves thousands km away. Cops defend all the normal functioning of metropolis, they don’t protect only the owners and politicians locked up in their ivory towers. So, I find pretty obvious that a urban revolt in 2017 is also a revolt against the metropolis in itself, being that more or less conscious by all the people who take part in it.

Except from our squats, social centers, social houses, libraries etc., I don’t see right now any safe zone for revolutionaries in a metropolis. Gentrification process that is going on everywhere in Europe shows this mechanism very well. There’s no anymore any “working-class neighborhood”. We don’t produce anything we really need inside a metropolis, we just consume while they empower their control upon us.

Of course, during a metropolitan revolt something that some comrades wouldn’t really like could happen, but we can’t be surprise by this thing and nobody couldn’t pretend to “control” a revolt. Of course, militant structures will be charged after a revolt and, of course, regime’s media will use everything they can to politically discredit a revolt. We have to decide if nowadays urban revolts are useful for revolutionaries or they are not. If we wanna truly involve all that big part of population who most of the time doesn’t use to express consciously hostility against authority, but they are the same who suffer exploitation and exclusion without a political knowledge of that, I guess revolt is necessary and it couldn’t be something in the middle.

If someone complains about the burning of little cars, the looting of small shops or the behavior of drunken people, people who don’t use masks or people who do selfies in front of barricades, we should think that these “problems” don’t come from the days of revolt, but from all other days when there’s no revolt. The days when our space and time are defined by the obedience to the State.

I think we should really talk more about how to improve our contributions to an urban revolt both if we “start” it for a specific reason or not, but a revolt is something out of control and everyone should have his/her own objectives without thinking to be able to control everything that happens. What we can surely do (and I think we have to) is giving suggestions. I think sometimes we’re good in this and Hamburg is a proof of this.

I personally never cared about “red zones” or symbolic actions next to the palaces of power, but I appreciated a lot that everyone and every different groups spent their efforts in their own goals without trying to hinder different practices. In the country I live it is really hard to find this heterogeneity of practices that don’t end in some harsh conflicts at a certain point.
I think that breaking the State monopoly of violence has to be the main thing and I’m glad that this happened in Hamburg in a larger way as possible.

SOLIDARITY

I think you have really good structures that support prisoners, so I want to be very short about this. I strongly think that solidarity is the struggle in itself. If we’re not able to replicate something like Hamburg revolt in a short time, we should still keep that spirit alive and reproduce all the different practices that happened in those days. Blockages, direct actions, wild demos and so on.

Everybody should improve and go on with his/her own analysis and practices. I don’t think this should depend from the political positions of prisoners. Nobody is representative of a revolt or he/she is the owner of a practice or of a specific moment. Prisoners, in this case, are just people who are randomly caught in the streets and they just represent themselves.

TRIALS

I go straight from the previous point. The main problem has been this way how the proceedings are carried on. Every G20 prisoner has different dates and different courthouses in a pretty large period (from the end of August till the end of November (?)). You did a good job in trying to keep everyone “united”, so you don’t have to complain too much about this, as I recently heard.

I can just share my experience from inside the prison. We were even, at a certain point, about sending a collective public letter among 7-8 G20 prisoners after the first two trials, which I think it could be really good. I don’t go through the specific reasons about why we didn’t it at the end because this thing involves other people. But the main reason still lays in the way all our accusations and infos came step by step. The main effect has been about blocking our political conversations inside the jail and pushing everyone to think and talk mainly about own proceedings and bureaucratic shit. The fear after the first sentence did the rest. From the beginning of September it was impossible to have a common position, even among the prisoner who talked more each other.

It seems that I’m basically saying that repression works very well, which if we’ve to be sincere we couldn’t really deny this. Otherwise we would have revolts like the one in July every month in every region of Europe. I wanna be clear that every choice is always the responsibility of the person who takes it. We also argue a lot about this behavior of “saying sorry” or managing weird stories to tell to the judges, but it has been really difficult because everything has been mainly based on the single legal situation of the convicted and not on their political or ethical choices. I mean, some people who were available about “saying sorry” from the beginning, they didn’t at the end and people who were thinking to never apologize, they had to deal, at least, with this at the end. Everything was changing too fast inside the jail for people without big experiences of detentions. Partial infos from other trials, legal papers that continuously come inside, partial infos from newspapers and televisions etc. I want to be sincere and clear about my choices. I don’t feel the need to justify something, but I use to be open, especially with people who supported me. All the choices I made are completely my only responsibility.

Of course, I wouldn’t never apologize. I already have 8 sentences (besides other 2-3 trials to come) which are going to be definitive in the next couple of years (here legal proceedings are really slower than in Germany). I always used (with other convicted comrades) to read a political statement during the trials and let my lawyer do his job. Except one time when I’ve been directly caught stealing in a store and I did the same as I did in my trial in Hamburg.

I’m conscious that this “admitting” is not that ok on several different points of view. What I mainly feel is about missing a chance to say what I think when someone want to judge me, but it has been a rational choice and I don’t regret it. I don’t feel to have co-operated in the courthouse. I feel worst about the fact that I moved in a very bad way in the circumstances of my arrest. They had pictures, videos, clothes picked up and very detailed witness. Since I understood that prosecutor wanted to have more than 2 years for me, at a certain point I took in consideration this possibility to just say “yes, it’s me” if this could be a chance to make it faster and to have the conditional. So, I did it. I basically feel to have been passive and this is bad enough, but this turn I decided it would be better for me to go out as soon as possible. Simple.

Unfortunately I’m not there, but I still would like to discuss with all of you about what you mean for “political trial”. I don’t think courthouse could really be a field for our struggles. If we look it with the eyes of power, every trial is “political”. Laws and State are done to defend properties, the owner’s class and predominant culture. On our side, I don’t think that a trial with a normal legal defense is an offensive trial just because the questioned “crimes” are politically motivated. For example, I didn’t even know about German laws concerning riots before getting inside a Germam jail. I know laws in my country, but this doesn’t change my behavior towards cops. So a legal defense is not something that defines my political position at all. I don’t really care if a law is constitutional or not, if the riots have been started by cops or by demonstrators. They’re not my points at all. Of course, there’s a strong difference between making an own political statement with a normal legal defense and what I did in Hamburg. It’s not about that. It’s about how far we think that a courthouse could be a field of struggle. I probably don’t have a fixed answer. I guess the real political trial of rupture is made by the refusal to recognize the judge, the court and the whole laws and by different attempts to interrupt the proceedings anytime it’s possible. This would take in consideration strong efforts that are not sure to reach a proper goal if they’re not strongly coordinated with the comrades outside.

These are just short reflections and a quick overview of my experience that I wish they would be useful for a debate. I’m always open to share ideas and to receive critics. It’s the only way I know to improve my actions. I will keep the spirit of Hamburg’s revolt against G20 for a very long time, no matter if I spent 3 months in jail. Let me add that I received great solidarity from other prisoners and this means that there are still a lot of underdogs outside our milieu that understand very well the meaning of struggle.

So, I want to send heartfelt greetings to everyone who acted in the streets of Hamburg during those days of July and to everyone who supported me in prison. Thank you.

Still with head up high.

A former G20 prisoner

At the moment I am being detained in the prison of Billwerder in Hamburg. I was arrested on Friday 7th July at 7:30pm near Rote Flora.

I am accused of insulting the State, endangering public security, of having played an active part in a group of fifteen people who challenged the police, in particular attempting to harm a policeman of the Special Unit of Bloomberg intent on carrying out arrests and finding evidence.

I don’t recognize the dichotomy ‘guilty-not guilty’ proposed by the State’s judicial apparatus.

What I want to say is that I’m proud and happy to have been there in Hamburg during the uprising against the G20. The joy of experiencing in person the determination of people of all ages from all over the world who haven’t yet given in to the temptation to submit to the logic of money and the capitalist world; this can never be quelled by any form of imprisonment. In an historical epoch in which capitalism is trying to inflict the final blow necessary to its stabilization in a constant oscillation between internal war (special laws, borders closure, deportations) and external war (indiscriminate massacres, destruction and poisoning of Planet Earth), the revolt in Hamburg against the G20 demonstrated what is most important to those who still care about freedom: the possibility of its realization.

The German police’s technological, physical and tactical efficiency was as impressive and monstrous as it was useless first to neutralize then to repress the need to struggle against the absurd catastrophic global society that the twenty pathetic State Leaders were showing off there so miserably, fortressed in the heart of the city.

The resigned and the reformists can well say that considering the relations of strength developed in the last decades between power and its subjects, Hamburg was the umpteenth mass experiment to assess the apparatuses of international security. After all that was also said following the G8 in Genoa in 2001.

Rebels and revolutionaries, however, don’t reckon with conspiracy theories of politics, but with their own feelings and projects. In any case, I think I can say that even if that were the case, the experiment failed totally. In the streets of Hamburg I breathed uncontrolled freedom, active solidarity, the determination to refuse a lethal order imposed by a few waelthy and as many powerful over the rest of humanity.

No endless rows of cars and composed processions sanctifying the oppressive murderous liturgy of the capitalist system every day. No indistinct masses forced to bow down and sweat for anonymous survival in favour of the wealth of some greedy boss. No thousands of empty gazes aimed at some aseptic display that alienates and deforms our experience of life.

I saw individuals raise their eyes to the sky and try to grab it.

I saw women and men give form to their creativity and most repressed dreams.

I saw the energy of each one intent on lending a hand to others that don’t put themselves above anyone.
I saw sweat dripping from foreheads to fulfil one’s own desires rather than those of some henchmen. In the moment of revolt no one is ever really alone.

A strong hug to all the comrades, all the rebels imprisoned by the German State. Passionate greetings to Anna, Marco, Valentina, Sandrone, Danilo, Nicola and Alfredo, the comrades on trial in operation “Scripta Manent” in Italy. To the revolutionaries and rebels imprisoned in jails all over the world. A kiss to Juan. Wherever you are… wherever you are… you’re always with us!

As long as I’m alive: always against authority! Always with my head held high! Long live the anti-capitalist international!

For Carlo! For Alexis! For Remi! For freedom!

Riccardo, Prison of Billwerder, Hamburg – 20th July 20 2017

Write to Riccardo:
RICCARDO LUPANO
09/06/1985
JVA BILLWERDER
DWEERLANDWEG 100
22113 HAMBURG – GERMANY

It’s been almost a month and a half since I was imprisoned during the twelfth G20 summit in Hamburg, in a city that was besieged and taken in hostage by the security forces, but which also saw an important local and popular protest.

Tens of thousands, if not more, flocking from all over Europe, and even beyond, converged, met, organised, debated and demonstrated together for several days in a great surge of solidarity. At all times aware of the possibility of suffering the violence and the repression of the police. A huge prefab police court had been built for the occasion, to punish any dissent against this international summit as quickly as possible.

My arrest, like that of many comrades, is based only on the sacred word of the police, of a brigade sent to infiltrate, observe and follow their “prey” (during forty-five minutes in my case, for a supposed throwing of a projectile…). Once isolated, they sent colleagues to arrest them, intervening quickly and violently, and leaving no loop-holes. So, here I am, locked up in these places primordial to the proper functioning of a global social order, these places that serve as a tool for the control and management of poverty, essential to the maintenance of their “social peace”. Prison acts like a sword of Damocles hanging above each and every individual so that they are petrified by the idea of ??deviating from the codes and dictates of an established order: “working, consuming, sleeping”, from which no dominated individual may escape, so they alienate themselves through work and the life that goes with it, to be on time, without ever flinching, and not only during the second round of the presidential elections, where we have been required to be “En Marche” “in operation”, Macron’s slogan and name of the party in power right now or to die, preferably slowly and silently. Since the law has no vocation to guarantee the general interest, nor to be neutral, it is the expression of an increasingly institutional domination by the most powerful in order to guarantee their property and security and thus paralyse, sanction and marginalize anyone who does not see things the same way or who will not submit.

Beyond the cases of the well-known and supported activists who are locked up, there are also, and above all, those men and women who are exposed to the brutality and the cruelty of imprisonment. Here the work is paid one euro per hour, of which half is accessible only on release from jail. In my wing, detainees in pre-trial detention or for short sentences (six months to four years) are mainly detained only for one reason: their social condition and origin. Apart from the staff, very few are from the host country, all are foreigners, refugees and/or precarious, poor, weakened by life. Their crime: they did not submit to the rules of the game, for the majority by engaging in drugdealing or by committing thefts, scams, alone or in organised gangs at various scales.

Imprisonment is a fundamental pillar of this system but one can not criticise it without attacking the society that produces it. The prison, not operating in self-sufficiency, is the perfect link in a society based on exploitation, domination and separation in its varied forms. “Work and prison are two essential pillars for social control, work being the better police and rehabilitation a permanent blackmail.”

My thoughts go to the Italian comrades facing an umpteenth wave of repression, especially those charged in the investigation into the “explosive device” left in front of a bookstore linked to Casapound. The extreme right must face an organised, popular and offensive counterattack. It is so useful and complementary to those states that feed on its security aspirations and delusions and its incessant stigmatization of “foreigners.”

Thoughts also for the comrades who will face trial next September for the police car burned on the eighteenth of May last year, in Paris, during the movement “loi travail” (labour law) movement. Many people have gone through prison and two are still incarcerated. Strength to them!
Acknowledgments to the local activists organising rallies in front of our prison, an initiative appreciated here as it breaks the routine and the state of ambient lethargy in which we are alienated. Acknowledgments to all those who support us here and everywhere. To the Bro’, 161, MFC, OVBT, wild youngsters, those who BLF and other friends …
Comrades, strength!

Let’s free the G20 prisoners and all the others! We’re not alone!

One imprisoned among others
Billwerder Prison,
Hamburg
14 August 2017