An overwhelming pig presence surrounded the area for hours in advance: cruisers lining the streets with dozens of cops idling on corners, a fence blocking off the plaza was installed since last year. Despite their seeming omnipresence, we resisted, shaking their fences and shooting fireworks bouncing off the heights of those brutalist prison walls, exploding joyously outside cell windows. Later, some went to the ICE field office conveniently located down the street visible from MCC. The pigs were too slow to stop a little redecoration with an important unwelcoming message to incoming Trump ICE dictator Tom Homan: painted on the front efface, “Die, Homan. GTFO Chicago”, “Abolish ICE”. We marched on for several blocks before disappearing into the new year for more late night revelry; unfortunately, after everybody had already dispersed, some sneaky pigs apprehended at random a few people at a CTA train platform; one was held overnight and released with a misdemeanor.

It’s imperative to mark the connections between the carceral state and the xenophonic white supremacist colonial project of of mass deportation; many more prisons and jails are being planned to be built to process the millions of lives they intend to interrupt. Homan, the incoming “border czar” says Chicago is ground zero on day one of the incoming Trump regime: but they underestimate how fiercely determined and prepared people are to defend our city from their racist federal stormtrooper armies. We reject the racialized copagandized ‘dangerous city’ narrative crafted by an entire ecosystem of police scanner bros, racist nightcrawlers, and low-orbit suburban MAGA chuds feeding video clips to FOX and other right-wing outlets, who all year have spread disinformation and sensationalist lies, hyping up crime and demonizing migrants to the point of absurdity. They’ve been laying the groundwork for the incoming regime to attack the good people in our supposed leftist “Sanctuary City”, but even despite this policy, neoliberal administrations fail our newest residents with embarrassingly insufficient social services and decrepit ‘shelters’. A coordinated astroturf campaign from the right has been underway to divide communities and erode the public, an attempt on Illinois MAGA takeover: dustbin of history types Paul Vallas and Darren Bailey have failed mayoral and gubernatorial power grabs, but unfortunately Eileen O’Neill Burke snuck through as new top prosecutor, a racist FOP-backed former judge who in her first week dropped charges against Oak Lawn pig Patrick O’Donnell who committed a brutal hate crime against a 17 year old Palestinian. Caught between cowardly neoliberals and fascist onslaughts, it’s time to break from elections, reforms, and turn to each other to carve new paths.

Crime will be the main vector in which the incoming fascist regime will leverage in justification for their abhorrent plans to deport, meaning our strategy of defending against this must apply abolitionist frameworks and a rejection of “citizenship”, “peace”, and their “law and order”. The struggle to overthrow carceral society is tied directly to the fight for inherent and forever rights and unstoppable force of migration. Facing an untenable dystopic future, more people are realizing the necessity to organize autonomously and collectively, to fight to survive against this fascist wave of aggressive prison politics going buck wild with Trump’s re-election, and to build a more liberated existence. Escalate against the state and support the comrades willing to take risks to bring it all down!

Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that two people escaped from MCC with bedsheet ropes from above the 10th floor of this downtown monstrosity, a reminder that no wall is too high to deter our desires and stop the will of people yearning to be free. Free Them All!!

Found on: Chicago Anti-report

We did our math wrong last year! This year, the actual 10th annual New Year’s Eve Noise Demo was a blast of sounds and fireworks. A few dozen rowdy rebels marched to the jail with noisemakers, a sound system, and tons of fireworks.

The following was read out before the noise demo started:

Prisons are not just buildings; they are symbols of oppression, violence, and suffering. We all know the current system is broken beyond repair

Tonight we say fuck prisons. We dance on their concrete graveyard. We mourn the loss of our comrades inside, and we stand in solidarity with those who remain imprisoned behind enemy lines.

Tonight we celebrate. This is not about merely wishing death upon the old world. It’s about wishing life into the new one. It’s about recognizing that we can build a better world if we don’t lose sight of our shared goals. We understand that change starts with us, because our collective power is transformative. Each day we choose who we fight alongside, and we refuse to accept the world as it is now.

The ashes are the result of burning over ten years’ worth of letters from prisoners–words that carried stories, struggles, and resistance. They represent the heart of the work that ABC [Austin Anarchist Black Cross] shared as a collective and the weight we have now released, laying this project to rest with the dignity and care it deserves.

We invite you to scatter these ashes along our path to the jail, and around the jail as a symbolic act. Let the ashes mark both an ending and a beginning: a reminder of what we’ve built and a call to nurture what comes next. Where the ashes land, new possibilities will grow.

Tonight, under this new moon, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, we inaugurate the 10th annual NYE noise demo at the Travis County Jail. With 10 years of ritual, we establish tradition and precedent.

We carve out a time for comrades to feel each other’s presence, to know we are not alone in facing whatever the coming year brings. We renew our commitments and connection to all those held captive by these jails, to remind them that they are not alone.

We use this time to feed and unleash the militant fires burning within us, establishing a combative presence that others would deny is even possible. Through our fierce and consistent displays we have proven that it is legal to shoot fireworks at the jail.

The prison is the threat dangled over every potential insurgent, meant to spread a suffocating fear that smothers rebellious fires. Every year, each act of escalating freakishness and defiant antagonism–shooting fireworks, tearing fences, dancing deliriously, dumping slimeballs–dispels this fear, shattering the prison’s psychic stranglehold and reconnecting us with our own power.

Tonight, and always, let yourself be possessed and carried away by the delirious, ecstatic spirit of anarchy.

May the noise that we bring forth into the world,
whether by voice, by drum, by horn, or by any other means,
reach all within hearing.
May it be pervasive.
May it bring comfort and strength to our accomplices,
fear and confusion to our foes.
May it never cease.

Many of the aforementioned ashes were poured into the shape of a circle-A, on top of the spot that hosts the memorial to dead cops.

Happy New Year & Fire to the Prisons!

Found on: Austin Autonomedia