Conversation

Bonnano has influenced more than any other #anarchist (who I haven't met), especially his text Locked Up. So much of the analysis in there helped me make sense of my own experience of #prison and to position myself within it with more integrity.

In particular, the critique of participation was useful to me. Bonnano describes the prison system as opening up, creating more options for prisoners to participate in their own oppression as a way of accessing privileges or less prison-like forms of punishment. He emphasized that this is a way of isolating the hardened ones who will be left to rot in ever darker dungeons while also being an insidious form of social control over those who participate. It is a way prison extends itself out into supposedly free society...

At my first sentencing, we refused to take any form of conditional sentence and insisted on doing straight time because we didn't want to be our own jailers. It was harder in some ways, but it meant we came out with our heads up.

So thanks Alfredo. I'm sure I will keep returning to that text and to the rest of your work.