BK/NY – Friday, July 3rd – Memorial Action for the Martyrs of the George Floyd Rebellion

WHAT: Public Memorial
WHEN: 7:00 PM, Friday, July 3rd
WHERE: Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York
COST: Free

More than 20 people have died at the hands of fascists/white supremacists, in or out of uniform, in the uprising since the murder of George Floyd, and this would be our first opportunity to memorialize them together.

This is a call to all backgrounds who seek radical change, not liberal reform, to come together to mourn those murdered by fascists/white supremacists, in or out of uniform, during the uprising following the murder of George Floyd.

A call for the abolition of police and prisons and nothing less, and reallocation of those funds to resources for Black and brown communities.

A call to free all those who have been arrested, arraigned, detained, or incarcerated by the city of New York.

A call to turn up at a time when we are told to turn down by collaborators, careerists, respectability politicians, and peace police.

Mask up, bring your crew, spread the word!

BK/NY – Saturday, May 21st – The Hydra We Face (CLDC Benefit)

WHAT: Civil Liberties Defense Center Fundraiser
WHEN: 7:00-11:00pm, Saturday, May 21 2016
WHERE: Brooklyn Commons – 388 Atlantic Avenue (Between Bond and Hoyt Streets)
COST: $10

MORE:
Come hear from friends fighting the repression of eco, animal liberation & and social justice activists in the Pacific Northwest, Buffalo and in America’s prisons. We will also hear what people are doing to fight back against this via the Freedom of Information Act, proactive lawsuits and more.

with:
•Lauren Regan, Executive Director, Civil Liberties Defense Center (Eugene, OR).
•Leslie James Pickering, owner, Burning Books (Buffalo, NY), press officer, Earth Liberation Front Press office.
•Rachel Meeropol, Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights.

The Commons has a wonderful cafe and bar which features organic/fair trade coffee, beer, wine, non-alcoholic drinks, dessert and more. Please come on an empty stomach and support the Commons!

This event takes place during the Left Forum which is happening at John Jay College 5.20-5.22

Presentations:
Lauren will provide case examples, tips, and traps regarding government and corporate surveillance of climate activists and frontline communities, their campaigns, and their lawyers, and why everyone needs to take security issues seriously to be a serious activist, advocate or attorney.

Rachel will discuss her legal challenges to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which allows for the prosecution of non-violent property damage as a federal crime of terrorism, as well as the suppression of dissent within the federal bureau of prisons, where animal rights and environmental activists are singled out post-conviction, along with other unpopular prisoners, for heightened restrictions and surveillance.

Leslie James Pickering highlights two decades of activism through secret files pried loose from the FBI. From living under federal surveillance to being targeted by informants to supporting underground liberation movements, this presentation offers a rare glimpse into maintaining the struggle in spite of repression.

Directions:
Hoyt-Schermerhorn: A, C and G
Bergen Street: F
Atlantic Ave – Barclay Center: B, M, Q, R, 2, 3, 4 and 5,
Flatbush Avenue: LIRR
B63 and B65

BK/NY – Tuesday, September 29th – Birthday Cards for Imprisoned Comrades

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, September 29th, 2015
WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)
NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.
COST: Free

It’s no secret that winter is the baby-making season and that leaves October as the month with the most birthdays. As we know, our imprisoned comrades are folks coming from the same movements as us, not some rare breed of super-human. As a result a disproportionate number of them also share October births. In fact, there are so many upcoming political prisoner birthdays that NYC ABC is focusing our entire upcoming political prisoner letter-writing dinner on sending cards to them. So come join us for some good food and sign a whole grip of cards. We’ll see you for supper.

BK/NY – Tuesday, March 31 – Letter-writing to Y12 Plowshares Prisoners

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, March 31st, 2015
WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)
NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.
COST: Free
March is one of those months where NYC ABC is lucky enough to host three letter-writing dinners. This upcoming Tuesday, we will be writing a trio of radical Catholics. We know what you’re  thinking— is this some kind of April Fool’s joke? Radical Catholics exist? Let us assure you that they do and they have been trespassing at military sites and smashing up equipment belonging to the military and war profiteers for over 25 years now.

We will be joined by Carmen Trotta of the Catholic Worker, who will speak about the case. Carmen has served on the National Committee of the War Resister’s League and is a founding member of Witness Against Torture.

The three activists we are writing– Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Gregory Boertje-Obed, are from the Plowshares movement. In 2012, the three cut holes in the fence of  the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  Once inside the “secure” area, they hung protest banners on a uranium storage site, poured human blood and spray-painted the walls with anti-war slogans. In May 2013, the activists were convicted on the charges of damaging property & intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States. Walli and Boertje-Obed were sentenced to just over 5 years in federal prison, while Sister Megan is serving a 3 year sentence at nearby MDC Brooklyn.
More information: transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com

We expect to see you on Tuesday. If you can’t make it, please take the time to write letters (and send books) to the prisoners:
Megan Rice #88101-020
MDC Brooklyn
Post Office Box 329002
Brooklyn, New York 11232

Michael R Walli #92108-020
FCI McKean
Post Office Box 8000
Bradford, Pennsylvania 16701

Gregory Boertje-Obed #08052-016
USP Leavenworth
Post Office Box 1000
Leavenworth, Kansas 66048

BK/NY – Sunday, April 12 – Jake Conroy On Activism, Repression, and Imprisonment

WHAT: Former Political Prisoner Jake Conroy
WHEN: 7pm sharp, Sunday, April 12th, 2015
WHERE: The Base – 1302 Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11221 (directions below)
NOTE: The Base is on the ground floor, is wheelchair accessible, and has a gender neutral toilet.
COST: FREE

NYC ABC is happy to co-sponsor this event with the National Lawyers Guild’s NLG-NYC Animal Rights Activism Committee, who, among other things, provide legal support and resources to animal rights activists.

Jake Conroy is a long-time activist, designer, and writer based in San Francisco, California. As a co-founder of Ocean Defense International, he helped lead the first ever disruption of a whale hunt in US coastal waters, putting himself between the hunter and the hunted. He also helped build the foundation of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (SHAC USA), one of the most successful grassroots animal rights campaigns in history. Due to his involvement with SHAC USA, he was a co-defendant in the SHAC7 case and was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison. Jake is currently working at an international environmental non-profit campaigning against corporate polluters. He can also be found speaking around the US, and working on the projects he helped co-found— Bite Back Magazine, the Animal Defense League San Francisco, and the blog Plant Based on a Budget.

Jake will speak about his involvement in SHAC USA and the repression they experienced from the US government and corporate investigators, as well by the Bureau of Prisons while incarcerated. He will discuss being the target of a multi-agency terrorism investigation, learning he was on a high-profile prisoners list, and navigating living a life branded as a terrorist in post-9/11 society.

A letter from Cody Lee Sutherlin

With the fundraising campaign initiated by Bloomington ABC, Sacramento Prisoner Support, and NYC ABC a recently-completed success, we want to make sure folks see what your support for political prisoners like Cody Lee Sutherlin means. We’ve been lucky enough to work with Cody Lee on projects that he organized while inside, including a book drive that generated about 300 books for the prison library. Since the support we’ve been able to give Cody Lee is via organizing with folks like you, this letter is as much to you as to our collective.

From Cody:
What’s up Brooklyn?!
I am ecstatic to say that one month from today I will be a free man! I want to thank y’all for the amazing support you’ve shown throughout this ordeal. Words can not express how much it means to me. At this point, I am just waiting on my interstate compact to be approved so that I can parole back home to Indiana. Aside from that, I’m finishing up my last module of school, saving what money I have left on my books, lining it up job opportunities back home, and finding potential back up parole sites here in Illinois. The weather has been amazing the last few days and definitely has helped to keep my spirits lifted. On a side note, the book drive has gone pretty well and by my estimates, we have collected roughly 300 books for the inmates and library here! Thank you for your help. Not long from now I’ll be done with this legal shit and be able to head east so you all could show me a good time out there in NY. Thank you again for all your love and support over the last couple of years.

Sincerely,
Cody Lee

BK/NY – Tuesday, September 25th – Letter-writing for the Cuban 5

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm (sharp), Tuesday, September 25th, 2012
WHERE: Tiny Cup, 279 Nostrand Avenue Brooklyn, New York (see below for directions) PLEASE NOTE THE NEW LOCATION
COST: Free

If you pay attention to the corporate media, it’s hard not to think the sky is falling. And yet to talk with neighbors and co-workers, it’s clear that we’re living the same lives we’ve been dealing with for a long time– bosses find excuses for not paying us anywhere near what we’re worth (as if they ever could), and the state keeps trying to scare us into accepting whatever bullshit they send down the pike. None of this is news to you, but that’s where we are.

Never ones to be brought down by the hyperbolic rhetoric of the state and its corporate media mouthpiece, NYC ABC again brings you great food and camaraderie with our every-other-week  political prisoner letter-writing dinner. This Tuesday finds us a couple of weeks into Freedom Month for the Cuban 5 and in solidarity, we will be focusing our letter-writing on them.

One having been recently conditionally release on probation, the Cuban Five are four Cuban men who are in U.S. prison. They are serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001.

The Five were falsely accused by the U.S. government of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States, and other related charges.

But the Five vigorously pointed out in their defense that they were involved in monitoring the actions of Miami-based terrorist groups, in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba.

The Five’s actions were never directed at the U.S. government. They never harmed anyone nor ever possessed nor used any weapons while in the United States.

While we expect to see you on Tuesday, if you can’t make it, please take the time to write a letter to the four who remain imprisoned:
Fernando Gonzalez #58733-004
FCI Terre Haute
Post Office Box 33
Terre Haute, Indiana 47808
Address envelope to Ruben Campa and letter to Fernando

Antonio Guerrero #58741-004
FCI Marianna
Post Office Box 7007
Marianna, Florida 32447-7007

Gerardo Hernandez #58739-004
USP Victorville
Post Office Box 5500
Adelanto, California 92301

Ramón Labañino Salazar #58734-004
FCI Jesup
2680 301 South
Jesup, Georgia 31599
Address envelope to Luís Medina III and letter to Ramón

BK/NY – 8 May – No Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner this Week

Due to an unforeseen circumstance, NYC ABC will not be having our every-other-week Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner this week. We found out last minute that the space that has hosted us for the past two and a half years will no longer be able to do so. We will be back in two weeks in a new space, ready to continue a tradition of over five years.

In the meantime, we are anxious to find a long-term public space in which to organize our letter-writing nights. If you or any of your friends or comrades have a connection to a space that you think would work well for what we do, please be in touch.

Love,
NYC Anarchist Black Cross

BK/NY – Tuesday, October 11th – Commemorate the Legacy of the Black Panthers

What: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
When: 7pm (sharp), Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Where: 885 Park Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (see below for directions)
Cost: Free

It could very well be that folks in the United States are fed up. Fed up with the state and capitalism, fed up with the authorities in their lives that keep pushing and pushing and pushing, fed up with bosses, with landlords, with cops, wardens, and commanding officers. While far from flawless, Occupy Wall Street and its successors have given form to the anger and potential we share. At the same time, over 12,000 prisoners in California continue to protest the inhumane conditions and fucked up policies under which many of them are imprisoned. And their hunger strike is spreading.

In this same month, we must acknowledge a significant anniversary. It was in October, 1966 that the Black Panther Party was founded. Much of the movement we see today, in the streets on in prisons, has a direct lineage to the Panthers. It is with that in mind that we focus our every-other-week political prisoner letter-writing dinner.

This time around, we’ll be focusing on current political prisoners and prisoners of war who were members of the original Black Panther Party. As there are currently twenty Panther political prisoners or prisoners of war, we will be hosting a card-signing, with additional information available for those able to write a separate letter or begin a correspondence.

BK/NY – Tuesday, September 27th – Come Support A.L.F. Lone Wolf Walter Bond

What: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
When: 7pm (sharp), Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Where: 885 Park Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (see below for directions)
Cost: Free

Here we are, not a full week into Autumn, and the streets are brimming with dissent. The state murdered Troy Davis; prisoners in California, facing severe repression, are planning to resume a hunger strike; and, locally, comrades have been arrested and brutalized by the NYPD.The pendulum is swinging and we in NYC ABC are having another letter-writing dinner to support those who continue to push that motherfucker until the string snaps. This week, we need you to come and write letters to the judge getting ready to sentence a warrior named Walter Bond.

In 1998, Bond was convicted of burning down the home and meth operation of a multi-million dollar drug dealer that was selling poison to his family and friends. In the Summer of 2010, based on information provided to the FBI by his brother, Walter was arrested for the “ALF Lonewolf” arsons of the Sheepskin Factory in Denver, Colorado, the Tandy Leather Factory in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Tiburon Restaurant, which sold Foie Gras in Sandy, Utah. Walter was sentenced to five years in federal prison for the first of these actions and now awaits sentencing for the remaining two.

Walter has written extensively about his history and philosophy and we encourage folks to take the time to read him.

Sentencing is set for Thursday, October 13th, 2011 and we are requesting you write a letter to Judge Ted Stewart, requesting the minimum sentence for Walter. Your letter will help to give a three dimensional and personal perspective on the positive character attributes Walter possesses and how highly he is valued by his friends and associates. The judge who presided over Walter’s case in Denver made a point to say that she read over 50 letters sent from people like you before handing down the minimum penalty.

If you are unable to join us, please write a letter to the judge and mail it to:

Nathan Crane, Esq.
Stirba & Associates
215 South State Street, Suite 750
Salt Lake City, Utah 84111

IMPORTANT: DO NOT MAIL THE LETTER DIRECTLY TO JUDGE STEWART.

Address a formal business letter to:
The Honorable Judge Ted Stewart
United States District Court
District Of Utah
Chamber #148
350 South Main Street
Salt Lake City, Utah 84101

Include your address and the date. The salutation is, “Dear Judge Stewart:” and the reference is “United States of America v. Walter Bond.” Tell Judge Stewart why you think Walter Bond deserves his leniency. By doing this, you will actually increase Walter’s chances of a receiving the minimum.

Keep Walter informed by sending him a copy of your letter. Walter’s mailing address is:

Walter Bond #2011-03339
Davis County Jail
Post Office Box 130
Farmington, Utah 84025-0130

The deal, as always, is that you come bringing only yourself (and your friendsand comrades), and we provide you with a delicious vegan meal, information aboutthe prisoners as well as all of the letter-writing materials and prisoner-letter-writing info you could ever want to use in one evening. In return, you write a thoughtful letter to a political prisoner or prisoner of war of your choosing or, better yet, keep up a long-term correspondence. We’ll also provide some brief updates and pass around birthday cards for the PP/POWs whose birthdays fall in the next two weeks thanks to the Anarchist Birthday Brigade.

DIRECTIONS:
Getting to 885 Park Avenue is simple:
From the J/M/Z:
Flushing Stop: Walk southeast on Broadway (toward Sumner Place, away from Thornton Street) and make a right on Park Avenue. We’re halfway down the block, on your right.
Myrtle Stop: Walk northwest on Broadway (toward Melrose Street, away from Troutman Street) and make a left on Park Avenue. We’re halfway down the block on the right.

From the G Train:
Flushing Avenue Stop: Walk south on Marcy Avenue (toward Hopkins Street, away from Wallabout Street) and turn left on Park Avenue. We’re three and a half blocks down on the left.
Myrtle-Willoughby Avenues Stop: Walk north on Marcy Avenue (toward Stockton Street, away from Vernon Avenue) and turn right on Park Avenue. We’re three and a half blocks down on your left.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch. Otherwise, we’ll see you at supper.

This event is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Anarchist Black Cross.–

NYC ABC
Post Office Box 110034
Brooklyn, New York 11211

nycabc[at]riseup[dot]net
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Free all Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War!
For the Abolition of State Repression and Domination!