Torchlight: Anarchist News From Pittsburgh

Reposted from ACJ Health Justice

On Tuesday night, Keyshawn Givens, an inmate at Allegheny County Jail who has been awaiting trial since December 2015, was sent to a local hospital to be treated for injuries sustained from an “altercation” with another inmate.

Both the warden and deputy warden have not released any information on his condition to his family members. There are 300 cameras in the jail, and somehow, this incident was not recorded. No family members have been contacted on his position, yet it is the jails policy to do so.

Allegheny County Jail has a long history of abuse and neglect. Just a couple of years ago, ACJ had the highest national rate of deaths due to medical neglect in the U.S.

Please call in to Rich Fitzgerald and Orlando Harper’s office to voice your concerns and demand answers. Make the phone ring of the hook, his family deserves to know what has happened to their loved one.
Call-In:

Rich Fitzgerald: 412-350-6500

Email: executive@alleghenycounty.us

Warden Orlando Harper: 412-350-2000

Healthcare Services: 412-350-2201
Suggested Script:

“I am calling as a community member of Allegheny County. Keyshawn Givens’ family deserves and should know the whereabouts of their family member. I demand that the Allegheny Count Jail notify Keyshawn’s family about his medical condition. I demand to know why his “altercation” was not captured on film. I demand that Keyshawn and all inmates receive the medical care they need.”

On Tuesday August 1st two separate incendiary speaking tours will both land in Pittsburgh. At 6PM at Glitterbox Theater, Ben and Firehawk will be speaking about last fall’s prison strike and repping their new zine The Fire Inside. Directly afterward representatives of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement will be talking about their organization and their new book Burn Down the American Plantation at the Big Idea. See the Torchlight calendar for details, and tell all your friends!

At today’s long-delayed preliminary hearing, nine of he protesters arrested at  last March’s noise demo at Allegheny County Jail accepted a plea deal. The deal involved pleading guilty to two summary offenses each and covering restitution costs of about $780 per protester. Please donate to help defray these expenses!

Two defendants were not offered this deal and had their cases continued. This post will be updated with further details as they become available.

UPDATE JULY 31: One of the remaining defendants pled guilty today to possession of a prohibited weapon as well as two summary offenses and was sentenced to a year of probation plus restitution. This person will have to come up with $50 a month in probation costs, so please donate! (Link above).

Title: Tilted Scales Collective Talk

Location: The Big Idea Bookstore, 4812 Liberty Avenue, July 19 at 7PM.

Description: Tilted Scales Collective is coming to The Big Idea Bookstore on July 19 for community discussions based on their new book, A Tilted Guide to Being a Defendant. With increasing confrontations with the far right, cops, FBI, ICE, capitalism, the Trump administration, and the systems of oppression that seek to keep us down, the importance of resistance is crystal clear.

And so too are the costs and risks of our resistance. Since the inauguration, there have been hundreds of new felony charges filed against us across Turtle Island. Our book aspires to be a resource for radical left struggle to help us all figure out ways to deal with serious criminal charges so we can strengthen our organizing and fight for liberation more strategically.

The defendant’s guide presents a goal-setting framework to help us be clear on our needs, priorities, and vulnerabilities as we figure out how to combat state repression and come out stronger as a result. This framework is based on two guiding principles: criminal charges are part of revolutionary struggle and we need to treat them as such; and we can handle our charges in ways that don’t help the State lock people in cages.

In these discussions, we’ll talk about how setting legal, personal, and political goals for criminal charges can help us deal with them in ways that benefit our movements; offer case studies about defendants from years and decades past who handled their cases in beneficial ways; and foster security-conscious conversations about being in solidarity with targets of state repression locally and nationally.

Tilted Scales Collective is a small collective of legal support organizers who have spent years supporting and fighting for defendants and prisoners across Turtle Island. The defendant‘s guide draws on the wisdom of dozens of people who have weathered the challenges of trials and incarceration, including many former and current political prisoners/prisoners of war.

In the spirit of solidarity and mutual aid, a portion of proceeds from our book will benefit Prison Activist Resource Center (PARC), a prison abolitionist collective that produces a free resource directory that is mailed to prisoners nationwide upon request.

Reposted from IGD

Pittsburgh anarchists held a march in solidarity with anarchist prisoners on June 11th, 2017. Full marching band in tow, the group disrupted traffic patterns and whatever the fuck other gross yuppie shit goes down on the hipster cesspool of Butler Street. Banners in solidarity with Eric King, Marius Mason, and Fernando Bárcenas were on display, along with other anti-prison banners.

After the march, a picnic and info fair was held near by, where t-shirts and buttons were traded in exchange for commissary funds for Joseph Buddenberg, Nicole Kissane, Eric King, and Marius Mason.

Until Every Cage Is Empty!