Photo not by us. Taken from gypsyofthesky on Flickr.
The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) recently released their annual report for HMP Norwich, which looks at the state of the prison and areas that need improving for the welfare of prisoners and prison staff.
Kevan Thakrar is a long-term prisoner in HMP Woodhill that was jailed under the Joint Enterprise law.
In Kevan’s words, this law means “if one person commits a crime all of his contacts who knew it would happen or participated in a crime believing it could evolve in to something else (like a playground fight ending up in murder) are all guilty of it”.
Yesterday a group of us headed to Britannia Cafe – described as a “social enterprise staffed by low risk prisoners”. With both a view of the prison and a view over Norwich, we did a banner drop from the tour bus: SMASH IPP, SET THEM FREE.
Following the statement to the press from Sgt Mark Shepherd regarding a ‘weekend blitz’ on aggressive begging, we sadly witnessed Norfolk Constabulary’s tactics in regards to this in full force last night. We arrived at the Haymarket area which was already under direct surveillance, with a line of posturing PCSOs overlooking our proceedings – they had been present for over an hour before our volunteers arrived.
Click here to read more from The People’s Picnic.
Police doing what they do best: intimidating and roughing up the most vulnerable sectors of society.
In Norfolk PCC Lorne Green’s recent Police and Crime Plan he states that he has laid out seven core principles for policing in the county that include “support victims and reduce vulnerability” and “good stewardship of taxpayers’ money”. That was in March. Last night we see over a dozen police officers attempting to intimidate a project that works with some of the most vulnerable people in the city, a project that has no previous instances of criminal behaviour or activity.
Is Lorne Green so shit at his job that is took just four months for him to forget about helping the vulnerable and not wasting taxpayers’ money? Or are the local coppers just slow readers and haven’t reached page seven yet?
Or… was it all a load of guff in the first place?
ACAB
The fortnight of action against IPP sentences will culminate in a noise demo at HMP Peterborough on Sunday 23rd July. This will be in the name of Charlie Noakes, who took her own life whilst still on an IPP sentence.
In addition to the local events we’ll be organising for the fortnight, we will also be heading across to Peterborough for this.
If you’re interested and want to join us there and back then we hope to be able to offer transport for other local people wanting to go. However in order to do so we’ll need to have an idea of numbers so please send us a message or email so that we can begin organising vehicles.
We will be undertaking a number of actions between 9th and 23rd July in response to Smash IPP’s callout for action for and solidarity with IPP prisoners. This will include things such as letter writing and flyering as well as participating in a prison noise demo. More details will be confirmed over the coming weeks. For ease of reference, we’ll be using the hashtag #smashippnorfolk for everything related to this fortnight.
Talk can be found at our Archive.org page
A couple of weeks ago we gave a talk at the Norwich Vegan Festival about anarchism and anti-authoritarian politics within veganism. Given the explosion of vegan consumerism in the UK today – and especially in Norwich, where there seems to be a new vegan joint opening every couple of months right now – it is important to remember that veganism has grown from fertile radical soil, where it strengthened and was strengthened by radical anti-authoritarianism. In this talk we look at some of the ways that veganism connects with other radical politics such as ecology, feminism, and class struggle.
Title: Peter Gelderloos presents “Worshiping Power”
Location: IT Room, The Vauxhall Centre, Johnson Place, NR2 2SA
Link out: Click here
Smash IPP have called for a fortnight of action in July. We’ll be doing our part to support this in Norwich and Norfolk.
If you’d like to join us in our plans, or if you’d like support with your own plans, then please contact us. We’d recommend sending an email using PGP encryption (our key can be found here).
Stay tuned for more updates.
Last weekend we gave a talk at the Cambridge Radical Bookfair about veganism and animal liberation and what it can bring to individuals involved in anarchist or other anti-authoritarian politics. You can listen to it at our archive.org page.
