Build gardens not prisons

The Reclaim the Fields Inter­na­tion­al Action Camp, attend­ed by 100–150 peo­ple

Grass

8.9.15

The cam­paign against a new mega-prison being built near Wrex­ham got a boost recent­ly when the Reclaim the Fields net­work held an action camp near­by.

The Reclaim the Fields Inter­na­tion­al Action Camp, attend­ed by 100–150 peo­ple, ran from 28th August to the 2nd Sep­tem­ber 2015 and was host­ed by a local anti-frack­ing site. Work­shops explored the links between land strug­gles, prison abo­li­tion and oth­er issues includ­ing gen­der, ani­mal lib­er­a­tion and free­dom of move­ment.

Peo­ple held evening noise demos at three pris­ons in the region in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those inside, leaflet­ted the local town, and pick­et­ed sev­er­al com­pa­nies involved in the mega-prison. Final­ly a block­ade of the con­struc­tion site held up lor­ries for over 4 hours with­out any arrests.

As any­one with expe­ri­ence of them knows, pris­ons are abu­sive places used to con­trol and threat­en peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of us who are work­ing class, peo­ple of colour, or dis­obe­di­ent. We need jus­tice process­es based on strong, vibrant com­mu­ni­ties, not more pris­ons and cops harm­ing our com­mu­ni­ties.

The new prison would be the biggest in the UK, and the sec­ond biggest in Europe. It aims to open in 2017 and would give the State enough cages to lock up an extra 2100 peo­ple.

Mean­while, Robert King of the Ango­la 3 will give a talk on strug­gle and rev­o­lu­tion in the US prison sys­tem, on Wed 16 Sep in Dundee.

Com­mu­ni­ty Action on Prison Expan­sion | Reclaim the Fields UK | Gar­dens not Cages | Frack Free Wrex­ham | Bor­ras Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camp