November 3 2018 - Thousands of Antifascists from Italy and from all sides of the border (Croatia, Slovenia and Austria) gathered on the streets of Trieste in Italy to oppose the much smaller march of the neo-fascist Casa Pound and to send a strong signal: “we will not let our streets and our cities to the fascists! We did not forget the tyranny that this city had to live in the past!” [video]/[video]
These days, activists who advocate “a world without prisons” are often dismissed as quacks, but only a few decades ago, the notion that our society would be much better off without prisons — and that the end of prisons was more or less inevitable — not only dominated mainstream academic discourse in the field of criminology but also inspired a national campaign by reformers demanding a moratorium on prison construction. Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, notes that what is most remarkable about the moratorium campaign in retrospect is the context of imprisonment at the time. In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with more than 2 million people today. The rate of incarceration in 1972 was at a level so low that it no longer seems in the realm of possibility, but for moratorium supporters, that magnitude of imprisonment was egregiously high. “Supporters of the moratorium effort can be forgiven for being so naïve,” Mauer suggests, “since the prison expansion that was about to take place was unprecedented in human history.” No one imagined that the prison population would more than quintuple in their lifetime. It seemed far more likely that prisons would fade away.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), Introduction.
Rodrigo Lanza is an antifascist from Chile who is living in Zaragoza, Spain. In December of 2017, Rodrigo was out with friends at a bar when they were approached by a man who began insulting Rodrigo, calling him “sudaka” (a derogatory term for Latin Americans) and telling him to go back to his country. As Rodrigo attempted to leave the bar, Victor Lainez, a member of the fascist Falange group with many friends in the local fascist scene, pulled a knife. Rodrigo defended himself and in the ensuing fight, Lainez was killed.
Occurring during the movement for Catalan independence and the accompanying resurgence of hardcore Spanish nationalism, the press worked overtime to vilify Rodrigo as a ‘foreigner,’ squatter, and former political prisoner. They claimed that Lainez was attacked at random for wearing Spanish flag suspenders, and built a bogus narrative of an innocent Spanish citizen murdered simply for showing support for his country.
Rodrigo is currently in prison awaiting trial and faces a lengthy prison sentence as well as expulsion from Spain.
We are currently trying to determine if Rodrigo would like to receive letters.
