Therefore, we must talk about making the Anarchist Black Cross into a mass movement against State repression, one which can counter the drive of the State Capitalists towards a police state, along with our work in the anti-prison struggle. We cannot free any of the prisoners without building a mass movement which links up with all those in favor of democratic rights. That is why I said we cannot engage in sectarian politics. The case of Martin Sostre in the 1970s, who although an Anarchist, did not refuse the aid of Liberals, Communists, Christians, Muslims or anyone else who believed in the injustice of his frame-up conviction, should be a perfect example. The only reason he was freed was because of a mass ferment and agitation by a large sector of the population demanding his release. The governor of New York granted his pardon. It is political suicide for a political prisoner, and the move-ment which supports him or her, to take a sectarian position and refuse to work with others, even though we may vehemently disagree with them on a whole host of other issues. This is a matter of life and death, where the usual rules do not apply. The only issue here is the freedom of the prisoner. We have to work with all other political prisoner committees who will work with us.
This is not 1979, the time when I first wrote this pamphlet. There was no real ABC movement in North America like there is now. There may be fifty ABC units now worldwide. We must unite them into a powerful tendency, with its own press, political orientation and agenda. I hope we can formalize the group, while not necessarily centralizing the movement. We need to build an ABC Federation of groups so that we can raze the prisons and free all class war prisoners. We can build a powerful international revolutionary prison movement, since we now have activists in many countries which agree with the ABC. Many others would join with us, if they can find out what we are doing.
The ABC Network must strike out on its own at this stage, since there is no consensus among Anarchists about prisoner support generally, and revolutionary political prisoners specifically. No one else will take up this fight in either the Left or the Anarchist movements, and the inside prison movement cannot be effective without the outside active support. The ABC's must join with the Black Cat Collective of the Black Panther movement, and with other political prisoner movements to make a mass coalition. I propose the convening of an ABC conference to unite the ABC's and discuss the building of a mass political prisoner defense movement. It will have to have be a large conference to gather the forces needed to make this a real thing. This conference also should include the other movements as both observers and participants. Some of these groups are political prisoner defense committees and have been working on the cases of political prisoners for many years, such as those for Geronimo Pratt, Sundiata Acoli and other political prisoners. They have been very isolated and with few resources. But there are also groups like the Communist party-dominated National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which for years has had a questionable reputation in its dealings and with its tepid support of political prisoners, though it has tremendous resources to bear, legal and financial. Either they must support the liberation of prisoners in a real way or be exposed in the most ruthless fashion. We can no longer brook sell-out or opportunist groups in this struggle.
We can build this revolutionary ABC movement if we will but commit ourselves_both prisoners and the movement outside. There is much we both must do, this is no cakewalk and is very serious. But the alternative of doing nothing is even more dangerous: more will suffer and die. Let us make a difference with a powerful Anarchist Black Cross Network.