Steel City Food Not Bombs 💣

ALT Banner reading “MELT ICE” with the anarchist A and the anti-fascist three arrows with a melting ice cube leaking blood.

ALT Banner reading “Justicia pa’ lorenzo” on a bridge overlooking a highway.

ALT A banner in spanish reading “Sin Naciones, Sin Fronteras” (no borders, no nations)

ALT We are heartbroken and dismayed by the recent sentencing of eight of the Prairieland Defendants. From the very beginning, the state engaged in increased escalatory action. They targeted community members that were not present at the action, threatened torture, and used flimsy evidence to allege that the defendants were part of a non-existent terrorist cell.

ALT Through these actions, the state attempted to justify these extraordinary and extremely repressive sentences. These exceed sentences given in previous eras of repression, such as the Green Scare. Judge O'Connor, the man in charge of sentencing the Prairieland Defendants, explicitly stated that he sought the maximum sentence because the state "...wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology."

ALT The message is clear. If you oppose concentration camps, mass deportations, and an authoritarian regime, then you will be considered a domestic terrorist. If you decide to defend someone from state violence, you will be sentenced to a century in jail.

ALT If you are under the impression the State desires to only punish the most “extreme” actors, we would do well to remember that several of the defendants charged today was not even in attendance at the protest, with one now facing decades in prison for moving a box of literature. This could have been any one of us, and if we don’t act now, it still could be.