PRECARIOUS WORKERS BRIGADE

STOP CRIMINALISING PROTEST!

’We’re outraged at hearing that a 6 months prison sentence has been imposed on Trenton Oldfield for taking a direct-action protest by swimming in a river on the day of a boat race between two of the UKs most elitist universities. We can’t help but find this sentence to be out of proportion in a way that reminds much of the jailing of the russian band Pussy Riot for staging a public protest concert in a church. Or the many student protestors who were kettled, beaten and imprisoned for raising their voice against the unnecessary hike of the fees, or not to mention the crassly disproportionate sentences that hundreds of youth have been punished with for standing too close to last summers riots, for taking a bottle of water or some other minor item from a shop.

Considering the massive robbery that banks and elites have recently undertaken in order to further expropriate and exploit people in this country, without running into the slightest problems for their hugely criminal, damaging and antisocial activities, we can only conclude: clearly the criminalisation of freedom of speech and the authoritarian removal of select rebellious subjects from the space and view of society is unacceptable. Where expropriation and theft are authorised on a massive scale for the elites, others go to jail for years for petty desperate nicking. 

We have a right to peaceful protest, to freedom of speech, and we will not be silenced in our acts of resistance against enslavement and repression. We demand the immediate release of Trenton Oldfield now and a re-opening of the countless cases of arbitrary rulings that the UK has seen in the last four years, and beyond. We will not accept to be intimidated and criminalized for voicing our dissent with the brutally antisocial and antidemocratic politics of this government, nor with the elitist institutions it builds upon.

In solidarity with all those (who) fight and create,
PWB

For background info on Trenton’s case see: http://www.thisisnotagateway.net/

You can write to him through this very good system: http://www.emailaprisoner.com/ (The letters are printed off every day and given to prisoners with the morning post): Trenton Oldfield, Prison ID: A1010CT, H.M.P.Wormwood Scrubs.
* All letters will be opened and read, before being given to Trenton (and all of Trenton’s letters to you will also be read before being sealed and posted)

Join TWIN WITH A PRISONER CAMPAIGN BY DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/prisoner-support/

JUSTICE FOR ALFIE MEADOWS! Protest in support of Alfie on the first day of his re-trail.
Alfie Meadows received a life-threatening injury by police at the student demo on the 9th December 2010. Outrageously Alfie has been charged with violent disorder. Show your support on Monday 29th October, Woolwich Crown Court http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/justice-for-alfie-meadows/’