Every day we witness the division and separation of human beings,
The refinement of control systems, the organization of police forces from every nation into a single, ever-watchful eye. We begin to perceive a clear strategy of repression, which patterns itself on the worldwide project of globalisation and solidifies itself in each country as new laws are introduced, or old laws are dusted off again and employed in ever more restrictive ways.

One of the strongest political issues of the moment is the “The Fight Against Terrorism”. Through anti-terrorist rhetoric and its accompanying fear mongering, the powerful justify their existence and legitimise the power that they wield. Their intention is to attack all forms of dissent and criticism, whether coming from communities or individuals, in order to eliminate or transform them. Meanwhile, the programs of control and security are extended ever further, as in the anti-terrorism laws that have established identity Files For even primary school children. The method is always the same:
Employ psychological terrorism, facilitated by infinite mass media campaigns; spread fear in order to block the desire for revolt that is innate in every human being; and at the same time, teach social conformity through a Process of isolation and alienation. The final goal is to instil a Spirit Of acceptance and total submission in every living being, and to sedate individuals into allowing the ruling forces to continue there subjugation Of the planet unchallenged. But we know the perpetrators: they are those who have always destroyed, repressed, and slaughtered in the name of Capital and of the continuing commodification of human beings and
their environment.

Coordination is taking shape in Europe, based on a radical critique
of this strategy of repression and on the idea that it is necessary to create an autonomous network able to construct its own means of reflection, Action and diffusion, avoiding like this the hijacking by institutional Organizations, spectacular mediation and political co-option. It is a mixed gathering of diverse collectives, individuals, and positions that have decided to create a common analysis and course of action, working within a non-institutional cooperation. Prison has been identified as the tangible “tip of the iceberg” of an aberrant and repressive system. With this in mind, we are proposing to squat a construction site where a prison is being built towards the end of the summer 2003.
Our goal is not just the act of occupation, but also the creation of a network of contacts, and the exchange of information and analyses, which will be useful in the practice of direct action. A document is being prepared that will report what was discussed at the initial international meetings that took place in Geneva, Paris and Turin. Everything is still evolving and up for discussion.


The previous international meetings were attended by numerous groups and individuals, who act against the development of the methods of control and exclusion. All over the world states carry out programs to construct new prisons (over a hundred new prisons are being built in the European Union alone). We all share the experience of living in a historical period of change and transition in which the prison becomes more and more, a central model in the organisation of society i.e. further control, exploitation and domination. For this reason the struggle against the prison system, seems today a particularly pertinent angle of attack to introduce an all-encompassing critique of the system that produces it.
In the international meetings, collective actions and through moments of co-ordination, we wish to give life to a common need which allows us to surpass our isolation and which responds to some concrete necessities:

1) To elaborate an exchange, a radical critique and confrontation in order to develop an effective analysis and praxis. From the previous three meetings various themes have emerged, these are being elaborated and developed through the project of a pamphlet. Such themes are: the prison industrial complex; prison slavery; the systems of control and surveillance; urbanism (town planning); prisoners' struggles; our forms of resistance.
2) To circulate the information among us and beyond us. Thus to develop our own tools of diffusion and information: by meeting up regularly every two months; by utilising already existing mediums such as mail lists, web sites, radios and publications; by creating channels of communication within ourselves and the incarcerated prisoners; by organising open meetings where an interest is manifest; by pooling our means, resources and skills.
3) To co-ordinate our actions in all their complementary forms; from the public informative action, to clandestine sabotage.
4) To occupy, in an instance of collective action, the construction site of a prison or another structure of detention and exclusion, in order to diffuse our radical critique and hinder the works and the functioning of the prison system.

The responsibility for each action and initiative is taken by the groups or individuals who organise it. The co-ordination is not a signature, it is a reality that is evolving and which continuously takes form in meetings, collective action, consolidating itself through affirming at each stage its necessities. We decide to reject reformist positions of co-operation with institutions and authority, thus relying heavily on our own autonomous media as a means of co-ordinating our autonomist action, for we perceive mainstream media as a fundamental link in the chain of domination.
The media are the necessary tool to impose categories of a language functional to the exigencies of power, such as “individual and society”, “rights and duties", “legality and illegality”, “violence and non-violence”, “innocent and guilty”, etc… The ideology of the citizenship, which is born out of these categories, leads to demands for "rights" which desire to obtain the mediation of the State to legitimise their own position and further their influence by diminishing real needs and struggles.
This conception of a "mediator - state"(as opposed to the evil free-market forces) re-instates the State as the only authority, unique interlocutor, and sole recourse, thus perpetuating its role as representing society to society. It is this deprivation that fosters the diffusion of a generalised fear, when no one feels capable of relating to anyone else. Seeing society as a factory of isolated lives, which lose their individuality but become more and more homogenised in their isolation. The imposition of this ideology goes side by side with the diffusion of terror and repression as a preventive measure to the inevitable reactions against the degradation of conditions of existence: arsenals of laws for security which discipline and criminalize all aspects of everyday life, the diffusion of measures of control (increasingly more technological) and the attempt to homogenise (which is exercised from the youngest of ages through school education and the increasing possibilities to incarcerate minors). On top of all of this there are new specific forms of exclusion with or without walls such as parole, conditional bail, obligation of cure (placing under section or internment), electronic bracelets, “socially useful” jobs, etc…
We are all haunted by a ghost, the threat of exclusion, torture and incarceration looms, supposedly acting as a deterrent, it constitutes a fundamental part of the organisation of society, which before being physical is both emotional and psychological. In this society one oscillates between the fear of punishment and the desire to destroy it. He or she fight with themselves everyday to sedate all the intimate sensations of revolt and point their fingers at the enemy of the moment who often is the figure that expresses their same contradictions. Our objective is to express and spread the struggle to break with the eternal perpetuation of the logic of power between individuals and society.