One of the most depressing things for an activist facing jail time for political reasons is going to court and seeing the courtroom literally empty. This is especially true if you are halfway across the country, far from your family friends and loved ones, on charges in a strange city where you hardly know anyone.
The court process for any person is isolating, humiliating and cruel, aimed at destroying your spirit and criminalizing you, turning you from a human with thoughts feelings and emotions into a person of interest, suspect, accused.
Today, given the fact that even though i have never met Eva and she has non-association with me, I couldn't attend court so I asked a comrade how her court went. I was very dissapointed to hear that there were less then a handful of people at her court date, especially since she has chosen to fight her charges and is now proceeding to jury trial.
While many activists probably did have legitimate reasons for not showing up, and a few activists have shown up in the past, the lack of support for Eva shows one of the big problems in our movement, which is we only support activists that are cool or who have the same ideology as us or who are our friends.
This is a weakness that not only affects those who dont get support, but our movement overall, after all what good is a movement that abandons its comrades to the system simply because they hold different values, are not cool, or are not our personal friends.
It seems to me that quite a few people are taking the slogan “support our friends ” quite literally, which is a weakness because the state does not discriminate between cool and un cool activists, nor does the state discriminate between differences of opinions among anti capitalists.
To the state we are all seen as threats and will be dealt with accordingly and if we don't learn from the lessons of the past, and unify and support ALL ANTI COLONIALIST AND ANTI CAPITALIST Prisoners and Arrestees regardless of our personal feelings towards them we will get wiped out, and quite frankly will deserve it!!!
Eva’s Trial is set for Jan. 7th at 361 University, let us show the state on that day that we proudly stand behind all anti capitalist arrestees and prisoners regardless of our personal feelings
