RE: [Marxism] IRSP: Statement to the International Symposium Agai nst Isolation

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Irish Republican Socialist Party
21 December 2003

Statement to the International Symposium Against Isolation

In like manner, the IRSP has extended its solidarity to Chilean prisoners of
war, Puerto Rican POWs, Basque political prisoners, Breton political
prisoners, political prisoners in Peru, in the United States, and around the
globe. And it is why we join you here today.  Each of us here, if we have
had the experience of isolation, criminalisation, torture, abuse, and
dehumanisation through the prison systems in our own nations, cannot look
upon the struggles of others elsewhere in the world against similar evils
and remain unmoved. And so, in conclusion, we in the Irish Republican
Socialist Party join with you all in demanding an end to the isolation of
political prisoners and prisoners of war.

In unity, let us find strength. Through that strength, let us find victory!
Long live the solidarity of those who struggle for justice!


Response (Jim C) We of the Blackfoot, like many other Indigenous Nations,
also know all about genocide, terrorism, being held as political prisoners,
torture etc, and also stand in solidarity with the Irish People for a free,
independent, self-determining, prosperous, socialist and united Ireland free
of British and other imperial forces and their Quislings. Although Leonard
Peltier is perhaps the most famous of Indigenous political prisoners, indeed
we have many Indigenous activists and innocent Natives railroaded through
oppressive and rigged judicial systems.

For the record, on our Blackfoot Reserves and Reservations, the film
"Michael Collins" is routinely circulated and used as a sort of "training
film" on the necessity of courage, tactics and strategy against colonizing
and imperial powers and on what is possible with determined struggle. We are
constantly reminded--and inspired--by the famous speech given by Michael
Collins shortly after his release from the British prison after the 1916
"Rising":


"The fact that the candidate you are being asked to vote for is at this
moment rotting in an English jail shouldn't put you off.  Sure I was in one
myself until a week ago.

They can jail us, they can shoot us, they can even conscript us. They can
use us as cannon fodder in the Saar. But, but, we have a weapon more
powerful than any in the whole arsenal of the British empire. And that
weapon is our refusal: our refusal to bow to any order but our own--any
institution but our own.

Our friends in the royal Irish Constabulary would like to shut me up-jail me
again, shoot me, who knows. But I'd like you to send them a message: If they
shut me up, who will take my place? Who is going to take my place? I can't
hear you. Who is going to take my place? And if they shut you up who will
take your place?"


Jim C.

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