Debating Justice: A letter from Damien out of the Fleury-Mérogis jail

Damien is an anarchist arrested on Wednesday, December 7 in Bretagne, charged with attacks against the Chambre of Commerce, a Jaguar dealership, and other targets during a demo that took place on April 14 between Paris’ 10th and 19th districts during the mobilization against the Loi Travail. This letter was published on January 7 and was intended as a contribution to a public discussion about how to engage with the justice system, in a bid to break the isolation that it seeks to impose.

When I heard that on January 9 in Paris there was going to be a debate about justice, I wanted to try to contribute by letter, but because I’m not allowed any visits or phone calls, I don’t have any details about the subject of the debate. The theme of justice is tied to many issues, like repression, authority, and incarceration, as well as obviously questions of defense or attack, resignation or dignity, inaction or vengeance.

This is a personal choice belonging to each individual and I don’t want to lecture about it or present myself as a martyr or hero, which I am not. So I will speak only of my own choice, one that isn’t motivated by the specter of revolutionary duty, but by desire, my own need to feel more free, more dignified, and more alive than my jailers permit.

My intellectual and theoretical baggage is relatively limited, but my life resembles more that of a delinquent than of an academic, and I’ve been moving through the hallways of the courthouse since I was 13, and of prisons since 17. These remarks are much more the product of my own very subjective personal experience, rather than any kind of pre-established ideological position. Although I draw from the anarchist current, I wasn’t even aware of these ideas when I was first held in investigative detention as a child. Read the rest of this entry »