Dear Dimitra, dear Marianna,

this October 31st marks one year of your abduction by the state, one year in which we could share our cries of grief and anger only through the small cracks in the prison walls, in which we carry on our lives hurt by death and separation. The tender strength you showed in the face of tremendous hardship has warmed our hearts and while we yearn desperately to walk the streets together, your unbroken resistance fills us with joy and strength. One year of imprisonment has come and we want to tell you that you are not alone.

We don’t want to focus on the details of the events that led to your imprisonment, as whatever the accusations are we stand in solidarity with you, as well as with all those who attack the colonial machinery. It does not matter what happened, your imprisonment is unacceptable to us, as is every imprisonment. And will not accept either the external campaign that portrays our ideas as terrorist, nor the internal hierarchization of some methods.

In a world that has been rapidly moving into fascist principles and economical warfare, we find sparkles of resistance to which to hold on together. It is the talks, ideas and convictions we share, the diverse ways in which we resist, that appear to us as means to continue to fight. Your imprisonment in Greece is not separate from our life in Berlin. The german state is one of the most powerful in the world and central to the network european and western state power. In many ways greece acts as its proxy at an important geopolitical position. With its war on migration and through the violence on its borders it sustains a flow of illegalized migration for the precarized labour markets. Germanys whole economic system is based on extractivism of global south resources and cheap labour. A colonial political economy that seeks to maintain the economic and cultural wealth in the hands of a few selected.

Marianna and Dimitra, your imprisonment as anarchists is part of the current political changes that all NATO states are enforcing as the new norm in the world. Having nothing more to offer, states are canalizing the ever increasing contradictions to the terrain of war, in which they will always define the rules of engagement. The extreme militarization that is taking place in the west is a sign of the extreme fear those who hold power have, and only through inflicting this fear on each of us every day they are able to reproduce a system that is sustained by destruction, death, debt and the objectification of everything. A „world of the things“ created by a relentless attack on our intimate relations. The idea of preventive detention is at the core of this punitive system. A constant threat to whoever dares to defy the chains of unspoken rules imposed on us.
But this only works because generalized fear and societies‘ morale allow for it. It is a work for all of us to cut through punitive thinking. As anarchists we claim the fight against prisons, but we are still many times far away from creating relationships outside of the punitivist system

This might sound off-topic. Because it is perhaps an aspect not much explored in our analyses. Or maybe because having close people in prison makes topics that are still considered private manifest politically. It goes without saying that prison is a laboratory of our societies. All the misery that exists within them is contained there in an overcrowded pressure cooker, deprived of the fulfillment and joy that only autonomy can provide
Moreover, prison shows us issues that, even as anarchists, we find difficult to discuss, like the division of caregiving labor, which—in a society like Greece that follows the Euro-Christian mentality—remains extremely feminized. And in this sense, prison also encounters stories like yours, which demonstrate that anarchism is built day by day in the little things. We are already living differently, we love each other differently, we support each other differently, and we critique each other differently, and that hurts them!

How you Dimitra and Marianna are there for one another, how your bond is resistance to repression is the best summary of how different our worlds are from that one they want to impose on us. Our anarchist life starts in the personal as political, in the little big things that make our existence worth living every day. One year and we keep you present with a smile on our faces and we wait for you with all our feminist rage in our hands.

We will take back the night together!
Solidarity with Dimitra and Marianna! Freedom for all prisoners!