Why fight the Wrexham Mega-Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex?

A new prison has been on the cards for north Wales for quite some time. Prisoners from Welsh speaking areas are incarcerated in England where the language and culture is different, families have to spend large sums of money and travel for hours to visit loved ones in prison. Why then as someone who has and has had relatives and freinds incarcerated in English prisons, do I oppose this Mega-Prison being built in north Wales?

Aside from the issues that plauge mega-prisons in terms of their awful conditions, as a prison abolitionist I don’t belive that prisons solve any social problems or make our communities any safer . The prison propulation is on the rise, between June 1993 and June 2012 the prison population in England and Wales increased by 41,800 prisoners to over 86,000 and the numbers are still rising.

They’re Still Hunting, We’re Still Sabbing

As the official foxhunting season is now in full stride, having started on 1st November, South Wales Hunt Saboteurs have been out in the field saving wildlife from cruel and horrific deaths. Hunting with hounds was made illegal in 2005 with the arrival of the Hunting Act, but the act has various loopholes (it is still legal to flush out a fox to a gun using two hounds and to ‘trail hunt’ – follow an artificial scent). These loopholes coupled with the fact that the police aren’t really bothered what the hunts are up to, mean that the majority of hunts continue to hunt just as they did in pre-ban days, often under the guise of ‘trail hunting’.

Although the most obvious victims of hunting are the hunted animals themselves (famously foxes, but there are hunts that chase and kill hares, stags, mink and more), they are not the only ones. When a hound becomes too old or slow to hunt or if they were never any good at hunting in the first place they are simply shot. The horses often don’t have a very pleasant existence either as they are often ridden to exhaustion and hunters and members of the field (the riders following the hunt) hitting their horse if they don’t ‘behave’ sadly isn’t a rare occurrence.

Food is a right not a privilege

You can go on a march, sign a petition or fight the police but my favorite form of protest against capitalism is to hand out hot homemade soup on the streets for free to anyone and everyone.

Food Not Bombs is an all-volunteer global movement that was born out of the anti war movement in the USA in the 1980s. By now it has groups all over the world and these loose-knit group of independent collectives serve free vegan and vegetarian food as a protest against war and poverty.

If governments and global corporations around the world spent as much time and energy feeding people as they do on wars, no one would be hungry. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that corporate and government priorities are biased towards allowing hunger to persist, even though there is more than plenty of food being produced. To demonstrate and highlight this issue, a large amount of the food served is surplus food from shops, bakeries and markets that would otherwise go to waste.

Opposing anti-abortionists in Cardiff

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) held UK wide kerbside vigils on Saturday 28th April to mark the 44th Anniversary of the Abortion Act - a law allowing women to opt for legal, safe terminations. In Cardiff, they chose an area by a junction on the busy A470 near Whitchurch High School.

As most people with an ounce of common sense don't think that sending human rights back to the dark ages is very progressive, it didn't take long to muster support for a counter demo. Nearly fifty of us turned up, despite SPUC's best efforts to keep the location secret. When we contacted them, we were told that it was a 'members only' vigil. It would appear, judging by Saturday's turnout, that they only have fifteen active members in the Cardiff area.

The demonstration started at 11am. The SPUCkers looked quite shocked to see us as they collected their boards which read 'Abortion - A baby can live without it' and 'Hurt by abortion? Call xxxx'. They spread themselves out thinly around all corners of the junction, and we thought it only right and good to keep them company. Some of us sang songs while others waved their placards strategically. Many of us attempted to engage in debate with them, and while a few were pleasant, their general response was aggressive. They made childish digs at our appearance, called us various names, including 'murderers', made homophobic comments, and one even threatened to push someone under a truck! I'm sure this isn't a fair representation of god-fearing, church-going Catholics as these all claimed to be.