This originally aired on The Final Straw radio show.

Emma Goldman once told unemployed workers in New York, “Ask for work. If they won’t give you work, ask for bread. If they won’t give you bread, TAKE BREAD.” Her next words were uttered from a jail cell.
When we look at reformists, their strategy is bankrupt because of an unwillingness to challenge power– to “take bread,” as Emma Goldman put it. So, it follows that their tactics serve a bankrupt strategy.
When talking about prison reformism specifically, you’re working with 3 main tactics that are pretty reflective of everything else reformists do, and taking a look at those tactics will give a good sense about why reformists fail even when they succeed.
The Big 3 for prison reformists are “coalition building,” “hungerstrikes,” and “work stoppages.” All 3 tactics seek to create some kin leverage against authority, or an incentive FOR authority, to exercise authority differently. All 3 tactics say, “Give us X and we’ll return to our assigned seats.” All 3 tactics leave the same authority in power to take back what’s given.
First, coalition building. Prisoners and advocates push for legislation. Problem is, prisoners don’t vote, politicians don’t care, and the money is on the other side. Coalition building is doomed.

Second, hunger strikes. In recent years, states developed strategies for neutralizing the hunger strike. In Ohio for example, a hunger striking prisoner must refuse 9 consecutive meals, even the coffee at breakfast, or the hunger strike is not recognized. So, even in resisting, hunger strikers must follow the state’s rules on HOW TO RESIST. The state mediates your resistance, then responds with a set program of deprivation followed by forcefeeding and torture. In California recently, Jerry Brown entertained the Margaret Thatcher response from the 1980s IRA blanket strike: Let ’em die.
Hard for reformists to succeed when appealing to the conscience of a murderer willing to let them die. Your only leverage is burial expenses.
Third, work stoppages. For any organizers out there, you know that a collective action like a work stoppage is like step 24 in a 25 step process. In a prison environment filled with distrustful and atomized populations, this means the state has 23 chances to derail your effort before it ever gets rolling. And even when it does, the state divides and conquers.
In Ohio once, after a day occupying the yard and refusing to work, the prison population was divided when the warden promised all-you-can-eat hotdogs, ice cream, and cola to the first 100 prisoners to get to the chow hall to wash pans.
Work stoppage over.
And again, as I pointed out last time, even if these tactics do succeed, they still fail. The same authorities who grant a few more crumbs from the table can be pressured by counter-reformists to take those crumbs away. So, what really sucks for an anarchist who wants to support prisoner resistance specifically, or participate in collective resistance, is that people generally do not have the IMAGINATION to think beyond reformist tactics and goals. So, you can either throw your shoulder into doomed reformist wheel-spinning that will only fail and make the state look even more indestructible… And discourage real, future resistance; or you can do nothing at all while others with courage and no imagination desperately throw their bodies into the gears of the machine… And then your inaction feels like complicity.
I’m sure this translates to the free world too, not just to prisoner support. As an anarchist, everywhere you go, you face the same catch-22. You can participate in a reformist misadventure you know is doomed from the start and will only put another “win” in the enemy’s win column, or you can sit on the sidelines and wait for something more “anarchisty” to develop, which is highly unlikely since all the anarchists are sitting on the sidelines.
So, what do you do? Good question.
I’m really fond of a quote by Meir Berliner, who died in resistance to the SS at Treblinka death camp. Meir Berliner said, “When the oppressor offers you two options, always take the third.”
I think that’s excellent advice. And since we’ve now devoted all the time to talking about reformism that that topic deserves, it seems like “The Third Option” would make an excellent title for my next podcast segment… Well, if I’m not dragged off to Guantanamo Bay with a black bag on my head and electrodes on my testicles before I can get to a phone again.
An alternative to reformism AND inaction. Wouldn’t that be awesome? For Ihsan, this is anarchist prisoner sean swain from Ohio’s supermax facility. If you’re listening, you ARE the resistance…
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