Running with the Anarchists to Support Political Prisoners
Running around Echo Park Lake, watching swan-shaped pedal boats glide over the water, I felt free. At least a little.
That’s what unencumbered activity, like running, can do for a person. It does that for me, at times, anyway.
That is, it affords an experience of freedom, however partial and momentary that experience might be.
Perhaps that’s what makes a non-competitive 5k run/walk/ride/skate a great fundraising event to benefit political prisoners. Perhaps that’s also why the Los Angeles Anarchist Black Cross has organized a “Running Down the Walls” 5k event every year since it started in Griffith Park in 1999.
The LA ABC formed in 1998 when members of a local Food Not Bombs group, the Alternative Gathering Campaign and a few other organizations with similar politics and complementary goals joined forces, according to Matthew Hart, who’s been involved from the jump. They aimed to revive a movement based on solidarity, mutual aid and opposition to the prison-industrial complex as well as to various forms of unnecessary authority.
The folks in LA soon affiliated with the Anarchist Black Cross Federation, which uses anti-authoritarian organizational structure to support political prisoners and prisoners of war.
Money raised from“Running Down the Walls” (RDTW) goes, in the main, to the ABCF Warchest program, which is used to distribute $50 per month to a handful of incarcerated persons.
The Warchest is a singular fund all the ABCF chapters use to pool money that at present helps support 13 incarcerated persons who meet certain criteria, who need the money and who will accept it, Hart explained.
“We say it's a monthly donation, but really,” Hart clarified, “what it is, is we, in order to save costs on our side, we will send two months of support to them every other month.”
According to Hart, the ABCF generally defines a political prisoner as “an individual that has been incarcerated because of either their political actions or [who has] been targeted because of their political belief system.”
Prisoners supported by the Warchest are not individuals who have been arrested for any political causes, however. Rather, according to Hart, the ABCF prisoner solidarity work is aimed at assisting those who incurred the wrath of the criminal punishment system because they struggled for community self-determination, they participated in liberation movements and/or they stood for social justice.
As an aside, I consider incarcerated individuals who face retaliation and harassment for organizing and engaging in collective action on the inside political prisoners too. Those interested in prisoner solidarity geared toward enabling prisoner organizing and aiding incarcerated organizers might also consider getting involved in the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, which is affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, the labor union striving for economic democracy beyond class society; the Freelance Journalists Union I belong to is also part of the IWW.
Prior to the start of the 2024 RDTW in LA’s Echo Park, a number of people, myself included, gathered near the 5k registration stand, which was replete with a Los Angeles ABCF banner, a table displaying free fliers with information about political prisoners and books for sale. We heard five statements from political prisoners, three of whom I was told were getting funds from the Warchest.
Oso Blanco, an indigenous anarchist of wolf clan Cherokee/Choctaw heritage and a recipient of the Warchest, provided one of the statements. It was read by an individual sporting a cap promoting Black Lives Matter and a t-shirt that mentioned KPFK, a listener-sponsored progressive radio station in Los Angeles.
Blanco reportedly robbed banks in the late nineties to send thousands of dollars to the anti-capitalist Zapatistas fighting for autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico. He is incarcerated in USP Victorville, a high security federal prison located in San Bernardino County, which is considered part of the Inland Empire, the region in Southern California east of Los Angeles, where I currently reside.
“Run down these walls. Run them down to dust,” Blanco told us in the statement that the individual in the BLM cap read in Echo Park yesterday morning. “It has never been worse inside these prisons.”
Inadequate nutrition and staff violence have become the norm, he explained. Blanco averred that he has witnessed the deterioration in conditions inside Victorville firsthand, given that he’s been serving time for his second federal case.
Xinachtli, a Chicano anarcho-communist imprisoned in Texas who also receives money from the Warchest program, wrote in a statement that was shared before the 5k that other social movement organizations should take heed of the work the ABCF is doing.
“We thank ACF for being true to its principles and for supporting the prison movement,” said Xinachtli, who’s spent more than two decades inside a supermax facility.
After the recitation of the statements, Hart informed us that they had a game called “Molotoss” set up behind the registration table people could play after the 5k. In a clever nod to the insurgent anarchist instrument of choice, the “Molotov cocktail,” the LA ABCF set up a county fair-style, cornhole-like game. If you hit the target with four Molotovs, we learned, you could win a free RDTW commemorative t-shirt.
Then the 2024 “Running Down the Walls” event in LA’s Echo Park started around 11 a.m. on Sunday, September 15.
But other ABCF-affiliated collectives also joined in the fun.
Ostensibly the first Running Down the Walls of 2024 took place in the San Juan de Aragon Forest in Mexico City the day before. Then an ABC collective in Massachusetts had their event at Lowell’s Boarding House Park at 11 a.m. Eastern on Sunday. Around the same time, after a yoga warmup, the Philadelphia ABC held their event in FDR Park to raise funds for political prisoners and for Palestine solidarity.
Though nobody was to be turned away for lack of funds, in Olympia, Washington, organizers asked people to donate an hour’s wage to participate in the non-competitive 5k at noon in Heritage Park, preceded by a group warmup and followed by letter writing to prisoners along with plant-based grilling. The Neighborhood Anarchist Collective in Oregon hosted a 5k fundraiser in the afternoon in Eugene for both political prisoners and for local defendants facing charges related to Palestine solidarity efforts. The Portland ABC met under Tilkum Bridge and commenced their RDTW 5k to support political prisoners and the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun at 12 p.m., followed by an early afternoon BBQ. The NYC ABC had their RDTW 5k run/walk/jog/bike/hang and festivities at Prospect Park that lasted from the afternoon into the evening.
Prisoners also participated, however they could. Blanco and Xinachtli intended to, Hart said, adding that oftentimes the ABCF gets letters from incarcerated individuals indicating before the event that they will participate in some fashion.
“But usually after the fact we will get letters with them saying, ‘Hey, you know, I participated in running on walls.’ … But they do it [whenever and in] whatever way possible,” Hart said. “There are some folks that do have access to the yard. So they're able to run the yard. And there are other folks that may be still in their cells. So they try to do things like burpees or run in place in solidarity.”
After a false start—I recall Hart saying, “Ready, set, hold on,” or something to that effect, upon noticing people were still walking over to where the 5k was set to begin—we all took off at our desired speeds once some approximation of, “Ready, set, run down the walls!” entreated us to get going.
I knew we needed to complete three laps around the park, but a few of us weren’t entirely sure where to go initially. We figured it out.
The non-competitive nature took the stress and anxiety I’ve felt before when running races out of the equation. I think that contributed to the ephemeral feeling of freedom alluded to in the opening of this piece.
That sense of liberation, however circumscribed, seemed buoyed by the shared sense of purpose and my knowledge that the event was taking place in solidarity with those who have been cruelly denied a rich experience of freedom for their to the common good and for their insistence others, indeed everyone, ought to be free. On that note, I can’t help but believe the most meaningful notion and realization of liberty is rooted in both individual agency exercised without undue authority and in the conscious affirmation of our sociality, in the concern we show for our fellow creatures and in our uncoerced relations of care, cooperation and consociation.
The RDTW 5k could be considered rightfully libertarian in that dual manner.
During the 5k, I ran just behind or beside a fellow participant for about two laps. Based on brief conversation, I can safely write that we both appreciated the pacing the other provided. Feeling a little spring in my step on a slight downhill, I eventually moved on ahead to the finish.
A friend of mine was watching my five-month-old labrador retriever for me. Buddy, the black lab I adopted about a month ago, was not the only dog on the scene.
My friend who looked after Buddy stocked up on a lot of the free stickers available at the LA ABCF table. She also purchased a shirt and a book.
She also snapped a photo of the three of us after the event.
I was happy to have had the opportunity to be there with others present in person and in spirit.
For those interested in participating in a future RDTW event, Hart suggests they check to see if, come next September, there’s such an event already being organized where or near they live. People can reach out to the federation at abcf.net as well.
“We'll work with people to help develop running down the walls in their community,” Hart said.
The event also need not prioritize running. You could do a Pushing Down the Walls event involving burpees. Hart also mentioned Biking Down the Walls and Dancing Down the Walls as options.
In addition, before the 5k, Hart had stressed how important it is to get more people corresponding with comrades who have been confined in cages and supporting those who continue to endure administrative segregation, isolation and control unit torture.
“This needs to be not just a one day event. … This needs to be a movement,” Hart said, later adding: “We need to build a movement to try to get as many of them out as possible.”
Afterward, he told me a lot of those involved in the ABCF identify as abolitionists.
“I think we're just a link in that chain that ultimately is wanting to pull down that wall as a whole,” the longtime LA ABCF organizer said, emphasizing the overlapping efforts of the diverse groups of people working toward prison abolition.
For a quarter century, RDTW has been a consistent link. At one point, Hart said, they considered discontinuing the fundraising event, but Jaan Laaman, a political prisoner who was released in 2021 after 37 years behind bars, reached out and told them they should keep doing it because it facilitates organizing.
“We’re able to sort of build a community around revolutionary politics here through Running Down the Walls with them,” Hart said about those who are behind bars because they took liberation to heart, “understanding that there's solidarity on the outside and there's a community on the outside that's supporting us on the inside.”
James Anderson is from Illinois but now resides in Southern California’s Inland Empire. He is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)’s Freelance Journalists Union and has authored articles for many outlets. He has also taught community college classes and is a lecturer at the University of California, Riverside.