Support the non-cooperating Prairieland defendants Autumn Hill, Benjamin “Champagne” Song, Daniel “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada, Dario Sanchez, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Soto, Janette Goering, Joy “Rowan” Gibson, Lucy Fowlkes, Maricela Rueda, Rebecca Morgan, Savanna Batten, and Zachary Evetts here: https://prairielanddefendants.com/meet-the-defendants/
Meagan Morris is currently supported as well and part of the collective defense effort standing trial, although according to available documents she initially cooperated, requesting interviews with law enforcement and providing information on other defendants that led to their subsequent arrests.
“A ‘rat’ is a traitor, a conceiver, planner or physical participator
He doesn’t sell secrets for power or cash
He betrays the trust of his team or his family hoping to save his own cowardly ass” – from “Snitches & Rats” by 21 Savage
We may say that people cooperate and have the right to, and that we also have the right to exclude them from our supportive efforts. The mutual hostility of right then barely conceals a real antagonism that has not been addressed in practice. When left to the choice of individuals, any ethics of non-cooperation is ultimately left to a matter of moral qualities absent the consideration of the conditions and social relations within which they are cultivated. Without this, the question of whether or not people can withstand the blows of repression has no content beyond their shapeless fears of what is to come.
This then leads the betrayals of cooperators to be excused by any number of factors in the situation, as if anyone would be susceptible to cooperate if they had to endure the experience of the rat. The rat then becomes a tragic figure. Having to face their betrayal tugs on our heartstrings, and the tragedy then merely reflects back a farce upon us. We then cringe from the specter of responsibility that hangs over us. When we flinch before the facts of what must be done, anything becomes excusable, and basic facts of a situation become distorted. What is a typical night in jail for the many people who never talk instead becomes “torture,” because we must feel empathy for the coward who cannot stomach their own discomfort. The actions of the state to compel such equivocations from the captured lead to a horror of any means of coercion at all, yet this is precisely the necessity with which we are confronted. It is then not a matter of abstract individuals possessing more or less intrinsic qualities, but the contention of a balance of forces in struggle.
It cannot be said then that the rat deserves “nothing.” Such actions require responses for our own protection, for our own longevity. The baseline hatred and disgust for the rat is the ambient recognition of this necessity of survival in a struggle against a society of hostile relations. This task cannot be managed by any mutual respect for the rights of individuals. In a political movement, we simply cannot do whatever we want. For any concerns of authoritarianism, there is no greater assertion of the authoritarian personality than the singular and unilateral declaration that one’s own life is worth more than another facing repression and deciding instead to send others to prison to save your own skin. The rat makes a wager: “maybe the state will take less of my life-time if I give them the means of taking the life-time of others.” It is the very logic of competition that emanates from the essence of capitalist social relations. The rat then creates a situation in which a contrary force must match this threat. Authority is then not the problem in itself. It is rather a problem of an antagonistic relation that must be confronted.
There is then the necessity of creating the actual means of developing behavior that successfully reproduces revolutionary movements, and suppressing that which threatens this development. The means of effecting this in a conscious and directed manner in our lives and relations is then a clear necessity. Against the asymmetrical force of the state, there is no room to maneuver if the actions of the cooperator are tolerated to any extent. Even the expression of empathy for their ordeal communicates a weakness that will be exploited either immediately or in the near future and simply wastes time that no one has. We then become enamored with the tragedy and turn away from the reasons of those who never cooperated to remain steadfast as they have, an immensely more enriching source of education than can be found in the motivations of a rat. In this very differentiation we find the foundations for a movement that will be resilient to repression.
A movement cannot tolerate any hesitation on this matter. We all must take note of who does balk in the face of the necessity of non-cooperation and insulate ourselves from their presence and influence. The means of support in the face of repression have to cohere into a definite political front and be leveraged to deter cooperation. A rat must not only receive no support, but must be subject to actions that demonstrate to all those who bear witness that betrayal has consequences. Anything less than this fails to recognize that the repression that faces individuals is but a single front in a struggle that pervades throughout the whole of social life. Supporting each other against this very repression negates that which separates us through conscious action upon these interdependent relations. As such, support is then never unconditional, for it creates a series of reciprocal obligations between partisans. Solidarity is the cohesion that arises from the recognition of this necessity put into practice.
Richard Hunsinger
Source: A Single Hail From Below