A new May arrives, tinged with Black. Hearts race, and Mauri laughs again with his mocking laugh.
Seventeen years seems like a lifetime, and it’s the number since you’ve been physically gone. Seventeen years ago, on a cold morning on May 22, 2009, the explosive device you were carrying to attack the prison guards’ school detonated prematurely, causing your instant death.
Your body lay in the middle of the street, your bicycle and a revolver beside you, a single bullet lodged in your Adam’s apple. They will photograph you, and the powerful will display those images to instill terror. They will want to use you as a trophy, but your comrades will come out to defend you. They will not leave you alone, not that day, nor in the days to come. Even though many would like them to…
A police/media witch hunt will then be unleashed, and the circle of comrades with whom you forged your path will receive a wave of blows of different kinds, including eviction, imprisonment, and being forced underground. When civic or calculating morality advised silence and discretion to seek “protection,” your comrades raised the stakes and went out to reclaim you with pride, with audacity and anarchist commitment. We collectivized your ideas, your interests, values, and principles. We reclaim your anarchist life, so that it would not end on May 22, 2009.
Many of us did so, internalizing everything we had learned from the experiences of other comrades, from stories that we absorbed and that shaped our convictions and actions. Thus, everything one has learned becomes fire in decisive moments. And even if we do not yet perceive it, it will move and inspire others.
A sowing of memory began to take shape—to combat the absolute death that is oblivion, but also to emphasize your life.
We wanted—and still want—new comrades to know you through your actions: your ideas, writings, poems, stories, drawings, and songs. We seek for you to reach other territories hand-in-hand with your anarchist comrades—not through the press, historians, or criminologists; not through the caricature that Power constructs of you.
The sowing of *black memory* is a labor without pause or downtime; it asserts its stance in a manner that is categorical and uncompromising. For wherever ambiguity and silence arise, oblivion takes root—even as discourses subservient to Power insidiously creep in.
For this reason, we insist—we persist—in the act of doing: in affirming your life choices, your tools of struggle, and the person you chose to be—a warrior against every form of domination. Never a martyr; never the victim of a frame-up. Defiant and proud, possessed of a sarcasm and humor that melted away boundaries. That is how you departed… and that is how you remain with us—with your triumphs and your errors, with your stumbles and your beauties.
We have persisted in scattering your seed—and it has undoubtedly borne fruit. Hundreds of new comrades now know you; they access your ideas, practices, and writings fluidly and without hindrance—just as we wish it were with so many other comrades throughout history.
Diverse wills have committed themselves to propagating the contribution you made to Anarchy. And beyond whatever differences may exist between various paths, a profound respect prevails for the authentic gesture of keeping your memory alive. There is no competition, nor any attempt to hinder or tarnish the gestures of others; this distinguishes a genuine interest in nurturing memory from an egocentric struggle devoid of values. This distinguishes Black Memory from civic competition. This ought to be clear to everyone.
We have learned that cultivating and defending our memory is vital both for anarchists and for Anarchy itself; for if power intervenes in our processes—altering and rewriting our history—it will also modify our capacity for envisioning the future, hindering analysis and stagnating future processes.
“What gives meaning to life gives meaning to death.”
Memory allows us to find our comrades—to recognize them—transcending time, geography, and language. Thus, we recognize ourselves in their writings, in their demands, and in the commitments they undertook in the “here and now” through which they passed. Their joys nourish us, and their sorrows cause us pain as well.
In this way, we feel the absence even of those we never met, yet with whom we are bound by shared anarchist paths and actions in pursuit of total liberation.
Our commitment to that Anarchy—without compromise, without renunciation, without seeking permission from power, and free from rhythms dictated at its whim—binds us in solidarity with our anarchist comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris, who met his death on October 31, 2024, in Athens, Greece, in an accident while handling an explosive device. Kyriakos died instantly, while his anarchist comrade Marianna Manoura sustained severe injuries.
The incident triggered a massive police and media backlash; counter-terrorism units, deploying their full apparatus and specialized jargon, fanned out to detain, intimidate, pursue, and punish.
Arrests followed one after another as authorities sought out links and connections—and, of course, sought to shatter social circles and sever bonds of solidarity. Anarchist comrades in Greece and in other territories rose up in response, undertaking numerous acts of solidarity and remembrance.
For where there is no silence, there is no oblivion—and power can neither triumph nor impose its absolutism.
In April 2026, comrades Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta were sentenced to 19 and 8 years in prison, respectively, on charges including criminal conspiracy, the manufacture of explosive devices, and the possession of firearms and ammunition, among other counts.
From the very moment of their arrest, both comrades have proudly affirmed their commitment to Anarchy and have defended the memory of their comrade Kyriakos. Their writings serve as a call for defiance and audacity in the face of the enemy, while simultaneously conveying a powerful message of love, comradeship, and an indelible devotion to the memory of Kyriakos.
In the early hours of March 20, 2026, a loud blast shook the neighborhoods of East Rome, Italy. Inside a park, an explosion brought down part of an abandoned building. Amidst the rubble, police subsequently reported the discovery of two bodies. Anarchist comrades Sara Ardizonne and Alesandro Mercogliano (Sandro) met their deaths at that location, in what appears to have been an accident involving the handling of an explosive device.
Both were comrades of profound dedication who made significant contributions to the anarchist cause. They were frequently targeted—placed in the crosshairs of the hunter; Sara, in particular, was under indictment from 2021 to 2025 as part of Operation Sibilla (charges which were subsequently dismissed). This operation was launched against anarchist comrades accused of inciting political violence, terrorism, and subversion through the anarchist publication *Vetriolo*—a case that involved, among others, their comrade Alfredo Cospito.
During a preliminary hearing for that case, Sara read a statement in which her concluding remarks asserted that the trial “convinces me that there is an enormous difference between the violence of the oppressed and that of the oppressors: the former adheres to an ethic; the latter, to none.”
Their comrade, Alesandro Mercogliano, had been sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison, accused of participating in attacks for which the FAI-FRI claimed responsibility. Ultimately, after spending more than four years behind bars, he was acquitted of all charges in 2020.
Their deaths have triggered the kind of police and media hysteria we have witnessed before—with those in power thirsting for more blood, issuing ludicrous statements, and whipping up winds of judicial vengeance directed against the comrades’ circle of associates, and in this instance, against their very bodies.
In an absurd, clumsy, and arrogant display of vindictive legal power, their bodies were withheld for several days; authority revels in—and seeks to perpetuate—those moments when it can exert absolute control over its declared adversaries.
Attempts were made to obstruct the release of their bodies to their families and comrades; false information was disseminated to ensure that the families would be left isolated, or accompanied by the fewest possible number of people. Furthermore, nearly 100 comrades were detained when they went to lay flowers at the site where Sara and Sandro had met their deaths. They believed that in this way they would silence the voices, that memory would be hushed, and that they could rewrite history at their leisure and to suit their own ends… but once again, they failed. The voices of our comrades—and the echo of solidarity—transcended borders, crossed territories, and found a home in other active hands.
Kyriakos, Sara, Sandro, Mauri, and so many other comrades: we are bound as siblings by their lives—lives that are sometimes best understood through their deaths; we are bound by their ideas and actions—regardless of the materials they chose to employ; we are bound by that which gave their lives meaning and purpose. That quest for absolute freedom which led them to walk paths that, at times, led to death.
It did not simply happen and then pass away; something always remains—our *black* memory—continuing to amplify the power of their lives.
Thus, nothing truly ends; everything continues… Here we stand… 17 years later… proving that you still move among us, Mauri—feeding the inner fire, laughing, debating, sharpening ideas to a razor’s edge, wielding the weapon, and staring down power and the powerful of the day.
With eternal love for Mauri and the comrades who have departed, and in solidarity with those who are imprisoned and persecuted.
May their names never be forgotten, and may more comrades find inspiration and strength in their legacy—for Zoé Aveilla and Snizana Paraskevaidou…
Long live Anarchy!
Sacco and Vanzetti Anti-Authoritarian Library
Black May