“I’m a black and white thinker.
Detention camps are an abomination.
I’m not standing by.
I really shouldn’t have to say any more than this.
I set aside my broken heart and I heal the only way I know how—by being useful.
I efficiently compartmentalize my pain…
And I joyfully go about this work.”
-Willem VanSpronsen’s Final Statement
July 13th has marked 7 years since that night you attacked that wretched Northwest Detention center, a concentration camp which holds our kin captive.
7 years since you were killed in combat by the Tacoma police.
Nothing forgiven, nothing forgotten.
I take this time to reflect on the current situation – the enemy you went to fight against has been elevated to the presidential private army and daily carries out acts of terror. Not terror as in terrorism, the flimsy justification for political repression, but terror as in acts meant not to carry out some law but to terrorize people into submission.
The concentration camps overflow and more get built, so many people are being kidnapped that people are being disappeared in the system. People are being tortured and raped in these camps while outside people are being brutalized and killed.
Just this very week three individuals across the country were murdered by ICE – In Flordia a currently unidentified man was killed when fleeing from ICE, in Maine Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by ICE, and in Texas ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
All over the territories dominated by the american state ICE has invaded cities and rounded people up while their operations continue as a daily reality in communities outside of particular media centric flash points.
Comrades in texas have been convicted of between 30-100 years for a solidarity noise demo at the Prairieland ICE detention facility as 15 comrades in Minneapolis have been charged for their involvement in the resistance to the ICE occupation.
This terror has had a secondary effect of unleashing a well spring of autonomous self organization. From clashes with ICE to full scale riots to autonomous networks of legal aid and rapid response the response has been inspiring, that people won’t just sit down or look the other way as those othered as The Foreigner are taken away. If Willem were alive I am sure he would dive head first into these efforts.
But he is not alive, and his absence compels us to rise to the standard he set – ultimately these concentration camps must be reduced to ashes and the captives set free once and for all.
It is in conversation with your memory that anarchists must commit ourselves to and reinvigorate that most important of anarchist principles – the rejection of the nation, the rejection of borders and universal fraternity with all peoples. The earth is our homeland! None are foreigners! All are kin!
Black memory – the memory of our past struggles and our fallen fighters – nourishes our hearts steadying us for the fight ahead, provides us continuity and passes lessons down from the past. It is in this spirit that I write these short reflections in memory of Willem VanSpronsen
Willem VanSpronsen Present in the Struggle!
A Death in Action is an Eternal Call to Fight!
A warm embrace to all the fighters against ICE!
Long Live Anarchy!
-One individual who comprises Fugitive Distro
ADDENDUM
This is some music released by Willem shortly before his death.