Prarieland Poets

Greetings!

It is extraordinary that Prairieland defendants Champagne Song, Maricela Rueda, and Rowan Gibson are sharing their poetry with Prison Radio. Their sentencing in June has become one of the most frightening cases of political repression in recent memory.

This week Champagne spoke to us while water flooded over the floor of their cell. Earlier, a riot squad walked past, on the way to “subdue” another prisoner.

Check out the Praireland Defendants’ support page here

Poetry has always been a weapon of the oppressed: a way of naming realities that power would prefer to leave unnamed, and of transforming private pain into collective consciousness. Their recordings will endure as a historical record of how ordinary people confronted an extraordinary expansion of state power.

It takes uncommon courage to speak up in the face of repression. By refusing silence they are turning the very conditions designed to isolate and silence them into an occasion for collective education and resistance.

“Whatever’s taken from me will wind up being taken from you. It may be these 22 strangers today, but it will be you tomorrow.”

– Champagne Song

Receiving letters keeps their spirits up! Support our correspondents by writing to them with the addresses below:

Johnson County Jail, TX

Benjamin Hanil Song, 202502108

P.O. Box 247

Phoenix, MD 21131

(Remember to use Champagne’s government name “Benjamin” when addressing the letter)

Johnson County Jail, TX

Maricela Rueda, 202502018

P.O. Box 247

Phoenix, MD 21131

Johnson County Jail, TX

Joy Gibson, 202502016

P.O. Box 247

Phoenix, MD 21131

(Rowan’s government name is Joy. Please make sure to address letters using the name “Joy”)

Info and guidelines on how to contact each of the defendants

We should pay attention to the Prairieland case because it raises fundamental questions about the right to protest, the criminalization of solidarity, and the lengths to which the state will go to deter people from standing shoulder to shoulder with migrants and challenging systems of confinement.

The state labeled the defendants as a coordinated terror cell but in their own words they are poets, partners, radicals and organizers. Anyone who cares about civil liberties, abolition, political dissent, and the elusive hope for a democratic society should be paying attention to what happens to the defendants.

At this moment when the state is attempting to define them through indictments, surveillance, and prosecution, they refuse to surrender the power of self-representation.

It takes strength, commitment and incredible courage for them to speak up. It takes creativity, conviction and moral clarity to do so with prose and poetry. To answer the coercive power of the state with art is itself an act of resistance. The least we can do is to listen.

I don’t fear for myself now. I fear for all of you. What will you do in this time of great failures and great injustices? What will you do? How will you help each other? How will you help yourselves? – Champagne Song

“Child of Mine” Original art created by Iranshid Ghadimi

With Love, Not Phear,

Jennifer Black, Prison Radio Director of Political Education

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