Rob Thaxton is an anarchist political prisoner, writer and activist who is in his second year of an 8 year sentence for defending himself against a police attack in Eugene, Oregon.

Interview with Rob Thaxton
by Walidah Imarisha

What is anarchy?
Anarchy/anarchism is going through a prolonged re-evolution and rebirth. The classical anarchist movement reached its peak during the Spanish Revolution in 1936. It was crushed by Franco, Hitler and Mussolini and the apathy of the "democratic" nations.
Since then, there have been entire new lines of philosophical, artistic and academic inquiries that were either initiated, influenced by or influential to anarchist critiques. Linguistics, anthropology and psychology have all led to new ways of viewing how our present civilization affects people, societies and our environment. Anarchist scholars like John Zerzan, Fredy Perlman and David Watson in the U.S., and John Moore in the U.K. have presented advances and support for anarchist arguments against authority and the concentration of social power and wealth in all the fields of study listed above. The picture they paint of the modern world is far from pleasing: it's actually quite horrific. And it's getting worse at an accelerating rate.
The solution-from the 21^st century anarchist perspective-is to utterly and completely do away with modern civilization before it does away with not only us, but life as we know it on planet Earth.
This is the position I support-the insurrectionary primitivist one, which views the struggle against civilization and all it stands for as a life or death and immediate battle.
It is our love for life, and the real living world that demands our loyalty and respect. Nothing else matters.

What happened June 18, 1999 that resulted in your imprisonment?
The eight most advanced industrial nations meet every year to determine how they are going to direct the world's economy-to the benefit of the wealthiest people in their countries.
Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness among first world citizens to take responsibility for their part in the domination and exploitation of the rest of the world. So, on June 18, as the G-8 summit convened people in 40 countries and something like 140 cities rose up in opposition to the G-8 and their right to rule the world.
It was massive. Just think of the WTO protest in Seattle and imagine the same thing happening in every major city in Europe-riots, banks attacked, entire cities (not just neighborhoods) shut down due to tens of thousands of people in the streets. The government of Pakistan was rocked so hard that it fell a few months later. Cities in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, in every continent, experienced some sort of disturbance or otherwise presented a demonstration against the G-8 and their economic policies.
Eugene, Oregon experienced the biggest U.S. response to the worldwide "Reclaim the Streets" festival, not necessarily in numbers, but certainly in determination.
There were several attempts by the demonstrators to disperse, and each time they did, the Eugene Police Department attacked, either by firing tear gas or by arresting people who were separated from the crowd or leaving. Each time the police attacked, the demonstrators counter-attacked. Twice the riot cops retreated.
During one such skirmish, I was attacked by Sergeant Larry Blackwell. I threw a rock up in order to protect myself from an imminent beating and it hit Blackwell, a glancing blow to his shoulder. I'd tried to toss it over his head to convince him to turn away from his assault on me, but I'm not strong enough to heft a rock that size (about 5 pounds) that high, at that distance. So, I was arrested and charged with Assault II- assault with a deadly weapon.

What was the police's response to your actions?
The cops chased me for a couple of blocks as I tried to get away. Finally, I was struck across my head by a police baton and thrown face first into a parking lot, which broke my nose. ON the ground, the police pepper-sprayed me while yelling unintelligibly at me to put my hands behind my back. My hands were pinned under me by the weight of two cops on my back. I couldn't understand them because of their gas masks. As blood dripped onto my shoulder and off my nose, Sgt. Blackwell made several threats against me. The more clear-thinking cops kept us separated though. I was convinced they were going to take me to some remote location and work me over before taking me to jail. I denied that I was hurt so that I'd be out of the custody of the EPD and into the "safety" of the Lane Count jail as quickly as possible.
Try to picture that: me, with blood dripping down my neck, my nose broken, my face purple across the right side and both eyes blackened, telling the cops, "No, no, I'm fine," while trying to breathe after running a couple of blocks and then being pepper-sprayed, while blowing blood out of my mouth that's running down from my nose. During the trial, the prosecutor and police said I wasn't injured, WHILE describing my physical condition.
What kind of treatment did you receive from the courts?

They set an incredibly high bail on me, first off, which really prevented me from finding a good lawyer, or preparing for my trial.

The judge was determined to keep me from presenting my political views to the jury and equally determined to allow the prosecutor to tell the jury his thoughts about anarchists and anarchy. She also allowed jury members to be seated who stated they could not be fair or impartial about anarchists under my circumstance due to our behavior on June 18. She also said that the jury wasn't influenced by the media coverage of June 18.
She finally set aside the sentencing guidelines in order to give me a longer sentence. What an asshole.

Do you feel like you received harsh treatment from the judge?
When Judge Bearden sentenced me, she acknowledged that she had received several dozen letters attesting to my history of non-violent activism, good reputation within the anarchist community and the fact that the officer I assaulted was not seriously hurt by my actions. These were all arguments that Measure 11 allows judges to take into consideration when determining a sentence. She could have set aside the Measure 11 minimum guidelines and given me a lesser sentence. Also, I reminded her that the one bit of "evidence" used to implicate me for the Riot charge was a description of someone other than me.
So she gave me 70 months for the Assault II charge and departed from the sentencing guidelines for the Riot charge to give me 18 months, and rant them consecutively, rather than concurrently.
Yes, I feel like this is harsh treatment. Why did she do this? Mainly, the city and county government needed to have a scapegoat to use as an example to other dissidents that they are in control, not the dissenters. I was a very convenient target: I'm not from Eugene, so there was no base of support for me. I could also make the argument that being of Mexican ethnicity in an overwhelmingly white city contributed to my isolation from the activist community and vilification by the police and prosecutor.

What has it been like for you in prison?
I've kept a low profile in here. It's weird that a person who is so willing to refuse to recognize laws he doesn't agree with (or any law, for that matter) has so little in common with people who have a "criminal" mentality. Different values, I suppose: wanting to nurse and nurture the world as opposed to wanting more things (Do you think I'd make a good mother?)

What is happening to anarchists in general in prison?
Most states are taking a pretty harsh stance against anarchist prisoners, especially those who have remained active since being sent down. They use regulations designed to keep close tabs on gang members and white supremacist groups to persecute anarchist prisoners, even those who don't get into disciplinary problems in their institutions. So, anarchists are kept isolated from general population prisoners as much as possible and cut off from their "gang affiliations" on the outside: activists and other anarchists.
Personally, I'm not getting particularly harsh treatment yet. The prisoncrats are trying to cut me off from the outside by rejecting lots of mail because of "gang symbols:" the infamous circle a, and due to their anarchist content, or as written on one mail violation notice, their "violet" content.
Many anarchist zines are rejected and that discourages some publishers from trying to send me their zines.
Other anarchist prisoners I write to are locked down in segregation units with Aryan Brotherhood-types, who often try to kill them. Harold Thompson (Tennessee), Chris Plummer (Texas), Mark Barnsley (U.K.) and Rio Johnson (Oregon) spend a lot of time in the hospital due to recurrent attacks. Anarchists in Italian jails are often found dead in their cells and anarchists in Greece are being jailed for long sentences for WTO-like activities. Those Greeks, they've been out street fighting for years and wonder why it's taken so long for us in the U.S. to get out and get it on.
We're forming an anarchist prison legal aid network here in America to see if we can't help each other out.

How are you getting on with your life?
This is a weird time to be in prison. Things could go one of two ways: they could get a lot worse or better. Either way, I'll likely benefit from any changes. If this government really racks down on anarchists out there, I might be relatively safe in here. Also, I might someday consider my sentence light compared to what future political prisoners of America get.
If things get better: we win the rights of anarchists to be politically active in prison and freely associate and write to people inside and outside our institutions; Measure 11 is overturned; the prisoners' network grows and thrives; the revolution is fought and won-I may get out sooner than expected and get back on with my life, my home in the woods and my delightful four-year-old daughter.
What does it say about this society that the only way to get a political dissenter to keep his activism within the limits of the law is to put him in prison? I'm currently one of the most highly "visible" anarchists in the U.S. This is strange for me, but as it goes with so many aspects of my life, the worst thing that's ever happened to me could turn out to bring very positive results in the future.