As a community and as individuals you never stop amazing me. The support and solidarity I have felt from all of you is nothing less than overwhelming and amazing. I have been receiving a steady stream of mail and books since being placed in my current institution. Y’all are bad asses!! To all my birthday well wishers and all of you who decided “/b/ my valentine”, I love you all.

To everyone who just writes to let me know I’m supported and remembered, either at letter parties or on your own, thank you. I love your letters and appreciate each one. Whether you are telling me about your pets, passions, interests, views, hopes, trumpets, or arm wrestling tactics (that wrist thing is cheating btw)…  I find them all interesting and often hilarious. I am unable to respond to all of you every time, but I want you all to know I value every word and you make my week every time I get a letter. Also I am not able to send letters out of the US right now. I do want to send some love to Queensland, Australia. Your letter was awesome and I wish I could write back. Much love to the French Resistance and a certain comrade in Germany. You’re rad K.

So I feel as though only the Cook County Jail could ever make a person “ready to get to prison”. Needless to say my conditions have improved greatly. I can purchase stuff like dental floss. I can workout. and I now have a walkman. Yes. A real walkman with real, or should I say, reel tapes. I am probably the only person in any prison with a Bjork tape! I’m also in classes which helps pass my time and I can earn days off my sentence. I have been treated professionally and the same as every person around me.

So before I close I want to touch on a subject that has come up over and over again in radical circles and radical causes. It’s time to ask yourself some hard questions when thinking about taking direct action. Are you prepared to be locked up? Are you willing to stay locked up to protect your comrades and community? Solidarity is a gift and a responsibility. Please ask yourself and be honest. If you don’t believe you can commit to the safety of your comrades and community, take a different path. We can all use the skills we have in the ways we are comfortable. There is so much work to do. So many ways to push for the world we hope to see. Please be safe, think tactically, and keep standing for what you know to be right.

I want to close with love and thanks to all of you. You all give me hope and remind me that some people actually care and that not everyone is a racist, sexist, homophobe… just most of the people that surround me at this moment in time. I still have hope for so many reasons and all of you contribute to that.

I want to publicly thank all my hometown heroes and all the folks holding down rad bookstores from North Carolina to Indiana to Sacramento working on prison support. To my own “dream team” doing research on how to mitigate the damage of mass incarceration and to my own light, who guides me everyday. I would be lost without you. To my crew, love y’all to death!! I’ll be home before too long.

With Love and Rage,

Jason W Sutherlin

The T

We’ve also been told to make sure we give a shout out to Anarchist Black Cross (especially Denver, Chicago, NYC, and Bay Area) for their ongoing and continual support. Another big shout out to those members of the Anonymous collective who have supported #opValentine and #opPenPal (not to mention #opStormFrontRaid, #freeAnon, #opBlitzkrieg, and #opRacism). It means a lot to them to know that they’re not forgotten. They are continually amazed at how much suipport they’re receiving from all around the world.

I spoke with one of the Tinley Park Five on the phone a couple days ago. Apparently he has been getting so much mail that he raised the suspicion of one of the guards. This guard approached him, a “humongous beast of a man”, with a shaved head and white skin.

“Who the fuck are you? Why are you getting so much mail?”

He tried unsuccessfully to evade the issue. “My girl writes a lot…”

“Motherfucker I’m just going to go home and google your ass. Who’s ass did you beat to get this ‘mob action’ conviction?” the guard asked menacingly.

At this point, our young friend is pretty convinced that this guard is going to be giving him hell for the duration of his sentence, but there’s nothing he can really do. There’s nothing he can do to stop this guy from typing his name in a search engine. So what else can he do but step up and own his beliefs.

After he tells the guard just exactly what he’s in for, the guard smirks and shakes his head and starts reaching for what my friend thinks is the can of pepper spray the guards carry on their holster. It turns out though that the guard was just reaching for his wallet. He unfolds it and shows some pictures of his beautiful black wife and children.

“You’ll be fine in here…” He says as he chuckles and walks away.

Moral of the story: Don’t judge a book by it’s cover I guess.

Anyhow…

Prison Censorship

So there’s a little bit of a problem with mail and reading materials getting confiscated by the mail room. Typically when a prisoner’s mail is confiscated they get a slip saying that there was a package that was sent back for security violations and sometimes they give a lose explanation as to why. Apparently with the high volume of mail, one of the TP5 got about twenty of these confiscation notices in one week.

While these notices aren’t supposed to carry any consequences, it does draw a lot of unwanted attention to our comrades. Since all of the TP5 expect to get parole immediately upon becoming eligible, we’re all just apprehensive about giving the State any excuse to extend the length of their incarceration.

Also, very concretely, they simply aren’t getting the materials. Please don’t stop sending them zines and political reading though! We’re just asking that if you send them things, try to avoid materials with inflammatory rhetoric, anything they’re going to try to say is ‘gang-related’, explicitly violent material, or get this… anything with a can or bottle of beer visible in the pictures. Once you start sending them stuff you can work with them to try to make sure that they’re getting as much of it as possible. Apparently a lot of these decisions are pretty arbitrary and depends largely on who’s working the mail room any given day.

Thanks for your continued support!

All five are in very good spirits and are currently in the process of trying to take advantage of some of the educational opportunities offered. These classes and programs can also chip away at their sentences. It’s optimistic but we’re hoping on seeing Alex and John this year, Cody and Dylan in early 2014, and Jason by the end of 2014.

They’re all very fortunate to have been placed in relatively decent facilities. They’ve had no real problems with guards or other inmates thus far. They’re all planning on making the most of their circumstances and trying to pass their time quickly by taking GED and college course, working out, watching television, and reading.

All of their webpages are now updated with semi-permanent addresses, but here they all are in one place:

Alex Stuck M34020
2600 N. Brinton Avenue
Dixon, IL 61021

Cody Sutherlin M34021
13423 E 1150th Ave
Robinson, IL 62454

Dylan Sutherlin M34022
P.O. Box 7711
Centralia, IL 62801

Jason Sutherlin M34023
100 Hillcrest Rd
East Moline, IL 61244

John Tucker M34024
P.O. Box 900
Taylorville, IL 62568

Send them a letter! All out of stamps? Send them a letter online!

Stamps, envelopes, post offices, delivery times… such a pain just to send your favorite antifa POWs a letter. But alas, no more! The website JPay.com offers online letter writing services to inmates. For just $5 you can buy a “book of stamps” with five stamps. Each stamp allows you to send an email up to a couple pages long. JPay then prints out your email and delivers it as a letter for you. As an added bonus, not only will this enable you to avoid the hassles of snail mail, but will also get your letter delivered quicker.

Dylan Sutherlin M34022
P.O. Box 7711
Centralia, IL 62801

Just so you know, this site will always have the most information relating to the Tinley Park Five. You can always find the most current address of any of the Tinley Park Five by clicking on their individual pages under the menu option “TP5“.

Jason W. Sutherlin M34023
100 Hillcrest Rd
East Moline, IL 6124

On March 20, John Tucker will turn 27 years old while serving a 3 1/2 year sentence in the Illinois State Department of Corrections. John is currently at Stateville Correctional Facility awaiting a placement at a long-term facility. While classification typically takes 2-6 weeks, John has already been at Stateville for two months. Unfortunately, prisoners awaiting classification at Stateville are unable to receive mail. We’re hoping that John will get transferred any day now and as soon as that happens we’ll get his address posted up here.

Send a Birthday Toast!

We’re collecting pictures for birthdays and other celebrations. We’ll be raising a glass for our imprisoned comrades. If you’d like to send a toast Jason and John’s way for their birthdays, take a picture of you and your crew toasting Cody on your phone anytime. Send the funniest, sexiest, sweetest, proudest, drunkest or smartest picture you can come up with for your toast and send it to:

TinleyPark5@Yahoo.com

with something along the lines of “Happy Birthday” in the subject line. When they get out, we’ll show them all the photos of their friends and comrades all over the world raising a glass. Hopefully this way we can replace a piece of their stolen birthdays.

We do want to make sure that Dylan has as good of a day as is possible. In order that he should hopefully receive it by his birthday, letters and other packages should be sent as soon as possible. PLEASE! If you’ve got an extra fifteen minutes just send Dylan a short letter to wish him a happy birthday! It’ll mean a lot to him.

Dylan Sutherlin M34022
P.O. Box 1000
Lincoln, IL 62656

As usual, we’re desperately trying to keep up with the commissary needs of all the Tinley Park Five. To make sure Dylan can grab some snacks for his birthday please consider contributing via WePay.

Wanna Send Dylan a Birthday Toast?

If you’d like to send a toast Dylan’s way for his birthday, take a picture of you and your crew toasting Cody on your phone anytime. Send the funniest, sexiest, sweetest, proudest, drunkest or smartest picture you can come up with for your toast and send it to:

TinleyPark5@Yahoo.com

with something along the lines of “Happy Birthday Dylan” in the subject line. When Dylan gets out (hopefully soon), we’ll show him all the photos of his friends and comrades all over the world raising a glass to him. Hopefully this way we can replace a piece of his stolen birthday.

We miss you Dylan! Solidarity! Happy Birthday!

The Tinley Park Five wanted to say thanks for all the wonderful letters they’ve been receiving and would especially like to thank those in Anonymous who worked on #opValentine. The letter writing parties and benefit shows make such a huge difference, they hope you all to know just how grateful they are. If you’re planning on doing a benefit show or letter-writing party, we’re beginning to accumulate some posters and tabling resources here.

We just received this letter from Cody Sutherlin that he asked us to post:

To my Family, Friends, Comrades, Supporters, and Fans,
Thank you! I appreciate all the cards and letters full of support. Through all of the turmoil over the last nine months, you all have helped me to weather the storm. Unless you’ve been through what we have, you can’t understand what it feels like to be incarcerated and have a nation of support out there. Hearing everything that has taken place has warmed my heart. From the fundraising to the protests, the benefit shows to the letter writing to the visits… I thank you all! I know that it was hard for people to hear that we were taking such unreasonable plea bargains, but the judge and prosecution would have done everything in their power to cook us had we not. Aside from it being an unfair playing field, we simply could not put our loved ones through the stress of the messy trial that it would have been. I also would like to thank our legal team for all of their hard work and time. Our lawyers went thorough so much with this case, including death threats, and did everything in their power to defend us. Again the State was just simply not playing fair, which made their job all that much harder. I want to let everyone know that personally, I am simply glad to have it all over with. The facility I am in now is like summer camp compared to Cook County Jail, and it is filled with opportunities to shave time off my sentence. I am currently working on enrolling in college courses, where i will receive a 1/2 day credit for every day I am enrolled. It’s looking like I can reasonably expect to be released between February and May of next year, maybe sooner if some more opportunities arise. If not though, between school and the gym, my time will go by in a flash. I wanted to let everyone know not to spend much money on books for me, because I have a library available to me here. If there’s something that I really want that I cannot get here, I will let people know. If people would like to contribute in some way, donate money to the WePay account or continue to write letters. Other than that, when I am released I expect a big welcome home party! Again, I want to thank everyone for all of their love and support and I look forward to seeing everyone on the outside.

-Cody Lee

 

We’ll continue to post any updates and change of status for the Tinley Park Five on their individual TP5 pages. Updates for John Tucker and Alex Stuck should be coming very soon.

Jason Sutherlin, antifa anarchist, sentenced to six years for the beating of nazis in Chicago.

On January 4, 2013 all members of the Tinley Park Five accepted a non-cooperating plea bargain in which they each plead guilty to three felony counts of Armed Violence in exchange for “lenient” sentences and the guarantee of ‘day-for-day’ good behavior. Jason Sutherlin was sentenced to 6 years. Cody Lee Sutherlin and Dylan Sutherlin were sentenced to 5 years. Alex Stuck and John Tucker were sentenced to 3 1/2 years due to their youth and complete lack of criminal history. Each will be placed upon two years of supervised release upon release from prison.

Before the plea was accepted, the State offered the Tinley Park Five one last chance to betray their comrades in exchange for their freedom. What a waste of time! As anarchist and antifascists, the Tinley Park Five are no more capable of selling out the struggle than their broken system is capable of reforming itself! They laughed at the offer and bravely accepted their fate.

Credit was given for the 7 months already served in Cook County. They will receive ’day-for-day’ good time credit which effectively cuts the sentences in half. The state of Illinois also offers several programs and classes which can chip away at sentences. Optimistically, Alex and John could be out before Christmas 2013. Dylan and Cody could be out my Autumn 2014. Jason could be out by Christmas 2014. This is all hypothetical and highly speculative of course.

On Monday January 7th, the Tinley Park Five will be transferred to Stateville for between one and three weeks. There the Illinois Department of Corrections will decide where they will spend the duration of their sentences. Until this decision is reached PLEASE HOLD ALL MAIL. If you wish to donate to the Tinley Park Five at this time we ask that you use WePay rather than money orders at this time, as we’re concerned that they will get lost or delayed as the Tinley Park Five are being transferred between facilities. We’re working on trying to quickly raise as much money as possible to ease this transition.

Make no mistake, it is with great sorrow that we accept just how long we’ll be separated from our dear friends, but they will not be forgotten nor will their struggle cease in their absence. This support crew will continue to advocate for each of them in whatever they decide to do until every last one of them is free. Communiques from several members of the Tinley Park Five to their supporters are expected soon and will be posted on this website.

The Tinley Park Five as well as their supporters, comrades, family, and friends would like to thank Aaron Goldstein, Sara Garber, Brian Barrido, James Fennerty, Stuart Smith, Matthew Dodge, and everyone else who assisted in their legal defense. They would also like to thank the National Lawyer’s Guild for connecting these attorneys with the Tinley Park Five as well as the People’s Law Office for consulting with us in the initial stages of this ordeal.

The Tinley Park Five also wanted to thank Chicago Anarchist Black Cross as well as South Side for their help in bringing people out to their most recent court appearance. Seeing so many supporters meant more than you could know to them. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it. Thanks to everyone on the interwebz for helping to get the word out about it so well.

I was able to speak with Jason this morning and Alex last night and both of them asked that there be a public acknowledgement of all the groups who have humbled us with their support thus far. Thanks to Denver ABC, Salt Lake City ABC, New York City ABC, Rose City Antifa, Southside Chicago Anti-Racist Action, Philly ARA, Lafayette HARM, Circle City ARA, One People’s Project, Bursts-o-Goodness, Political Fail Blog, Sacramento Prisoner Support, M1AA, IWW, VICE, Worker’s World (especially NYC and Detroit affiliates), the Btown crew, as well as anyone who’s attended a letter-writing party, a court date, or came to visit. Thanks to the countless organizations that I apologize in advance for forgetting to mention.

Thanks to all of you Anonymous gangsters that had our backs with #opStormfrontRaid. Dirty South, whoever you are, you’re a life-saver, literally. Thanks to anyone who has stepped up in any way they could whether that be sharing a link or donating a couple dollars.

Thanks to everyone that has helped, but please don’t forget… the Tinley Park Five aren’t going to be in the news headlines as often but they are still going to need just as much support. We ask that you not forget about the Tinley Park Five! Please keep the benefit shows, letter-writing parties, and other acts of solidarity coming as they’re needed now as much as ever.

We’ll leave you with this quote, nearly a century old, which still rings just as true today:

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” – Eugene Debs 1918

Yours in Solidarity,

Tinley Park Five and Support Crew