WALTER EDMUND BOND (37096013)

10/19/2012 8:48:39 AM

Mi Nombre Es Lobo Solitario

Recently I read the book ‘Long Walk To Freedom’ by Nelson Mandela.  It was one of the most powerful books I have read. In it Mr. Mandela said ‘A freedom fighter should always remember his roots’.  I have recently had chance to reflect and remember my roots when my father sent me a newspaper cut out of local news from the late 70′s.  It was about a shack that I lived in as a young child with my family.  I was told we lived in a trailer before this place but I do not remember that.  I do have many fond and bitter memories of what my father deemed ‘The Cottage’.  I remember climbing the wood pile and breaking my nose when the logs broke and rolled. I remember that this cottage marked the beginning of the state woods that I used to play in and explore.  I remember that I used to eat wild berries and rhubarb.  I remember swimming in the lake directly behind our shack.  I also remember the racism and classism of the area as well.

We were the notoriously poor family of Tanglefoot Iowa.  Apparently, so poor that the newspaper ran that article about us, trying to frame us as some family of wannabe little house on the prairians.  Many parents didn’t let there kids come down and play because we were poor.  As if it was a disease that might rub off.  I remember two brothers, the Henningsons, asking me why my mother was caramel colored.  I said because she is from Puerto Rico.  The next day they told me that they found out that a Puerto Rican Is ‘half nigger and half spic’.  I had no Idea what either of those words meant.  I remember coming home and proudly telling my mother, ‘your a spic’!  I learned very quickly that this was a very terrible epithet.  I also learned that playing with the Animals around our shack was far more interesting and rewarding than the snobby brats down the road.

I also recently reread my final statement to the court in Salt lake City, Utah.  It’s been a year since I looked at that statement and it reminded me of the difference a year can make.  At the time of my sentencing in Utah I had been in county jails and federal detention centers ‘in transit’ all across America for the preceding year and a half.  I had gone through a whole other federal court case for my arson of the sheepskin factory in Colorado.  The powers that be in Utah were determined to punish me to the fullest and even filed motions to the judge begging him to throw out the federal sentencing guidelines and give me more prison time than what was allowable by the US supreme court!  I was really beginning to feel the stress add up.  I had resolved myself from the beginning to never equivocate to the courts or to the media no matter what the cost to me personally.

A year after that verdict that left me with a little over 12 years in prison.  I now sit for an indefinite period of time In the CMU political prison unit of Marion.  The federal prisons first and notorious supermax penitentiary, on a control unit that is the equivalent of a hamster house for 40 men.  I have nothing but time to reflect and think/over think everything within my memory.  I have evaluated my crimes of arson in the name of Animal Liberation, time and time again.  Was it worth my current incarceration?  Will there ever be a time for the rest of my life that I will not be harassed by the FBI? How many Animals could I be saving or helping right now legally had I not taken this path? All very valid questions.  Having found some serenity in spirituality I often see things in a much different way than I did before this epiphany.

But the inescapable truth is that the loving precept of peace only exists under the ready arm of justice. The truth is that Animals have faced the worst atrocities at the hands of humanity for the machinations of technologically advanced civilization.  They still face these horrors in unimaginable numbers.  As far as I am concerned The ALF are the angels of deliverance for the lives of Animals and the Earth, and I am proud to have served.  I will always mark those times as the pinnacle of my life, and as the true resistance that must be undertaken a million times more if this earth is even to have a fight chance at survival!

The Governments of the world are a Babylon system that use racism, classism, war, death, murder and religion. to rape, destroy, violate and oppress all innocent life.  I’m afraid that as long as these satanic systems of abuse define and manipulate all of us.  Then I will have no choice but to remain defiant in the face of adversity and an advocate of direct activism, and let the record stand.

Animal Liberation, Whatever It May Take!

Regards,

Walter Bond