Join us on Monday April 29th, 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we complement the 2024 NE Bash Back Convergence in Philly with a letter writing for incarcerated transgender anarchist, environmentalist, and animal rights activist Marius Mason. Marius is currently serving an almost 22-year sentence for property damage conducted in defense of the planet.
After years of aboveground organizing for social movements in Indiana and Michigan, Marius embarked on a Earth Liberation Front sabotage campaign in the late 90s. In 1999, he set fire to a lab at the University of Michigan that researched genetically modified organisms (GMO) for Monsanto. Threatened with a life sentence, lacking financial stability, and wary of dragging his family into a costly legal battle, Marius pled guilty in 2009. At sentencing, the judge applied a terrorism enhancement, makng Marius’s sentence the harshest punishment levied on anyone convicted of environmental sabotage in the US to date. No one was ever harmed in any of his actions.
Marius lived and worked in the Detroit area for most of his life. Like the late Earth First! (EF!) organizer Judi Bari, he was part of a generation of radicals who worked to link the environmental and labor movements, and was jointly active in both EF! and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This alliance contributed vastly to the initial successes of the anti-globalization movement, including the 1999 anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle. Mason was an editor of the the Industrial Worker, and is also a musician. In 1999, he recorded “Not For Profit,” a neo-folk album with EF! comrade Darryl Cherney.
If you can’t join us in person this month, you can still write to Marius at the address below. Please review his current mail restrictions before drafting your letter.
Marius Mason #04672-061
FMC Fort Worth
P.O. Box 15330
Fort Worth, TX 76119
We’ll also sign and send birthday cards to U.S.-held political prisoners with birthdays in May: Xinachtli (May 11th) and Kojo Bomani Sababu (May 27th).