We are the people fighting to suffer no more
An open letter from prisoners of the ongoing uprisings in France
23 October 2026
We are writing to you from a prison in the Île-de-France region (France) whose name we will not disclose. We have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of looting, of violence against law enforcement, of unlawful assembly, of concealing our faces. We are the people who rose up. The people who suffer and who are now fighting to suffer no more.
We are writing to you from a prison in the Île-de-France region whose name we will not disclose, to protect ourselves against possible reprisals, particularly from the judicial and prison authorities.
We are university students, high school students, teachers, unemployed people, restaurant owners, small business owners, delivery workers, gangsters, from every neighborhood and every town and city in the region: from Créteil, Bobigny, Belleville, Montreuil, Bagnolet, Noisy-le-Sec, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris. We are of every age, every skin color and every nationality; we are Arabs, white people, Black people, Roma, Turks, Germans, French people.
We have been accused, rightly or wrongly, of looting, of violence against law enforcement, of unlawful assembly, of concealing our faces. In the end, our circumstances or whatever we might have been accused of hardly matter, because the courts have bowed to the orders of Macron’s regime to throw us all in jail. However filthy and overcrowded the prisons may be—as long as they can cram us in!
This reminds us just how little what they call Justice resembles an independent institution, especially when the state and the bourgeoisie feel threatened.
In prison, we have the privilege of being able to numb our minds all day watching BFMTV, CNEWS and the channels of the regime’s other watchdogs. The ideological offensive on these television talk shows bolsters the repressive policies of those who think they govern us. This offensive matches the fear that has gripped them since last Saturday. It was a real revolutionary warning. Everywhere, they are now trying to make us regret what we did, to make us give in, to deter us from coming back on the Saturdays to come. They silence the support, the pride and all those messages we have read and heard over the past few days, such as “I wish I’d been there,” or, “You made them pay.” They want us to believe that our violence is comparable to the thousands of lives crushed by capitalism every day.
If the media servants of those in power cannot establish a “typical profile” of the insurgents, it is because we are the people who rose up, the people who suffer, and who are now fighting to suffer no more. They try to divide us, to categorize us as protesters, vandals, looters, scum, or the far left. But they have failed to understand that we are all of these at once! We are united by our anger and our desire for revolution. A revolution that gives us back the possibility of breathing and hoping, of sharing and holding things in common. That finally allows us to decide how we want to live. A revolution that puts an end to this humiliation that spews luxury.
This social rage drove us into the streets last Saturday; it is the same rage that runs through the corridors and cells of the prison where we are locked up. This rage also explains the other prisoners’ support and respect for the insurgents of 17 October. Nor will we accept being divided into political prisoners on the one hand and common-law prisoners on the other, because this unjust world has driven us all into this regime’s prisons.
For all these reasons, we say to you loud and clear: we regret nothing! Nothing except not having protected ourselves enough against the repressive violence that was about to descend on us.
We therefore call on everyone on the outside to keep standing firm against the state and to return to the streets every Saturday, until Macron and his entire rotting world fall.
• We call on you to organize between Saturdays, to meet, to prepare, and to take your lives into your own hands now.
• We call on you to support all prisoners like us and all insurgents here and elsewhere.
• We call on you to leave small shops alone as far as possible, as a reminder that our popular justice targets only the biggest, the richest, the multinationals—only those who have been robbing us, crushing us, and despising us for far too long.
• We call on you to reject every division between us and to declare loud and clear what we are fighting for: revolution.
Featured image: “In the face of outrageous repression, a radiant youth.”
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