Lines in the Sand

From With Whatever Weapons Distro

Writings on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley from an Anarchist Prisoner of War by Casey Goonan

To commemorate Palestinian Prisoners’ Day—April 17, 2026—we are sharing Lines in the Sand: Writings on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley from an Anarchist Pris­oner of War, a collection of writing Casey Goo­nan produced while imprisoned at Santa Rita Jail awaiting trial for actions carried out in solidarity with the Palestinian people enduring and resist­ing genocide in Gaza.

As a comrade in many movements—from street uprisings for Black liberation, mass prisoner struggles, and anti-imperialist solidarity in the belly of the beast—Casey’s works (whether in their own name as a guerrilla intellectual or anonymously in uncountable movement contri­butions) have never been bound by barbed-wire barriers or ephemeral abstractions, always seeking to help us to determine what’s possible here and now, especially through their immense efforts in the zine-to-prisoner distro True Leap Press.

Casey’s intellectual curiosity is limitless, and, while what’s collected here is far from the en­tirety of what Casey wrote while at Santa Rita, these are the interventions that Casey drafted, edited, edited again, and sent outside to us in a stack of manila envelopes for us to share widely with those who need them. Writing is a task that never ceases for Casey—they are always reading, reflecting, and sitting down with a pen in hand to poetically untangle not just their context of cap­tivity but the wider stakes of global anti-imperi­alist struggle.

Casey, in their words and in their action, has al­ways sought to intervene directly into the only fight worth intervening in—the struggle for a better world, without walls or cages. Their writ­ings collected here—tactical and strategic assess­ments of possibilities for action, precise analysis of the (material and discursive) political economy of U.S./Zionist settler-colonialism, imperialism, and genocide, as well as personal reflections on the stakes of taking the leap into action—are an invitation for each of us to continue to rigorously interrogate our own sites and scenes of struggle, to hold open concealed possibilities, to break down the walls that divide us from the “we” we could become, and to take the true leap into ac­tion. 

This book is the result of inside/outside collabo­ration from a few comrades to the end, lovingly transcribed from hand-written letters, and pre­sented to you as a revolutionary gift and inter­vention in the struggle for Palestinian liberation and abolition of the colonial-imperialist prison world. Casey’s wish to release their writing to the world on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is also a de­sire to shrink the fabricated distances between our global struggles, which we share with Casey as a serious project for any emancipatory struggle, especially since imprisonment as an institution spreads across the prison world, the prison sky.

It is Casey’s hope that you will read, print, and share this book, reflect on it with those with whom you’re in struggle, and ultimately enter into a broader conversation about what transpired across university campuses in 2024 in solidarity with Gaza as well as what is possible / necessary to do here and now. As a free-to-download, anti-copyright body of work, this collection is an invi­tation to expand our material and collective sup­port for Casey and other comrades behind bars and to also shrink the fabricated distances be­tween “inside” and “outside”—our comrades in­side have much to contribute. Each chapter of this book is also available as a zine for ease of reading and distribution.

For more information on how to write to Casey or to put money on their books, visit: freecaseynow.noblogs.org.

Free Palestine!
Free Casey!
Free Them All!

Love & Rage

Lines in the Sand: Writings on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley from an Anarchist Prisoner of War

I. To Speak for Myself

II. Poetry

III. Academicism, within & without the “Academy”

IV. Singular Apparatus, Differentiated Terrains

V. University of California as Infrastructure of Empire

VI. Light the Way, Part I: The Gaza Solidarity Encampment at U.C. Berkeley

VII. Site & Scene of the University Campus

VIII. Forms of Struggle

IX. Light the Way, Part II: The Campus Flood

X. Lines in the Sand

XI. Federal Task-Force to Combat Anti-[Zionism]

XII. A Message to a Prisoner Letter Writing Event

XIII. Timeline of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment Wave & Campus Flood at U.C. Berkeley at U.C. Berkeley from My Perspective, April to June 2024

Comments

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/29/2026 - 11:10

https://imginn.com/p/DXPLanpAN75/

The book is an interesting record of the boundaries of the u.s. white-dominated left. Casey went way further, in both theory & practice, than even most of the “revolutionary”/“radical” milieu, & it's interesting to read about both experientially & to grasp the understandings that motivated the actions.
Yet: they still don't understand themselves as a colonizer, or that understanding isn't elaborated as much as other aspects of their subject position (namely their politics, work history, mental health experience). They are unequivocal in delegitimizing the existence of “israel” but waver when it comes to the “united states.” Through True Leap, Casey is about as well-read on anti-Blackness as anyone could be—yet there's no extended analysis focusing on how slavery & anti-Blackness are reproduced in “the movement”, the university, or the “isrseli” state. & it's certainly not because Casey is uncritical of those things! Simply put, nothing that happens to Black people motivates this kind of resistance, just like Black prisoners of war don't motivate the kind of support Casey has received. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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