This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Under Lock and Key
RAIL Radio Program
Nov. 6, 1998

Air Date: November 6.
3 readers:  A, B, C

A: Congress tries to extradite a former U.$ political prisoner from
Cuba
B: The death penalty in Amerika
C: FBI launches network of state DNA prisoner databases
A: Collection of Massachusetts' prisoner's DNA halted
B: Film about Angola prison portrays the humanity of prisoners, 
but downplays the inhumanity of the prison system


C:  Welome to Under Lock and Key, news and commentary about prisons
from the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League. The U.$. incarcerates a
greater percentage of its population than any other country. The rate for
imprisonment of Blacks is 4 times that of apartheid South Africa, and the 
U.$. sends more Black men to prison than college. The purpose of this 
program is to educate about, and inspire activism against the Amerikan 
lockdown.

A:  Congress tries to extradite a former U.$ political prisoner from Cuba

Assata Shakur has lived in exile in Cuba since 1979, after she escaped
a bogus prison term. Assata first organized with the Black Panther Party
and then with the Black Liberation Army. Assata and Sundiata Acoli were
ambushed by the New Jersey pigs on May 2, 1973 because both were
revolutionaries fighting for liberation of the Black nation. It's
important
to note that Assata was never convicted of the charges that made her
wanted and worthy of stopping on the NJ turnpike by the troopers.

During the ambush, a State Trooper was killed. Assata was convicted of
aiding and abetting in the alleged murder. Assata never handled a gun
during the ambush and was shot with her hands raised in the air.
Sundiata
was convicted of killing the pig and remains locked up in Amerikkka's
gulags. Both were tried in white Amerikas courts after being set up on
these bogus charges.  Assata is one of the many fighters for liberation
of the Black Nation who was set-up and convicted on serious felony charges 
as part of the U.$. government effort to squash national liberation 
struggles.

Assata has continued to speak out from exile about the conditions of
political activists imprisoned in Amerikkka. She has exposed the
psychological warfare against them and consistently pointed out the
fact that prison conditions are designed to stop the oppressed from
organizing for their own liberation.

Today Assata is faced with the possibility of forced extradition from
her exile in Cuba. In a recent United Snakes congressional vote, Assata's
ex-comrade and former Black Panther, Bobby Rush, supported the
extradition. Earlier this year, New Jersey pig governor Whitman offered a 
$50,000 reward to for the return of Assata from Cuba.

Activists within u.$. borders  have a responsibility for understanding
and opposing the conditions of occupation that dominate the Black Nation.
The Black Panther Party argued that the police occupy the Black Nation as
a 
foreign troop occupies territory, and this is still true today. Under
these
circumstances, Assata Shakur was wrongfully convicted and forced into
exile for the crime of being a revolutionary. Under these circumstances,
Assata Shakur knows that she cannot expect fair treatment within the
confines of the United Snakes of Amerika.

[Play track one of "Lynch Mob". Ideally, start 3.5-4 seconds in.  This
is 1:54 long and there is no gap between this and the 2nd track. Some
white 
dude says "The mob was totally unruly--mob was totally unruly--mob was 
totally unruly" and it's over and we cut.  There is an explosision right 
during the 3rd time he says it.]

B: FBI launches network of state DNA prisoner databases

On October 13, the FBI launched a network of state databases of
prisoner DNA. The network will match DNA material from so-called "unsolved 
crimes" and future "crimes" with the evidence from the prisoner's DNA.
This 
is yet
more evidence that this rotten system doesn't think that prisons serve
a rehabilitative purpose.=20

We called the crimes so-called because this system has a subjective
definition of crime. The importation of drugs into North America isn't
a crime, nor is the U.$. bombing of Africa's largest pharmaceutical
company. The crimes of the U.$. government and its allied corporations are 
far more dangerous than any anything else that happens in North America.

The database currently has 250,000 DNA samples and 4,600 unsolved
cases. Another 350,000 samples from various states will be online soon.

All 50 states passed laws authorizing the pigs to take DNA samples from
at least some types of prisoners. Not all states have begun collecting
samples, however, and as we will discuss next, Massachusetts' law has
been recently struck down.  A few states mandate that all prisoners,
including those convicted of white-collar crime, give samples. The Federal
government does not have such a law, yet.


C: Collection of Massachusetts' prisoner's DNA halted

On August 14, Massachusetts prisoners won a victory in the courts, with
Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein ruling that the state's DNA
database was unconstitutional. Forty-seven other states have similar laws, 
and the prisoner's and probationer's attorneys hope that precedent has
been 
set to strike down these other laws.

The principal grounds by which the law was struck down was of privacy
rights based on the Fourth Amendment.  The judge argued that
"[r]egardless of the state's compelling interest, an unjustified random 
bodily intrusion without any indication of individualized suspicion is 
unreasonable and intolerable."

Typically privacy "rights" are reserved for those with power and
prestige to protect. We emphasized the word "rights" because unlike the
bourgeoisie, we don't pretend that there are certain rights that people
have. Rather, we believe, as Mao Zedong said, that "there are no
rights, only power struggles." The only thing that we can count on in this
world is what the masses themselves can fight to gain and retain.

The Bill of Rights in the U.$ Constitution claims to speak for all
citizens, even though it is rarely that way in practice. But it is a
good tactic for progressive lawyers to try and get the Bill of Rights to
apply to everyone, especially prisoners

An additional weakness of the Massachusetts law is that it did not
restrict what the DNA could be used for. It would have been totally
legal for the pigs to use it in their current state-funded racist quest
for 
a
"crime gene." Nor was information gleaned from the DNA--such as disease
susceptibility--required to be shared with the person from which it was
snatched.

RAIL opposes the DNA database because it is a potential weapon in
Amerika's war against the internal colonies.  The database could be
(mis)used in many ways, but even as it relates to the fight against
actual crime, we don't want to see the pigs gain any additional tools. As
sixty years of government statistics show, locking more people up doesn't
affect crime.

We aren't saying that violent crime is Ok, although we rarely fail to
point out that such crime is a small portion of what prisoners are
incarcerated for. But we can't let this system and its leaders point
fingers at street crime when they are guilty of far larger and more
violent crimes each day.

A:
The Farm: Angola
Directed by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus
Film about Angola prison portrays the humanity of prisoners, but
downplays inhumanity of the prison system


Angola is the largest prison in Amerika, covering 18,000 acres. Of its
5,000 prisoners, 77% are Black. Most of the prisoners are sentenced to
"natural life" or extremely long sentences, leading to the warden's
estimate that 85% of the current population will die behind the walls
of Angola. Angola was transformed from an old-style slave plantation into
a modern day slave plantation (prison) after the Civil War. The old
plantation was also called Angola, after the place of origin of so many
of the slaves who worked there.

The film, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Sundance Film
Festival, effectively talks about the personal impact of a life
sentences on prisoners, thereby bringing out the humanity of the
prisoners. 
For example, the film tries to portray the loneliness created. The average 
prisoner at Angola never receives a visit from the outside after the first 
3 years of incarceration. But it fails to talk about the systemic
brutality 
of
prison, nor does it address, beyond mentioning it, the history of
Angola as being one of Amerika's most violent prisons.

C:Angola uses 1,800 non-prisoner workers to run the prison. Two hundred
families of employees live on the grounds of the prison. Early in the
video, we see one guard boast of the great job security working in a
prison brings. This reactionary statement is quite accurate, as prisons
are one of Amerika's leading growth industries.

Unlike the armed pigs on horseback, the real work on the Angola
plantation is done by the prisoners. Most prisoners work in the fields for 
4 cents an hour. The best jobs in the prison pay only 20 cents an hour.



The film interviews six prisoners for their stories. One prisoner is a
trustee, one on death row, one an old man dying from cancer, and
another an old man turned religious leader.

One of the most effective things about the film is showing the
arresting mug shots of the prisoners interviewed. These photos are from 
1972, or 1959. The prisoner incarcerated in 1959 was 24 at the time. The
prisoner on death row reports that since age 12 he has spent all but four 
years in prison. Due to the Amerikan injustice system, prison is all some
residents of North America will ever know.

The most amazing part of the film to RAIL is the segment on one
prisoner's parole hearing. A Black man was sentenced 20 years ago for the 
rapes of two teenagers. When the "victim" was interviewed
by police, she was asked "Would you be able to identify the assailant?"
No, she said, because "All niggers look alike." But she was able to
identify one person in the line-up -- the one in handcuffs. The
photograph of the lineup shown in the film verifies the fact that only the 
defendant wore handcuffs.

At the parole hearing the prisoner presented new evidence, suppressed
from the defense at the time of trial, that the medical report after the
rapes reported that the teenagers were virgins. Therefore, not only was 
this
Black man framed, but the rapes didn't even happen.

There is more. At his parole hearing, the "victim" is told that the
parole board is very sympathetic to her, and one parole board member
identifies himself as the president of a "victims rights" organization.
Two 
board members are old white men, and one is an old Black man. The "victim" 
is still a racist, saying that she fears all Blacks, and while she doesn't 
fear the Black pig on the parole board, she wouldn't want to be alone with 
him either.

All on camera, the parole board decides to deny the application before
the prisoner even enters, and when he leaves, they forget about the camera
and make their bias even clearer.



A: The warden of Angola claims his job is to spread hope that prisoners
will "win the lottery" and be allowed to leave the prison. As the film 
ends,
updates are given on each prisoner. No pardons are given, and appeal
hearings are denied. This applies to even the elderly religious
prisoner, who has a pardon recommendation on the governor's desk.  The 
dying prisoner is buried in the prison cemetary.

RAIL puts so much work into the prison issue because the prisons and
police are key weapons in Amerika's imperialist war against its
internal Black, Latino and Indigenous colonies. As opposed to the film, 
this
perspective offers an explanation as to why the incarceration rate for 
Blacks is eight-times
that of whites.

While RAIL was impressed with the portrayal of injustice in the film,
we thought the necessary indictment of the whole Amerikan injustice system 
was far too subtle. Thousands of people will see The Farm.  Most won't be 
affected by it.  The film's politics are too subtle and the lives of
incarcerated Blacks so foreign to most, this film will have little
impact. RAIL will likely show The Farm in the future, adding it to our
arsenal of documentaries about prison. We will be sure to emphasize the 
weaknesses of this film in our introductory remarks as well as the 
discussion in order
to present a more revolutionary view of the Amerikkkan Lockdown.


B:
This has been, Under Lock and Key, a weekly Revolutionary
Anti-Imperialist League program about prisons. For more information, 
contact: RAIL PO Box
712 Amherst MA 01004, or email mim@mim.org.

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