Criminal Organization, or is Organizing the Crime?

[Below are excerpts from a proposal from a comrade. - ULK Editor]

One of the greatest leaders to teach us how to move lumpen organizations (LOs) to the next level by applied science was the beloved Brotha Malcolm X. While many before him spoke about the issues of self-determination and human rights, his was the most vocal, and his articulation was more relevant to us with street and hood ethos because he was once a pimp, hustler and to some degree, a gangster.

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One of the first things I strive to illuminate to a student is the application of these ideas to the present oppression that lumpen organizations suffer without understanding their legitimate human rights to exist through the Universal Human Rights of Self-Determination. Incorporating the fundamentals of legality and sociology, I posit:

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
-Robert H. Jackson. Supreme Court Ruling in West Virginia Dept. of Ed. v. Barnette (1943).

and,

“History should teach us. . . that in times of high emotional excitement, minority parties and groups which advocate extremely unpopular social or governmental innovations will always be typed as criminal gangs and attempts will always be made to drive them out.”
-Associate Justice, Hugo Black dissent in Barenblatt v. U.S., 360 U.S. 109, At. 159 (1959).

Hugo Black ought to know, as a member of the outlaw and terrorist network KKK before stepping into the justice position.

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Common sense illuminates that if a general continues to go out to battle using the same failed approaches and armory that has proven to be counter-productive because it is not only known, studied and mastered by the opposing forces, but they are the ones who designed it, s/he will fail. S/he must retreat and restrategize and not only restock, but seek new armory to do battle.

Even before I became an astute student of the Art of Vita or student of Sun Tzu, and was in my street hustling mode, I knew early on that once one of us got caught hustling a particular mode or game, it was time to change strategy. Or to put it more simply, if that dope house got raided, it was time to move to a new locale.

Yet in terms of strategy, a lot of LOs think we can continue in the same old hustle scheme. Even more harmful is the individual who thinks this way. They don’t realize they are helping the forces of hate justify their “collective punishment” of the lumpen as a class.

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It’s a betrayal to the struggle for street formations to still be living and accepting this kind of treatment that affects us on the street and in prison. How many generations of our people are in prison from each individual formation? People need to stop accepting this mentality of inferiority, that we are criminals for trying to define our own futures.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The right to organize for self-determination is denied regularly to the oppressed nations in the United $tates. Following the downfall of the most successful party to represent the Black nation, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the imperialists went about a conscious effort to divide the oppressed along class interests by integrating the petty bourgeoisie and further criminalizing the lumpen. As a result any independent oppressed nation organization today is automatically labeled as criminal, terrorist or a security threat with little resistance from the oppressed nation petty bourgeoisie and, as always, loud support from the white nation.

The failed strategies for self-determination through capitalist business models, legal or illegal, need to be left behind for a righteous collective struggle to be free from oppression. Not only will the lumpen find their own power in reuniting around this struggle, but they will begin to find allies in other groups when they stand up for true self-determination. Self-determination is earned, not guaranteed.