Georgia Prisons

The purpose of this article is to shine a spotlight into an area where darkness prevails. Now I know Georgia’s prisons are not the only ones with this problem, but I’m willing to wager that Georgia is most likely leading the nation in such instances where INMATES ARE PERFORMING (FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES) THE DUTIES OF OFFICERS.

First off, Georgia’s close security prisons (same as maximum security) are experiencing extreme shortages of correctional officers. It seems as though no one wants to be a part of a very obvious and very well known corrupt system or governmental body.

So now what a lot of prison wardens, administrators, officers, are doing, is becoming very familiar with gang leaders, or high ranking members of gangs, and basically using them and their subordinate gang members to police other prisoners.

Now some may say, I thought you would like this situation, it’s ideal. EXCUSE ME, BUT FUCK NO, IT’S GOT EVERYTHING FUCKED UP! For instance inside the housing units, if you’re a civilian prisoner (non-gang affiliation) you are most likely not going to have access to a cell to sleep in or use the toilet, because gang members want their own personal room.

The gang members are doing a lot of oppressing towards civilian prisoners (robbery, extortion, beatings, stabbing, murdering) and a lot of these acts are done for the sheer pleasure or entertainment of the gangs.

They even kick other prisoners out of the housing units, forcing them to be housed in isolation/segregation. Basically if you’re a non-gang affiliated prisoner, you can’t stay in general population unless you want to sleep in the dayroom/common area. What’s even more absurd is that the gang members don’t even want their so-called brother member to share a room with him.

The gang members are assigned nearly all the prison jobs, therefore they control the whole prison and its movement. The meals are brought to the housing unit, where the gang members distribute out the trays to themselves first and give what they don’t want to the ones remaining. So you’d be fortunate to eat!

The food portions are very very pathetic, not even a kindergarten student would be fulfilled from these small portions. YES INMATES ARE PURPOSEFULLY STARVING OTHER PRISONERS.

HERE’S THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THE CAMEL’S BACK, if for some reason you and an officer get into a heated exchange these same gangsters take the side of the officer against you and will even beat you, stab you, yes even murder you.

The sad thing about all of this is, these inmate officers are not handsomely rewarded for any of these acts! Yeah the high ranking ones have their contraband, and other prison luxuries, but for the most part they don’t have anything to show for their acts. Most are serving a life sentence (must serve 30 years before parole board considers parole for them) or life without parole, or any other combination of lengthy sentences.

Now I respect that some prisoners are working the system to their advantage, but you should never forget that your goal is to get released. So while you working the system to keep contraband shipments coming, and hustling to either provide for family or to save up for attorney fee or both, keep in mind that you’re contributing to the oppression of others and to yourself by helping the wardens, administrators, and officers operate these prisons.

Some prisons in Georgia are even neglecting to open the law library, especially here at Valdosta State Prison. The cell phones have been the biggest gift and curse in Georgia prisons, because these guys allow wardens, administration, officers, HELL THE WHOLE GDC TO VIOLATE U.S. CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS SO THAT THE STAFF DON’T COME SEARCHING AND POSSIBLY FIND THEIR CELL PHONE. THINK ABOUT IT prison cell then phone, and you get cellphone, that’s babysitting you in a cell!

Instead of attending to the law library, and trying to find a loop hole with their case to regain their freedom, they’re on social media, or chatting with some chatline girl, instead of using the cellphone as a tool to regain their life. DO YOU GET IT NOW CELL PHONE? PRISON CELL PHONE!

It seems, gone are the times when inmates would stick together regardless of race, organization, affiliations etc etc to reach a common goal or to better their treatment.

They’ve let the powers that be use their differences, along with their frustrating sentence/case circumstances, and their greed for material possessions (commissary food, cellphones and other contraband items) to divide them and place some above others to cause even more division.

In Georgia we’re in prime position to unify and demand some things. Due to the fact that Georgia Department of Corrections is in an extreme shortage of officers.

This what I’m suggesting could be done without violence or breaking the rules. But we have to get the gangs and their purpose and main mission back into the proper perspective, which is to serve and protect civilians/citizens, to stop oppression.

The gangs have been infiltrated by these imposters who’ve gained rank and position only to destroy it from within. So be careful who you follow.

In closing, think deep, find what you and your so-called opp have in common, come together to fight against your common enemy. Don’t allow your oppressors to use you to do their dirty work, by giving you some trinkets so you the oppressed will in turn oppress the already oppressed. We all have the same fight so why not join forces? There’s nothing that a warden, administrator or officer could bring in to me or promise me to trick me into performing his duty. I’ll never perform violence against another inmate for an officer, who when done with me, will turn traitor against me. Again I will not let Dept of Corrections pimp me. While they go home each and every day to their freedom and home and family, while some $50 cellphone keeps me distracted from seeking freedom. These cheap devices are not worth a life!

Refocus, Rehabilitate, Regain.

MIM(Prisons) adds: See page 2 of Under Lock & Key for the 5 principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons and see if you can use them to rebuild unity among the lumpen in your area.

I’ve been retaliated against by correctional officers that are gang affiliated. on 12 January 2023, the Court found I arguably stated viable retaliation and failure to protect claims against Telfair State Prison (T.S.P.) correctional officers.

On 30 March 2023 out of retaliation I was transferred to an even worse prison with a very high murder rate.

Upon arrival on 30 March 2023 here at Smith State Prison (S.S.P.) I tried to request protective custody and was denied by Warden Beasley, who was a Deputy Warden at T.S.P. On 18 April 2023 I filed an emergency motion to be placed on protective custody, but was denied and my family was forced to pay for protection for me while I tried living in General Population so that I could have access to the law library.

Since I arrived at S.S.P. the law library has been completely unavailable. I started requesting case law on 2 April 2023 and have not been to the law library not once nor has any of my requests been filled. The shortness of staff and high murder rate has kept the prison on complete lockdown.

On 8 December 2023 I received a court order notifying me of the consequences if I failed to make a sufficient showing in an opposition to defendant summary judgement. I did in fact support an opposition without access to the law library. I explained to the judge in a request for an extentsion of time that I didn’t have access to the law library. I was granted the extension without the judge questioning why the law libary was unavailable.

Revolutionary greetings, my fellow comrades!

As a first time writer for MIM(Prisons) I must confess that, it’s absolutely a blessing to have found such a space/medium to expose what’s currently taking place within the Georgia Department of Corrections (G.D.C), hereinafter “Georgia industrial slave complex”. Because honestly, with every issue of Under Lock & Key, I thirst to develop a political cadre, in order to establish a vanguard party among the (lumpen) prisoner class.

Here at Telfair State plantation, there’s no real sense of political consciousness among the masses nor is there any form of unity among the street tribes, whom all proclaim to have been birthed out of Black struggle to combat against oppression from a political perspective to protect their community. To which I ask, isn’t the slave plantation environment currently their community? Then why is it that their claims, tends to seem as though nothing more than “persuasive rhetoric” produced from the tenets of a force with every form of materialistic/imperialist reason to divide the common? and yet, it gets worse.

There’s a massive staff shortage at the root of many Georgia industrial slave sanitation failures and the problems don’t stop there. It’s beyond the crisis point and something needs to change. Because there’s a real humanitarian crisis. In which homicide and suicide rates has already reached “unprecedented levels.” At Least 25 slave prisoners deaths on plantation compounds in 2020 were suspected homicides, 7 at Macon State plantation, according to “G.D.C.” and 19 slave prisoners supposedly killed themselves in 2020, twice the national average.

The “G.D.C.” annual report for fiscal year 2019 (there was a lack of access for 2020 FY report) reveals constant churn. According to the OF, 78% of the department’s new hires are (overseers) “Corrections Officers,” and 71% quit before the year ended. Gov. Brian Kemp, just proposed a 9.1% pay increase for plantation(overseers) guards that would raise their entry level salary from $27,936 to $30,730. The experienced staff are leaving as fast as they can to get out of here. What we’re left with is kids trying to supervise slave prisoners they’re afraid of and that has a domino effect. Without adequate staffing, the maintenance begins to suffer, food service suffers. Because they don’t feel safe, it’s created a circular problem.

Access to healthcare is more limited than ever and mental health counselors are afraid to come in the dorms. Under-staffing has led to more slave prisoners being stationed in temporary holding cages, going extended periods without food, water or even bathroom visits. Often we’re left in those cages to urinate and defecate on ourselves. If the situation persists, lives will continue to be at stake. It’s just a matter of time before we see causalities among the staff and slave prisoners.

Urban street tribes have filled the power vacuum. The G.D.C. estimated it housed 15,000 tribe members; nearly a third of it’s total population. In the five previous years, authorities said tribe members were responsible for 1,700 assaults in Georgia industrial slave plantations. The pandemic has only made the situation worse, as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the slave plantations. Recently 24 slave prisoners tested positive for the virus; 3,100 have been infected so far, 88 have died. Another 1,482 staff members have test positive and two died from the virus, according the the G.D.C Those figures are likely 10 times below the actual number of infections, according to a recent study by the Center of Disease Control & Prevention.

I believe (the G.D.C.) is tolerating levels of chaos we have not seen in the last 20 years. The scale of the problem is so great that federal interventions is necessary and warranted. (Side note, the Department of Justice continues investigation into Georgia prisons.)

Please family, friends and those on the inside report on what is happening inside the walls of Georgia Department of Corrections prisons. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in September a state-wide civil investigation into conditions at facilities across the state. The DOJ investigation is focused on determining whether state prisoners are reasonably safe from physical harm at the hands of other prisoners. DOJ is also investigating whether the state offers reasonable protections for LGBTQIA prisoners from sexual abuse by corrections officers and other prisoners. If you or someone you know has information that could raise awareness to this cause, submit tips to:

MIM(Prisons) adds: This comrade’s report echoes what is being reported from Alabama from prisoners organizing there. Georgia is one of the five states with a higher incarceration rate than Alabama, and of course both are in the Black Belt south. Prison systems across the country are crumbling and failing. It is our purpose to support those who are trying to organize for change amongst this chaos. These contradictions create opportunity for change.

If you did not receive a copy of the JFI petition to the Department of Justice that we mailed out with Under Lock & Key 78, write us to get copies and use them to organize a collective voice in your prison. It is only by independent, collective organizing that we can stop these unnecessary deaths and abuses.

I, Nino G, vow to promote unity in an organized fashion to secure the rights of all inmates in the state of Georgia, and to find solutions of our daily problems of peace and identifying the real oppressors, and exercise our power through grievances and lawsuits instead of brute force or intimidation tactics.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Comrade Nino G. Leads the group Loyalty Ov3r Royalty (L$R) in a Georgia prison to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. The UFPP is a project created in 2011 by a council of anti-imperialists in prisons faciliated by MIM(Prisons). The project is an effort to unite all those who can be united around the common interests of the U.$. prison masses. The project is a culmination of various formations of prisoners primarily lumpen organizations (aka “gangs” or “sets” or “crews”) who seek to abandon the gangster mentality for a revolutionary anti-imperialist outlook.

On 20 April 2021, Ma’Khia Bryant – a 16-year-old New Afrikan girl – was murdered by a pig belonging to the Columbus Division of Police.(1) As the news of a guilty verdict on killer pig Derek Chauvin was barely starting to make news on various media, an Amerikan pig killed another New Afrikan child.(2)

At the time of the murder, Ma’Khia Bryant lived in foster care in the home of Angela Moore – the foster mother. The incident started as a conflict between a Tionna Bonner, 22 year old former foster child of Ms. Moore, and Ma’Khia Bryant and her younger sister Ja’Niah Bryant. The conflict was originally over housework, and how the former foster child Tionna Bonner said the Bryant children were not giving Ms. Moore the respect that was due. The dispute escalated when Ja’Niah called Ms. Moore who said she was too busy to get involved. Ja’Niah called her grandmother while Ms. Bonner called another former foster child by the name of Shai-Onta Craig Watkins. Watkins was 20 years old at this time.(3)

The biological grandmother of the Bryant children arrived who described the conflict. She tried protecting her grandchildren who were being threatened by the older former foster children Ms. Bonner and Ms. Watkins. By this time, Ms. Bonner had pulled out a knife (according to Ja’Niah and her grandmother) and Ma’Khia had grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen. This is when Ja’Niah called 911 to which she claimed “Angie’s grown girls trying to fight us, trying to stab us, trying to put her hands on our grandma.”(4)

The police arrived 12 minutes later. Ms. Watkins has left the house while the Bryant children began to pack up their things. The Bryant children’s father now arrived at the scene as Ms. Watkins returned with two more people. While the two groups crossed paths, Ms. Watkins spat towards the Bryant family. Ja’Niah Bryant later said, “That’s when everything just went left.”

As Ma’Khia Bryant charged, Ms. Watkins fell to the ground in which then Ma’Khia’s father tried to kick Watkins. When Ma’Khia raised her kitchen knife, pig Nicholas Reardon shot Ma’Khia four times. Ma’Khia was dead.

Many activists and people on Twitter oriented towards the discourse of Amerika’s police brutality pointed out on social media how the New Afrikan masses couldn’t get a single second of judicial justice from the United $tates without having another Amerikan pig take the life away from another New Afrikan. This murder was closely dated with the release of the video footage showing the murder of a Mexican lumpen youth Adam Toledo who was 3 years younger than Ma’Khia Bryant. The liberals and left-wing imperialists oriented with the Democratic Party seemed too busy to pat themselves on the back in regards to the guilty verdict on Derek Chauvin that these two murders of oppressed nation youth seemed to not stay in their national headlines.

The Oppressed Nation Youth in the Foster Care System

In 2019, New Afrikan children made up 14% of the total child population in the United $tates – children ranging from ages 1 to 18 – while their euro-Amerikan counterparts made up 50%.(5) Despite their much smaller population size, New Afrikan children made up 23% of the kids in foster care, much higher than not only Amerikans, but also the Chican@s, First Nations, and national minorities.(6) The number of New Afrikan foster children however, has been decreasing steadily for the past two decades with the year 2000 starting with a 39% and reaching a stabilization of 23% around 2016 up to 2019.

Throughout the history of the modern imperialist world there have been problems of vulnerable children; whether they be foster kids, orphan beggars, or a gang of youth thieves, crisis which inevitably comes from the capitalist relations of production will strike the youth populations as well. In the United $tates, one of the many major external factors of the oppressed nations’ material conditions in the recent decades have been the drug war. With the turn of the 1980s, the crack epidemic fueled by the alliance between the CIA and the comprador drug lords of Latin America has hit New Afrikan and Latin@ communities like a locust swarm would to a peasant’s rice field. As the drug game became more and more dangerous, the oppressed nation youth lost the little stability and the nuclear family structure that they had in the first place. The associate commissioner of the Children’s Bureau stated that “most children enter the foster care system, not from physical abuse, but from neglect.”(7) From this we can gather that the primary cause of New Afrikan youth entering the foster care system is not physical and emotionally abusive parents per se, but lack of resources the family or the community around them has.

Children growing in those lumpenized households and impoverished labor aristocrat households vulnerable to lumpenization (and most importantly, surrounded by abysmal living conditions) creates a very unstable social element for the Amerikans (and even the oppressed nation masses!). So in that response, the foster system is utilized where petty-bourgeois households (many of them belonging to the oppressed nation themselves!) with the time and resource could take care of children coming from beneath their petty-bourgeois class status. Despite its well-intended individuals, the foster care system is just as unsafe from bureaucratic and profit-driven work methods that is embedded in the capitalist the capitalist superstructure. Abuse, emotional deprivation, and physical neglect reign amongst children in foster care. Just like how the police departments of every major city juke statistics and makes robberies and rapes disappear – and how the school system juke scores and encourage studying tests instead of studying fields of knowledge – foster homes oftentimes make their abuse and neglect disappear as well. Anti-communists claim that no one would work without the profit motive, and that the profit motive is the main source of good work in any society. Then how come foster parents who get paid hundreds by the government every month per child still can’t meet the emotional and physical requirement for vulnerable youth?

With the crack cocaine epidemic rising in the 1980s and 1990s, bourgeois nationalist ideas hardening the family structure of oppressed nations came to popularity. Bourgeois nationalists pointed at the lack of a nuclear family structure amongst oppressed nations, and rested the conditions of New Afrikans and Chican@s upon that point.(8) The absentee father; the drug addicted mother; the so-called “emasculated” gay man; the gangster who’s “too dumb” to use his parasitic gains to transform into a legal capitalist; and the participator of “loose sex” were seen as the reasons why New Afrikan/Chican@ youth were pulled into lumpenization and the foster care system. Maoists understand that the superstructure cannot change the economic base, and the idea of “superstructure first” will be fruitless without the overthrow of capitalism. Shaming single mothers, persecuting LGBT masses, and enabling the capitalist instincts of the lumpen class will not only fail to give us liberation, but will attack the masses even more.

Socialist Handling of Unattended Youth

In the Soviet Union, revolution, counter-revolution, and world war left millions of orphans in Russia commonly referred to as “besprizornye” (literally meaning “unattended”).(9) Most of these orphans worked as beggars while also looking towards odd jobs such as selling flowers and cigarettes or hoping to work in restaurants for scraps. Competition became more fierce, and many of these orphans turned towards prostitution and thievery.(10) Gangs of orphans as large as groups of 30 came to being; alcoholism and drug abuse became a common site; and STDs, physical, and mental illness became common things associated with the unattended children.(11) From this basis came the battle for communist transformation of not only the unattended children but all children under socialism in the USSR. Revolutionary orphanages were formed, children were provided with necessities such as education while expected to help with maintaining those independent institutions and decision making. The primary split between these orphanages under socialism and capitalism was the agency and self-determination given to the orphaned youth and the question of adoption: socialist orphanages didn’t seek to put children in adoption but give them a family through the productive life of the commune. During the latter half of the 1920s, the Soviet Union succeeded in the rehabilitation of the unattended children although the goal of creating revolutionary youth movement for all youth has not been met.(12)

The murder of Ma’Khia Bryant is overlooked unfortunately by both the Liberals and the revolutionaries. As a guilty verdict has been placed on pig Derek Chauvin, liberals are eager to put a book end to the rebellion that spread across the country from 2020-2021. As Mao Zedong taught us that the masses must learn revolution through waging revolution, we emphasize the work on us that must be done in pulling the correct lessons from the period of rebellion from 2020 to 2021. Many radical Liberals are heartbroken by such morbid killing of an oppressed nation youth – a habit Amerikkka is unable to kick – and often times let the bourgeois moralism alongside catharsis get the better of them. We emphasize again the importance of learning the essence of the reality around us and the importance of serving unattended youth while combating tailist and commandist attitudes.

<sup>Bibliography
1. Will Wright, 8 May 2021, “Ma’khia Bryant’s Journey Through Foster Care Ended With an Officer’s Bullet,” The New York Times.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Kids Count, September 2020, “Child Population by Race in the United States,” Kids Count.
6. Kids Count, June 2021, “Children in foster care by race and Hispanic origin in the United States,” Kids Count.
7. Administration for Children & Families, January 15, 2020 “Child abuse, neglect data released: 29th edition of the Child Maltreatment Report,” Administration for Children & Families.
8. The New York Times, July 31, 1994, “Facing Complaints of Bias, Farrakhan Speaks to Women Only.”
9. Alan M. Ball, 1994, “And Now My Soul Hardened,” University of California Press.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.</sup>

Peace be unto you… Thank you for providing me, the much needed information on AIPS-GA/Outside Reports.

Those warehoused and enslaved within this illicit system, particularly at Telfair State Prison (i.e. Koncentration Kamp), are subjected to unprecedented hazards. The entire staff is not being screened for COVID-19, upon reporting to work daily. The staff continues to interact with those of us held captive, without wearing any PPE (i.e. Masks or gloves), even while serving the units at meal times.

Units of korruption officers from various kamps, forming what they call a tactical squad, come to this facility to shake us down frequently. Countless outside visitors employed with the state are permitted to enter the facility without being screened as if they are immune to catching or spreading the coronavirus. Mind you, that the state cancelled all family visits in March, so no one has been able to see a family member since that time.

What is the difference between them going home and any place of their desire and then returning here possibly exposing us to COVID-19, or allowing our families which live in the same society as they do to come visit us?

The chemicals (or lack thereof) that are given are watered down so much that their ability to effectively clean and sanitize is questionable. The drinking water is tan or brownish due to the piping being rusted out. The food being slopped together will not satisfy a three year old. Nor does it meet the required calorie standards recommended for adults.

Amid the federal declaration of national emergency; issued on or around the thirteenth day of March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, little to virtually no cohesive measures have been implemented within the Georgia Department of Korruption (i.e. GDC), to protect the lives of the country’s most vulnerable population; Its prisoners!

In fact, prisoners are forced to exist in congregate settings. Where physical social distancing is all but impossible. Adversely, inherently enhancing our enslavement sentences; to that of a sentence of death. Because we are not at all able to effectively protect ourselves from this pandemic. That has now taken well over four hundred thousand lives in the U.$. [as of January 2021].

For, it is essential that the humanity of those being held captive be reevaluated at once. Because: Prisoners’ Lives Matter, as well!

The nature of COVID-19 requires an unprecendented and empathic response. The states have taken up many measures to curb the pandemic, in free society. With little success at slowing the spread of this virus; as evidenced by the 23 million who have now tested positive, just within the U.$. [as of January 2021].

The Georgia Department of Korruption; governor of Georgia: Brian Kemp; the Department of Injustice (i.e. DOJ), nor have the United $tates Attorney General: Wiliam Barr, thought it to be necessary to act upon implementing actions to release those held within their state and federal kamps that have not been sentenced to death.

For, it is no secret, that the state kamps are understaffed and overcrowded with vulnerable citizenry. These koncentration kamps are unsanitary and unfit for humans to exist in. They are insufficient in providing adequate nutritional supplement for those of us that are being held captive. The level of medical care provided is egregiously inadequate.

Reducing every facility to susceptible petri dishes for infectious disease outbreaks.

In fact! Eight of the ten clusters of the coronavirus are located within state Korrectional facilities, according to the: New York Times (in July 2020). For though many state have increased COVID-19 testing, the country’s prison system maliciously refuses to test those being held captive, within its vile entity.

For it is the duty of those in office, to use every tool available to prohibit this pandemic from claiming anymore lives. The conventional philosophic way that has become our approach to civility is morally despicable. We cannot pick and choose, who amongst us are deserving of being saved. For that is the creator’s job!

We must prioritize the safety and well-being of as many people as humanly possible.

The United States are quick to censure a variety of countries, due to the way those countries treat their citizenry. While all along treating their own citizenry much worst.

The demographics of the cruelty that already existed within the illicit prison system of the United States, did not need the addition of COVID-19, included to the many different forms of weaponized impunity that already exist within a system designed to tear a person down.

The United $tates’ prison system was designed to be a governmental body to enslave New Afrikan people to rebuild the southern states, which relied on slave labor to bolster the economy. This is officially documented in the Thirteenth Amendment.

Prisons were not designed to be a death chamber for those accused of breaking the so-called law. The perception of government in the nineteenth century was to make the public think that the nations’ prisons were places of rehabilitation. There is no rehabilitation going on behind these enemy lines. Just death! All that exist is Kruel treatment by Korrupt bigots and their house nigga’s, which thrive on dehumanizing human-beings to augment their own self-worth.

It is now time to unlock these chains and cages, before they are responsible for the deaths of thousands.

Prisoners’ Lives Matter!

Several weeks ago, Rayshard Brooks – a 27-year-old New Afrikan man – was murdered by the Atlanta Police Department at a Wendy’s at South Atlanta. Media reported that armed protestors have set up barricades at the Wendy’s which by then have been burned down and graffitied up with support for Rayshard Brooks’s life, the Black Lives Matter movement, and anti-police messages. On the 4th of July, it was reported that the 7 year old New Afrikan child – Secoriea Turner – had been fatally shot near the Wendy’s site in a car while with her parents.

Due to the tragic death of Secoriea Turner, and the violence that heightened at the 4th of July weekend among the Atlanta masses, Comprador-bourgeois representative Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms declared that the armed New Afrikans must be vacated from the Wendy’s. From then on, the organization Community Movement Builders (CMB) stepped in with regards to showing support and calling for a Peace Site at the Wendy’s. Here is the interview with CMB leader, Kamau Franklin:

1. The armed protestors in Wendy’s have been occupying the site since past several weeks. Have these protestors been part of the Community Movement Builders?

Actually no, these protesters armed and unarmed have been from the local community. They were inspired to act after the killing of Mr. Brooks. My understanding is that some protesters provided security because there were threats of white supremacist coming to the Wendy’s. We were just getting involved right before the tragic shooting of the 8-year-old girl outside of the Wendy’s. Our understanding is that there are competing narratives as to what took place. Which does not make the events any more tragic and has caused the protesters to expand their vision for the peace center to include the young girl.

2. On Monday of July 14th, there have been protests declaring to “Take Back the Wendy’s” and calling for a creation of a peace center. What will the peace center’s role be in the struggle against oppression and the goals of CMB overall?

The role of the peace center is to make sure that community control is established over that property and that Wendy’s is not allowed to rebuild another hamburger chop-shop, but instead something needed and valuable is established in the community. The center will create programing against violence and will at the same time highlight the American role in perpetrating violence on Black people and how we can stop it from happening. For CMB it is important for us that we continue to advance the call for liberated territory (places where the community is in direct democratic control of land, organizations and institutions) and against the corporate and development class with support from city officials who continue to treat working class, poor and Black people as expendable.

3. Mayor Bottoms has declared that the protestors should be cleared out due to the violence that happened in ATL over the 4th of July weekend and that she will no longer be “negotiating” with the protestors. How do you think the actions of “Take Back the Wendy’s” and the call to build the peace center affected this protocol by the city government?

Well the city was never negotiating in good faith. The city was stalling hoping the protesters would go away and or possibly maneuvering to take back over the space. It seems very disingenuous that Mayor Bottoms would hold a press conference with Turner’s family but has never done this is similar cases where people have been killed in senseless violence. Our goal is to keep the pressure on to force the corporate owners and the city to have dialogue over the future of this space.

4. A lot of the news media has covered the reports of CMB’s actions in the Wendy’s site. Has there been any misrepresentation of what the news media have been reporting? If so, what are some misconceptions that you would like to clear out regarding CMB and its actions on the planned peace center?

I think its obvious that the media was looking for violence to break out and was looking to paint protesters as violent. The idea of community control over space as opposed to the capitalist private land grab model is what the corporate media supports and elevates.

END INTERVIEW

What led up to the murder?

On 4 July 2020, 7-year-old Secoriea Turner was fatally shot with her parents present inside the car which she was shot in.(1) Her death has been widespread news in Georgia and has been a popular talking point on the discourse surrounding the oppressed’s action against the racial/national oppression of the United $tates today.

The scene of the incident was the Wendy’s where Rayshard Brooks was murdered by the Atlanta Police Department (APD) on 12 June 2020. The leading narrative of how the shooting went down is that one of the armed barricaders of the Wendy’s had shot at the car that Secoriea was in.(2) According to Community Movement Builders – the Non-Government Organization who called for building of a “peace center” on the razed down Wendy’s site – there were threats of white vigilante-type organizations coming to the Wendy’s site and the local New Afrikan masses armed themselves to honor and defend the life of Rayshard Brooks.(3)

The Wendy’s barricade was started by the revolutionary spirit of the New Afrikan masses to defend themselves against amerikan chauvinism and so-called “white supremacy.” Members and supporters of the armed masses have burned down the Wendy’s murder site, and graffiti tagged signs of support for the broad mass movement of New Afrikans against occupying police and the life of Rayshard Brooks. Because the masses they were armed; because they received threats of amerikan chauvinist presence; and because of the APD’s presence in Atlanta, a barricade and check point was necessary. Tensions were high.

It is not crystal clear as to how it went down at the hour of the murder of Secoriea Turner, but we do know the broad facts: APD committed an illegal killing of Rayshard Brooks; amerikan chauvinist elements threatened to come to the site of Rayshard Brook’s killing; New Afrikans barricaded and armed themselves from police and amerikan violence; and a 7-year-old New Afrikan child has been murdered among the conflict.

Should Communists Condemn the Barricade?

When the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) implemented a campaign of bombings across Great Britain (primarily Northern Ireland) the masses of the Northern Irish people were tired of the violence from all sides. Out of the masses the petty-bourgeois/national bourgeois elements were especially tired. So the current and then would-be compradors and neo-colonial leaders of the Sinn Fein signed a peace treaty called the Good Friday agreement, in which they ended up condemning the so called “terrorists” of the Irish Republican movement and the violence coming with it.

In the Philippines today, a Protracted People’s War is being waged by communists organizing the peasants of the countryside. The communists have often been declared as the number one security threat by the fascist U.$.-Duterte government, and within the revolution there are elements of the masses also tired of the violence coming with revolution. The Communist Party of the Philippines have been active in calling for a peace deal in past years, but unlike the Sinn Fein of Northern Ireland which abandoned and condemned armed struggle, they did not call for the turning in of weapons by the New People’s Army and instead asked for the killings by the Duterte regime to stop in the cities and the red base areas of the countryside in which the communists had a “stronghold” in.

Both of these examples of calling for peace are from far away countries with different conditions than the ATL, but they are relevant as ever to the international fight against Neo-colonial tactics of imperialism. The violence that comes to the masses with revolution and the contradiction among the people are serious questions communists must be ready to solve in order to overthrow imperialism.

While we Maoists do see the death of Secoriea Turner as a tragedy and our hearts and condolences go out to her family and close ones, we do not agree with the neo-colonial New Afrikan “leaders” actions which have bulldozed the Wendy’s site and the paternalistic negotiation attitudes in which these “leaders” dealt with Community Movement Builders.(4) The comprador-bourgeoisie mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in fact alluded to the armed New Afrikans defending Rayshard Brook’s life and legacy as “the enemy within.”(5)

“We’re fighting the enemy within when we are shooting each other up in our streets,” said the comprador mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

“We’ve had over 75 shootings in the city over the past several weeks,” said Bottoms. “You can’t blame that on APD [Atlanta Police Department].”

Maoists do not blame the APD for those 75 specific shootings in the span of several weeks. But we do blame national oppression, the pseudo-communists’ inaction in building independent institutions among oppressed nation communities, and the lumpenization that came with the so-called “war on drugs” on the 75 shootings. And we take action to combat national oppression and lumpenization as well.

Going Beyond the Barricade

The failures of the barricade shows the limitations of spontaneity, and the necessity for an organized and self-reliant people’s institution designed to serve the people. There are dogmatic revisionist “Marxists” who claim that the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory of an organized vanguard to lead the people’s struggle and build independent institutions goes against the writings of Marx. These “Marxists” claim that capitalism’s decay will naturally rise the people up due to oppressive conditions. Even in the Third World where proletarians and peasants are the majority, and with the writings of Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune, we see that a proletarian power and proletarian state is needed to overthrow imperialism and preserve socialism. And history has proved that ultimately, political power grows from the barrel of guns. Maoists do not condemn the masses desire to defend themselves from white supremacist and fascist presence, and in fact applaud it. We just believe that it should be crystallized into a more disciplined focus of serving the people and building independent political power.

<sup>Notes: 1. Atlanta mayor says ‘enough is enough’ after girl fatally shot near scene of Rayshard Brooks’ death, 6 July 2020, CNN.
2. Ibid.
3. Greyhound, July 2020, Interview With Community Movement Builders On Their Recent Struggle On the Wendy’s Site, Under Lock and Key.
4. Atlanta Wendy’s where Rayshard Brooks was killed gets demolished, 14 July 2020, New York Daily News.
5. Ibid.</sup>

Representative(s) of ACLU of Georgia Inmates at Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison Special Management Unit (SMU) Tier 3 High Max are being subjected to egregious and scandalous conditions which deprive us of rights and, but not limited to, privileges secured and protected by the Constitution and other laws of the United $tates which has caused or could cause suffering and grave harm. We are being exposed to unsanitary conditions such as not having showers cleaned for weeks and being denied and opportunity to clean our own cells out for months at a time. Dormitory floors and sitting areas have dried food, milk and feces that are never properly cleaned. Breakfast meats and dinner patty(s) are very pink or red on the inside.

There are major life threatening security problems such as inmates having seizures in their cells and not being found until trays are served which could be as much as 6 hours later. Officers make no security rounds after they remove the 30 minute check-sheet when they start their 12 hour shift; then they are not seen again. Inmates are being pepper sprayed and at times tazed then left in their cell without medical attention.

We are being denied grievance and when we do get one the Counselor neglects to come back into the dormitory for weeks at a time.

Law Library is only open on Friday and offers no actual access to files which makes it impossible to look up cases and file motions in a timely manner. Getting legal motions and other documentation like a Notary Public Stamp can take up to 20 days. The Law Library limitation and the long time frame on the Notary Public Stamp themselves are violations of Due Process.

I come to you this day asking for your voice to speak out. Your actions can help not only me but the entire collective that is confined to the SMU Tier 3 High Max Program. What steps should we take, and in what order for Correction?

Inmates at J.S.P. are going hungry as the prison saves money by cutting portions on meals and quality of food. Some of the food is unfit for human consumption. There is no justification for forcing inmates to go hungry. Other inmates are forced to spend more money on food at the commissary. Georgia taxpayers already paid for inmates’ adequate meals. Food is a human right and the prison must provide inmates with adequate amounts of nutritional food to maintain physical and mental health.

Inmates throughout the prison constantly complain about the food portions being cut by Food Service Director Mrs. Granison. Inmates wrote grievances about inadequate meals. Warden Antoine Caldwell continues to ignore the inmates’ complaints. As a Political prisoner, the inmates and I are asking the peoples out there in society: be a voice for us. And complain with us to the GA Senators, State Representatives, Governor, Commissioner and the Warden. Se we can be heard loud in many directions.