MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
www.prisoncensorship.info is a media institution run by the Maoist Internationalist Ministry of Prisons. Here we collect and publicize reports of conditions behind the bars in U.$. prisons. Information about these incidents rarely makes it out of the prison, and when it does it is extremely rare that the reports are taken seriously and published. This historical record is important for documenting patterns of abuse, and also for informing people on the streets about what goes on behind the bars.
Robert Brooks, a 43 year old New Afrikan man, was beaten to death by
Correctional Officers (C.O.s) in Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate
New York on 9 December 2024, dying in the hospital the next day. On 27
December the New York Attorney General’s office released body camera
footage from 6 C.O.s and 2 Sergeants involved in the beating. They show
Brooks being pinned to a gurney, while handcuffed, and beaten on-and-off
for many minutes by the pigs.(1) Thirteen staff members of the New York
State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) are
being investigated in the beating.(2)
Marcy C.F. is in an area of upstate New York known for its racist
rednecks, a very white area abutting the Oneida Nation Reservation. Just
down the road is the infamous Clinton Correctional Facility as well as
the Mohawk Correctional Facility offensively named after the neighboring
Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederacy. A comrade struggling with
addiction was moved from Mohawk last year to a Secure Housing Facility
where ey reports:
“I still am recovering from the brutal assault, battery, torture and
sexual assault by the gang of pigz here at Upstate C.F. I am physically
healing slowly and taking some drug to help with the brain damage I
suffered from all the fractures in my face and forehead. I’m doing
physical therapy for my arm. My studies with you all have given me the
focus and strength to recover. I am no longer on the Suboxone program,
smoking cigarettes, marijuana or PCP. I still struggle with K2, but the
more time I spend grounded in studies, writing and reading with you all,
the less time I have to think about wanting to get high. I thank you all
and hope my struggle is an example to those whoa re sick themselves and
struggling.”
Brooks had recently been transferred from Mohawk as well, and sent to
Marcy this month.(2) The state investigation indicates that Brooks did
not attack the officers or do anything to warrant the use of force,
which the videos show as well.(1,2) Brooks’s death is suspected to be a
result of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.” New York State
Correctional Officers are required to wear body cameras and have them
running whenever encountering a prisoner. While many involved covered
their cameras, the beating continued despite the presence of the body
cameras in the room. The Times Union reports that the C.O.s
seemed to be unaware that their body cameras could be passively
recording the incident.(2)
People posted pictures of Mario and Luigi cartoon characters online
in response to pictures and videos of the beating posted online. The
outrage at this state-sponsored lynching is somewhat encouraging, but
posting images online obviously won’t solve the brutality waged against
oppressed nations, and against prisoners in general, in this country.
Organization is needed. Only together can we protect ourselves.
Tip of the Spear Black Radicalism, Prison
Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt
Orisanmi Burton (Author)
University of California Press
October 2023
“without understanding carceral spaces as zones of undeclared
domestic war, zones that are inextricably linked to imperial and
officially acknowledged wars abroad, we cannot fully understand how and
why the U.S. became the global leader of incarceration that it is
today.” (1)
Tip of the Spear is the story of the organization and flourishing of
resistance to American imperialism as it developed in the New York state
prison system in the 1960s and 1970s, including the time well before the
four days of Attica in 1971. Professor of anthropology Orisanmi Burton
does many things in this book, a lot of which we’ll only be able to
mention briefly or not at all, but MIM(Prisons) has already sent out
many copies of this book and is prepared to send out many more to enable
further study and discussion of Burton’s very worthy research and
ideas.
We are asking our readers to send their own feedback on this book, to
write up their own local histories or stories applying the framework
below, and to popularize this understanding of U.$. prisons as part of
the imperialist war on the oppressed peoples of the world that we must
unite against.
Prisons are War
Burton begins his investigation with George Jackson’s observation
that Black people “were defeated in a war and are now captives, slaves
or actually that we inherited a neoslave existence.” (2) Prison
conditions don’t originate in the law or in ideas but in the historical
fact of defeat in a war that still continues.
But what kind of war is it? One side surrounds the other and forces
it to submit daily, the way that an army laying siege to a city tries to
wear down the resistance of the population. These sieges include not
just starving prisoners of food but of social life, education, and
culture. In maintaining its rule the state uses the tools of
counterinsurgency to split the revolutionary ranks, co-opt the cause and
re-establish its rule on a more secure level. On the other side, the
prisoners have themselves, their ability to unite and organize in
secret, and their willingness to sacrifice for the cause – the
attributes of a guerrilla army. (3)
Burton spends an entire chapter, “Hidden War,” laying out the
strategies the state pursued when its naked brutality failed to prevent
prisoner organization and rebellion. After the smoke cleared at Attica
and wardens, politicians and prison academics had a chance to catch
their breath, they settled on four strategies to prevent another Attica
from happening: (4)
One, prisons were expanded across the state, so that
density was reduced and prisoner organizing could be more effectively
disrupted. If a prisoner emerged as a leader, they could be sent to any
number of hellholes upstate surrounded by new people and have to start
the process all over again. The longer and more intense the game of
Solitaire the state played with them, the better. We see this strategy
being applied to USW comrades across the country to this day.
Prisons were also superficially humanized, the
introduction of small, contingent privileges to encourage division and
hierarchy among prisoners, dull the painful edge of incarceration
somewhat, and dangle hope. Many prisoners saw through it, and Burton
makes the point that the brief periods of rebellion had provided the
only real human moments most prisoners had experienced during their time
inside. For example, Attica survivor, John “Dacajeweiah” Hill described
meeting a weeping prisoner in D yard during the rebellion who was
looking up at the stars for the first time in 23 years. (5) Burton sums
this up: “the autonomous zones created by militant action… had thus far
proven the only means by which Attica’s oppressive atmosphere was
substantially ameliorated.”
Diversification went hand in hand with expansion,
where a wide range of prison experiences were created across the system.
Prisons like Green Haven allowed prisoners to smoke weed and bring food
back to their cells, and permitted activities like radical lectures from
outsiders. At the same time, other prisons were going on permanent
lockdowns and control units were in development.
And finally, programmification presented a way for
prisoners to be kept busy, for outsiders (maybe even former critics of
the prison system) to be co-opted and brought into agreement with prison
officials, and provide free labor to keep the system stable by giving
prisoners another small privilege to look forward to. To this day, New
York, as well as California and other states, require prisoners who are
not in a control unit to program.
All of this was occurring in the shadow of the fact that the state
had demonstrated it would deploy indiscriminate violence, even
sacrificing its own employees as it had at Attica, to restore order. The
classic carrot-and-stick dynamic of counterinsurgency was operating at
full force.
Before Attica: Tombs,
Branch Queens, Auburn
Burton discusses Attica, but doesn’t make it the exclusive focus of
his book, as it has already been written about and discussed elsewhere.
He brings into the discussion prison rebellions prior to Attica that
laid the groundwork, involved many of the same people, and demonstrated
the character of the rebellions overall.
The first was at Tombs, or the Manhattan House of Detention, where
prisoners took hostages and issued demands in the New York Times,
denouncing pretrial detention that kept men in limbo for months or
years, overcrowding, and racist brutality from guards. Once the demands
were published, the hostages were released. Eighty corrections officers
stormed the facility with blunt weapons and body armor and restored
order, and after the rebellion two thirds of the prisoners were
transferred elsewhere to break up organizations, like the Inmate
Liberation Front, that had grown out of Tombs and supported its
resistance. (6) Afterwards, the warden made improvements and took credit
for them. This combination of furious outburst, violent response and
conciliatory reform would repeat itself.
Next Branch Queens erupted, where the Panther 21 had recently been
incarcerated. Prisoners freed them, hung a Pan-Afrikan flag out of a
window, took hostages and demanded fair bail hearings be held in the
prison yard or the hostages would be executed. The bail hearing actually
happened and some of the prisoners who had been in prison for a year for
possibly stealing something were able to walk out. The state won the
battle here by promising clemency if the hostages were released, which
split the prisoners and led to the end of the rebellion. Kuwasi
Balagoon, who would later join the Black Liberation Army, was active in
the organization of the rebellion and learned a lot from his experiences
seeing the rebellion and the repression that followed after the state
promised clemency. (7)
At Auburn Correctional Facility on November 4th, Black prisoners
rebelled and seized hostages for eight hours. Earlier, fifteen Black
prisoners had been punished and moved to solitary for calling for a day
off work to celebrate Black Solidarity Day. After the restoration of
order, more prisoners were shipped away and the remainder were subject
to reprisals from the guards.
In each case, prisoners formed their own organizations, took control,
made demands and also started building new structures to run the prison
for their own benefit – even in rebellions that lasted only a few hours.
After order was restored, the state took every opportunity to crush the
spirits and bodies of those who had participated. All of this would
repeat on a much larger scale at Attica.
Attica and Paris: Two
Communes
Burton acknowledges throughout the book a tension that is familiar to
many of ULK’s readers: reform versus revolution. He sees both
in the prison movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York, with some
prisoners demanding bail reform and better food and others demanding an
end to the system that creates prisons in the first place. But in
telling the story of Attica and the revolts that preceded it he
emphasizes two things: the ways reforms were demanded (not by petitions
but by organized force) and the existence of demands that would have led
to the end of prisons as we know them. On Attica itself, he writes that
the rebellion demanded not just better food and less crowded cells but
the “emergence of new modes of social life not predicated on enclosure,
extraction, domination or dehumanization.” (8) In these new modes of
social life, Burton identifies sexual freedom and care among prisoners
emerging as a nascent challenge to traditional prison masculinity.
Attica began as a spontaneous attack on a particularly racist and
brutal guard, and led to a riot all over the facility that led to the
state completely losing control for four days starting on September 9th,
1971. Hostages were again taken, and demands ranging from better food to
the right to learn a trade and join a union issued to the press.
Prisoners began self-organizing rapidly, based on the past experiences
of many Attica prisoners in previous rebellions. Roger Champen, who
reluctantly became one of the rebellion’s organizers, got up on a picnic
table with a seized megaphone and said “the wall surrounds us all.”
Following this, the prisoners turned D Yard into an impromptu city and
organized their own care and self-defense. A N.Y. State trooper watching
the yard through binoculars said in disbelief “they seem to be building
as much as they’re destroying.” I think we’d agree with the state
trooper, at least on this. (9)
Burton’s point in this chapter is that the rebellion wasn’t an
attempt (or wasn’t only an attempt) to get the state to reform
itself, to grant rights to its pleading subjects, but an attempt,
however short-lived, to turn the prisons into something that would be
useful for human liberation: a self-governing commune built on
principles of democracy and solidarity. Some of the rebels demanded
transport to Africa to fight the Portuguese in the then-raging colonial
wars in Mozambique and Angola, decisions were made by votes and
consensus, and the social life of the commune was self-regulated without
beatings, gassings and starvation.
Abolition and the
Concentric Prison
Burton is a prison abolitionist, and he sees the aspirations of the
Attica rebels at their best as abolitionist well before the term became
popular. But he doesn’t ignore the contradictions that Attica and other
prison rebellions had to work through, and acknowledges the diverse
opinions of prisoners at the time, some of whom wanted to abolish
prisons and some of whom wanted to see the Nixons and Rockefellers
thrown into them instead. (10)
The Attica Commune of D Yard had to defend itself, and when the
rebelling prisoners suspected that some prisoners were secretly working
for the state, they were confined in a prison within a commune within a
prison, and later killed as the state came in shooting on the 13th.
There was fighting and instances of rape among the prisoners that freed
themselves, and there were prisoners who didn’t want to be a part of the
rebellion who were forced to. And the initial taking of the guards
constitutes a use of violence and imprisonment in itself, even if the
guards were treated better than they’d ever treated the prisoners.
Burton acknowledges this but doesn’t offer a tidy answer. He sees the
use of violence in gaining freedom, like Fanon, to be a necessary evil
which is essential to begin the process but unable to come close to
finishing it. Attica, even though it barely began, provides an example
of this. While violence is a necessary tool in war, it is the people
organized behind the correct political line in the form of a vanguard
party that ultimately is necessary to complete the transformation of
class society to one without oppression.
Counter-intelligence,
Reform, and Control
The final part of the book, “The War on Black Revolutionary Minds,”
chronicles the attempts by the state to destroy prison revolutionaries
by a variety of methods, some more successful than others, all deeply
disturbing and immoral.
Some of the early methods involved direct psychological
experimentation, the use of drugs, and calibrated isolation. These fell
flat, because the attempts were based on “the flawed theory that people
could be disassembled, tinkered with, and reprogrammed like computers.”
(11) Eventually the state gave up trying to engineer radical ideas out
of individual minds and settled for the solution many of our readers are
familiar with: long-term isolation in control units, and a dramatically
expanding prison population.
There is a lot else in this book, including many moving stories from
Attica and other prison rebellion veterans that Burton interviewed, and
who he openly acknowledges as the pioneering theorists and equal
collaborators in his writing. Burton engages in lengthy investigations
of prisoner correspondence, outside solidarity groups, twisted
psychological experiments, and many other things I haven’t had the space
to mention. We have received a couple responses to the book from some of
you already, which the author appreciates greatly, and we’d like to
facilitate more.
^Notes: 1. Burton, Orisanmi Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism,
Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt p. 19 All citations will
be of this book unless otherwise specified. 2. Jackson, Soledad
Brother, 111–12 cited in Burton p. 10 3. p. 3 4. pp. 152-180
5. Hill and Ekanawetak, Splitting the Sky, p. 20. cited in Burton,
p. 107 6. p. 29 7. p. 48 8. p. 5 9. pp. 88-91 10.
p. 95 11. p. 205^
I received ULK 83 and I too agree prison is war. I’ve in the
past heard on numerous occasions that the prison guard “respects
violence!” No, they “expect violence.” They can and will never “respect”
those they consider subhuman and dispensable. And they fear those
knowledgeable enough to know and combat this.
This “expect violence” recently reigned true for me when a Sgt. Reid
came to my cell and ripped my clothing line down (making my wet clothes
fall on me and the floor) in anticipation of some violent outburst. When
he didn’t receive one, he literally stalked me for the rest of the day
provoking me and hoping to get a violent reaction. Singing things like,
“you’re too scared to die,” to no reaction and therefore the harassment
continued into the bathhouse and so forth.
In 1970 few of Attica’s captives made more than 6 cents a day and the state’s food budget was a meager 63 cents per day per prisoner, causing able-bodied men to go to bed hungry in, of all places, the United $tates of America! These same men were also only allowed 1 shower per week & spent 15-24 hours everyday locked in tiny cages as if they were some type of exotic bird. For prisoners from the New York City area it would cost loved ones over $100 in travel expenses to visit and 24 hours of time away from work, school, etc., leaving no realistic way for those struggling to provide help to their loved ones in the future if they did in fact decide to visit.
With money being a known issue for these poor Black and Brown prisoners, doctors at Attica Correctional Facility would offer these men money to be “volunteers” as subjects for exposure to a test virus.(1) Albeit, these men were made to sign informed consent agreements being denied access to real vocational & educational training opportunities and/or drug programs. How “informed” were they really? Only 1.6% of Attica’s operating budget was allotted to academic & vocational training. That is 1.6% out of 100%! So, malnourished, ignored, & hindered from life skills, “They’d need to fight the invisibility that comes with being poor… They would have to work just to learn!” (quoting imperialist Michelle Obama) And “a riot is the language of the unheard.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)
What was falling on deaf ears were a list of 15 “practical proposals” by these oppressed prisoners, which could’ve been easily agreed to putting an end to this uprising. Question: Why not “allow all inmates at their own expense to communicate with anyone they please”? (Request #5) Why not “when an inmate reaches conditional release, give him a full release without parole”? (Request #6) Why not “institute realistic rehabilitation programs for all inmates according to their offense & personal needs”? (Request #8) Why not “educate all Correctional Officers to the needs of the inmates, i.e. understanding rather than punishment,” (Request #9) & so on & so forth.(2)
Instead government would rather send in armed troopers, policemen, Correctional Officers, Conservation Corps helicopters that would drop C.S. gas [orthochlorobenzylidene] that would hang suspended in the air causing tearing, nausea, & retching in anyone that inhales it. Instead, Governor Rockefeller via Executive Order No. 51, even after all inside were immobilized by the gas, would give the command: “Tell all your units to move in!” Cosigning the murder of hostages and prisoners alike. “Trooper Gerard Smith … saw a trooper approach a prisoner who was lying still on the pavement and shoot him in the head.”(3) “It was very painful to see all these old & crippled guys getting shot … They were in D yard because they had no place else to go.”(4) “Another prisoner who had been shot in the abdomen & in the leg was ordered to get up and walk, which he was unable to do. ‘The trooper then shot him in the head with a handgun.’”(5) “Guard Robert Curtiss also felt the fear of imminent death when a trooper kept knocking him over every time he tried to sit up. He shouted… that he was an officer, but still had to beg the trooper not to shoot him.”(6) “Ultimately … 128 men were shot – some … multiple times … 9 hostages were dead & … 29 prisoners had been fatally shot.”(7) Another hostage in critical condition would later die, pushing the total to 10 hostages killed. “The most tragic thing about the bloody riot & massacre … is that it could have been avoided. If the state had listened to warnings from correctional officers, if administration had shown a modicum of sensitivity in providing for the inmates – if the state had just listened, the revolt might never have occurred!”(8)
For this carnage, escalated by the state to a protest for civil rights and basic liberties, you must blame someone and so you charge 63 prisoner survivors with 1,289 crimes, and not 1 single trooper or guard was indicted. However, some of these survivors continued to fight & share their little light on the hidden truth(s) and via civil rights litigation would win their lawsuit against one man, Attica’s deputy superintendent Karl Pfeil. But, “if any defendant was found liable, the state was liable, and this was no small thing.”(9)
On 5 June 1997, they awarded one of the survivors “Big Black” $4 million in damages. The state would recoup for these losses by underhandedly paying hostage survivors and surviving family members from the workman’s compensation fund, knowing that these people could no longer sue under NYS law because they had elected a remedy the moment they cashed these much needed checks. This is after 2,349 - 3,132 lethal pellets from shotguns were fired indiscriminately in Attica’s D yard; 8 rounds from a .357 caliber; 27 rounds from a .38 caliber & 68 rounds from a .270 caliber, [not to include C.O.’s and other members of law enforcement] fully aware that not 1 prisoner or hostage had a single firearm.
You don’t show a modicum of remorse & pay everyone their just due, but instead you con and scam the dead in the name of budgeting. “40 years after the uprising of 1971, conditions at Attica were worse than they had ever been … by 2001 the Department of Correctional Services had cut over 1200 programs providing services to inmates that were there in 1991.”(10) I wonder how much more money they’d save if they cut out prison & kept the programs? There will be more Attica’s until Federal and State governments and the American people accept their responsibility to establish minimum standards of decency & respect for human rights in our prisons. We cannot afford to wait for new explosions." (Senator Jacob Javits) Instead of waiting for “new explosions” why not get rid of the powdered keg altogether… prisons!
In remembrance of Sept. 9, 1971 REST IN POWER
MIM(Prisons) adds: This issue of ULK is inspired by recent scholarship by Orisanmi Burton, that centers around Attica. One of the points made by Burton is about the revolutionary vision of leaders in Attica and other contemporary organizing efforts, some of which included the same people. These were people who were members of or worked closely with formations like the Black Panther Party, Young Lords Party, Republic of New Afrika, the Puerto Rican Nationalist movement, etc.
One of the conclusions drawn from this is that the reformist demands listed by the comrade above were merely a campaign, with obvious and reasonable demands, that would appeal to the broadest sectors in this country. These reformist demands were not the be all end all goals for many of the leaders involved in these movements. They were winnable demands within a broader strategy for total liberation from oppression.
Notes: 1. Dr. Michael Brandriss, Interview Transcript, Aug. 18, 2012, Criminal Injustice: Death & Politics at Attica, (Blue Sky Project 2012). 2. Richard X Clark, Testimony, Akil Al-Jundi et al. v. The Estate of Nelson A. Rockefeller et al., October 25, 1991, 131;133. 3. Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water p. 183 (Vintage Books)(2016). 4. Ibid. @ p. 184 5. Ibid. @ p. 185 6. Ibid @ p. 186 7. Ibid @ p. 187 8. Ibid. @ p. 260 9. Ibid. @ p. 477 10. Ibid. @ p. 567
The world has become extremely subjective with Kyrie Irving’s posts
of a documentary of someone else’s views and opinions of the Holocaust,
and other Jewish history. The world thereafter vilifies him for not
conforming to their way in apologizing and admission of his
anti-Semitism. He however lets the world know that he embraces his
complete Afro-Black history, and reposes the question to him asked on
how could he then be antisemitic?
The jew of antiquity I believe Kyrie refers to in debate of his non
“anti-Semitism”, were either the black skinned Falasha of Abyssinia
and/or, the Chinese Jews of Kai-Feng and/or, Jews of the Berber tribes
located in the African Sahara [many colorful shades of Jewry]. So the
real underlying question to Kyrie was not if he was “anti-self-metic”,
but did Kyrie learn the truth and now possibly hate the modern caucasian
Eastern European Jew who adopted his ancestors way of life as their
own.
The bulk of today’s Jewry isn’t of Palestinian but of Caucasian
Origin, and Yiddish is shockingly a mix of Hebrew, medieval German and
Slavonic. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, in the 16th century
there was about 1 million Jewish people and the majority were Khazar
[located in the eastern confines of Europe between the Caucuses and the
Volga] a substantial part was from Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and the
Balkans who founded the Eastern Jewish Community. This was the dominant
majority of the world Jewry. If Kyrie delved even further he would
discover that in the dark ages commerce in western Europe was
monopolized by the Jews, including but not limited to the slave trade.
Albeit, the “Jews” became a motley crew of humanity partly due to
Abraham cohabiting with Hagan [an Egyptian]; Joseph marrying Aseneth [an
Egyptian]; Moses marrying Zipporah; and King Solomon who loved many
strange women, and had a Hittite mother of dark-complexion, the original
tenets of the Jewish faith was practiced by Africans long before the
“Jews”. [Thus making Africans possibly not the creator of the Jewish
brand but, originators of the Jewish Faith.] “The religious belief in
sacrifice for the remission of sins was an African belief and practiced
at least 2,000 years before Abraham”, and “Practically all of the Ten
Commandments were embedded in the African Constitution ages before Moses
went up Mt. Sinai in Africa in 1491 B.C.” Chancellor Williams, The
Destruction of Black Civilization p.135 (Third World Press)
(1987)
“The large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern
European– Thus perhaps mainly of Khazar–origin. If so, this would mean
that their ancestors came not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once
believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that genetically they
are more closely related to the Hun, Uiger and Magyan Tribes than to the
seed of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Should this turn out to be the case,
then the term”anti-semetism” would become void of meaning, based on a
mis-apprehension shared by both the killers and their victims.” Arthur
Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe (Last Century Media)(1976)
I do not agree with murder of innocent people especially children.
Hitler and his cronies did massacre countless human beings for
nonsensical reasons of “race, color, and creed.” He orchestrated the
genocide of over 6 million human souls of the Jewish Faith. But in all
objectivity Adolf Hitler killed people of his own race and color, who
centuries ago adopted a different creed from a migratory people of
African/Semite descent. In all reality Hitler may not have even been a
real racist and/or even knew the trajectory of the true African/Semite
Jew in order to be authentically “Anit-Semite.” Hitler was merely a
desperate white privileged capitalist, colonialist, imperialist wannabe,
who would murder and oppress anyone within range, even his own
country-men [for a man who hated the “Jews” so much he never waged war
on a predominately Jewish State [Coward]. Hitler was an opportunist who
made innocent people his opportunity] in the end the outcome of this
inhumane genocide called the holocaust was real. But, the falsity may be
in its premise. Did Hitler kill over 6 million “Jews” because he hated
“Jews”, or did he kill over 6 million people because he hated LIFE! He
died by suicide as a coke head, evidence that he too hated his own
Free Kyrie
MIM(Prisons) responds:
“Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies?
No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and
from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the
struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment.”
- Mao Zedong (Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?)
Just like how the above quote mentions, correct ideas come from the
social practice of class struggle, the struggle for production, and
scientific experiment. We extend this claim of knowledge coming from
class struggle to bad ideas as well. Reactionary ideas among the masses
also don’t drop from the skies nor are they innate in the mind.
A popular cultural phenomenon that is being widely reported on
television is New Afrikan celebrities like Kyrie Irving (mentioned by
the comrade above) expressing the idea that New Afrikans here in the
United $tates are the original Hebrews described in the bible alongside
sharing a documentary on social media which further elaborates on this
trend. On top of similar sentiments, popular rapper Kanye West expressed
admiration for Adolf Hitler, and claimed that he is going “death con 3”
on Jewish people.
The reason why we would like to emphasize the above statements on
correct ideas coming from social practice is because as chauvinist and
strange these claims may be, they didn’t drop from the sky either. We
can see a similar type of chauvinism against Asian national minorities
from the masses of New Afrikans/Chican@s as well highlighted during the
LA riots of burning down Korean petty-bourgeois establishments, and the
sensationalized attacks of New Afrikans assaulting Chinese nationals
during the earlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city centers of
this country.
In no way does this responder claim that anti-semitism and chauvinism
in general is a correct thing, nor that all Jewish/East-Asian people are
petty-bourgeois so they deserve what’s coming to them in times of crisis
such as an uprising or a global pandemic. Communists who hold these
ideas shouldn’t even hold that label in the first place. However, there
should be a deeper and more scientific study of these contradictions and
to recognize common reactionary ideas in the masses in the historical
context. On top of this, to have the oppressed nations (particularly New
Afrikans in this case) being the media’s face of modern anti-semitism is
a ridiculous chauvinist idea as well in a country where the oppressor
nation Amerika is one of the strongest contenders in the world of
turning fascist in world economic crisis.
Many religious/cultural nationalists in the oppressed nations
particularly share this attitude of New Afrikans being the real Hebrews
described in the bible alongside the line that the common Jewish people
we see in Europe/North Amerika today are pretenders. This particular
trend of nationalism can be traced back in the late 1800s by Frank
Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy who respectively founded two
different Black Israelite churches in 1886 and 1896 respectively after
both claiming to have had revelations that New Afrikans are descendants
of the Hebrews in the bible. Both men were from the southern black belt
territory still suffering from sharecropping at its height. In a region
where almost semi-feudal conditions still reigned for a semi-colonial
nation, religious ideas entrenched in a nationalist trend isn’t
surprising.
In the modern setting, the contradiction between New Afrikan masses
that live in the ghettos and Jewish petty-bourgeoisie can be exemplified
in the Crown Heights riots of 1991 where a Guyanese child was murdered
in an accident where a motorcade of Chabad (A Hasidic Jewish movement)
carrying the famous rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson struck Gavin Cato
to the child’s death. This led to several Jews being attacked on the
street by New Afrikan youth.
While some comrades might be quick to condemn these ideas as
anti-semtiic, we should see the prejudices of the masses (in this case
anti-semitism) as a historical process that emerged in a specific time
of class society (particularly in the United $tates). A scientific
understanding of this problem would first lead one to recognize that the
frustration the oppressed nation masses might have with prominently
petty-bourgeois religious/national minority groups such as Jewish
Americans (or certain demographics of Asian Americans) as based on the
masses frustrations against their class enemy. One would also recognize
that conspiratorial and chauvinist ideas should be eliminated through
mass political education. Jewish communities of Russia of the Middle
East/North Africa to the United $tates all have different relations to
world imperialism from many belonging to both friend and enemy classes.
Conspiratorial claims of Jewish elite are reactionary, but that is often
what the masses think during times of oppression where they have not yet
grasped scientific thinking.
In the United Struggle Within, there are many Black Hebrew Israelite
tendencies along with other religious nationalist groups that might vary
in terms of anti-semitism or conspiratorial thinking like the comrade
above. The key point in all this is to properly assess
unity-criticism-unity and to what point do some tendencies of
nationalism have more good than bad. Ultimately, it’s these masses of
the oppressed nation whose historical duty is to create a revolution and
society where ideas such as anti-semitism will be gotten ridden of, and
to put these groups as the leading cause of anti-semitism in the United
$tates is classic settler-chauvinism.
I just wanted to let you know some more of the tricks the system is
implementing against me via the J-Pay E-Mail/kiosk system they have set
up.
It seems that anytime I send an e-mail to my loved ones asking them
to contact a Court and/or government official these e-mails show up
blank, yet J-Pay says these messages are being held and/or censored by
the prison for reasons of “third party contact” (SMH). Imagine that, I
can’t even send an e-mail to my Power of Attorney to contact the courts
on my behalf as my LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE!
What would they be trying to “censor” from reaching the courts?
(rhetorical question).
In other (related?) news they are also using some device to
“un-download” movies I purchase from this same system shortly after I
lock back into my cell. This is causing me to lose the movie sometimes
due to time restrictions on them, which is a form of consumer fraud.
Note that only here on my company in Auburn Correctional Facility,
have the oppressors instituted kiosk privileges 1 day per week, when
Directive #4425 clearly states 15 minutes daily. Also, due to Covid
restrictions we don’t have visitation privileges, so these once a week
e-mails are cruel & unusual due to the already strained
circumstances.
I have been debilitatingly sick here twice already taking all
precautions against such especially at the times I got sick. I didn’t
leave my cell outside of showers, packages & visits for
approximately 6 months.
By intentionally taking away in-cell entertainment you force one
outside where the chances are higher of me getting sick. Because of
prior retaliation akin to this, this seems the most plausible ploy. Let
me know what you think.
In Struggle.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with our comrade
in Virginia that there is a strategic effort to profiteer off
prisoners and their families while increasing surveillance and
censorship of prisoners’ communications with the outside world. The fact
that you are losing movies you paid for, or others are being charged by
the minute to read a book is just JPay profiteering off of control of
data. It’s the same in the outside world where companies like Apple and
Google lock you into a system where they can keep tempting you to spend
more money and they decide what media you consume. Only in prison you
have less choice.
Many prisoners write us asking to communicate on platforms like JPay,
which we cannot do. These platforms increase censorship, surveillance
and state control over what you can read or listen to. If we do not
fight this, other states will join North Carolina in banning U.S. postal
mail and materials like MIM(Prisons) study packs and resource
guides.
On Monday, 31 August 2020 the officers on the 7 to 3 shift beat a
prisoner in A-Block that was locking on M-gallery. The prisoner could of
been Spanish or white. The prisoner was beaten kind of bad.
On Wednesday, 2 September 2020 officers had beaten a prisoner that
was in the block. That was B-Block. It was said they had broke the
prisoner’s arm! The officers in B-Block is known to beat up prisoners
that live in B-Block.
Earlier this month, the city of New York and the world watched detainees
at MDC Brooklyn freeze in their cells during the most recent polar
vortex. People were in awe that this high-tec, modern-day dungeon – with
both the Statue of Liberty and Wall Street in view as testaments to
hypocri$y – would be so crass, so brutal, so inhumane.
No heat, no food or water as detainees were locked in their cells as a
result of a power outage stemming from a fire. Crowds of people gathered
outside witnessing people – not inmates, people – bang on windows,
shouting and crying in horror, fearing for their lives, locked away and
forgotten in the 9-story Sunset Park detention facility. There were
reports from the inside of pigs shaking down (i.e., ransacking) cells,
looking for contraband cell-phones – the only means of communications by
which prisoners, locked in their cells, could communicate their
predicament to outside friends, family, and supporters.
Shouting and banging on cell doors was met with fire hoses. Terrified
family members of those inside with no recourse but to rush the building
and plead with the officers were pepper-sprayed.
As someone who did almost 4 years there, who left behind many loved ones
over there, it made my blood boil, and yet I was not surprised at all.
Warden Quay, who didn’t even have the minimal amount of human compassion
to provide extra blankets is the same Warden Quay who shut down the
mental health unit in February 2016 – transferring vulnerable people (I
say again, PEOPLE – not inmates) afflicted with Schizophrenia, Autism,
PTSD, and cerebral palsy to the overcrowded general population.
Yes, I remember in the winter time they wouldn’t turn the heat on even
when the electricity was working. I remember how we’d complain and
they’d send a cop in to wave some fake thermometer around that always
stayed at 60-70 degrees. Yup, vermin and scabie-infested MDC. I remember
you. I remember the beat-up squad. I remember the retaliation against
anyone who raise their voice in dissent, including myself who, upon
sending out an e-mail about “gang-members” on the Bronx 120 indictment
being arbitrarily rounded up and sent to the SHU, had my cell ransacked
by the facility’s red squad.
Better not get sick at MDC, cause medical might kill you. Everyone knows
that…. Yup, MDC Brooklyn Goddamn.
And this was happening well before De Blasio and other politicians
expressed their faux outrage. Well before our oppression was trending on
social media. (Disclaimer: by saying that, I do not intend to belittle
the support of ordinary people who, from no fault of their own, had just
found out about MDC through recent events).
But if you ask the average incarcerated person, they’ll say “Yeah, you
know … jail is jail.” And that’s what it is. This is happening all over
the system in places that you’ve never heard of before nor dreamed of
going to. MDC Brooklyn is just in your face about it – smack dab in the
middle of the liberal metropolis of downtown Brooklyn – just a few
blocks away from the Barclay center (I was able to see it from my cell).
The support is appreciated and much needed to make sure you ask yourself
the question, and this is most sincerely directed towards specifically
the white liberals who were in awe of what they saw in their progressive
city: Does it bother you because we’re “innocent until proven guilty,”
or does it bother you simply because we’re human?
One thing’s for sure, two thing’s for certain: You don’t reform
oppression, you abolish it.
The first step(s) to move as a Revolutionary, all must know what to
stand up to and fight for. Such comrades such as Che Guevara, Martin
Delany, and H. Rap Brown (just to name a few) all stood for solidarity
to instruct the masses on “Black Sovereignty”. Nowadays, the Black
movement must be reconstructed from the “inside.” What I mean from the
“inside”, I’m referring to the mind because so many of those on the
outside are still mentally incarcerated by the wicked oppressor. In the
words of Steve Biko, “The most potent weapon in the hands of the
oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”.
As those that’s with in the “United Separation” movement–we believe in
“salutation and friendship and stand firm with all our comrades that’s
locked and chain on these plantations across the United Snakes of
Amerikkka. On these plantations (on the East Coast) such plantations are
guarded by the Black Gloves. The black gloves are a group of slave
masters transformed into CO’s with tattoos of a black baby with a”noose”
around his neck. These devils formed this group in Clinton Correctional
Facility but has spread over New York State (Attica, Elmira)
corrections.
Not so long ago in Clinton there was a finding of “human remains” under
the floor in the gym where the teachers once stood. This was only
discovered because the gym was being reconstructed. Also, those devils
in Attica keep a ziplock bag filled with teeth that they show off to
prisoners to instill fear, because they’re known for kicking out teeth.
What’s more crazy is the “surf board”–that’s when they hog tie a
prisoner and sit on his back and “ride him” down a flight of stairs!
The United Separation has merged its presence alongside with the New
York Bloods, who stand together as one in the fight with racism,
imperialism, and capitalism in this enslave-system in the United $tates.
On behalf of all of us, we like to thank ULK, USW and the helping
and teachings of MIM(Prisons). Also we would like to request any
Revolutionary books and/or literature that can be an asset to the United
Separation.
“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man
unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of
his life”–Huey P. Newton
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with their grievance procedure. Send them extra
copies to share! For more info on this campaign,
click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses listed on the petition, and below. Supporters should send
letters on behalf of prisoners.
Acting Commissioner, Anthony J. Annucci<br>
The Harriman State Campus <br>
1220 Washington Ave<br>
Albany, NY 12226-2050<br><br>
New York State Commission of Corrections<br>
80 Wolf Rd, 4th Floor<br>
Albany, NY 12205<br><br>
United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division<br>
Special Litigation Section<br>
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB<br>
Washington, D.C. 20530<br><br>
Office of Inspector General<br>
HOTLINE<br>
P.O. Box 9778<br>
Arlington, Virginia 22219<br><br></blockquote>
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140