Federal Prisons

I’m writing to let you all know of the way Georgia prison system have broke the very soul of us prisoners. Not only have they broken the souls of many, but they’re using our own kind (prisoners) to oppress for them.

Here in Georgia, they have a program Tier II that’s violating a lot of the human rights. It’s a 9 month program as you’re told, but any type of rebellious actions will lead to a prisoner doing years on said program. The cells are very nasty, bugs are always getting on us behind these doors, the food is very small amounts, cold and if one speaks out too loud then you do not eat per the supervisor. The grievance process is a joke, there’s a copy of what the chief counselor sent me, for a grievance that I wrote 3 months ago, funny how the lady put January 3, 2016 isn’t it.

I’m an inmate who’s been on this said program Tier II farce. The Tier II program has 3 stages that one must complete. We have had many brothers who have stopped eating, but all is done placed on a strip cell. I myself have set many cells on fire, been tasered, and pepper sprayed for standing up for the rights of us prisoners.

A lot of the world was stressing Black Lives Matter, what about inmates lives matter? Every other day in some city or state a prisoner dies from hands of the overseers. I’m located in Valdesta State prison, in Georgia where prisoners have been murdered, beat, etc. The saddest that I have witnessed two fellow brothers of mine started a fire and the officers did nothing, being that both of ’em was trying to not do their jobs. When we prisoners started kicking and banging on the door, due to the smoke was very thick in the dorm, they then chose to come in the dorm and went to the cell that was ablaze and asked did the prisoners wish to see mental health. To make a sad story short, both prisoners died due to the smoke.

I’m very sad to say that only about 15 prisoner stood up on September 9, 2016. Others just talked about it. Today is January 9, 2017 and it’s been 3 hours since the officers last came in the dorm to check on us inmates. I’ve been beating on the door and yelling to get their attention. Well I was just dropping you all some words letting you know what’s going on. I will keep you updated on what all me and others are doing to free ourselves of this slave lockdown.

I do not have an organization but the principles are something I hold to. I don’t believe the way Texas treats its prisoners is legal at all. We face extreme conditions especially at the Clemens unit. The main building has had windows broken for 2 years. It freezes in there. Now I’m at this poor excuse they call a “trustee” camp. Its the same way, we are in small metal dorms it’s freezing cold my dorm. 2 dorm never gets fixed only 3 and 1 dorm because this is the original dorm here.

It’s not right how COs threaten us. if I knew codes from the PO22 I would write them up for all the violations like unauthorized taking of personal property. I try to write grievances but I get harassed every time. Our legal library is in distress it has nothing needed and everyone already knows TDLU doesn’t want us to have a grievance manual. If there is any help you can provide to my struggle in this rabbit hole system I would greatly appreciate it and be able to help people around me due to this units population being mainly under 25 years old we don’t really have anyone that’s been through this before.

“Colorado prisoners at the Skyline Correctional Center who start out at $.66 a day, milking about 1,000 goats…

Colorado Corrections Industries (CCI) “employs some 1,600 prisoners at 17 facilities, generating around $65 million in annual sales. Haystack Mountain is just one of many small- to mid-sized businesses that benefit from prisoner labor; the company began purchasing milk from prison goat dairies at the Skyline facility in 2007…

“Thanks to the grapes harvested by Colorado prisoners, Abbey Winery won a silver medal for its Juniper Valley Chardonnay at the 15th Annual Grand Harvest Awards in California. Haystack cheeses are sold to various high-end stores and restaurants, including Whole Foods, a national grocery chain.

“Kathy Abernathy of Arrowhead Fisheries, which breeds, packs and ships tilapia though CCI, sees the program as a way to ‘help an inmate improve his life.’ The CCI fish farm has been expanding and produces trout, catfish, koi and goldfish. Quixotic Farming also buys tilapia from CCI for less than a dollar a pound, which they then resell to retailers like Whole Foods, where it is sold for up to $12 a pound…

“The prisoners participating in such programs are underpaid, prohibited from unionizing and sometimes work under the threat of disciplinary action if they refuse.”

Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising
Second Edition
Staughton Lynd
2011, PM Press

Condemned
Keith LaMar (Bomani Hondo Shakur)
2014, www.keithlamar.org

In April 1993 there was an 11-day occupation of Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, starting on Easter Sunday when the maximum security prisoners overpowered correctional officers (COs) while returning from recreation. During the occupation, eight COs were held as hostages; one was killed and the rest were released. Nine prisoners were also killed through the course of this uprising, all by other prisoners. The 407 prisoners surrendered when the administration committed to a 21-point agreement. After the uprising, five prisoners were sentenced to death for the murders, and they are the only people held on Ohio’s death row.

Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising and Condemned are good books to read together, and give two thorough accounts of the events of the SOCF uprising, and even more thorough detail of what happened afterward. Lucasville is written by Staughton Lynd, a lawyer who plays a significant role in Condemned, which was written by Keith LaMar (Bomani), one of the people condemned to death for the events during the uprising. The content in these books overlaps a lot, but not too much as to be redundant. What content is repeated through the two books just underlines lessons learned, and clarifies the authors’ political orientations, some of which MIM(Prisons) does not agree with. Rather than write a point-by-point criticism of these books which most of our readers will never have the opportunity to read anyway, below we summarize some of the lessons on prison organizing we gleaned from studying them.

Condemned recounts Bomani’s first-hand experience before, during, and after the uprising, especially focusing on the struggle of the five prisoners who were scapegoated for the uprising (known as the Lucasville 5). Condemned is a good case study on many common aspects of prison organizing. Lynd’s book describes all the work it took, and all the obstacles the state put in place, to support the Lucasville 5’s struggle from the outside.

The first theme addressed in Condemned is the author’s ideological transformation. MIM(Prisons)‘s primary task at this point in the struggle is building public opinion and institutions of the oppressed for socialist revolution, so affecting others’ political consciousness is something we work on a lot. On the first day of the uprising, Bomani was hoping the state would come in to end the chaos. But “standing there as dead bodies were dumped onto the yard (while those in authority stood back and did nothing), and then experience the shock of witnessing Dennis’ death [another prisoner who was murdered in the same cell as the author], awakened something in me.” Bomani’s persynal experiences, plus politicization on the pod and thru books, are what led em to pick up the struggle against injustice.

At an event where Bomani was publicizing eir case and experience, a MIM(Prisons) comrade was able to ask em what go-to books ey recommend for new comrades who are just getting turned on to the struggle. Bomani suggested Black Boy by Richard Wright, and also refers to Wright in Condemned. MIM(Prisons) would second this recommendation. Black Boy is an excellent study of New Afrikan life under Jim Crow in the South, with many aspects of that struggle still continuing in this country today.

In eir own book, Bomani also recounts acts of prisoner unity against the administration shortly following the uprising, and how politicization of fellow prisoners played out in real life. The prisoners made a pact to trash the range each day, and not clean it up. The guards cleaned the range themselves for a few days, but then brought in a prisoner to clean it up. Simultaneously, the “old heads” on the pod were leading speeches nightly about the need for unity and the relationship between the prisoners and the administration, politicizing everyone within earshot.

“Every night there was a variation of this same speech, and I listened to it over and over again until something took root in me. I became openly critical of the mistreatment we had all undergone and, for a few months at least, was serious in my determination to persuade others not to join the administration in the efforts to further divide and conquer us.”(Condemned, p. 33)

A tactic that was mentioned in passing in Condemned was how the prisoner who was cleaning the range for the pigs was dealt with. Ey was struggled with for a period of time, and asked to not clean the range, but ey came back day after day. Eventually this prisoner was stabbed by the protesters for continuously undermining the action. Bomani doesn’t mention how this act impacted the unity demo, whether it helped or not. We aim to minimize physical violence as much as possible, although sometimes it may be necessary. It is up to those who are on the ground to make the call in their particular conditions, and this tactic should not at all be taken lightly. If much physical force is necessary to maintain a peace demo, then we should ask ourselves if the masses we’re organizing are ready for that type of demo. Political education is always our focus at this stage in the struggle.

Both books address how a protest with solid participants can fail or succeed depending on the protest’s outside support. Several hunger strikes were launched, and ended, without progress made on the demands. It wasn’t until connections were made with outside advocates and media that prison officials took any steps toward fixing them. Especially in an instance where a lawyer met with the regional director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation, which led to some property restrictions being lifted.

Recalling a victory from a 12-day hunger strike which had a lot of outside support,

“When the administration refused to follow their own rules, we complained (verbally and informally) and then asked a district judge to intervene on our behalf, all to no avail. It never occurred to us that we were wasting our time by appealing to the very people who had placed us in this predicament we were in.

“Indeed, the whole process of redressing our grievances was nothing more than an exercise in futility designed to drain off our vital energy and make us feel as though we had done all that we could do.

“It was only when we began to write and reach out to ‘the people’ that things began to change. First, there was Staughton’s book and accompanying play; then we began holding ‘talks’ around the state on various college campuses, as well as writing articles in various periodicals. In this way, we were able to generate some much-needed support.”(Condemned, p. 179)

To combat the psychological warfare of the prison staff, Bomani strongly recommends daily meditation and yoga as a method to protect oneself. “By learning how to watch my thoughts [meditate using simple breathing exercises], I was able to rise above the vicious cycle of cause and effect, and thereby avoid the tricks and traps of my environment.”(Condemned, p. 133)

MIM(Prisons) receives regular requests for information on sovereign citizenship. While we’ve written against this tactic at length elsewhere, Lucasville underlines it with an anecdote about three prisoners who cut off their fingers and mailed them to the United Nations to show how serious they were in in their claim of sovereign citizenship. The request was still denied.

A final lesson from these books, especially recounted in Lucasville, is that in any attempt at solidarity and justice for the oppressed, prison officials and other oppressors will do everything they can to undermine it. Everything. We should never expect that our enemies will act in good faith toward respecting us and our needs. We should always expect pushback and always expect that they will attempt to derail us at every step of the way. Studying past struggles for clues on how we can protect our movement will only make our job easier. The state is taking notes on our shortcomings and we need to do the same of both our shortcomings and our strengths.

China’s Urban Villagers: Changing Life in a Beijing Suburb
by Norman Chance
Thomson Custom Publishing, Second Edition 2002

“Thus it is not surprising that an important theme expressed by the suburban Chinese described in the concluding chapter of this book is resistance – not in direct opposition to socialism per se but against a government and party that in recent times chose to put its own interest ahead of those of the Chinese people. In the early years of the People’s Republic, the Communist party was the major force leading the struggle for economic improvement, enhanced social equality, and greater political empowerment of its predominantly peasant population. But the protest movement of May and June 1989, supported by thousands of Chinese from all walks of life demonstrated to everyone that the party and government no longer had a mandate of leadership. What the future holds for China remains to be seen. But the lessons of the recent past, from which much can be learned, are there for all to see.” - Norman Chance

China’s Urban Villagers is a book about peasants on the edge of modernization. This book discusses in part how peasants made great strides in the construction of socialism, attained a life free from hunger, oppression and exploitation, and then lost it all. In particular this book chronicles the story of Half Moon Village, a small peasant village which used to be located on the outskirts of Beijing on land which prior to liberation was known as a “vast wasteland” but which following socialist revolution was transformed through the peoples collective strength into Red Flag commune, one of China’s largest communes.

The author wrote the first edition of this book based on data originally gathered on his third trip to China in 1979. However, the author also references material collected from earlier trips to China in 1972 and 78. He was also assisted in collecting information for the first edition as well as the second edition to this book in 1984 and 1989 by his wife Nancy Chance and by Fred Engst, the son of Joan Hinton, sister of William Hinton. Within the preface to this book Norman Chance explains his decision to publish the second edition (of which this review covers) so as to put into perspective his previous experiences in China, both during and after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) as well as his time in Red Flag in light of the repression at Tiananmen which followed capitalist restoration.

The preface to Urban Villagers began with the author discussing how he was initially impressed with the Chinese success upon his first visit to China during the GPCR commenting that: “Many people, including myself, were impressed with Mao Zedong’s strategy of reducing economic inequalities through the immense collective effort of the people.”

Yet he immediately follows up this statement by saying that in retrospect this prior assessment was incorrect due to the fact that he later came to believe that we was never really allowed to actually observe socialist China’s failures in agriculture and industrialization, only its successes. This is an erroneous analysis which effectively amounts to a “Potemkin Village” thesis in which the author implied that everything that was good about China was false and everything that was bad about it was instantly authenticated. This is a contradictory stance on behalf of the author, not because he changed his position after leaving China, but because all throughout the book he finds it useful to compare and contrast what he saw and wrote about China in 1972 and 1976 with the changes he observed in 1979, all the while claiming to uphold the conditions of the Chinese people as being qualitatively better in 1972 and 76, while still stating that what he saw in those first two trips wasn’t really real after all – either conditions were better in 1972 and 76 or they were not, you can’t have it both ways. Indeed, even in Chapter 9, “A Decade of Change”, added to this second edition using data from the years 1987-89, the author comes to the conclusion that social conditions had drastically changed in China since 1979. In particular he refers to “class polarization the breaking up of communal peasant land into individual holdings and the rising rate of inflation and exploitation.”

Norman Chance was one of the first cultural anthropologists to be allowed into China between the years 1952-1972 as anthropology as a branch of the social sciences was discredited in the Peoples Republic following the socialist stage of the Chinese revolution (1). He was invited to visit China in 1972 as part of an educational delegation during the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Professor Chance was asked to give a lecture at the Beijing Institute of Minorities titled “Minority Life in America.” No doubt the communist party invited this Western academic not only as part of a mutual exchange of ideas, but so as to expose the Chinese people to reactionary ideologies so that they may learn from them and be better prepared to combat them. Upon reflecting on his visit to China, Mr. Chance commented on “how different were our perspectives on the relationship between minority and majority nationalities.” (p XV)

It would have been helpful if the author would’ve spoken more on this last point so that we could’ve learned about the structural relationship between the majority Han nationality and minority nationalities in China. For example, the contradiction of nation (Amerikkkka vs the oppressed nations) is principal here in the United $tates. How did similar contradictions get resolved in the PRC? In particular how were these contradictions further elaborated and worked on during the GPCR?

“Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are ‘poor and blank’. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free form any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.” - Mao Zedong, Introducing A Cooperative, 1958

To understand how Red Flag commune and Half Moon Village came to be developed we must first understand China’s need to raise the quality of life for its majority peasant population. As in any other society quality of life is first measured by the country’s ability to meet its citizen’s basic needs. First among these needs being the government’s ability to feed, clothe and house its citizens. After providing a summary of China’s national liberation and socialist revolution struggles the author dives right into some of the major social issues facing the People’s Republic in the early 1950s’ primarily how does a country of 600 million paupers who are stuck in medieval culture and a feudal economy pull themselves into the 20th century? Chance acknowledges the feat with which China was forced to contend at this critical juncture in its hystory as nearly insurmountable.

Indeed, if China had remained a colony or neo-colony of this or that imperialist empire as say a country like India was at the time and continues as today, then it would have proved insurmountable. As hystory has proven however the Chinese people, with the guidance of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party, were able to lift the mountains of feudalism and imperialism off their backs, and in doing so cleared the way for socialism and communist development to begin.

When learning about socialist experiments of the past it is always common to hear intellectuals and sophists alike speak of the contradiction of a supposed “humyn nature” that will always prevent us from building a society free of poverty, hunger, exploitation and war. And as most academics writing on the subject, Chance does not miss the opportunity of raising the specter of humyn nature. Where Chance departs from this common bourgeois narrative is when he frames the issue of greed and selfishness as originating in the culture prevalent at the time:

“Underlying these conflicts is a fundamental problem in the building of a socialist society – the issue of human nature. If greediness is at the heart of human nature, then the whole idea of socialism is nothing more than a utopia. If on the other hand, human nature involves a dialectical tension between self-interest and social interests, then self-interest can become secondary to the interests of the larger group. Anthropological studies of various societies demonstrate that pure greediness in human behavior is deviant indeed. Rather, individual motivation is strongly shaped by the social and cultural environment. If greed is encouraged and rewarded, it would be considered foolish not to act in a similar fashion. By contrast, if friends and associates strive to act in a helpful, cooperative manner, selfish actions on the part of an individual would likely lead that person to feel ashamed. Even within the competitive, individualistic orientation of Western society, one regularly finds selfless actions by individuals who are willing to risk their personal security for a given cause. Thus in discussing greed and selfishness, the question is not human nature but rather the dominant behavior expected in normal circumstances.” (p7-8)

What’s more the Chinese masses were able to transform their country from the “sick man of Asia” into a strong socialist power in the span of only twenty years. They were able to accomplish this not by force but by persuasion. Compare this to India which started ahead of China, had a higher life expectancy and had a higher per capita than China. It was also 75% peasant like China. Yet China surpassed India in all these areas within one generation – so much for the comparison between socialism and capitalism.(2)

“Our task is to build islands of socialism in a vast sea of individual farming. We are the ones who will have to show the way for the whole country.”(3)

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was able to spearhead the collectivization of agriculture thru their successful mobilization of peasants first into mutual aid teams, then low level elementary agricultural cooperatives.(p4-5) These APC’s were comprised of “20 or more households which pooled their labor, land and small tools for the common benefit.”(p4) These cooperatives not only helped peasants survive, but begin to spurn on the economy in the countryside. With time and success the APC’s began to grow as peasants eagerly joined. According to Chance the only people who hesitated or refused were the “well to do” peasants who saw an end to their standard of living come with the rise of the APCs. At first the government let these rich and middle peasants abstain from joining until of course their abstinence became a hindrance to social development. It was at this time that the Communist Party under the leadership of Chairman Mao “opted for a acceleration of rural collectivization – a Socialist upsurge in the countryside – in which mutual aid teams and low-level co-operatives were to be combined into larger, more advanced units.”(p6) These APCs were but preludes to the Great Leap Forward 1958-1960. The Great Leap Forward was China’s attempt to catch up with the imperialist countries by building up China’s ability to produce grain and steel. Experimentation in farming, animal husbandry and other associated activity were in fact the earliest models in innovation from which experience and rationale knowledge were garnered for and summed up for further practice and experimentation in the city environment. Once the Great Leap forward began the APCs quickly ran their course and became outmoded. The APCs then gave way to the commune movement in the countryside in which the most advanced APCs were consolidated into 42,000 communes.(p8)

In it’s early developmental stages one of the fundamental political lines in the Chinese countryside was to “rely on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, isolate the rich peasants and overthrow the landlords and wipe out feudalism.”(p39) Having put this political line into practice the land was re-distributed “according to the number of persons in the family and the quality of the soil.”(p39) Landlords were treated thusly: their house, animals and tools were divided among everyone. As for the rich peasants the policy was to let them keep whatever they were able to work themselves. Because most peasants were not used to having so much land and were accustomed to only working on small individual plots much land and crops went to waste. After having had time to accumulate and process experience and practice from this the peasants of Half Moon were well on their way to conquering this new social environment. Half Moon as so many other villages within Red Flag became responsible for growing rice, wheat, corn and a variety of vegetables, as well as raising chickens and pigs.(p29-30) On the question of forced collectivization, two old peasants known to have lived in the area of Red Flag prior to redistribution had “nothing to say.” The author insinuates the peasants were afraid to speak out against land distribution and collectivization for fear of reprisals from the government. However, this insinuation is unfounded due to the fact that (1) the peasants interviewed clearly voiced their support for Red Flag commune and the CCP remembering the “bitter years” before revolution, and (2) this interview was conducted in 1979 at a time that collectivization and other socialist policies originally began under Mao were being dismantled throughout China in favor of for-profit enterprise.

Education in the Peoples Republic

Education in the area of Half Moon Village lept from “fairly small” between the decade of the 1950s to the early 1970s when it then spiked to over 90 percent by 1979.(p91) These are surprising numbers for a Third World country, yet it is only another impressive indicator that only a country under socialist construction is truly serving the people. In visiting some of Half Moon’s primary schools Professor Chance found that even in 1979, three years after the capitalist roaders rise to power, certain socialist values were still being upheld in China’s education system even as others were being negated. One example of this could be seen in how peasant children were imbued with a sense of proletarian morality by being taken out of school and into the fields on a daily basis so that they could watch their parents and neighbors work. Children would also be put to work alongside the village engaging in light duty. The children’s work consisted of “husking small ears of corn left behind by their parents… Such activities not only instilled in the student the value of hard work, but also emphasized the importance of being thrifty with what one produced.”(p93)

In another example, the author describes how individualism was still being struggled against at the basic level of education:

“Students continually learned proper behavior from teachers, parents, textbooks, radio, newspapers and television. In all these instances they were encouraged to help each other, care for each other and take each other’s happiness as their own. In contrast activities that caused embarrassment or remarks that emphasized a negative attribute were discouraged. Envision for example, a Chinese child’s participation in a game like musical chairs. In an American school such a game encourages children to be competitive and to look out for themselves. But to young Chinese, the negative aspect was much more noticeable. That is, losers become objects of attention because they had lost their place – and therefore ‘face.’ In China, winning was fun too. But it should not be achieved at the expense of causing someone embarrassment. In all kinds of daily activity, including study as well as games, Chinese children were regularly reminded that they must work hard and be sensitive to the needs of others for only through such effort would their own lives become truly meaningful…”(p94)

Even groups like China’s Young Pioneers, a group similar to the Boy Scouts, taught their members to engage in pro-social activities such as cleaning streets, assisting the elderly and aiding teachers as opposed to the leisure activities which the Boy Scout movement largely concerns itself within the United $tates.

Of course, not everyone in Half Moon was of the same mind politically. One school administrator spoke ill of education in China during the Great Proletarian Revolution (GPCR):

“Education is improving now… Before (meaning during the decade of the Cultural Revolution) the children had no discipline. They didn’t behave properly and couldn’t learn anything. Now that is all changed. We have ten rules and regulations for behavior, and they have settled down. Now they are learning very well.”(p97)

As previously stated, it is logical that this school administrator would consider educational policies a disaster during the GPCR quite simply because his own power and prestige were challenged and negated by revolutionary students. In addition the author also states:

“Both primary and secondary education had expanded significantly throughout the commune by the early 1970s. Much of this activity, closely linked to the educational policies of the Cultural Revolution, emphasized the importance of utilizing local initiative. And indeed many villages had established new primary (and junior middle) schools by using local people and urban-trained”educated youth” to staff them. Wages for these new teachers were largely paid by the villagers themselves, through brigade-based work points. To obtain additional teachers for the new facilities, villages had reduced the earlier system of six-year primary schools to five years – justification for the step being summed up in the slogan “less but better.”

“This dramatic educational effort put forward during the Cultural Revolution brought the benefits of expanded primary and secondary education to many commune youth – a real achievement, given the large increase in population between 1950 and the 1970s. Yet it did so at the expense of improving educational quality. The local primary school director was obviously identifying with the quality side of this equation.”(p98)

Indeed, no period in the hystory of revolutionary China is more despised or has been more besmirched by the enemy classes as that of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. During the GPCR the bourgeoisie witnessed how the masses armed with Maoist philosophy opened up a new offensive against traitorous, revisionist and bureaucratic elements within the CCP itself, and attempts at the restoration of capitalism. This new offensive took the form of criticisms of bourgeois morals, values and ideals. Though seemingly innocent from a first worldist perspective such as our own, if left unchallenged within socialist society these morals, values and ideals become like a virus or disease in the body of socialism. When left untreated they will fester and wreak havoc on their socialist host, interrupting normal function with the very real potential to cause death.

Beginning in 1966 all established facets of life were forced to justify their existence within the new society or risk being relegated to the museum of antiquities. No more would an “experts in command” line be tolerated, in Chinese society whether in enterprise or education. No more would patriarchal rule be considered the natural order of things. Confucianism outside the temple of worship would be forced to contend with scientific method – all reactionary cultural products would be grappled with, criticized and torn asunder. In their place proletarian morality would be erected both as a guide and bulwark to the cause of socialism and the masses.

Later, on pg99 Norman Chance talks about how middle school students began to drop out and how most cases were related in one way or another to economic problems in the countryside. Chance explains that although “80% of all primary school graduates in the commune began middle school less than 30% finished. Of those who did, almost none entered higher education.” Both the “failing” grades and new economic downturn can probably be linked to the restoration of capitalism.

Portrait of An Educated Youth

In socialist China education went beyond the enclosure of the classroom, as society as a whole was treated as a laboratory where people could discuss, debate, experiment and learn from others, not just experts in command. An excellent example of this could be seen in the “sent down educated youth” program which started in the mid 1950s but increased from the early 1960s to 1966 and then “dramatically from 1968-1976 before finally being concluded in late 1979” (p101). During the Cultural Revolution in times of intense political struggle in the country school was suspended so that students could struggle over the issues of the day and have a say in which direction China would go. This is more than can be said of the Amerikan public school system where rote memorization is popularized and children are expected to parrot what they heard and read and punished for leaving school to challenge government policies.

In this section we are introduced to Zhang Yanzi, a young tractor driver in Red Flag who chose to speak to Chance about her experience in the “Going to the Countryside and Settling Down with the Peasants” campaign. Zhang Yanzi recounted how after graduating from middle school she volunteered to go live with the peasants working first at a state farm as an agricultural worker then as a primary school teacher. She was only 16 years old when she took up a teaching position. She admitted to having her reservations about teaching because her parents were school teachers in Beijing and had been criticized by the masses during the Cultural Revolution.(p103) After requesting to be transferred from her teaching position, she ended up working with livestock and later attained a position as a cook.(p103) Zhang finally became a tractor driver in 1976 and was transferred to Red Flag in 1977.(p103)

She spoke about how initially there was great unity between the peasants and the sent down educated youth. This unity however soon began to dissolve after what Zhang describes as “political factionalism” began to develop amongst the older cadre in the commune. Another problem Zhang brought up was that there wasn’t enough concern given to the educated youths’ political development.(p104) It seems that much of what Zhang speaks about was happening in post-Mao China (1977) and it’s somewhat hard to decipher what experiences happened when. For instance, on page 104 she speaks about how enthused at first she was about choosing to go work and live with the peasants in 1966. She speaks about how it was all done on a volunteer basis:

“In the beginning, no pressure was put on anyone to go. It was all on a volunteer basis. Each individual had to pass the ‘Three OKs.’ One was from the actual student, one from the family, and one from the school. If there was any disagreement, then the person wouldn’t go. Even if you hesitated just before climbing on the train you could stay. But we didn’t do that. We were all very enthusiastic.”(p103-104)

In the next two paragraphs however Zhang speaks about how “later the policy was changed” and that families with more than “three educated children had to send two of them to the countryside” and if they didn’t then the parents would be forced to attend study groups and if the parents still didn’t agree then the “neighborhood committees would come out to the street and beat big gongs, hang up ‘big character posters,’ and use other propaganda to persuade you to let your children go.”

Because the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was exactly that, a revolution in culture, it meant that the masses for the first time anywhere in hystory were given free reign to not only grapple and struggle with ideas but to engage in open debate publicly and at the grassroots level without government interference. This is the true meaning of democracy – and so long as violence wasn’t used the masses were left to reach their own conclusions and express themselves freely. It is as Lin Bao correctly stated. “…the mass revolutionary movement is naturally correct; for among the masses, right and left wing deviationist groups may exist, but the main current of the mass movement always corresponds to the development of that society involved and is always correct.”(4)

Critics of the Cultural Revolution, in particular, intellectuals like to portray the GPCR as some kind of punishment for the petty-bourgeois classes in which they were made to endure mental and physical torture at the hands of the Communist Party and hateful peasants. But Zhang who originally lived in Beijing and whose parents were both teachers, paints a much different picture. Admittedly enough, Zhang has her own disagreements with various CCP policies during and after the Cultural Revolution but commune living was not one of them:

“We all ate together in the public dining halls, with some of the older workers. Even though conditions were bad (speaking of the living conditions of the peasants and the weather) they took pretty good care of us, giving us easier jobs and better housing.”(p104)

In that same paragraph Zhang also says that in fact it was the sent down youth who, after a while, began to talk down to and abuse the peasants calling them “country bumpkins,” “dirty” and “uncultured.” She also says that in “units where there were few educated youth, the work was done better, but where they were the majority, the problems became severe.”

The most severe problem to occur at Red Flag during the time Zhang reflects on is an instance in which a corrupt high ranking cadre was discovered to be molesting young girls. This official was said to be virtually untouchable within Red Flag, until the People’s Liberation Army caught wind of these abuses, entered the commune, began an investigation, arrested the official and subsequently executed him. Afterward the situation got better. (p104-105)

All in all, Zhang’s biggest criticism of the GPCR is that there could’ve been more mechanization in Red Flag and that because of the lack thereof much of the commune’s potential in agriculture went to waste. She thought that the sent down educated youth program was sound because it “enabled them (urban youth) to learn more about the good qualities of the peasants and also some production skills.”(p105) Zhang also addresses the bureaucracy. This will however be addressed in the upcoming sections.

Family Relations

In this portion of the book the author focuses on how collectivization and land reform affected the family structure and the patriarchy in Half Moon Village. From control over the fields, tools and animals to wimmin’s empowerment both in the home and the local and central government.

According to the author the focus of this attack in Red Flag was on “Feudal backward patriarchal thinking.”(p130) Although the GPCR was the most progressive social event in world hystory we should not be mistaken to think that the Cultural Revolution simply went on unimpeded.

From a mother-in-law’s perceived rule in the family to the bureaucratic apparatus there were a variety of social forces opposed to true revolutionary change, even in Red Flag.

The Changing Status of Women

Before the start of the GPCR wimmin’s existence in rural China was largely devoted to serving the male’s side of the family according to what was known as the “three obediences and four virtues.” These required a woman to first follow the lead of her father, then her husbands, and on her husband’s death, her son, and to be “virtuous in morality, proper speech, modesty and diligent work.”(p134)

One peasant womyn recounts her experience to the author explaining how prior to the revolution she was given away as a child bride, beaten, starved and made to engage in forced labor at the hands of her husband and her husband’s family. After 1949 however the Communist Party began the arduous task of doing away with the old system thru the enactment of wimmin’s rights in a country where wimmin were by and large still considered property according to the old kinship system. Beginning with the Marriage Law of 1950, which required free choice in marriage by both partners, guaranteed monogamy, and establishing the right of women to work, and obtain a divorce without necessarily losing their children. This law when combined with the Land Reform Movement Act, which gave women the right to own land in their own name, did much to challenge the most repressive features of the old family system.(p137)

Social relations in Red Flag during the 1950s, 60s and 70s reveal a complex effort by the CP to simultaneously transform China economically and liberate wimmin. Because capitalism developed under congealed patriarchal social conditions, and ideology arises out of the superstructure, this means that even in a socialist society the ideology of the oppressor does not dissipate overnight. Rather, a cultural revolution must be set into effect so that the masses and society as a whole can learn to struggle against backward, reactionary and oppressive thinking. Therefore it should not be surprising to find out that when wimmin first attempted to assert their rights in the new society there were some who did not approve and attempted to put wimmin “back in their place.” To some, especially idealists, this will seem difficult to understand, but revolution is never easy and at root requires scientifically guided struggle at all levels of society. And so to many Western academics and so-called “observers” it would’ve seemed that wimmin’s rights were being subsumed into the wider socialist (and male dominated) framework. But before we get too discouraged with China’s inability to meet our idealistic standards, we should remember that revolutionary struggle always requires determining and working to resolve the principal contradiction, to which all other contradictions become temporarily relegated. This is different than subsuming which requires the glossing over of contradictions or cooptation. It would therefore seem that this is also how the Communist Party saw it. Therefore they could enact land reform, marriage laws and divorce laws which recognized wimmin’s democratic rights, but they also had to be aware of the fact that land reform, agriculture and industry were of the highest priority during this period. If China was unable to develop its productive forces in conjunction with changing social relations then all would be lost. Yes land reform was enacted, and yes wimmin were finally given democratic and bourgeois liberal rights which in semi-feudalist society were revolutionary. But socialist revolution proceeds in stages and it is ultra-left to believe that the patriarchy would not put up a fight and that some concessions would not have to temporarily be made. Ultimately this is why cultural revolution is necessary, to criticize and build public opinion against the old ruling class in preparation for the following stage of revolution.

Even with such reactionary ideas still being propagated wimmin’s conditions were elevated exponentially. Testament to this being the fact that in 1978, 3,037 young wimmin students were enrolled in junior middle school in Red Flag compared to 3,202 males, while 1,035 wimmin were enrolled in senior middle school compared to 859 males in Red Flag.(p101) “In 1977, there had been six women members, out of a village total of fifteen members, of whom one had been the party secretary.”(p44) In addition, let us not forget Jiang Qing, great revolutionary leader who helped spark the GPCR, one of the most influential and powerful people in China; neither should we forget the countless other revolutionary wimmin of China who without their participation in revolutionary struggle China’s liberation would not have been possible. With the restoration of capitalism however, most of the progress made in the arena of wimmin’s rights were reversed or negated with the exception of some democratic rights which mostly the petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeois classes who reside in the urban centers are still privy to. China’s countryside however has seen a resurgence in female slavery since the restoration of capitalism.(5)

Among other reversals in socialism which the author documents is a perversion of China’s barefoot doctor’s program which the social fascists used to depopulate the masses. Here the author speaks about how barefoot doctors and wimmin’s federations “introduced system of material incentives to reduce births, pregnant Half Moon peasant women at that time could receive five yuan in cash and have several days off from work if they agreed to abort their unborn child. Counseling women on such matters was the responsibility of the local women’s federation. Technical medical questions were handled by barefoot doctors in consultation with the federation.”(p142)

“Becoming Rich is Fine” and A Decade of Change

These are the concluding chapters in China’s Urban Villagers and they are very interesting as well as disappointing in the fact that they really document China’s about face in building socialism. Perhaps they can be both summed up in Xiao Cai’s (a young wimmin in charge of foreign affairs at Red Flag) statement to professor Chance: “you know, it’s all right to become rich… I mean that individuals and families can work hard for their own benefit. If they make money at it, that’s fine. They won’t be criticized any more for being selfish.”(p151)

Emphasis on getting rich came thru the “Four Modernizations” campaign which emphasized developing the productive forces while negating production relations in the economy and social relations in society. In popularizing this campaign the revisionists stated that “collective effort must be linked to individual initiative” and that the GPCR “was an appalling disaster.”(p152) These criticisms expressed the class outlook of the bourgeoisie in the party and their attempts to convince the broad masses that “the political extremism of the Cultural Revolution” offered a “simplistic notion of capitalism” and “unfairly labeled people as capitalist roaders.”(p152) The outcome being “a large decrease in individual and household sideline activities, to the detriment of China’s overall economic development.”(p152)

In reality however, nothing could be further from the truth. While the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were not without their mistakes, both the GLF and GPCR marked profound shifts in both the development of socialism as well as the overall development of the humyn social relations not seen since the development of classes themselves. Furthermore, the GLF and GPCR offered the masses insight into the unraveling of contradictions on a hystoric level. Thru participation in the Great Leap the masses learned what it was to engage in industrial production as well as how to innovate traditional farming techniques by utilizing collective effort in combination with proletarian thinking.(3) By their participation in the GPCR the revolutionary masses learned what it was to both gain unprecedented insight into the advance towards communism and the unraveling of contradictions prevalent in socialist society. Thru this experimentation the masses contributed not only to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the science of revolution, but to the development of rational knowledge as well.

Other reversals in socialism in Red Flag were made apparent when officials in Beijing issued an order to China’s commune to “de-collectivize” the land and privatize most plots. Opposition to this privatization was fairly strong in Red Flag even though its residents weren’t as politically educated as others, they still clung to the memory of the hardships common in the countryside before the revolution. In particular they were well aware that it was only thru collective strength and revolutionary leadership that they were able to overcome such difficulties. Thus, they began to openly fear class polarization as they rightly began to recognize that some peoples “rice bowls” had gotten bigger than others. Especially when it came to party officials.

As time went on, many in Red Flag began to get a new understanding of what Mao spoke about before his death concerning the revisionists and the return to capitalism.

By the mid-1980s exploitation in China had returned full-force and no-one could deny or claim ignorance to what was happening except for perhaps the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. As a part of the so-called “responsibility system” initiated under the traitor Deng Xiaoping “separate households and even individuals, could contract with production teams and brigades to produce their grain, vegetables, and other agricultural goods on specific plots of brigade land divided up for that purpose.”(p161) The inevitable result of all this was that migrant peasant workers began to be sought out to work Half Moon’s individually owned plots. The result? Deplorable oppressive conditions for hundreds of thousands of peasants from poorer regions of China who began arriving in Beijing’s agricultural suburbs:

“It looks like a prison labor camp to me” commented one visitor on seeing Half Moon’s migrant worker dormitories “After spending all day in the fields these poor peasants return to their dorms in the evening only to be doled out a bare minimum of food – lots of grains but not many vegetables. Once the harvest is over, they are paid a small wage by the manager and then head back to Henan, Hebei, or whatever province they came from. It’s highly exploitative.”(p166)

Due to a return to capitalism by 1985, China was again forced to import grain, something unheard of since the natural catastrophes that occurred towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. During this time corrupt party officials’ greed reached new heights as they enriched themselves at the expense of the masses thru their manipulation of the national economy and exploitation of workers and peasants thru their access and control of the means of production. Some of the frustration of the people was captured in an interview of a party member by professor Chance in 1988. Although the quote is much too lengthy to feature here the party member was very critical of the capitalist roaders. This is part of what he had to say:

“Some people feel the nature of the party and the state has changed. The change first appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s when the power and authority, rather than representing the interests of the people came to represent those in power. This process took some time to unfold. But now it is quite clear what Mao meant when he warned us about the danger of capitalist roaders…. You don’t know how hard it was for us to figure out what was going on. Mao tried time and time again to weed out the capitalist roaders, but still he failed. Now people don’t know what to do…. Since Mao came along many years ago and saved China from the mess it was in, someone else will come along someday and save us from the mess we are in today…”(p173)

In fact, contrary to what this “Communist” Party member has to say, many of the problems with the bourgeoisie in the party first surfaced during the Great Leap forward 1958-1961 and were illuminated for us by Mao and his followers prior to the Cultural Revolution. In fact, during the Great Leap Forward political struggles and factionalism were already taking place in China’s factories and industrial centers between those wishing to keep expert-in-command and those wanting the masses to take the lead in production. Furthermore, this party member is in error when he places Mao as a great individual whose responsibility it was to save China. Yes Mao was a great revolutionary leader, but he would’ve been the first to point out that the masses were responsible for controlling their own destiny. Afterall this is why the GPCR was initiated.

The student movement at Tiananmen Square is also addressed in which the author chronicles the events leading up to the political repression and massacre of the students. The demands of the protesters ranged from a return to socialism to freedom of the press and a desire to turn to Western style capitalism and democracy. The revisionist CCP, fearing an uprising by the masses, ordered the People’s Liberation Army to fire on the protesters. On 3 June 1989, 8,000 troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers entered the outskirts of Tienanmen and began firing on protesters and city residents alike. Discussion in Half Moon over the protests and political repression and Tiananmen brought mixed reviews.

“Based on their past knowledge and experience, most villagers found it inconceivable that the PLA would fire on the protesters. Even during the height of the Cultural Revolution, the army had gone unarmed into the colleges and universities, where the worst fighting had occurred. But when several factory workers reported that the army had fired on crowds at street corners, the tenor of the conversation began to change.”(p182)

Close enough to Beijing to have participated in the rebellion (and indeed some Red Flag students and other villagers did participate), Half Moon residents were brought under investigation by authorities. Most were eventually cleared.

In short, contradictions in China since the return of capitalism have once again created the conditions for a new revolutionary upsurge. With China’s economic emulation of the so-called “economic miracles” of the South-East: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong (also knowns as the “Four Tigers” or the “Four Dragons”) contradictions in China have once again created the conditions for a new revolutionary upsurge. In relation to this point the author ends this book with the following:

“Implicit in this proposal is the assumption that by emphasizing privatization and a market driven economy, China too can achieve a similar prosperity. However, those four nations that were able to break out of Third World poverty were small, were on the Asian periphery, and were the beneficiaries of two large Asian wars financed by America. There is little reason to assume that a market-driven economic system will enable China to repeat the process. Much more probable is a return to a neo-colonial status with small islands of prosperity and corruption on the coasts and with stagnation in the hinterland – a sure formula for future revolutionary upheavals.”(p187)

This will be my full account of my evolvement with the organizing of peace between all prisoners, be they independent citizens of this yard or members of lumpen groups or organizations. Many prisoners have been involved in the processes that will be disclosed, to ensure their safety their names won’t be mentioned in this report. All circumstances are well known by the prisoner population on this yard (C yard @ Tehachapi) and can therefore be verified easily by asking and requesting anyone who receives ULK on this yard. Before starting I want to give shouts out to United Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP), because I hold your principles and am inspired by your scientific methods. As a 5%er I give all due respects to the teachings of the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE) for my Free dome and clear sight which allows me to live in a non-fictional reality, being awakened to the True Self which is righteousness without fear. Also I would like to thank ULK and MIM(Prisons) for providing revolutionary education for free, which has taught me how to lead and helped me realize that I am a socialist with a revolutionary conscience. Thank all the prisoners here at California Correctional Institution (CCI) who’s assisted me [nicknames omitted], Tha Numbers, Tha Old Black Vanguard and a huge part of the New Afrikans and Chican@s.

I arrived here at CCI in mid-2016. Upon my arrival I introduced myself as a member of the NGE. I met several New Afrikans that were very negative about the program here, C.O. culture, prisoner treatment and a myriad of other complexities dealing with conflicts among prisoners. The first persyn I came to know from a non-fictional reality is a member of one of the largest street organizations in North America. Our first conversations would become the foundation and conduit for many actions that followed. His assessment of the yard has proven to be invaluable, though bleak when he spoke of the mental deadness of our people; meaning the Black prison population on the yard. Blind, deaf and dumb with no concept of organization or unity. This comrade is indispensable to the prosperity, growth, and development of this yard’s prisoner on just about every level. His advice is most valuable now as ever.

To begin to address these conditions, I initiated the weekly services for everyone on the yard who wants to attend as a place of unity, education and true identity resurrection. From proposal to acceptance it took one month, then from acceptance to being physically scheduled it took three more weeks ending when we had the first NGE service in November 2016.

At the same time this was being developed, most people were saying this will never be accepted by the administration on this yard. Doubters included prisoners, as well as Captains, Chaplains and Correctional Officers. I persynally began circulating my verbal disapproval of two-on-one violence or group violence against one person. Simply stating these actions won’t be tolerated when acted out against New Afrikans by other racial groups nor by other New Afrikans on New Afrikan prisoners nor member of other races who are also prisoners regardless of charges and convictions issued by the unlawful court system. By my understanding this position is backed by the BPP’s 10 point program demand #8.(1) This has become the new norm through actions I will now describe.

On a day at the ass end of September 2016, at the morning yard for the lower tier, I noticed a dichotomy between a group of Aztlán known as the Number and an elder from the New Afrikans. Three members of the Number appeared to be attempting to jump physically this unknown elderly New Afrikan when his cellie physically assisted him ending the exchange of blows by walking away and descending to the bottom of the yard. All this happened in the direct view of the yard Correction Officers without any response. After my initial investigation of the occurrence turned little to no information I migrated to the bottom of the yard to build and better understand what I had just witnessed. Upon speaking to a New Afrikan soldier who we shall call Ty, me and him decided to get to the bottom of this matter. The elder explained that the Number owed him and upon confrontation about the debt verbally refused to pay. That is when the elderly New Afrikan swung his fist, hitting the debtor in the jaw, causing 3 members of the Number lumpen group to engage him in physical battle. After the knowledge, me and Ty decided to go and confront the Numbers, to issue a formal notice that the jumping of any New Afrikan would no longer be accepted and if we cannot have an agreement we would go to war at that moment. However, due to the magnetic energy all the New Afrikans on the yard mobilized with unity and harmoniously walked as one to the Numbers table at which time the aforementioned decree was stated to the Numbers. They decided peace was best for the yard at that moment and minutes later came assuring the elderly New Afrikan he would receive what he was owed. They apologized for the acts of aggression and the miscommunication.

During this time the Correctional Officers stayed in their yard position but many prisoners reported hearing them radio the tower to shoot Blacks if violence was to occur. Many New Afrikans felt the power of unity that day and began a positive dialogue due to being empowered by the unity of that event. That day also respectful communication between New Afrikans and Numbers were established including beginning dialogue between white nationals of two different lumpen groups in days to follow, which opened up the door for me to begin to share the principles of the UFPP with both major groups. The NGE membership grew to 23 prisoners of a racially diverse demographic, mostly New Afrikan but Aztláns and YT’s joined too. I shared white national books out of my collection with the white nation lumpen group member and believed we had strong lines of communication.

Over a month later, in November 2016, an issue was made known to me about an alleged thief of a radio supposedly by a New Afrikan who had a history of mischief named KC. When word got to me I was told the Aztláns were planning to jump the New Afrikan, after sharing this with my comrade it was decided that we would investigate in order to keep the peace. While playing basketball someone had taken the radio off of the sidelines where items had been sat inside owners’ shirts. My comrade believed KC to be the culprit, which he denied. Voluntarily, all the New Afrikans stripped down to their boxers proving they didn’t have the property in question, lastly and with little fuss KC stripped proving he didn’t have it. Then all the Aztláns likewise stripped proving they didn’t have it either. The victim still felt like KC was guilty and wanted to fight. KC reluctantly obliged and whipped him and peace was better established stating New Afrikans won’t turn down no battle if requested but peace is desired.

Almost a month later a white national, who I believed to be solid used our growing relationship to lure KC away from myself, then attacked him with a huge stone in a pillow case when his back was turned. Needless to say his instant karma manifested, KC was able to thwart this plot against himself and turn the tide with a huge victory over this extreme form of physical oppression and violent aggression. In days to follow white national politics seemed to attempt to establish itself, with whites telling Blacks they could not use pull up bars near their table. On hearing this I spoke with their known leaders and we all decided to end all attempts at making C yard a racialized environment and instead work together on a proposal to help create this yard into an honor yard. Vowing to do away with weapon usage and to better establish open lines of communication in order to solve interracial issues without violence.

There was an issue which touched home that I must share with you now. One of the persyns I most respect was accused of a savage crime against his celly. At the time I was allowing him to use my TV and a few CDs as was two other comrades. Upon his arrest people began circulating rumors of his alleged guilt. Due to his conduct and our developed closeness I persynally went to those prophecizing against him and told them to stop and desist. While he was being investigated a white porter came into blame for what was by then deemed missing property, that the porter had access to and had allegedly stolen. This was based on the fact that neither my TV nor all the CDs and a CD player made it to R&R. He was blamed and pressured to pay for two of the missing CDs by someone of influence. During this time I found out that the Building Officer had on his own taken my TV out of this persyn’s property before it even left the building along with the CD player. I was asked to protect the white porter by one of the members of the original Black prisoners vanguard party, which I agreed to. Then the Correctional Officer returned my TV after keepin it almost two weeks, which is not just unfair but it is unlawful and burglary by definition. I didn’t know if the white porter was guilty so I didn’t charge him for my CDs knowing that the comrade was innocent and would be returning. Under threat and fear the white porter paid a 16oz jar of coffee to the owner of two missing CDs.

Well, I was right about the porter being innocent and the comrade because when he came back the CDs were in his property which he returned to their owners. The porter got his coffee back and all the false prophets learned a valuable lesson and some even apologized for smutting the comrade.

Now I have a monthly unity walk at yard with an all inclusive New Afrikan peaceful unity movement and I will have my first banquet in February 2017, of which all the leaders of the different lumpen organizations have been invited to attend. I will read UFFP principles at that time and speak on United Prisoners (UP) its benefits and how important it is to take the initiative in the Change Movement.

I recently got shipped to the Michael Unit 11/21/16 due to myself being jumped by a white supremacist gang member because I told his people that I messed around with him on 10/7/16. The law library SSI snitched on us. I received a major disciplinary case. On 10/20/16 I was jumped to where I fell and lost my balance. Sgt. Anderson did the OPI and I was placed on D-Line at Eastham 10/25/16 and I went before UCC and Ms. Phillips-classification recommended that I be shipped. During the almost 5 months I was at Eastham, the drinking water was severely contaminated. My stomach was hurting me. Mr. Garrett French Co IV and Mr. Rains didn’t bring all my property back on 10/25/16. I filed a step 1 grievance. They failed to provide a notice of extension. My step 1 is due on Jan 2017. D-Line used to be where they placed G4 transit folks waiting a house. They got rid of it and made it into seg.

There is an infestation of flies in the chow hall and outside. They refuse to solve the water crisis. Dayroom was 1-4 7 days a week daytime, except weekends 6-8am. One of the weekends was outside Rec. Mon-Fri 7p 9p dayroom. Restriction was on Wed night.

I arrived on Michael on 11/21/16. 5 of us comrades waited in 7 bldg for over 8 hrs. They placed us in transit housing in 12 bldg which is for level 3 Seg offenders. They treated us like Seg offenders placing us in handcuffs to the showers, and outside Rec. We had a 2 day shakedown Nov 29-Dec 1.

The unit is very disorganized. They installed a lot of security cameras. There was days in 8 bldg where we were given johnnies. The unit is short of staff. I sent sick calls, many don’t return until after 48 hrs or so. I am still waiting for Ms. Coburn or whoever from Medical Records to lay me in. The Michael Unit has been opened almost 30 years.

They don’t keep a stock of I-60s, grievances (step 1/2), sick calls at the desk. Officers work 12 hr shifts A card (1 card) B card (2 card). They have hospice in 10 bldg. There are comrades that are differently abled that are placed on 3 row instead of being the ground flood. The unit is not ADA compliant.

8 bldg hasn’t had outside/inside recreation in over 3 weeks. On 12/29/16, our bldg was denied dayroom however we went to chow in the morning. We had a johnnie at last chow.

On 12/25/16 at 8:30, I dealt with Ms. Charlotte Bussey, Rd. She told me to stop dropping sick calls. My medical care wasn’t important. I sent a sick call to Ms. Coburn in Medical Records. No sick call came back. I was told to send a sick call to Ms. Israeli. The Michael Unit Medical Staff is severely disorganized. My claim they are short staff. I question their credentials.

On 8 bldg there is an infestation of roaches all over. They don’t supply plenty of pine oil, bleach, etc to keep them from coming. Spiders hang out in the cells. I plan on mailing the petitions to the state reps/senators in Texas as they step into office. All 50 state reps and 31 state senators will receive it. I will let you all know the results of the mailer. We must press the issue also president Donald Trump needs to know what’s going on. On 7 bldg, they have general population 64 medium custody mixed in. Michael Unit has a safekeeping wing. They won’t allow me to life there because I been in general population over 6 years. The comrades state that it is hard to get into safekeeping.

Today we Raza and Natives/others kicked off the new year by exercising unity here in C Yard by not going to work or education at work center (head quarters) of this yard. Other factions decided not to participate because they care too much about the 5-10¢ paying job they currently have (Lumpen Aristocracy?).

This campaign we currently put into motion is to stop the form of harassment these pigs use thru daily body searches, i.e. x-ray body scan, strip search, etc. before we go to school/work and before we leave. We know that we can stop at least the x-ray scan from taking place for we will continue to refuse the x-ray scan and therefore work/education. This is the recent flow here.

Persynally I believe that we should shut down all movement but still go to Yard, programs and accept our food. Just make the pigs do all the work. That is the only way to make these pigs fly. Even then, these forms of campaigns are at a beginner step and might not be fully successful. We should still engage and get a feel of the opposition. The only way we know how to deal with an opposition is thru the motion of our resistance. It is then that we’ll know what we’re up against and to what extent they’ll go. Not only this but we learn on how to combat the beast. New views and forms of tactics come from this. It is what we call the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2016

Rogue One is the backstory behind the very first episode of Star Wars ever produced (which is now chronologically number 4 in the unendingly profitable Star Wars series of movies). In this movie we learn how the rebel alliance managed to get a copy of the blueprints for the Death Star, a critical piece of information used to destroy that weapon. This movie is an impressive example of how well-funded elements of capitalist culture can spend millions of dollars in order to make a profit off of entertainment: the estimated budget was $200,000,000. Imagine what could have been done with those resources in a system guided by peoples’ need instead of profit.

For this money we get a story that has some progressive elements but also many questionable and reactionary messages. Rogue One is about the rebel alliance’s fight against the Empire. This could be a great anti-imperialist analogy. And there are some solid themes of revolutionary sacrifice and the oppressed coming together to fight a common enemy in a united front. But in the end it is individualism that wins, as of course that makes for a more exciting story in our culture.

This episode is a fairly satisfactory effort to stitch together episode 3 and episode 4, and provides us with a better explanation for why the Death Star could be completely destroyed with one good shot. The saboteur behind this weakness gives us one of the many examples of revolutionary sacrifice in this movie. It also offers an example of how resistance is possible from someone who is forced into a situation where there seems to be no resistance. While this character is depicted as having unique skills, eir course of action serves as a good example of the existentialist axiom that we always have a choice. This may serve as inspiration for those in the imperialist countries surrounded by class enemies, or those in isolation cells with no contact with the outside world but occasional letters.

While revolutionary sacrifice is a strong theme with many characters in the Rebellion, this message is not inherently anti-imperialist as it will likely reinforce those fighting for U.$. empire who believe what they are doing is good. The Empire in the movie, rather than being an example of the evils of imperialism, continues to come across as a caricature of what Amerika thinks of communism. Everyone wears the same uniform and is forced to work for the military dominance of the world under the leadership of one egotistical leader. But for those with a revolutionary mindset, we can pretend this was meant to represent the imperialist empire, and root for the Rebellion and honor their sacrifices.

There is a group that resembles Arab militants who have taken up focoism against the Empire, and who the Rebel Alliance grudgingly wants to work with. In some ways this is better than the average portrayal of Arab peoples in Hollywood movies, where they are often just the terrorists. But in this case they come across as not smart enough to participate in a united battle, just doing what their leader directs, in random focoist attacks. Still a rather stereotypical picture.

The Alliance itself appears to be a united front of various species from around the universe who are working together to defeat the Empire. This could be seen to parallel the united front of oppressed nations that will be necessary to take down U.$. imperialism. In humyn history we have strong examples of united fronts within nations, such as China. But the multinational united front and the joint dictatorship of the proletariat that will likely be necessary after defeating U.$. imperialism are things that we have little experience with. Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition in Chicago was an early form of such a united front, but it was repressed before an anti-imperialist war could emerge.

The movie uses this united front to promote ultra-leftism and individualist acts of desperation. When they get bogged down in fighting over whether or not they should take military action or run and hide, a small group of fighters take independent action because they don’t know anything but war. These are the brave heroes of the movie. The main disagreement within the united front was over whether or not it was possible to win in a fight against the Death Star. This debate over tactics could have been a good lesson in struggle and unity, perhaps greater gathering of information and a testing of various tactics to learn from practice. Instead there was a short verbal fight and then a decision that no action could be taken because of all the disagreement, portraying the united front as futile.

Rogue One did feature more female characters than the average Hollywood movie, but the main characters were born into their roles, rather than rising up to take positions out of conviction and hard work. While the lead male characters overcame great hardship, or fought against persynal circumstances, to take up the rebel struggle. And still the vast majority of the characters seen in the movie are male, an odd feature for a society so far in the future. Clearly the patriarchy still dominates in Star Wars.

Star Wars movies all feature reference to “The Force” to greater or lesser degrees. In this storyline The Force is basically turned into a religion, practiced only by one Asian man who blindly guards the temple (literally, he is blind). This man’s blind faith (it’s not very subtle) becomes an important part of the rebel fight. And at one point this faith saves the day, again promoting a sort of ultra-leftism.

With all of these failings, MIM(Prisons) can’t recommend Rogue One for anything more than critical analysis.

I’m once again checking in from California Correctional Institution (CCI). In 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale planted the seeds of the Black Liberation movement in Oakland. The seeds they planted rapidly spread to the rest of the United States and now years later we’re fighting for the same things as the Panthers.

We still follow the same theme of Black nationalism, armed militancy, intercommunalism, and answering the call to join the revolutionary struggle. Even today, I can still see and hear the voices of comrades such as Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Gwen Fontaine, Fredrika Newton and Lil Bobby Hutton; their teachings, thoughts, practices. And they still resonate with significance and power through the pages of books.

The spirit of the Panthers have been spread so deep into the roots of Black life and into the fabric of every African Community in America, that it’s just natural for us to want to stand up and fight when we hear the call. In our homes, schools, hoods, jails, and prisons. That’s the revolutionary legacy, and the spirit these comrades planted in us.

This yard we’re on is considered an Ad-Seg kick out yard. But in our efforts to educate the people we’ve begun to create something better. This yard is becoming a place where cadres are born. We have created programmes that serve the people: we have political study groups, we have a GED study group, in which we are helping comrades get their GEDs, and we are helping individuals with their college classes as well.

I am very proud of the comrades on this facility of all nationalities. Because we’re not just talking we’re doing, pushing hard for a truly united front and serving the people. We have just submitted the paperwork for a banquet. That will be used as a Unity Celebration, where we will all meet and share our thoughts on the issues of today, and share a little political knowledge with each other.

The only issue I see is that the room only holds fifty people, so not all of the groups can fit in this room, so we’re planning to have another on the yard the next day. We don’t want anyone left out. We are here to serve the people, educate the people, and to help liberate the people, all the people. My rules are if we focus on what we have in common and less on our differences we’ll be able to learn better, who we are, and what we’re about.

We all want the same things. We all have the same goals, and we all want to create positive change in our world, and in our communities. A community by way of definitions is a comprehensive collection of institutions that serve the people who live there. CCI C-Facility is where we are living right now. So this is the community we’re serving.

It is the duty of all revolutionaries to make the revolution. This is obviously rule one. But this is a way of denouncing, in the context, all the so-called revolutionaries who not only did not seek to make the revolution, who managed secure income, talk the revolutionary shit, but who torpedoed the efforts of the people to liberate themselves and that must not be. As Huey said, revolutionary theory without practice ain’t shit.

Power to the People
a servant.