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.
I am writing to you concerning a lawsuit which my defense team members
are currently preparing on my behalf. It protests my false prison gang
validation as an associate of the Black Guerrilla Family on December 31,
2009.
It is my position that this validation is solely motivated by
retaliation and racial profiling due to my ongoing campaign to stamp out
corruption involving some “Green Wall” correctional staff within the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) who are
currently engaged in organized crime, which is a clear threat to the
safety and security of all CDCR institutions.
I was recently responsible for disciplinary and employee discharges
against three corrupted CDCR prison staff at California State prison -
Sacramento, Salinas Valley State Prison, and High Desert State Prison.
Since my false prison gang process, me and my defense have come across
strong evidence. Some corrupted “Green Wall” staff are very prejudiced
and racist, sanctioning use of the false validation process for some
Black, Brown and white prisoners, to pursue false prison gang
investigations. Many prisoners have strong evidence of being wrongfully
validated for reading materials on their culture. Institutional Gang
Investigators have taken a race-based shortcut and assume anything to do
with African or Mexican culture can be banned under the guise of
controlling gang activities.
Any California prisoners who have relevant information on the false
prison gang process should write to MIM(Prisons), to get involved in
this case.
My purpose of this lawsuit is to shed light on this abuse of power and
human rights violations, including torture tactics through criminal
activities and organized crime.
Prisoners in America suffer at the hands of their captors; the only
group of people who remain under the brutality of compelled work. Their
master is the state. It is an evil and capricious master, whose goal is
to break the spirit and reduce to an automaton (the better to be a
wage-slave in society) a human being.
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides: “Neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the
party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the united
states, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
The reality of this in prison, is that a prisoner will be assigned a job
which will be institutional drudgery - the kitchen, laundry, farm labor,
etc. He will then be made to perform his job under the gun - literally,
in the case of outside work squads. Something about a correctional
officer with a gun is very unsettling - these are very base people who
couldn’t get a job with the Sheriff’s Department, and who don’t have to
pass a psychological exam or rigorous requirements to get this job.
Even if not under the gun, officers, and sometimes civilian employees,
hold tremendous power over the prisoners in their custody, which they
usually abuse. What’s more, they expect a fully honest days work out of
you like you owe them something. If they don’t like the job you’re
doing, or just don’t like you, they can send you to the box for 60 days
and take all your gain time for refusing to work. Most people get gain
time, so an officer has the power to hold a prisoner in prison several
months longer at his whim and subject to no real oversight.
Needless to say, you are working at no benefit to yourself. I can speak
from the experience of the kitchen, where myself and my fellow prisoners
serve the disgusting state food, clean up, and attempt to look busy so
as not to incur the ire of the man. After we serve, we are often fed a
regular tray, getting only what the compound gets. And some staff like
to threaten us with throwing away the rest of the food instead of
serving it to us. Also they can legally make us work 70 hours a week.
A few days ago, I was threatened for my grievances about the boots they
make us wear over our shoes and all the menu changes. I’m not worried
about it, and actually feel good because they ended up on the warden’s
desk and I got the man’s attention.
The boss made a remarkable statement today, in one of his daily
speeches: “You’re here by choice. I’ve got a family to feed.” First of
all, I’m here by force. Second, I didn’t make him work in the prison
system as a guard.
The supposed compassion of our boss man is overwhelming. I was told
today by a friend that he personally witnessed the boss pepper spray two
people. This was not for fighting or trying to attack him, but for
trying to finish their meal after they were told to throw their tray
away for some bogus disciplinary reason.
Prisoners who have medical conditions or are mentally ill are still
pressed into labor, with no real way out except to go to the box. The
box may look like a pleasing alternative sometimes, but it is not -
sensory deprivation, no property or canteen, meager state meals. It’s de
facto physical and psychological torture, something that surprisingly
still exists in this country. Plus there is so much that goes along with
it, like a later release date and transfer to a worse unit in the same
prison.
I find consolation in the packet of legal material I got from the Panama
City Division of the U.S. District Court tonight. Soon I will be out and
able to file my 42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuit against an officer and a captain
who fabricated disciplinary charges against me. I encourage every
prisoner not to forget this time when he reaches freedom, but to speak
up for our struggle and report their crimes against us. This can often
include filing a lawsuit based on something that happened in prison,
because every convict has a story and many have good cases. Know that
most of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) does not apply to you as
a released prisoner, so you do not have to show physical injury or have
filed grievances (although you always should, it establishes a paper
trail and potentially incriminating responses) before filing suit. Keep
that same spirit alive that made you a stronger man when you get to the
streets, whatever you do. That will make you an adversary worth fearing.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with this comrade’s assessment of
the importance of organizing and fighting back both behind the bars and
on the streets. And the message of continuing the battle once you hit
the streets is particularly important. But we would not call this system
of prisoner labor “slavery.” As we explained in our article on the
prison
economy, prison labor does not produce a profit for the prisons,
rather it is used to offset some (but not all) of the costs of
imprisonment. Prisons are primarily used as a tool of social control,
with the prisoner labor only a minor aspect of this. The term slavery
refers to the system that captures humyn labor for the purpose of
exploiting and profiting from it. This is not the case with the Amerikan
prison system today. It is important to understand the real motivations
of the oppressor if we hope to change this oppressive system.
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure or censorship of music
and literature. 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 below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Tom Clements, Director of Adult Institutions P.O. Box
236 Jefferson City, MO 65101
Chris Pickering, Inspector General (MO DOC) P.O. Box 236
Jefferson City, MO 65101
U.S. Department of Justice PhB 950 Pennsylvania Ave,
N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530
Marianne Atwell, Director of Offender Rehabilitative Services
(Missouri) P.O. Box 236 Jerrerson City, MO 65101
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones inside who are experiencing issues
with the 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 below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Warden (specific to your facility)
Oklahoma State Jail Inspector, Don Garrison 1000 N.E. 10th
St., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73117-1299
ODOC Office of Internal Affairs Oklahoma City Office 3400 Martin
Luther King Avenue Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111-4298
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE P.O. Box 9778 Arlington,
Virginia 22219
United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special
Litigation Section 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB Washington,
D.C. 20530
Oklahoma Citizens United for Rehabilitation of
Errants (OK-CURE) P.O. Box 9741 Tulsa, OK 74157-0741
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades in High Desert State
Prison’s Z-Unit (administrative segregation) who are experiencing
brutality and cruel living conditions. Send them extra copies to share!
For more information on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Prison Law Office General Delivery San Quentin, CA 94964
Internal Affairs CDCR 10111 Old Placerville Rd, Ste 200
Sacramento, CA 95872
CDCR Office of Ombudsman 1515 S Street, Room 540 N Sacramento,
CA 95811
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special
Litigation Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC
20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington,
VA 22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Recientemente recibí el libro que les mande pedir, Agentes de Represión
por Ward Churchill. Hombre, ese era uno de los libros más iluminados con
respeto a los problemas inherentes del trabajo político que yo leído
hasta este punto. Sí, no importa si ellos oficialmente desbandaron las
operaciones COINTELPRO o no. Todavía continua, ellos aprendieron lo
efectivo del programa hasta con que sean grupos de agentes pícaro, De
todos modos continua, especialmente en la decadencia acrecentamiento de
los EE.UU.
Ya lo he pasado el libro. Tratare de meterlo entre las manos (y las
cabezas) de los más disidentes que sea posible cualquiera sea su raza o
creencia política personal. Muchísima gente está descontenta con las
acciones y las políticas del gobierno estadounidense, gente con la que
sea posible que ustedes tengan intereses opuestos, todavía el estorbo lo
más grande para la realización de los objetivos políticos de cualquier
de estos grupos políticos varios es la siempre poderosa clase
comerciante de los Estados Unidos.
Encuentro que muchísimos disidentes están completamente ignorante de la
realidad de que en cuanto que empiezan a organizar, reclutar, agitar o
de educar a la gente a una forma de pensar al contrario del statu quo se
convierten en un blanco, si lo sepan o no, o le guste o no. Al fallar
prepararse contra las contramedidas del sucio Tío Sam es desastroso.
Yo fui soltado en 2006 y di el brinco directamente dentro de actividades
de orientación política. Alguna interferencia gubernativo era esperada y
aun notado, como vigía, acosamiento y lo parecido. Muchas de las
tácticas en el libro había sospechado fuertemente pero tenía poca o no
prueba o que no estaba bastante seguro para tomar una acción
irreversible.
En cualquier caso, para sumar lo todo, uno de nuestros miembros fue
manipulado dentro de una posición que resultó en la muerte de dos de
nuestros miembros. Luego una planta de alto nivel le tendieron una
trampa para que lo arreste, pero resultó en la muerte de dos detectives
más quienes trataron de aprehenderlo. El miembro murió en un granizo de
balas, creo que eran 62.
Yo realizo que todo esto es extremamente contra-productivo y solamente
sirvió como justificación para aumentar su gasto presupuesto infiltrador
en nosotros. Yo he visto los mejores de estas plantas/informantes FBI
(Buró de Investigaciones Federal). Conozco a uno que instiga, solicita,
y hasta, a veces, ordena crímenes como su papel doble de disidente rango
en la organización, después manda al sucio Tío Sam para que arresten los
criminales, que solamente son criminales por virtud del dato que
siguieron su dirección! Sí, he tenido esta planta tratar de asesinar a
mi novia embarazada y solamente sucedió en causar la muerte del niño.
Les puedo enseñar declaraciones donde esta misma planta del FBI está
siendo delatado por otra rata que ni sabe que estuvo tendido por la
planta del FBI, ni si quiera que es una planta del FBI. Aunque el
explica en detalle como el planta de FBI está golpeando a mujeres
embarazadas con bates, etc.
Yo sé que no cargos nunca serán registrados contra los de ellos, y
personalmente, si yo pudiera recobrar mi libertad yo prefería que cargos
nunca serian prensados. Yo ciertamente no testificaría. Lo veo como un
gran contradicción a voltear al mismo sistema al que uno odia, al buscar
ayuda en la disolución, para dar la vuelta y buscar la ayuda de ellos en
la busca de justicia. Yo conseguirá mi propia justicia si alguna vez
podría recobrar mi libertad temporaria.
MIM(Prisiones) responde: En las semanas pasadas han sido un numero de
historias de jóvenes siendo arrestados con cargos del terrorismo después
de siendo tendidos por agentes federales a cometer actos violentos.
Sabiendo el arte de la guerra y comprendiendo la etapa de la lucha en la
cual estamos son maneras de evitar muchos de los ataques usados por
COINTELPRO. Camaradas verdaderos se prueban a través de trabajo duro
constante y con dedicación, y no por actos de bravata.
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Mario Vargas Llosa Aventura
press, 1986
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
2010. Widely known as an author who writes about political events in
Peru, and takes a vocal position on politics throughout Latin America,
this review only addresses one of the many books he has written. But it
is a good example of the political views of Vargas Llosa whose politics
have made him an enemy of the people for many years. Vargas Llosa claims
that he supported revolutionary politics earlier in his life, but if
true, he firmly and thoroughly changed that and works hard as a critic
of people’s movements and a supporter of imperialist so-called
democracy. He has written many works of both fiction and non-fiction,
and lost a bid for president of Peru in 1990, during the height of the
Peruvian Communist Party’s fight for liberation of the Peruvian people,
to Alberto Fujimori.
After being named the Nobel winner, Vargas Llosa said, “It’s very
difficult for a Latin American writer to avoid politics. Literature is
an expression of life, and you cannot eradicate politics from life.”(1)
We would agree with that statement, and as we demonstrate in this
review, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta is a good
demonstration of Vargas Llosa’s reactionary politics.
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize, Vargas Llosa commented
extensively on the “terrorists” in the world today who are the enemy of
what he calls “liberal democracy” (capitalism). Spouting the best
pro-imperialist rhetoric, Vargas Llosa makes the case for imperialist
militarism with lies about the freedom and beauty of capitalist
so-called democracy:
“Since every period has its horrors, ours is the age of fanatics, of
suicide terrorists, an ancient species convinced that by killing they
earn heaven, that the blood of innocents washes away collective
affronts, corrects injustices, and imposes truth on false beliefs. Every
day, all over the world, countless victims are sacrificed by those who
feel they possess absolute truths. With the collapse of totalitarian
empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human
rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind
holocausts, genocides, invasions, and wars of extermination. None of
that has occurred. New forms of barbarism flourish, incited by
fanaticism, and with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
we cannot overlook the fact that any small faction of crazed redeemers
may one day provoke a nuclear cataclysm. We have to thwart them,
confront them, and defeat them. There aren’t many, although the tumult
of their crimes resounds all over the planet and the nightmares they
provoke overwhelm us with dread. We should not allow ourselves to be
intimidated by those who want to snatch away the freedom we have been
acquiring over the long course of civilization. Let us defend the
liberal democracy that, with all its limitations, continues to signify
political pluralism, coexistence, tolerance, human rights, respect for
criticism, legality, free elections, alternation in power, everything
that has been taking us out of a savage life and bringing us closer –
though we will never attain it – to the beautiful, perfect life
literature devises, the one we can deserve only by inventing, writing,
and reading it. By confronting homicidal fanatics we defend our right to
dream and to make our dreams reality.”
Vargas Llosa went on to talk about his political views:
“In my youth, like many writers of my generation, I was a Marxist and
believed socialism would be the remedy for the exploitation and social
injustices that were becoming more severe in my country, in Latin
America, and in the rest of the Third World. My disillusion with statism
and collectivism and my transition to the democrat and liberal that I am
– that I try to be – was long and difficult and carried out slowly as a
consequence of episodes like the conversion of the Cuban Revolution,
about which I initially had been enthusiastic, to the authoritarian,
vertical model of the Soviet Union; the testimony of dissidents who
managed to slip past the barbed wire fences of the Gulag; the invasion
of Czechoslovakia by the nations of the Warsaw Pact; and because of
thinkers like Raymond Aron, Jean Francois Rével, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl
Popper, to whom I owe my reevaluation of democratic culture and open
societies. Those masters were an example of lucidity and gallant courage
when the intelligentsia of the West, as a result of frivolity or
opportunism, appeared to have succumbed to the spell of Soviet socialism
or, even worse, to the bloody witches’ Sabbath of the Chinese Cultural
Revolution.”
Finally, Vargas Llosa made clear his support for the neocolonial
governments in Latin America, pretending that they represent
“functioning” democracy in the interests of the people and “supported by
a broad popular consensus.”:
“We are afflicted with fewer dictatorships than before, only Cuba and
her named successor, Venezuela, and some pseudo populist, clownish
democracies like those in Bolivia and Nicaragua. But in the rest of the
continent democracy is functioning, supported by a broad popular
consensus, and for the first time in our history, as in Brazil, Chile,
Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and almost all
of Central America, we have a left and a right that respect legality,
the freedom to criticize, elections, and succession in power. That is
the right road, and if it stays on it, combats insidious corruption, and
continues to integrate with the world, Latin America will finally stop
being the continent of the future and become the continent of the
present.”
This book is indicative of Vargas Llosa’s work which does greater
disservice to the revolutionary movement in Peru than those who write
bourgeois fiction without pretending to have historical context or
political purpose. The novel reviews the life of a fictional
revolutionary activist in Peru in the 1950s who participated in a small
focoist uprising before ending up in prison. The book describes
revolutionary parties as all small marginalized groups wasting their
time studying dead guys and debating theory. And it leaves the reader
questioning the commitment of all who participate in revolutionary
politics, assuming that everyone sells out somehow to pursue their own
interests in the end. The peasants and workers are virtually ignored in
the book, portrayed only as pawns in the work done by activists.
This novel focuses on a small Trotskyist party, the product of several
splits in previous Trotskyist groups, and specifically on one of the
party members, Alejandro Mayta. Interestingly, in a brief description of
how Mayta ended up in this party, Vargas Llosa describes his movement
from group to group, each time rejecting the previous one as not correct
enough politically, until he ended up with the Trotskyists as the most
pure political line he could find. MIM(Prisons) has some agreement with
this description in that Trotskyism is pure idealism and it appeals to
those who don’t like to get their hands dirty with the realities of
revolutionary politics.
Eventually Mayta deserts the Trotskyists to join up with a focoist
movement in the mountains that is going to take armed action. He is
galvanized by the idea of real action rather than the talk that his
Trotskyist group has been engaging in for years. He is kicked out of his
party, who consider the action premature, and also because Mayta has
approached the Stalinists to participate in and support the focoist
action.
Focoists believe that the armed actions of a small group of people will
spark the masses to join the revolution. This is an incorrect view of
revolutionary strategy. History has demonstrated that small groups of
insurgents are not sufficient to bring about revolution; successful
revolutions have come through the hard work of organizing the masses. As
inspiration, many focoists look to the Cuban revolution, and Castro is
mentioned repeatedly in the book. But the Cuban revolution is the only
example focoists have of anything resembling success, and while that
revolution did deliver a blow to U.$. imperialism, it created a
state-capitalist country dependent on the Soviet Union.(2) Like other
focoist actions, Mayta’s small group is captured during their armed
insurrection. And there is much debate about whether desertion,
betrayal, or just poor planning led to their failure.
A recurring theme in this book is the claim by the narrator that the
truth of history is impossible to determine. In interviewing people
about the life of Mayta the narrator gets conflicting stories from
everyone he talks to, and is unable to figure out exactly what happened.
This nihilist position encourages people to just give up rather than
seeking to understand and interpret history to help forward progress in
the future. Ironically Vargas Llosa thinks he knows the definitive truth
about the history of politics in many countries as he interprets history
through the lens of the imperialists.
Through this fictional novel, Vargas Llosa manages to attack a vast
range of revolutionary theories and practices, and leave the reader
disillusioned and without hope for a better future for the people of
Peru. He does not try to hide the poverty and despair that is the
everyday reality of life for the Peruvian people, but condemns
revolutionaries, politicians, and everyone else to failure in a maze of
corruption, collaboration and irrelevant theories. There is no redeeming
political value to this book which could depress even the most militant
of activists.
Organizing the imprisoned lumpen within the United $nakes is
certainly nothing easy. However, speaking technically and from a
materialist perspective, it should be relatively easy. As First World
lumpen we face much more oppression than our oppressed nation counter
parts who have ascended to the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie/labor
aristocracy. Therefore, when conducting a proper class analysis within
the United $tates it is the law of contradiction that tells us that
those most oppressed in the economic sense by capitalism’s
contradictions in society will be the scientifically designated
revolutionary vehicle. Having no proletariat to speak of within U.$.
borders, besides perhaps the migratory workers, the next best thing or
class of people resembling a revolutionary vehicle becomes, in our case,
the bourgeoisified lumpen.
Therefore, as any good communist should know the heart of social change,
the very meat and marrow of it all within U.$. borders rests with the
lumpen. And so in knowing all this there is still a question to be
begged. Why is it so damn hard?!
The lumpen as a class is the direct product of the capitalist mode of
production and has its ideology rooted and embedded in the bourgeois
philosophy of “me, myself and I.” It is this backward bourgeois thinking
which we must first focus on defeating. Victory on the ideological front
should be our first real goal. The more people we win over on the
ideological front, the more successful we’ll be in accomplishing all
other tasks. This is the principal contradiction that needs to be
resolved with respect to organizing the lumpen.
ULK as an ideological weapon is a good tool in helping us to
win over the prisoner population in a conscious way to not only their
own class based cause, but more importantly to that of the truly
oppressed and exploited, the international proletariat and peasantry,
i.e. the Third World masses.
ULK and now USW, with the direct ideological assistance
provided by our Maoist teachers at MIM(Prisons), are currently spreading
Maoist thought amongst and throughout the prisoner population. With all
this said and being done therefore it should be relatively easier to
organize the imprisoned population.
So why is it still so damn hard?
The answer once again to the aforementioned and repeatedly asked
question is: ideology.
Case in point, take the California Department of Corruption for example,
the biggest warehouse of people in all of the United $tates. The
imprisoned lumpen within this golden gulag might very well be one of the
toughest nuts to crack for USW and so it should serve as a case study
for MIM(Prisons).
The CA Dept. of Corruptions is the very focus of many of the internal
contradictions of Amerikkkan imperialism peculiarly personified in
national oppression and class warfare. For that matter just about any
Amerikkkan prison is a perpetrator of these superstructurally demanded
operations. Killa’fornia however differs from most other states in the
way in which the lumpen organizes itself. It’s not merely a matter of
organizational differences as compared to other LOs, in other states
rather a difference in ideology of each nation-based LO. Perhaps this is
why state repression is so intense, as well as carried out over and
beyond the call of duty by prison administrators here.
Just as your average Amerikan foot soldier believes that fighting
Islamic anti-imperialists is their number one job as “freedom loving
Amerikans,” so does your average pig on the street, as well as those
working the prisons, believe that the biggest threat to internal
security and class interests inside “the homeland” is the lumpen.
While on the California “mainline” it is easy for a USW comrade to bang
their head on the ideological brick wall of
backward-bourgeois-individualistic thinking when attempting to organize
the lumpen for their own interests. Failed attempts to facilitate peace
treaties between LOs or failed attempts to organize peaceful protests
over real issues doesn’t say much about a comrade’s effectiveness while
working within these conditions. Being that prison is only a microcosm
of its given society, and knowing that the contradictions of the former
are only equal or greater, for the most part in the most extreme sense,
than that of the latter, deems that that principal contradiction that
needs to be resolved in order for us to begin successfully organizing
the lumpen is that of ideology. The difficult thing here is to persuade
the prisoner population to become class conscious; the rest is
relatively easy.
“The correctness or otherwise of the ideological line and political line
decides everything. When the party has no followers, then it can have
followers; if it has no guns then it can have guns; if it has no
political power then it can have political power.” -
Mao
Zedong
What applies to parties can usually be applied to individuals.
Some comrades in USW and MIM(Prisons) might believe that the important
thing here when building class consciousness throughout the imprisoned
populations is in getting lumpen organizations to adopt a proletarian
worldview. If we do this however, all we’re really getting is a
revisionism of sorts because individuals won’t really bother to struggle
politically with themselves, they’ll just “toll the bell” so to speak.
Of course we’ll always try to attract as many followers as we can, but
only if they’re all able and willing to lead.
Some might think that if you remove the barrier of lumpen organizational
structure, i.e. the LO itself, that this act in itself will
automatically gain us troops to the tenth degree because the lumpen will
then be that much more progressive.
True, some individuals who either willingly leave their LO or are
forcibly removed from their car do indeed become progressive in one way
or another. Some delve into mysticism wishing for forgiveness and a
better tomorrow, others become class conscious and take up the struggle
of ending oppression in all its forms. For the most part however they
just keep on doing the same old shit. “Same shit, different day,” as
they like to say.
Just as we can only build socialism one country at a time, we can only
revolutionize the prison population one persyn at a time; and just as
the theory of simultaneous world revolution is an incorrect one, so is
it incorrect to think that we can revolutionize whole LOs all at once or
anything close to that.
I say all this to make the point that the one organizational barrier for
the most part isn’t the end all be all when it comes to preventing the
prison population’s revolutionization process. Some comrades might know
what I’m talking about if you’re housed in an environment where there
are no real prison politics to speak of, that is to say you don’t have
to worry about another prisoner trying to pressure you to conform to
socially accepted and required norms.
A PC yard shows you this when you see people who have left one LO on the
mainline only to join another one on a SNY, playing the same games and
reconstructing the same old hierarchy and policies that got ’em to a PC
yard to begin with.
It’s almost as if the prison population must be shocked out of their
zombie-like state of existence before they can exhibit some type of real
progressiveness. Feeling this way can surely discourage some comrades
from doing the necessary work which the USW has been tasked with.
Unfortunately we are forced to work with what capitalism has bequeathed
us.
The battle to push people towards scientific-socialism is a most
ruthless war waged by the class-conscious and is fought against not only
backward individuals but against an entire network of ideas
(superstructure). This is exactly why the Chinese Communists had
themselves a “Cultural Revolution,” because they knew full well that
organizing the prison population in this or that direction would never
be enough. You have to teach the prison population not only what has to
be done but why it needs to be done. For this we must all bear
responsibilities!
For the alleged criminally insane obsessed,
possessed and repressed so-called most
“incorrigible” inmates protective custody security
risks where death awaits all those whose warrants have
been signed if not stayed… Where ole’ sparky (the electric
chair) resides where men resist are
brutalized refuse to be dehumanized or give up
control of their minds where their dignity and
perspective in some cases is relegated or impaired to an
extreme appreciation or acceptance of the unjust where
some men are broken commit suicide take overdoses hang
themselves
I went from rice and deer meat To bologna and carrots Four
wheelers and Honda XR motorcycles To a stinky Bob Barker
mattress Grew up chasing girls and a good time Still growing up -
still doing time Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be
cowboys To the abolition of classes, the abolition of state
power country music to a dead solitary silence promising
amerikkkan middle class future To a socialist, communist, bourgeois
hater From a needle to knowledge Knucklehead to ‘never
again’ Sally forth from juvenile detentions, prisons, boot
camps only to come back again. and again. and again. Used to pine
away - love sick puppy over my ex-girls Now seeking a socialist
revolution and a non-patriarchy, non-sexist world Faith in God -
Gone - turned atheist Trust in my country - lost - I hate
it! Belief in the people - found - turned non-escapist A cause
worth dying, for - became - most hated I stand alone now with a
couple of friends Solitary insane, I’ll not pretend Basically I’m
just a man now with minimal needs Mouth silent, eyes bloodshot The
sun sets and rises as my tired soul bleeds
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