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.
In 2018 the California Office of the Inspector General (OIG)
investigated the grievance process at Salinas Valley State Prison. This
resulted in a new process in 2020, where any grievances alleging staff
misconduct in the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) would go to an Allegation Inquiry Management
Section (AIMS) in Sacramento, rather than being handled by staff at the
prison.(1) As we report on in almost every issue of Under Lock &
Key, grievances in U.$. prisons are often ignored, denied, or
covered up by staff.
One problem with this small reform is the staff at the prison was
still deciding what grievances would be forwarded to AIMS. Following OIG
recommendations in 2021, the CDCR changed its system for handling
grievances in 2022 so that staff misconduct could be reported directly
to AIMS. In March 2023, AIMS was replaced with the Allegation
Investigation Unit (AIU), within the Office of Internal Affairs.
In 2010, United Struggle from Within (USW) in California initiated
the “We
Demand Our Grievances Are Addressed!” campaign, which has since
spread across the country. We just released a petition for Indiana this
year, see the report on initial
campaign successes in this issue. And we just updated our petition
for Texas. Since 2010, hundreds of prisoners in California have sent
petitions to the California OIG and others outlining the failures of the
existing grievance system and demanding proper handling of grievances.
This campaign contributed, likely greatly, to the recent changes in
California.
It also happens that February 2023 was the last report we have of
staff in CDCR
retaliating against prisoners for filing grievances (in this case
for freezing temperatures).(2) So we are interested to hear from our
readers how the grievance process has been working over the last year.
However, the OIG’s recent report has already exposed staff misconduct
since the new program was implemented.
The OIG found that in 2023 the department sent 595 cases back to
prison staff to handle that had originally been sent to the AIU to
investigate as staff misconduct. This was reportedly done to handle a
backlog of grievances. The OIG also stressed the waste of resources in
duplicating work, given that the department had been given $34 million
to restructure the grievance process. In 127 of these cases the statute
of limitations had expired so that staff could no longer be disciplined
for any misconduct. Eight of these could have resulted in dismissal and
12 could have resulted in suspensions or salary reductions. Many other
grievances were close to expiring.
Unsurprisingly, when the OIG looked into grievances that had been
sent back to the prisons, many issues were not addressed, many were
reviewed by untrained staff, investigations were not conducted in a
timely manner (39% taking more than a year), and grievances were
improperly rejected. All of these are common complaints on the grievance
petitions prisoners have filed over the years.
The OIG states in their concluding response to the CDCR claims around
these 595 grievances:
“The purpose of this report was not to provide an assessment of the
department’s overall process for reviewing allegations of staff
misconduct that incarcerated people file; that is an assessment we
provide in our annual staff misconduct monitoring reports. This report
highlighted the department’s poor decision-making when determining how
to address a backlog of grievances that the department believed it was
not adequately staffed to handle.”
In ULK 84 we reported on a sharp
drop in donations from prisoners in 2023, and a gradual decline in
subscribers in recent years. We asked our readers to answer some survey
questions to help explore the reasons for these declines and to begin a
more active campaign to expand ULK in 2024. Below is some
discussion with comrades who have responded to the survey so far about
drugs, gangs, COVID-19, generational differences and more. If you want
to participate in this conversation, please respond to the questions at
the end.
Problems We’ve Always Had
A North Carolina prisoner on censorship: i pass my
copies around when i’m able, what i always hear is “Bro i wrote to them
but never received the paper.” Then there is a couple guys who were on
the mailing list who say they’re not receiving the paper no more.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The obvious answer to this is
the newsletter is being censored. Any prisoner of the United $tates who
writes us for ULK will be sent at least 2 issues, and if you
write every 6 months we will keep sending it. Censorship has always been
a primary barrier to reaching people inside, but we have no reason to
believe that has increased in the last couple years. Relaunching regular
censorship reports could help us assess that more clearly in the future.
A Pennsylvania prisoner on the younger generation: I
think it is these younger generation people who are coming into the
prison system or people who have been pretty much raised by the judicial
system, and the guards become mommy and daddy to them… They do not want
to or are possibly afraid to change the only life they have ever known.
I know some of these younger guys here who have gotten too comfortable
and think: “Oh, I am doing so good, I have a certain level of say-so
here, the guards are my buddies, they get me, et cetera.” When on the
outside they did not have that.
Also, on my block, many people are illiterate and cannot read. I know
this because I am the Peer Literacy Tutor.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Most of this doesn’t sound new.
Older prisoners have been talking about the lacking of the younger
forever. Illiteracy is also not new in prisons. There is some indication
that the COVID pandemic has impacted literacy in children, but that
would not be affecting our readership (yet).
A California prisoner: I think a lot of prisoners do
not want to hear negativity or incendiary language, we get enough of
that in here and I notice a lot of unity around positivity in here. I
suggest less dividing language and more unifying language. In
particular, the “who are our friends and who are our enemies” line could
certainly drop the “who are our enemies” part. Prisoners don’t want
someone telling them who to be enemies with, prisoners want to be told
who to be friends with.
I have trouble passing on ULK, natural leaders won’t even
accept it (I try to revolutionize the strong). As soon as I say “it’s a
communist paper”, the typical response is “I’m not a commie.” Any
suggestions??
MIM(Prisons) responds: Not sure if you’re leading with
the fact that it’s a communist newspaper. But when doing outreach, the
fact that we’re a communist organization will not come up until we’ve
gotten into an in-depth conversation with someone. We want to reach
people with agitational campaign slogans, hopefully ones that will
resonate with them. What in this issue of ULK do you think the
persyn might be interested in? Lead with that.
As far as who are our friends and who are our enemies goes – this is
actually a key point we must understand before we begin building a
united front (see MIM Theory 14: United Front where a prisoner
asks this same question back in 2001). We must unite all who can be
united around anti-imperialist campaigns. Our goal is not to have the
most popular newsletter in U.$. prisons; that might be the goal of a
profit-driven newsletter. Our goal is to support anti-imperialist
organizing within prisons. As we’ve been stressing in recent months,
prisons are war, and they are part of a larger war on the oppressed. If
we do not recognize who is behind that war, and who supports that war
and who opposes it, we cannot stop that war. If you see a group of
people that wants to carpet bomb another group of people as a friend,
then you are probably not part of the anti-imperialist camp yourself.
Prisoners who are mostly focused on self-improvement, parole, or just
getting home to their families may be willing to be friends with anyone
who might help them do so. But we must also recognize the duality
of the imprisoned oppressed people as explained by comrade Joku Jeupe
Mkali.
Problems That May Be Getting
worse
A Washington prisoner on the drug trade: Drugs and
gangs are the biggest threat to radical inclination in the system. Drugs
keep the addicted dazed and unable to focus on insurgency. Whereas the
self-proclaimed activist gang member who actually has the mental fitness
to actually avoid such nonsense has become so entrenched in a culture
aimed at feeding on the profit he gains in the process has forgotten his
true goal and would rather stand in the way of change to maintain
profit.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is perhaps the biggest
shift we’ve seen in reports on conditions on the inside in recent years.
Of course, these are not new issues. But there are new drugs that seem
to be more easily brought in by guards and have more detrimental effects
on peoples’ minds. Meanwhile, the economics of these drugs may have
shifted alliances between the state-employed gangs and the lumpen gangs
that work together to profit off these drugs.
When we launched the United
Front for Peace in Prisons over a decade ago, it was in response to
comrades reporting that the principal contradiction was lack of unity
due to lumpen organizations fighting each other. In recent years, most
of what we hear about is lumpen organizations working for the pigs to
suppress activism and traffic restricted items. While Texas is the
biggest prison state and much of those reports come from Texas, this
seems to be a common complaint in much of the country as regular readers
will know.
Related to drugs is the new policy spreading like wildfire, that
hiring private companies to digitize prisoners’ mail will reduce drugs
coming into prisons and jails. Above we mentioned no known increase in
censorship, but what has increased is these digital mail processing
centers; and with them more mail returned and delayed. In Texas, we’ve
been dealing with mail delayed by as much as 3 months for years now. As
more and more prisons and jails go digital, communications become more
and more limited. Privatized communications make it harder to hold
government accountable to mail policies or First Amendment claims. There
is no doubt this is a contributor to a decrease in subscribers.
A Pennsylvania Prisoner reports a change in the prison system
due to COVID-19: The four-zoned-movement system has been
implemented here at SCI-Greene because of COVID. Before COVID,
everything was totally opened up. Now everyone is divided from one
another and it makes it that much harder for someone like me who is
constantly surrounded by an entire block full of people with extreme
mental health or age-related issues.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an interesting
explanation that we had not yet thought of. While we don’t have a lot of
reports of this type of dividing of the population in prisons into pods
since COVID, we know that many prisons have continued to be on lockdown
since then. An updated survey of prisoners on how many people are in
long-term isolation may be warranted. But even with the limited
information we have, we think this is likely impacting our slow decline
in subscribers.
This does not explain why donations went up from 2020 to 2022, but
then dropped sharply in 2023. However, we think this could have been a
boom from stimulus check money, similar to what the overall economy saw.
In prisons this was more pronounced, where many people received a couple
thousand dollars, who are used to earning a couple hundred dollars a
year. While we would have expected a more gradual drop off in donations,
this is likely related. In 2023, prisoners were paying for a greater
percentage of ULK costs than ever before. We had also greatly
reduced our costs in various ways in recent years though, so this is not
just a sign of more donations from prisoners but also a reflection of
decreased costs. We’d like to hear from others: how did stimulus checks
affect the prisoner population?
Like many things, our subscribership and donations were likely
impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the state’s response to
it. Another interesting connection that warrants more investigation is
how the stimulus money may have contributed to the boon in drug
trafficking by state and non-state gangs in prisons. And what does it
mean that the stimulus money has dried up? So far there is no indication
of a decline in the drug market.
A California prisoner on “rehabilitation” and parole:
The new rehabilitation programs in CDCR are designed to assign personal
blame (accept responsibility). A lot of prisoners are on that trip.
“It’s not the state’s fault, it’s my fault cause I’m fucked up.” That’s
the message CDCR wants prisoners to recognize and once again parole is
the incentive, “take the classes, get brainwashed, and we might release
you.” I call it flogging oneself. But a lot of prisoners are in these
“rehabilitation” classes. It’s the future. MIM needs to start thinking
how to properly combat that.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The Step Down program in
California in response to the mass
movement to shut down the SHU was the beginning of this concerted
effort to pacify and bribe prisoners to go along with the state’s
plan.(1) As we discussed at the time, this is part of a
counterinsurgency program to isolate revolutionary leaders from the
rebellious masses in prison.
Our Revolutionary 12 Step Program is one answer to the
state’s “rehabilitation.” Our program also includes accepting
responsibility, but doing so in the context of an understanding of the
system that creates these problems and behaviors in the first place. Yes
we can change individuals, but the system must change to stop the cycle.
The Revolutionary 12 Steps is one of our most widely
distributed publications these days, but we need more feedback from
comrades putting it into practice to expand that program. And while it
is written primarily for substance abuse, it can be applied by anyone
who wants to reform themselves from bourgeois ways to revolutionary
proletarian ways.
In other states, like Georgia and Alabama,
parole is almost unheard of. The counterinsurgency programs there
are less advanced, creating more revolutionary situations than exist in
California prisons today. In the years leading up to the massive hunger
strikes in CDCR, MIM mail was completely (illegally) banned from
California prisons. Today, it is rare for California prisoners to have
trouble receiving our mail, yet subscribership is down.
Solutions
A California prisoner: Personally I would like to see
play-by-play instructions for unity. I saw something like that in the
last Abolitionist paper from Critical Resistance. A lot of us
want unity but don’t know how to form groups or get it done. I know
MIM’s line on psychology, however it has its uses. The government
consults psychologists when they want to know how to control people or
encourage unity among their employees. I suggest MIM consult a psych for
a plan on how to unify people, then print the play-by-play instructions
in ULK. It’s a positive message prisoners want to hear.
MIM(Prisons) responds: As mentioned above, building the
United Front for Peace in Prisons was a top topic in ULK for a
long time, so you might want to reference back issues of ULK on
that topic and MIM Theory 14. Psychology is a pseudo-science
because it attempts to predict individuals and diagnose them with
made-up disorders that have no scientific criteria. Social engineering,
however, is a scientific approach based in practice. By interacting with
people you can share experiences and draw conclusions that increase your
chances of success in inter-persynal interactions. This is applying
concepts to culture at the group level, not to biology of the
individual.
Again, the key point here is practice. To be honest, the engagement
with the United Front for Peace in Prisons has decreased over the years,
so we have had less reports. Coming back to the question of how to
approach people in a way that they don’t get turned off by “commie”
stuff, a solution to this should come from USW leaders attempting
different approaches, sharing that info with each other, and summing up
what agitational tactics seemed to work best. Comrades on the outside
could participate as well, but tactics in prison may differ from tactics
that work on college campuses vs. anti-war rallies vs. transit
centers.
A North Carolina prisoner: i look forward to receiving
the paper and i love to contribute to the paper. ULK is not
just a newspaper in the traditional sense of the word it’s more than
that. It’s something to be studied and grasped, and saved for future
educational purposes. In my opinion its the only publication that hasn’t
been compromised.
i think ya’ll should publish more content on New Afrikan
Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) then ya’ll do. To be honest, the
ULK is probably the only publication that provides content that
elucidates NARN. Nonetheless, ya’ll keep doing what ya’ll doing.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We’ll never turn away a
well-done NARN article, so keep them coming. This is a newsletter by and
for prisoners of the United $nakes.
A Pennsylvania prisoner: As with everything,
“education” is a key factor. A lot of people really have a lack of
comprehension of the Maoist, Socialism, Communism agenda or actual
belief system is about. I have a general idea, but not the whole
picture. Many people are ignorant to what it is all about. … I was a bit
of a skeptic when I first began writing MIM(Prisons), but I no longer am
3 years later.
As I have continued to write and read all your ULKs I have
begun to realize what you stand for, and that is the common people who
are struggling to survive in a world full of powerful people, who do not
play by the rules. … Those powerful and wealthy who have forgotten what
it is like to be human. … When I get released from prison later this
year and get back on my feet I do plan to donate to MIM(Prisons) because
I strongly support what you stand for.
…It was word of mouth that got me interested in ULK, and
that is what we should use to spread the word. Sooner or later someone,
somewhere is gonna get interested.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We appreciate this comrade’s
continued engagement and struggling with the ideas in ULK. Eir
description of what we do is accurate. Though, the same could be said
for many prisoner newsletters. We recommend comrades check out “What is
MIM(Prisons)?” on page 2 to get an idea of what differentiates us from
the others; and to ask questions and study more than ULK to
better understand those differences.
A Washington prisoner: I believe there has not been
enough exposure of ULK in the prison system. I only happened on
it by chance. I sought out communist education on my own after not being
able to shake an urge that there was something incredibly wrong with the
political and economic structures in my surroundings. I believe we
should launch a campaign of exposure and agitation. Create and pass out
pamphlets and newsletters geared to helping people see the relevance of
communism and their current situation. For a start, I would like to
receive copies of the Revolutionary 12 Step Program pamphlets
to strategically place in my facility so prisoners can have access to
them.
MIM(Prisons) concludes: Expanding ULK just for
the sake of it would be what we call a sectarian error. Sectarianism is
putting one’s organization (one’s own “sect”) above the movement to end
oppression. The reason we are promoting the campaign to expand
ULK is that we see it as a surrogate for measuring the interest
in and influence of anti-imperialist organizing in U.$. prisons. As
comrades above have touched on, there is always a limitation in access
and numbers do matter. Most prisoners have never heard of ULK.
The more we can change that, the more popular we can expect
anti-imperialism to be within U.$. prisons and the more organized we’d
expect people to get there.
We are working on expanding our work with and organizing of prisoner
art. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words. More art that
captures the ideas of our movement can help us reach more people more
quickly. So send in your art that reflects the concepts discussed in
ULK. We also offer outside support for making fliers and small
pamphlets. What types of fliers and small pamphlets, besides the
Revolutionary 12 Steps, would be helpful for reaching more
prisoners with our ideas and perhaps getting them to subscribe to
ULK?
Another way to reach people in prison is through radio and podcasts.
We are looking for information on what types of platforms and podcasts
prisoners have access to that we might tap into.
We only received 4 responses to our survey in ULK 84 in time
to print in this issue. This is another data point that indicates the
low level of engagement with ULK compared to the past. Another
possible explanation for lack of responses is that this survey was more
difficult to answer than previous surveys we’ve done because it is
asking for explanations more than hard facts. Either way, in our attempt
to always improve our understanding of the conditions we are working in,
we are printing the survey questions one more time (also see questions
above). Even if your answer to all the questions below are “no”, we’d
appreciate your response in your next letter to us.
Have you noticed changes in the prison system that have made it
harder for people to subscribe to ULK or less interested in
subscribing?
Have you noticed changes in the prisoner population that have
made people less interested in subscribing?
Have you noticed/heard of people losing interest in ULK because
of the content, or because of the practices of MIM(Prisons)?
What methods have you seen be successful in getting people
interested in or to subscribe to ULK?
Do you have ideas for how we can increase interest in ULK in
prisons?
A spear, utilized as a weapon to engage in battle, can only be
effective insofar as its tip is both sturdy and sharp. And the sharpness
of its tip is maintained as part of a process of sharpening in the
continuum of a protracted struggle campaign. Otherwise, what you’ll have
is not an implement for war, but a stick that merely rhetorically
projects a technology for combat that in actuality, is incapable of
immobilizing or pushing back against a harmful, even deadly force. So
considering the condition of the spear, I have no intention to deal with
or re-visit the “Long Attica Revolt” with historicism, relegating the
event to a time in history; nor to romanticize its existence for the
purposes of psycho-emotional or intellectual masturbation. Instead, I
relocate the Long Attica Revolt to the present moment in hopes of
creating dialogue and theory around the fundamental question of whether
the “Long Attica Revolt” (i.e the prison movement) still exists?
I start my analysis of the question at the end and (epilogue) of
Orisanmi Burton’s (hereinafter Ori) text with the statement:
“For many, 1993 was a watershed in the slow disintegration of the
prison movement.”(1)
If 1993 marked the crucial turning point in which the prison movement
started dissipating, or decomposing, what does the reality look like in
2024, 31 years after its evocation? If we are serious about
“interpreting the world to change it, there is no escape from historical
materialism,”(2) requiring my analysis to stay anchored to tackle the
question from my direct experience as a prisoner of 21 and a half
consecutive years of carceral bondage within Michigan prisons. In so
doing, I stay true to Mao’s injunction to adhere to what [Vladimir]
Lenin called the “most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of
Marxism, [the] concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”(3)
The “prison movement,” according to the New Afrikan analysis that I
subscribe to, marked a specific moment in time that spearheaded a
qualitative change, transforming issue-based prison struggles centered
primarily around conditions of confinement (reform), into a movement
that was influenced by and married itself to the anti-colonial national
liberation struggles being waged beyond the concrete walls
(revolutionary). These circumstances, having affected colonial people on
a world scale, radicalized and politicized sections of the colonial
subjects in the united states to such an extent where the consciousness
developed inside of penal dungeons was being disseminated to the streets
where it would be internalized and weaponized by agents against the
state. The impetus for this qualitative leap in the substance and
character of the prison movement was Johnathan Jackson’s 7 August 1970
revolutionary act of pursuing the armed liberation of the Soledad
Brothers, culminating in the 9 September 1971 Attica Rebellion. This is
why Ori argued the “Long Attica Revolt was a revolutionary struggle for
decolonization and abolition at the site of US prisons.”(4)
While Ori’s assessment may have been correct, his very own analysis,
and a concomitant analysis of present-day Michigan, exposes a
revolutionary contradiction prone to reversion and therefore
revolutionary (Marxist) revision by elements that were, in fact, never
revolutionary or abolitionist but only radical reformist. Revisionism
spells doom (death) to the prison movement, so part of our objective has
got to be how do we oppose the carceral state from an ideological and
practical perspective to ensure the survival of a dying prison movement,
and reap benefits and successes from our struggle. After all, Ori tells
us the aim of his book is “to show that US prisons are a site of war,
[a] site of active combat.”(5)
Clausewitz (Carl von) observed that war was politics by other means,
just as Michel Foucault reasoned politics was war by other means. War
and politics being opposite sites of a single coin, this “COIN” in
military jargon is none other than “counterinsurgency.” As explained in
the U.S. Army Field Manual at 3-24. It defines insurgency as:
“an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to
weaken the control and legitimacy of established government, occupying
power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent
control.”
“The definition of counterinsurgency logically
follows:”Counterinsurgency is the military, paramilitary, political
economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to
defeat insurgency.””
“Counterinsurgency, then, refers to both a type of war and a style of
warfare”(6), whose aim is, in the context of prisons, to neutralize the
prison movement and the ability of its agency to build the movement into
the future.
As we can see, by isolating and extracting this point from Ori’s
text, u.s. prisons as combat zones where war is waged is significant if
we are to gleam from this fact what the proponents, the protagonists of
the prison movement must do next; how we struggle accordingly in hopes
of gaining victories.
The Master Plan
The logical response of a revolutionary tactician to state repression
is resistance. But not just resistance for the sake of being
recalcitrant – as Comrade George (Jackson) informed us, our fight, our
resistance has to use imagination by developing a fighting style from a
dialectical materialist standpoint. Because
“…we can fight, but if we are isolated, if the state is successful in
accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of
proving the point. The point is, however, in the face of what we
confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just
make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that
oppresses us.”(7)
In constructing long-term insurgency repression (counterinsurgency),
the scientific technology deployed by the state was “soft power” as its
effective mechanism to accomplish their task. Ori tells us the federal
government drafted a “Master Plan” which hinged on “correctional
professionals coming to realize that the battle is won or lost not
inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks.”(8) This assessment could
only be true considering the question surrounding prisons and the
corollary prison movement is one of legitimacy, for only through
legitimacy could the state preserve carceral normalcy. So
counterinsurgency, or war, to be overtly specific, and the game is the
acquisition of legitimacy from the masses (national public at-large) as
a main objective. This fact should be telling that the struggle for
state oppression, aggression and repression within the context of the
prison movement is ultimately always a struggle for the people. Thus,
“in an insurgency, both sides rely on the cooperation of the populace;
therefore they compete for it, in part through coercive means.”(9) These
political facts, as tactics of war, envision the real terrain in which
the battle for prison lives is waged: the mental realm. It is within
this domain that resistance and the legitimacy on both sides of the barb
wired cage will be won.
The prisoner population must take cues from these facts. The very
first recognition has got to be that prisons, deployed as war machines,
cannot possibly be legitimate if we (the prisoners) have been cast as
the enemies the state seeks to annihilate as human beings by
re-converting us from second-class citizens back to slaves. This was the
very point Ori lets us in on regarding Queen Mother Moore’s August 1973
visit and speech in Green Haven Prison in New York, that New Afrikans
were in fact enduring “re-captivity.”(10) Blacks have long hoisted this
argument, lamenting an amendment to the 13th Amendment to the u.s.
constitution, and a host of case law, like the case of Ruffin v
Commonwealth cited by Ori, have declared “incarcerated people
slaves of the state.”(11) And as slaves, to borrow the words of George,
“the sole phenomenon that energizes my whole consciousness is, of
course, revolution.” In this vein the prison movement is partially about
the survival of the humanity of prisons, their dignity, which requires
the survival of the spirit of the prison movement. This is what Chairman
Fred Hampton meant when he said “You can kill a freedom fighter, but you
can’t kill freedom fighting. You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t
kill revolution.” It is this very same deprivation of human dignity that
Huey talked about resulting in what I’m experiencing among Michigan
prisoners, who are largely “immobilized by fear and despair, he sinks
into self-murder”.(12) But even more dangerous to Huey than self-murder,
is spiritual death, what Huey witnessed become a “common attitude…
driven to death of the spirit rather of the flesh.”
So the very idea (spirit) of the prison movement must survive, must
be kept alive, or, “your method of death can itself be a politicizing
thing.”(13). And this is precisely the reality Michigan’s male prisoners
have succumbed to, death of spirit, death by de-politicization.
All this begs the question posed by George: What is our fighting
style in face of political death? This question can only be answered
against the background of the statement: “For many, 1993 was a watershed
in the slow disintegration of the prison movement,” because the reality
shouts out to us that the prison movement has diminished to such a
degree, it’s in desperate need of being incubated back to life (if it
still exists at all).
Thus far it has been made clear that at issue is the survival of the
prison movement which means by extension a revival of the political life
of prisoners. The catalyst breeding political consciousness can only be
education. As Ori illuminates, part of the prisoner war project requires
guerrilla warfare, the life of which itself is grounded in political
education.(14) Ori himself writes in the acknowledgment section of
Tip of the Spear that he sharpened his spear (political
analysis) by tying himself to a network of intellectuals and study
groups, like Philly-based podcast Millenials Are Killing Capitalism.
The Role of Outside
Supporters
The “Master Plan” developed by the state concluded “that the battle
is won or lost not inside the prison, but out on the sidewalks,” and
this leads directly to the utility of individuals and organizations
outside the confines of prison life to be leveraging against the
subjects inside the walls. Yet, it must not be lost upon us that by
virtue of the state’s “Master Plan”, they seek to weaponize outside
organizations as tools to drive a nail in the coffin of the prison
movement once and for all. Proponents of the prison movement,
accordingly, must also utilize and weaponize outside agency to advance
the prison movement. When asked, although George said, “A good deal of
this has to do with our ability to communicate to people on the street,”
we must nevertheless be sure not to allow this communication or the
introduction of outside volunteers to stifle the spirit of the
movement.
Ori hits the nail on the head when exposing the “Master Plan” to
absorb outside volunteers as part of the “cynical logic of
programmification, with well-meaning volunteers becoming instruments of
pacification.”(15) I spoke to this very phenomena in 2021 essay entitled
“Photograph Negatives: The Battle For Prison Intelligentsia”, in
response to a question posed to me by Ian Alexander, an editor of True
Leap Press’s “In The Belly” publication, on whether outside university
intellectuals could follow the lead of imprisoned-intellectuals? There I
mentioned how Michigan’s outside volunteers near absolute adherence to
prison policy, designed to constrain and be repressive, retarded our
ability to be subversive and insurgent, called into question the purpose
of the university-intellectuals infiltration of the system in the first
instance. And while “many of these volunteers undoubtedly had altruistic
and humanitarian motives, they unwittingly perpetuated counterinsurgency
in multiple ways.”(16)
The battle for prison intellgentsia itself creates an unspoken
tension between the inside (imprisoned) and outside (prison)
intellectuals to the detriment of the prison movement, benefiting the
state’s “Master Plan.” As I cited in “Photograph Negatives,” Joy James
correctly analyzes that it is the imprisoned intellectuals that are
“most free of state condition.” Scholar Michel-Rolph Troillot’s insight
also champions that imprisoned intellectuals, “non-academics are
critical producers of historiography,”(17) yet, as Eddie Ellis told Ori
during a 2009 political education workshop, “We have never been able to
use the tools of academia to demonstrate that our analysis is a better
analysis.”(18) This fact further substantiates my position in response
to editor Ian Alexander that outside university-based intellectuals must
take their lead from imprisoned intellectuals because (1) we are the
experts, validated through our long-lived experiences; and (2) most
university-intellectuals are clueless they’re being used as tools within
the state’s “Master Plan” against the very prisoners that altruism is
directed.
Carceral Compradors Inside
But sadly, it’s not just the outside volunteers being positioned as
pawns in the state’s war against prisoners. To be sure, prisoners
themselves have become state agents, be it consciously or unconsciously,
pushing pacification through various behavioral modification programming
that intentionally depoliticizes the prisoner population, turning them
into do-gooder state actors. It is in this way that the prison state
“strategically co-opted the demands of the prison movement and
redeployed them in ways that strengthened their ability to dominate
people on both sides of the wall.”(19)
In Michigan prisons, these compromised inmates function as “carceral
compradors,” and part of the plan of this de-politicizing regime is to
convince the prisoner population to surrender their agency to resist. It
has been the state’s ability to appease these, what Ricardo DeLeon, a
member of Attica’s revolutionary committee, said was the elements of
“all the waverers, fence sitters, and opponents,”(20) exacerbating
already-existing fissures, exposing the deep contradictions between a
majority reformist element, and the minority revolutionary element. This
success effectively split and casted backward the “prison movement” to
its previously issue-based conditions of confinement struggle model by
“exposing a key contradiction within the prison movement, ultimately
cleaving support from the movement’s radical edge while nurturing its
accomodationist tendencies.”(21)
All of this was (is) made possible because “a sizable fraction of the
population that saw themselves, not as revolutionaries, but as
gangsters: outlaw capitalists, committed to individual financial
gain”(22), and radical reformist, despite their rhetoric to the
contrary, focused rather exclusively on conditions of confinement,
instead of materializing a revolutionary goal. If the prison movement is
a revolutionary movement, then the revolutionary element must manage to
consolidate power and be the final arbitrators of the otherwise
democratic decision-making processes. Ori cites Frantz Fanon to make
clear that political parties serve as “incorruptible defenders of the
masses,” or, the movement will find itself vulnerable to neocolonial
retrenchment.(23) The schism that emerges between these two factions,
ideologically, paralyzes the prison movement. These implications
obviously extend beyond the domain of prisons to the collective New
Afrikan struggle on the streets, as the prison movement was fostered by
national liberation struggle on the outside, lending the credence to the
victory from the sidewalk notion. But in order to secure a revolutionary
party-line, the revolutionary party must be the majority seated element
in the cadre committee.
Perhaps this is precisely why Sam Melville, a key figure in the
Attica rebellion, said it was needed to “avoid [the] obvious
classification of prison reformers.”(24) This is significant because
otherwise, reformists would dominate the politics, strategies and
decision-making, killing any serious anti-colonial (revolutionary)
ideology. Again, this is true for both the inside and outside walkways.
As a corollary, this reality should cause the revolutionary-minded to
seriously rethink ways in which our struggle is not subverted from
within the ranks of fighters against the state who, contradictorily, are
okay with the preservation and legitimization of the prison machine and
its “parent” global white supremacist structure, so long as remedial
measures are taken to ameliorate certain conditions.
Our Road
In advance of summarizing, let me just say I do not at all intend to
imply a reformist concession can’t be viewed as a revolutionary
advancement within the overall scheme of carceral war. I pivot to Rachel
Herzing, co-founder of Critical Resistance, that
“an abolitionist goal would be to try to figure out how to take
incremental steps – a screw here, a cog there – and make it so the
system cannot continue – so it ceases to exist – rather than improving
its efficiency.”
But that’s just it. The Attica reforms did not, as Rachel Herzing
would accept, “steal some of the PIC’s power, make it more difficult to
function in the future, or decrease it’s legitimacy in the eyes of the
people.” On the contrary, the Attica reforms entrenched the system of
penal legitimacy, seeded the proliferation of scientific repression, and
improved upon the apparatus’s ability to forestall and dissolve
abolitionist resistance. In addition, the reforms were not made with the
consent of the Attica revolutionaries, but by a splintering majority of
radical reformers who, in the end, the present as our proof, greased by
the levers of power assenting to the machine’s pick up of speed and
tenacity.
As inheritors of the prison movement, and as we consider the
de-evolution of the Long Attica Revolt and all it entails, specifically
its survival, we are called upon to meditate on Comrade George’s
essential ask – What is our fighting style? At minimum, I suggest our
task is implementing a twofold platform: (1) political education; and
(2) internal revolutionary development.
First, those equipped with the organization skills and requisite
consciousness, as a methodology of guerilla war, should construct
political education classes. These classes should operate within study
group formats. We must return to the injunction of prisons functioning
as universities, that “The jails (and prisons) are the Universities of
the Revolutionaries and the finishing schools of the Black Liberation
Army.”(25) We align ourselves with the Prison Lives Matter (PLM)
formation model and utilize these study groups to engage in:
“a concrete study and analysis of the past 50+ years, and in doing
so, We learn from those who led the struggle at the highest level during
the high tide (1960s and 70s), where and how the revolutionary movement
failed due to a lack of cadre development, as well as knowing and
maintaining a line.”(26)
Our political education study groups must also instill a pride,
courage, and will to dare to struggle along the lines of New Afrikan
revolutionary ideology. For desperately, “Our revolution needs a
convinced people, not a conquered people.”(27) The quality of courage in
the face of impending brutality by what Ori calls the state’s “carceral
death machine”(28) will be necessary to put in gear the wheels of
guerrilla resistance. The invocation of this spirit sets apart the human
prepared to demand and indeed take his dignity by conquest, from the
weak, pacified slave who rationalizes his fear, which is in fact
“symptomatic of pathological plantation mentality that had been
inculcated in Black people through generations of terror.”(29) This
terror in the mind of Black males inside of Michigan cages is displayed
at even the mention of radical (revolutionary) politics, inciting a fear
drawn from the epigenetic memory of chattel slavery victimization, and
the propensity of master’s retaliatory infliction of a violent
consequence. This thought has frozen and totally immobilized the
overwhelming majority of Black Michigan prison-slaves, not just into
inaction, but turning them into advocates of pacified slave-like
mentalities. But these niggas are quick to ravage the bodies of other
niggas.
To this point, Ori writes
“Balagoon suggests that the primary barrier to the liberation of the
colonized was within their minds – a combination of fear of death,
respect for state authority, and deference to white power that had been
hammered into the population from birth. Liberation would remain an
impossibility as long as colonized subjects respected the taboos put in
place by their oppressors.”(30)
To be sure, liberation struggles can only be “successful to the
extent that we have diminished the element of fear in the minds of black
people.”(31) Biko, speaking to this fear as something that erodes the
soul of Black people, recognized “the most potent weapon in the hands of
the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed.”(32)
Secondly, hand-in-hand with our political education must be the
material engagement in the first revolution, the inner revolution. This
is “The hard painstaking work of changing ourselves into new beings, of
loving ourselves and our people, and working with them daily to create a
new reality.”(33) This first, inner-revolution consists of “a process of
rearranging one’s values – to put it simply, the death of the nigger is
the birth of the Black man after coming to grips with being proud to be
one’s self.”(34)
The ability to transform oneself from a nigga to an Afrikan man of
character is perhaps the most important aspect of developing concordance
with a New Afrikan revolutionary collective consciousness. Commenting
“On Revolutionary Morality” in 1958, Ho Chi Minh said that “Behavioral
habits and traditions are also big enemies: they insidiously hinder the
progress of the revolution.” And because niggas, unbeknownst to
themselves are white supremacists and pro-capitalist opportunists, the
vanguard security apparatus must forever remain on guard for the
possibility of niggas in the rank-and-file corrupting the minds of other
niggas who have yet to internalize New Afrikan identity.
May these be our lessons. Ori’s Tip of the Spear text is
important in the overall lexicon on the history of the prison movement,
and must be kept handy next to the collection of Notes From New
Afrikan P.O.W and Theoretical Journals. Tip of the
Spear should serve not just as reference book, but a corrective
guide for the protagonist wrestling the prison movement out the arms of
strangulation, blowing spirit into the nostrils of its decaying body
until it’s revived, and ready to fight the next round. And We are that
body. Let’s dare to do the work.
Forward Towards Liberation!
We Are Our Liberators!
^*Notes: 1. Orisanmi Burton, October 2023, Tip of the Spear: Black
Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, University of
California Press, p. 223 2. Praveen Jha, Paris Yeros, and Walter
Chambati, January 2020, Rethinking the Social Sciences with Sam Moyo,
Tulika Books, p.22 3. Mao Zedong, 1937, “On Contradiction”, Selected
Works of Mao Tse-Tung 4. Burton, p.52 5. Burton, p.224-226 6. Life
During Wartime, p.6 7. Remembering the Real Dragon - An Interview with
George Jackson May 16 and June 29, 1971, Interview by Karen Wald and
published in Cages of Steel: The Politics Of Imprisonment In The United
States (Edited by Ward Churchill and J.J. Vander Wall). 8. Burton,
p.175. 9. Life During Wartime, p.17. 10. Burton, p.1 11. Burton, p.10
12. Huey P. Newton, 1973, Revolutionary Suicide, p.4 13. Steve Biko, I
write What I Like, p.150 14. Burton, p.4 15. Burton, p.179 16. Burton,
p.175 17. Burton, p.8 18. Burton, p.7 19. Burton, p.150 20. Burton, p.41
21. Burton, p.150 22. Burton, p.99 23. Burton, p.92 24. Burton, p.82 25.
Sundiata Acoli, “From The Bowels of the Beast: A Message,” Breaking da
Chains. 26. Kwame “Beans” Shakur 27. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina
Faso Revolution 1983-1987, p.417 28. Burton, p.105 29. Burton, p.42 30.
Burton, p.42 31. Biko, p.145 32. Biko, p.92 33. Safiya Bukhari 34.
Burton, p.62
The aim of this article is to provide a brief summation of what Hamas
is as a movement. It will expand on the history
of Palestine written by a comrade in ULK 84. Both imperialist media
and revisionist propaganda create false narratives around Hamas,
oftentimes mistaking basic facts to suit their interests. It is
important to understand that Hamas is a movement and that over the
course of history has changed, likely changing as We speak. The primary
aim of this article is not to formulate an opinion on how communists
should approach Hamas or to speak over Palestinian and Arab analyses of
Hamas. Rather it is to point out the fundamental, but often obscured,
facts and history of the origins of Hamas and what it represents.
The Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions brings the
resistance together to coordinate a counter-attack against I$raeli
colonization on 7 October 2023. Ayman Nofal, senior commander in
Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant arm of Hamas. was a main leader in
unifying resistance for this counter-attack who died in 2023 soon after
the counter-attack.(1) The current war is not just between Hamas and
I$rael, but one between the entirety of Palestinian resistance against
I$rael for the national liberation of Palestine. Hamas is the largest
faction of the Palestinian resistance so an understanding of the
movement and its history is crucial for understanding the ongoing
struggle.
The origins,
emergence and development of Hamas
Hamas is an Arabic abbreviation for Islamic Resistance
Movement(Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya). The movement was founded in
December 1987 at the beginning of the First Palestinian Intifada. Before
Hamas there was the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had a branch in
Gaza since 25 November 1946(founded this year to coincide with year 1366
of the Islamic calendar). The Muslim Brotherhood was non-confrontational
with I$rael, which led to criticism and division internally during the
1970s-1980s. Hamas was formed as a way to join the First Palestinian
Intifada(Uprising) without endangering the position of the Muslim
Brotherhood. Under the defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, the I$raeli
military adopted the so-called “iron fist” policy of violent repression:
it used live ammunition against unarmed protestors, jailed
demonstrators, and imposed punitive curfews and closures. This only
added fuel to the fire, escalating into a full scale intifada.(2) The
participation of Hamas in the First Palestinian Intifada was a major
success, leading it to become more than just an associated organization
of the Muslim Brotherhood.(3)
The origins of Hamas lie within the Muslim Brotherhood and the
Islamic Centre(Al-Mujamma’ al-Islami). The Islamic Centre was
established on 7 September 1973, by the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed
Ismail Hassan Yassin(Ahmed Yassin). It emerged out of the Muslim
Brotherhood, with it’s stated goals of being the independence of Muslim
lands from foreign occupation and establishment of an Islamic
sociopolitical system.(4) The rise of the Islamic movements in
Palestine, specifically in Gaza, only really took off after the First
Intifada. This started on 9 December 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp
after an I$raeli truck driver collided with a civilian car, killing four
Palestinian workers. Palestinian resistance emerged in response, being
met with 80,000 I$raeli soldiers being deployed to crush it. Hamas
emerged specifically for the Muslim Brotherhood to engage in the First
Palestinian Intifada, beforehand militant struggle against I$rael by
Islamic movements in Palestine were scarce.
Palestinian fedayeen(freedom fighters) network was primarily united
under the Palestinian Liberation Organization(PLO) after the Six-Day
War, a war between I$rael and a coalition of Arab nations in 1967 which
led to I$rael attaining West Bank, Jerusalem, Sinai Peninsula and Gaza
Strip. The resistance was primarily led by the Palestinian Liberation
Front(PLF), Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah), and Popular
Front for Liberation of Palestine(PFLP). In the end, it was harshly
repressed by I$rael with the death of Muhammad al-Aswad, known as
“Gaza’s Guevara,” on 9 March 1973, marking the end of the military
struggle. The failure of the Palestinian national movement marked a
major turning point in Palestine.(5)
The Muslim Brotherhood was spared this harsh repression and Ahmed
Yassin during this time led a variety of political activities and
creation of various social institutions. These were under the name of
the Islamic Centre, being recognized more formally on 7 September 1973,
when the I$raeli governor attended the Jawrat al-Shams mosque
inauguration. Later on, the Islamic University of Gaza, one of the first
universities in Gaza, was founded by the Islamic Centre. The
institutions and activities of the Islamic Centre played a major role in
its establishment, with the university becoming a major site of
recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic Centre was
officially recognized as a charity in September 1979 by the I$raeli
occupation. The reason for I$rael’s benevolent tolerance toward the
Islamic Centre was to weaken the Palestinian national movement in
exchange for a more conciliatory Islamic alternative.
The Palestinian national movement was even further divided with the
PLO adopting the 10 Point Program which was the basis for the two-state
solution and drafting of peace with I$rael. The Front of the Palestinian
Forces Rejecting Solutions of Surrender was established in 1974 by a
coalition of communist and progressive nationalist organizations who
wanted to continue armed struggle. The PLO became more conciliatory
towards I$rael, and today it rules over the now I$raeli puppet
government called the Palestinian Authority. The 10 point program in its
content may have had some progressive demands, such as right for
displaced Palestinians to return and take back their homes. However, its
calls for peace with I$rael and usage in justifying and end to
resistance led to collaboration as we see today in the West Bank.(6)
In regard to social institutions, the main competition to the Islamic
Centre was the Palestine Red Crescent Society under Haidar Abdel-Shafi,
who was close with the PFLP. Specifically, Haidar was part of the Arab
Nationalist Movement which was started by one of the founders of the
PFLP, George Habash. The PFLP emerged directly out of the Arab
Nationalist Movement after the Six Day War in July 1967. The executive
committee of the Arab Nationalist Movement decided that the Palestine
Section should move toward armed struggle. Three commando groups merged,
the Revenge Youth, Heroes of Return, and the Palestine Liberation
Front(PLF) to announce the founding of the PFLP on December 11th, 1967.
Haidar Abdel-Shafi was both the founder and director of the Palestine
Red Crescent Society, which served as a bastion of Palestinian
nationalism in 1972.(7)
The PLO, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre were dominated by
different sections of petty-bourgeois, national bourgeois and even
comprador elements. As a result, the PFLP was a major threat to the
projects of both groups given the revolutionary nationalist outlook that
the front upheld, rooted in the proletariat. The PFLP took heavily from
the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutionaries both in political and
strategic developments.(8) Also, the the front correctly identified the
enemies of Palestinian revolution as “Israel, the world Zionist
Movement, global imperialism and Arab reactionaries.” In contrast to the
other factions within Palestine, the front adopted a firmly dialectical
materialist outlook, one based in scientific analysis of material
reality with all its developments and changes.(9) This is what led to an
allied struggle against communism by the other factions, as the PFLP
presented a major threat to the PLO and Islamic movements. To note, the
PLO refers to the mainstream conciliatory section, as the PFLP was still
part of the PLO.
The co-founder of Palestinian National Liberation Movement(Fatah),
Assad Saftawi, was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was
crucial in negotiations between the Islamic movement and Fatah in
Palestine. He was the pioneer of an anti-communist strategy and alliance
between the factions, running against Haidar Abdel-Shafi for leadership
of the Red Crescent Society with the support of the Islamic Centre.
After an overwhelming defeat, hundreds of protestors supportive of the
Islamic movements ransacked Red Crescent offices on 7 January 1980. The
protestors continued to attack cafés, cinemas, and drinking
establishments in the town center. The I$raeli authorities did not
intervene in response to the violent attacks against the Palestine Red
Crescent Society intentionally.(10)
Coming back to the Islamic University of Gaza, in 1981 there were
protests over the Islamic movement’s monopoly over the policies in the
university. The Islamic Centre decided to turn against its former
allies, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. The I$raeli
authorities and the Islamic movement formed a strange coalition to end
the secular nationalist opposition in the university. The Islamic Bloc,
an offshoot of the Islamic Centre, won 51% of the votes in student
elections and were able to impose Islamic policies; from separate
entrances for women and men to the way in which certain ideas and
courses were taught.(11) It was reported in 1983 that the Islamic Centre
hired armed gangs to attack striking students and teachers. Later on,
certain Islamic dress standards among students were encouraged, with
women who refused to wear Hijabs being attacked for it. A further
bolstering of the Islamic movements against the national movements in
Palestine had ensued with the Islamic University of Gaza becoming a
bastion for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Centre.(12)
On June 1984, sixty pistols and sub-machine guns hidden in Ahmed
Yasin’s mosque led to his arrest and sentencing to thirteen years in
prison. Even if the arms were primarily intended to intimidate other
Palestinian factions.(13) Yasin’s incarceration allowed his supporters
to wash him of all suspicions of collaboration with I$rael. The leader
was freed in May 1985 within the framework of a prisoner exchange
between Israel and the PFLP–General Command, a faction that emerged in
opposition to the PLO after it created it’s 10 Point Program, based in
Damascus. The Muslim Brotherhood remained non-confrontational despite
the repression against it and built up the Islamic Centre, with the
number of mosques doubling from 77 in 1967 to 150 in 1986. This
non-confrontational and passive stance was opposed by Fathi Shikaki, who
split off to form the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, inspired by the Iranian
Revolution. In response to the Islamic Jihad multiplying attacks against
I$rael, the Islamic center formed the Majd. It performed the function of
protecting the Islamic network from attacks and in suppression of what
was seen as social ills.(14) The priority remained in combating
oppositional factions within Palestine rather than I$rael.
On 9 December 1987, the First Palestinian Intifada began in the Gaza
Strip and quickly spread to the West Bank. The growing popularity of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad led to an agreement within the Muslim
Brotherhood between the conservative old guard, supportive of a
non-confrontational approach to I$rael, made up mainly of urban
merchants petty-bourgeoisie and general upper petty-bourgeoisie, and the
younger generation of new activist cadres, pro-resistance, made up
mostly of lower petty-bourgeoisie and refugee camp petty-bourgeois
students. Hamas was created in December 1987 as a separate but
affiliated organization which joined the First Palestinian Intifada. It
was largely successful and began to attract a lot of sympathizers. The
post-1973 oil boom allowed for many neighboring Arab nations to back
Islamic movements across the region, including Hamas and the Islamic
Centre.(15)
The
Second Palestinian Intifada and liberation of Gaza
The PLO suffered major setbacks abroad, with the Black September in
Jordan, a period of major repression of the PLO there. It led them to be
deported and transferred to Lebanon. Later in 1982, the PLO was expelled
from Beirut to Tunisia. All of this led to the PLO, led by Fatah, to
seek out a diplomatic solution rather than pursuing armed struggle. The
Oslo Accords were signed later on in 1991 between I$rael and the PLO,
leading to the Palestinian Authority ruling over parts of the West Bank
and Gaza. Military collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and
I$rael had increased against the Islamic movement. The Palestinian
Authority allowed continued colonization and occupation.
On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, a Likud party candidate for
I$rael, visited the Temple Mount, also known as Al-Haram Al-Sharif, an
area sacred to both Jews and Muslims, accompanied by over a thousand
security guards. He stated on that day, “the Temple Mount is in our
hands and will remain in our hands. It is the holiest site in Judaism
and it is the right of every Jew to visit the Temple Mount.” This led to
the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada, with Palestinian
resistance being carried out by the PLO, Hamas, and other factions. It
led to I$raeli settlement and occupation forces withdrawing from the
region after being ousted by the resistance in 2005.(15)
In January 2006, Hamas had won the elections in the Gaza Strip,
winning 72 out of 132 seats with 42.9% of the vote. I$rael and I$rael’s
imperialist backers enforced sanctions on the Hamas-led government soon
after. Just a year later, tensions rose between Fatah and Hamas, with
Hamas reigning victorious and expelling Fatah from Gaza in 2007 after
the Battle of Gaza. The government faced major issues, with the poverty
rate sharply rising to 65% by the end of 2006.(16)
The I$raeli blockade banned importation of raw industrial materials
and put a siege on Palestinian banks to create an artificial financial
crisis. Despite this and the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the
oppressor classes enjoyed great luxuries and had high levels of
consumption. This was especially the case of private tunnel dealers who
controlled a monopoly on prices. A large portion of workers in Palestine
found themselves in extreme poverty. There are two aspects to this,
internal and external, and the external blockade by I$rael was only the
external cause behind this.(17)
The origins of the tunnels were historically havens for both
smugglers and outlaws but also for freedom fighters. Before the Second
Palestinian Intifada the tunnels were primarily used for drug and gold
trafficking for high profits. Near the end of the year 2000 they became
primarily used for smuggling arms for the resistance factions.(18) After
the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the regeneration and construction of
tunnels ensued in response to the siege. During this period, the main
lifeline for those in Gaza became these tunnels with an economy
centering around it. This led to a regression and neglect of the
development of a productive economy or sustainable development. It is
possible that during this time the primary class within Gaza was the
lumpen-proletariat and perhaps still is.
The number of tunnels increased from 20 in mid-2007 to up to 500 by
November 2008.(19) Some estimates by a variety of sources, from the
Hamas-led government, Egypt, and others, estimate higher. Regardless,
most of the tunnels belonged either to Hamas or its sympathizers. The
risks that workers face in the tunnels are immense and there is a
popular saying about the tunnels:
hundreds of tunnels deployed on the border, hundreds of young men
waiting to get involved in the game … write your will, you are facing
the unknown, but this is the land that you loved, roll up your shirt
sleeves, and be a man, you are now at a depth of 20 meters in the land
of Gaza, trust in God and finish your shift … 12 hours in hell, but
remember that hungry mouths awaiting you. Here, death is merciful and
quick … No pain… No white phosphorus … nor Israeli soldiers who might
use you as a human shield, it’s neither a prison here nor jail; here is
God and the darkness of the tunnel and breathing slowly till you
die(20)
Hamas is heavily dependent on the tunnel economy, estimated to make
more than $700 million annually. This economy is ultimately unproductive
and heavily dependent on exploitation, creating a class of private
tunnel owners and merchants who make up the leadership of Hamas today.
Ismail Haniyeh, the current leader of Hamas, is a millionaire from the
money made from his ownership and respective taxation on trade through
tunnels. The specific class relations will not be commented on here, but
this inquiry into the tunnel economy is done specifically to point out
its importance to Hamas. The large national bourgeoisie who own these
tunnels and the petty-bourgeoisie merchants who conduct trade within
them make up the class basis of Hamas today. This leads to an interest
in opposing imperialism and I$raeli occupation while maintaining the
exploitation of the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat.
The Hamas charter frames the struggle as a Jihad(holy struggle)
against Zionism. In its first charter in 1988, it was openly
anti-Semitic, claiming that both liberal and communist revolutions were
carried out because of the Jews.(21) The first charter also employs
idealism to obscure the internal class struggle and only emphasizes the
external one in an idealist manner. This was possibly put in due to the
opposition to Hamas by elements of the PLO and PFLP. Later on, this was
removed completely possibly in part due to the downfall of both of these
factions. As we can see, the ideology of Hamas changes as a result of
its class character and relationships with different factions. For that
reason, we see that Hamas broke with the Muslim Brotherhood officially
in the second charter in 2014 for being too passive. It also shifted
toward a more materialist conception of struggle against Zionism,
settler-colonialism/colonialism, and imperialism here rather than
against Jews and Judaism. In a recent document by Hamas, the
organization states this more clearly:
Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with
the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle
against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against
the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who
constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project
and illegal entity.(22)
This shift in position is important to note. The specific reason why
this occurred is hard to track down but the downfall of elements of the
PLO and PFLP is likely an important factor. So is the Second Intifada
and liberation of Gaza from I$raeli occupation and imperialism. As we
see, resistance to occupation forced Hamas to adopt more correct and
materialist political positions in regard to I$rael. It still obscures
internal class relations for its own benefit, but given the primary
ongoing struggle is against occupation, Hamas is able to maintain
majority support. A wartime poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the
West Bank showed a vast majority supported: the Al Qassam Brigades(Hamas
brigades) at 89%, Palestinian Islamic Jihad at 85%, Al Aqsa
Brigades(Fatah brigades) at 80%, and Hamas at 76%.(23) Smaller
organizations like the PFLP were not included in the survey. So despite
the exploitation internally which Hamas is responsible for, its recent
practice of being one of the largest groups in the counter-attack
against I$rael leads it to win the sympathy of the masses.
Conclusion,
Reflections and Future Analysis
Palestinian resistance factions following a press conference in Beiruit,
Lebanon. Pictured are Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Democratic Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine — General Command (PFLP-GC).
As we can see, the Islamic movements in Palestine are not a monolith
and have changed overtime. The formation of Hamas and its class basis is
important to have clarity on, but this article is by no means an
extensive analysis of such. It hopefully has helped in clearing up
common myths and confusions around Hamas, with imperialist media
constantly making frivolous claims. They range from Hamas having spawned
out of the I$raeli far-right funding to Hamas being a terrorist group
which kills Palestinians and I$raelis. This article hopefully provided
both facts and summarized analyses of why both of these common
narratives are false. However, there are major issues left unaddressed
and a few will be listed here. The political economy of the Levant and
the Palestinian clans/tribes are a crucial factor that has not even been
mentioned. The displacement by I$raeli settler-colonialism and
imperialism has not been analyzed enough in detail. The Muslim
Brotherhood and its relationship to Hamas was glossed over as well. As
an analysis and presentation of facts from a foreign perspective, many
crucial elements are likely missed that are not known about.
Some of these shortcomings may be addressed in future articles.
Specifically, an article about Fanon’s writings on the
lumpen-proletariat leading a revolution in Algeria will be pursued. The
underground national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations in the United
$tates are quite similar to Hamas in current times. The displacement of
Palestinians by I$raeli settler-colonialism and imperialism mirrors the
conditions of oppressed nations and oppressed national minorities at the
hands of Amerika. A greater understanding of how revolutionary struggle
can be conducted in conditions of settler-colonial displacement by the
participation of the lumpen-proletariat and First World lumpen will be
important.
Before ending this article, i would like to make a general
acknowledgement. This article was written with the direct help of a
variety of MIM(Prisons) and AIPS members along with a variety of
comrades not affiliated with MIM(Prisons). The work of Arabic and
Palestinian documentation and analysis played a major role in being able
to answer this question here in more detail. These sources are worth
checking out and have been cited below for readers to read into
themselves if they wish. This is not meant to advocate for communists in
the Third World to pursue a certain policy toward Hamas, but to provide
the facts about and a brief analysis of Hamas to give a deeper
perspective of what the movement is and represents.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
In the past, the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), and its mass
org at the time, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League, campaigned
to get the University of California to Divest from I$rael.(1) This was a
correct strategy, because U.$. imperialism is the number one backer of
the I$raeli war machine. Behind the flag of I$rael is the stars and
stripes.
More recently, United Struggle from Within (USW) carried out a
petition campaign, which read in part:
“Therefore with this declaration we angrily express our indignation
with the state of Israel for committing genocide, and for the Israeli
people for allowing it to happen in the 21st century after vowing”never
again.”
The petition recognized that Palestinian political prisoners had
supported the California hunger strikes in recent years and it was time
to return solidarity. By 2016, comrades in 16 prisons had gathered 189
signatures. Recognizing the limitations of conditions, the petition also
read:
“Within these walls we are as yet powerless to tap into the potential
of the imprisoned lumpen; the oppressed internal nation lumpen in
particular as agents of social change, but we are not yet powerless to
sign a piece of paper to denounce the state of Israel and their support
in the U.$.”
Still today, comrades are asking what can we do to support
Palestine?
Settlers Supporting Settlers
The war against Palestine is what Amerika has always done from its
very founding – land grab, occupation, genocide. Therefore, there is
much support in the United $tates for I$rael’s current bombing campaign
and invasion of Gaza. And the tactics being used against Palestine could
easily be tried against indigenous people here on Turtle Island
next.
MIM and others have documented the history of Amerikan labor union
support for I$rael.(2) Yet, in recent months not only has the U.$. seen
millions demonstrate to oppose U.$. militarism in Palestine, but labor
unions representing millions of Amerikan so-called workers have signed a
call for a cease fire.(3) While Amerikans have always been settlers, the
United $tates is more and more a population of people who do not come
from settler backgrounds. And more and more, people from non-settler
backgrounds are joining the ranks of labor unions, big tech companies
and other professional roles. This is one factor behind the wavering
support for I$rael. Of course, it is the Palestinian resistance that is
forcing Amerikans to take a position.
The cease fire call is a shift for many Amerikan labor unions away
from outright Zionism to the left wing of white nationalism. Despite the
cease fire statement, these unions will still be campaigning for
Genocide Joe this year. And while some members of the International
Longshoreman Workers Union (ILWU) participated in a one day protest/shut
down of the port of Oakland in support of Gaza, there has been no
sustained strike by Amerikan unions that are actively involved in
shipping arms to I$rael.
The United Auto Workers (UAW), having been in the news for strikes
last year, is one of the unions to issue a statement for a ceasefire.
Meanwhile, the UAW has been hosting talks with employees of arms
manufacturer Raytheon for a “just transition” to guarantee labor
aristocracy union jobs in thefuture technologies of war and genocide.
Brandon Mancilla, director or UAW’s Region 9A, announced in a tweet on
Dec 1st the formation of a Divestment and Just Transition working group
to explore how “we can have just transition for US workers from war to
peace.” Behind the UAW’s ceasefire resolution, was UAW Labor for
Palestine. Self-described on their website as a “nationwide group of
rank-and-file UAW members” that seeks to “organize UAW worksites that
send arms and other material to Israel.” They have faced great
resistance from the UAW in general to taking any action to stop
producing arms for I$rael. Like the Amerikan leaders who mumble words
about humanitarian efforts in Palestine while continuing to authorize
more and more shipments of war machines to I$rael, Amerikan labor makes
statements about ceasefire, while continuing to produce these machines.
Actions speak louder than words.
As we reported in ULK 84, arms shipments must get to the
Red Sea before they face real resistance; resistance by Yemen’s
armed forces. And following I$rael’s attacks on Iranian diplomatic soil
in Syria in April, Iran has seized an I$raeli-linked cargo ship passing
through the Strait of Hormuz. While the Strait, which accesses the
Persian Gulf, does not lead to I$rael, it does lead to I$rael’s new Arab
allies in the UAE.
Doing Better
The #1 thing people in the United $tates can be doing in the
short-term to stop genocide in Palestine is to stop shipments of arms
and aid to I$rael. Just as the imperialists have used blockades to
weaken the Palestinian resistance. The question is how to make such a
blockade meaningful and sustainable.
In the longer-term it is our responsibility in the United $tates to
weaken imperialism from the inside. As we see the principal
contradiction in the United $tates to be between nations, it is by
supporting national liberation struggles at home that we believe we can
best make this happen faster. And without building the revolutionary
forces here in the United $tates, we do not foresee a successful,
sustained blockade of aid to I$rael.
Another realm of struggle we should be tuned into is the struggle
against political repression of those supporting Palestine, and
especially the state imposing limitations on the exchange of information
between Palestine and the world. The labeling of organizations linked to
the Palestinian struggle as “terrorist organizations” is parallel to
organizations in the oppressed nations in the United $tates being
labelled “security threat groups (STGs).” As our readers know well the
right to free speech and association is not guaranteed but must be
struggled for within this bourgeois democracy.
Finally, correct political line must lead for us to succeed on all
fronts. Democratic Party-supporting labor unions calling for “cease
fire” is not the correct political line. Stopping all aid to I$rael is
correct. Supporting national liberation struggles of the oppressed is
correct. Recognizing the populations of the exploiter countries to be
part of the bourgeoisie is correct. And recognizing the need for
independent communist organizations in all parts of the world is correct
for avoiding past mistakes that restricted the revolutionary potential
of oppressed nations (see next section).
There is a reinforcing effect between revolutionary nationalist and
communist movements around the world. Communism was more popular in
Palestine when communists were demonstrating models of success in
practice in other parts of the world. The revolutionary nationalism of
Palestine today will impact the consciousness of revolutionary
nationalism around the world, including within U.$. borders. Amplifying
this effect in the short-term will help us build the type of movement
that can provide real solidarity with Palestine in the short-term. The
history and class interests of Amerikan labor prove that their current
level of sympathies with Palestine are tenuous and lacking in
militancy.
It is the struggle of the occupied indigenous populations, the
largest of which is Aztlán, that are most parallel to Palestine in our
context. Meanwhile New Afrika has probably been the most ardent
supporter of Palestine in the United $tates historically. Though it’s
also worth noting the prominence of Jewish voices in opposing the war
from the United $tates, due to the connection the existence of I$rael
has forced onto all Jewish people. As a resistance movement based in a
compact area of land that is mostly urban, there is much to be learned
tactically from the successes of the ongoing struggle in Palestine today
that relates to the conditions of oppressed nations in the heart of
empire.
The ICM, Pan-Islamism and
Palestine
Support from communists around the world, especially those waging
People’s War in the Third World, has been unwavering on the side of
Palestine liberation since October 7th. But the history of the
International Communist Movement (ICM) has led to setbacks in
Palestinian and pan-Arab liberation.
MIM(Prisons) has been working on reiterating MIM line on the
Communist International in recent years as part of an effort to compile
MIM’s
work opposing crypto-Trotskyism. One of the key issues we have with
Trotskyism is its view that the most advanced capitalist countries
will/should lead the communist movement. MIM line says that the most
exploited and oppressed nations will lead the way, and recognizes the
need for independent initiative and direction from within each nation.
We also see the need for a Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the
Oppressed Nations (JDPON) as a tool for overthrowing imperialism. Under
the JDPON, it will be the communist minorities in former imperialist
countries that are benefiting from the assistance of more advanced,
socialist, former colonies.
From 1919-1943, the third Communist International (Comintern) was the
first experiment in an international communist movement that involved
parties in state power. At that time the idea that the advanced
capitalist countries would lead the socialist revolution was more
popular. Bolshevik leader Mirza Sultan-Galiev was one of the biggest
critics of this position. In 1923, at the 9th Conference of the Tatar
Obkom, Sutlan-Galiev stated:
“If a revolution succeeds in England, the proletariat will continue
oppressing the colonies and pursuing the policy of the existing
bourgeois government; for it is interested in the exploitation of these
colonies. In order to prevent the oppression of the toiler of the East
we must unite the Muslim masses in a communist movement that will be our
own and autonomous.”(4)
MIM positively reviewed eir ideas:
“Sultan-Galiev was for the formation of a”Colonial International” to
replace the Comintern as organization of central importance. He also
called for the “dictatorship of the colonial nations over the
metropolis.”“(5)
Sultan-Galiev applied this concept to Russians, who were far more
oppressed and exploited than Amerikans today, as well as to the United
$tates, which ey saw as built on the genocide and labor of First Nations
and New Afrikans.
Cuban revolutionary Che Guevarra and Georgian leader of the Soviet Union
Joseph Stalin. Despite eir mistakes in building the first socialist
state, Stalin is part of the lineage of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. While
friendly to Maoism in many ways, Guevarra is known for focoism, a
military strategy that is the opposite of Mao’s Protracted People’s War.
For a brief period, about 5 years after the Russian revolution, the
Bolsheviks had created a Muslim communist party separate from the
Russian one. But this project was quickly abandoned. Decades later, USSR
leader Joseph Stalin, who also played a leading role in the Comintern,
abolished the Comintern in 1943. Stalin and Mao both said the communist
international was no longer appropriate for the complicated conditions
of international struggle. One of the problems with the communist
international was the mixing of people from exploiter countries and
exploited countries in one organization. Another was the mixing of
people engaged in armed struggle against imperialism with those who are
not. Sultan-Galiev’s proposal for a “Colonial International” addresses
the first problem. However, eir ideas were not ultimately adopted by the
Comintern, and ey was purged from the Bolshevik Party in 1923.
Current
Events in Russia and Palestinian Communism
Last week a horrible mass shooting took place in Moscow, killing 143
people. The gunmen are reportedly from Tajikistan and working with the
Islamic State-Khorasan, based in Central Asia. An Amerikan analyst
explained that this group “sees Russia as being complicit in activities
that regularly oppress Muslims” and that a number of other Central Asian
militants have allied with the Islamic State group due to their own
grievances against Moscow.(6) Tajikistan is a former Soviet republic.
One must wonder if a Muslim Communist International, separate from the
Russian one, could have avoided the emergence of militant groups in
Central Asia today that have violent beefs with Moscow. This goes both
ways, with chauvinist attitudes by many Russians today towards the other
former Soviet republics. As the capitalist/imperialist USSR collapsed in
1991, both sides of this national divide perceived the other to be
exploiting them.(7)
On the Western side of the USSR Sultan-Galiev helped establish a
separate Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. This
became a bastion for German Nazis in the 1940s, leading to the native
Tatar population being relocated by Stalin, and the area populated by
Russians and Ukrainians – leading to disputes over the territory today.
This suggests that Stalin was correct to oppose Sultan-Galiev for narrow
nationalism in the late 1920s and ultimately have em killed in 1940 as
the Nazis were preparing to invade.
The problems with trying to unify too quickly with a communist
international seems to have played a role in Palestine and the Arab
world as well. The Soviet Union supported the partitioning of Palestine
by the Zionists, leading to the Nakba (“The Catastrophe” or ethnic
cleansing of Palestine) in 1948. Despite the Comintern having been
dissolved in 1943, apparently it was still policy for the Communist
Parties in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon to support the USSR line on the
partitioning of Palestine against their own beliefs. This led to massive
loss of support for the communists in Syria and Lebanon for years to
come (there was not much support in Palestine until years later).(8)
While U.$. and I$raeli imperialism played a role in suppressing
communist organizing, these internal contradictions and short-comings
are what allowed such efforts to succeed. We can see how the strategies
we choose today can have grave and lasting impacts decades later. That
is why we, as communists, must do a better job of implementing an
effective internationalism by recognizing the national
self-determination of each oppressed nation. Independence in action must
coincide with a struggle for unity in ideology.
“The early stages of socialism according to both Lenin and Stalin
would see a vast multiplication of nations seizing their destinies. It
was only under advanced communism that we could contemplate the
disappearance of nations.”(7)
The above is in line with USW’s slogan of “unity from the inside
out.” It is only with true self-determination of the oppressed nations
that they can fully unite with other nations. Of course, the more unity
we have the stronger we are. So we must struggle for unity, without
forcing it before conditions are ripe.
We call on comrades to continue to make connections between Palestine
and national struggles in occupied Turtle Island, and to build national
liberation struggles here in the heart of empire.
What is to be done? That’s the most important question for a
revolutionary. “How can it be done?” is as important. Theory and
practice are of equal importance when it comes to revolution. Theory
without practice, ideas without action, are useless. Practice without
theory leads to failure. That’s why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
decided that scientific socialism will accomplish what utopian socialism
could only dream of. An event such as the Great October Revolution of
1917 required a leader such as Lenin, a philosopher. Now, a revolution
is for the people. That’s why we need to educate the people, and to do
that we should educate ourselves. Study politics, history, science,
psychology, philosophy, but most importantly study revolutionary history
and the writings of past and present revolutionaries. It’s impossible to
exaggerate the importance. We need well-educated revolutionaries.
The Black Panther Party was committed to educate the people and they
required their members to study. They studied Mao, Lenin, Marx, and the
works of Black radicals. The Black Panther newspaper was meant “to
educate the oppressed”. That was its primary purpose. Che Guevara was a
brilliant man who educated people through his speeches in a clear
manner. Mao, Lenin, Marx, Engels, they all wrote extensively in order to
guide their readers before, during, and after a revolution. Why wouldn’t
we take advantage of all that wisdom?
Karl Marx was a philosopher, sociologist, economist and a voracious
reader. Lenin too. And they studied the works of different types of
radical thinkers. They studied, and admired, the French Revolution.
Lenin was a fan of Peter Kropotkin’s history of the French Revolution.
Karl Marx admired Charles Darwin’s work, and noticed how Darwin was
influenced by Thomas R. Malthus. How can we claim to support scientific
forms of socialism and never actually read any science, or economics at
least?
I recommend the following: “Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong”
edited by Lin Biao, “Essential Works of Lenin” edited by Henry
Christman, “Theories of Surplus Value”, “The Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844”, and “The Poverty of Philosophy” by Karl Marx, “The
Black Panthers Speak” edited by Philip Foner, and any other books on
radical politics, history, science and philosophy.
And remember, comrades: “Hasta la victoria siempre!” -Che Guevara
MIM(Prisons) responds: We welcome this statement from
the study group of the Iron Lung Collective, and we support its
sentiments. Through our Free Political Books to Prisoners Program,
comrades inside can receive any of the books Modern Cassius recommends,
with the exception of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong or
“The Little Red Book.” We believe all of the historical texts of
revolutionaries must be studied and understood in their historical
context. The mish-mash of quotes from different periods of the Chinese
revolution in “The Little Red Book” make it very difficult to do so.
As we work to re-ignite the prison movement, regular, local study
groups are the base of our efforts to re-build. We have a guide for
starting a local study group, and a decent stock of revolutionary and
historical literature you can find on our literature list. Please see
page 2 of ULK for more details on how to participate in the
Free Political Books to Prisoners Program.
by a Hawaii prisoner April 2024 permalink
Prisoners in Wai’awa Correctional Facility performing a traditional
dance
Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona as a private prison is
being run illegally by these authorities: WARDEN - Sean Wead, Assistant
WARDEN - Jody Bradley, HAWAII CONTRACT MONITOR - Jennifer Bechler and
others.
Here, disciplinary segregation is run against CoreCivic policy and by
law from the above, because they are segregating only the Hawai’i
prisoners for over one (1) year in a segregated unit. And no matter how
you look at it, there is no way out, not even if you take them to court,
because the courts here in Arizona for SCC all work together to just get
free money off the Hawai’ian prisoners when we file a lawsuit.
Help Our Hawai’ian Population
They have this thing that they call SHIP. No policies pursuant to any
law authorizes SHIP. SHIP is identified as Special Housing Incentive
Program.
CoreCivic does not provide “intensive program” within SHIP:
Does not provide substance abuse treatment
Does not provide education
Does not provide comprehensive programs
Does not provide vocational opportunities to prepare prisoners for a
successful re-entry into society or the general population
SHIP does not support academic development through Adult Basic
Education (ABE) or General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Therefore SHIP
lacks any penological goal or correctional interest.
Why does Hawai’i support SHIP when it does not help our Hawai’ian
population? Our people deserve better. SHIP is fraud. CoreCivic is
degrading our Hawai’ian people.
Halawa Correctional Facility (the state prison in Honolulu, Hawaii)
does not recognize SHIP, so how does CoreCivic get away with it
here?
The First Amendment authorizes anyone to grieve the government. Due
Process requires at the minimum some type of hearing to be held. The
Eighth Amendment, which is “cruel and unusual punishment” as well as
“retaliation” is heavy in this private prison of Saguaro Correctional
Center. And these authorities just get away with it. It is wrong for the
law to do that to innocent prisoners that are only trying to go home to
their family and learn from the mistakes that led them to prison.
MIM(Prisons) adds:In 1995, 300 Hawai’ian prisoners were
shipped from occupied Hawai’i to the occupied Sonoran Desert, where
CoreCivic (at the time the Corrections Corporation of America) runs the
Saguaro Correctional Center. This was billed as a “temporary measure” to
deal with extreme overcrowding in prisons on the Hawaiian islands. But
it was not temporary. Today there are about 1000 Hawaiians there, and at
the peak there were about 1,500.
Just over a year ago, Hawaii News Now got rare video access
to Saguaro CC for an apparent fluff piece to appease growing concerns
among Hawai’ians for the people being shipped there. The story praises
the program for giving access to cleaner, less crowded prisons where
there are more programs for rehabilitation preparing people for their
release back to Hawai’i.(1) According to the author above, it seems
everything took a sharp change after Hawaii News Now left, or
someone was lying.
While only 10% of the population of the state of Hawai’i today,
Native Hawai’ians and Pacific Islanders make up 44% of the prison
population.(2) In 2010, Pacific Islanders were 1.5% of the prison
population in Arizona, despite being 0.2% of the state population. This
is due primarily to the shipping of Hawaii’s prisoners to Saguaro
CC.
Hawai’i is one of the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates. We
report regularly on the disproportionate targeting of the internal
semi-colonies for imprisonment, and once in prison, for isolation. So it
is no surprise that Hawai’ians are facing similar repression by
Amerikans. We support this comrade’s call, and hope we can play a role
in the campaign to bring Hawaiian prisoners home.
I have already taken measures to develop peace and unity between
factions here at the Bay Correctional Facility in Panama City, Florida.
As a basis here we are opposing oppression of prisoners and oppressed
people in general. Work has begun, and we will campaign around the
September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity.
The objective this month is getting every organization on the
compound to make sure every member of their various organizations send a
short, one paragraph letter to the USW Council pledging allegiance to
the Runaway Slave Movement and making sure every member of the various
respective organizations are on MIM(Prisons) newsletter subscription
list.
MIM(Prisons) adds: Greetings to the Runaway Slave
Coalition and all associates in Florida that are working towards a
united front of the oppressed. This comrade wrote asking for
certification and official sanction for eir group. We do not certify
anyone who is not a member of MIM(Prisons). And no one locked in prison
can be a member of MIM(Prisons). United Struggle for Within (USW) is an
independent org working under our leadership. This means they should not
be promoting things that disagree with our 6 main points (see page 2 of
ULK) - if so, they are no longer USW as they have broken their
charter. Even if they are acting under the broad definition of USW as an
anti-imperialist prisoner organization, that does not mean we agree with
everything they say or do, and we do not have any say in their
day-to-day operations. In the case where someone reports a USW member
breaking USW policy, even then it is hard for us to investigate or
intervene.
Similarly many organizations have signed onto the UFPP, but that
doesn’t mean we agree with everything they say or do. We have only
pledged to agree to the 5 principles of the UFPP. This is how united
fronts work, everyone maintains organizational independence, while
uniting around common goals or principles (see MIM Theory 14: United
Front for more info).
Anyone can write to us to get Under Lock & Key in U.$.
prisons. Just because someone is distributing ULK or claiming
they have articles published in ULK does not mean that we
endorse them. Everyone should be judged by their actions. USW comrades
must be accountable to the masses. Ultimately it is the masses at your
locality that must judge the correctness of a USW leader or chapter, not
MIM(Prisons). We do our best to support comrades from a distance in
these endeavors.
Back in September we printed an article from a comrade in Virginia
about PREA audits and why they do not work. This article did not
appear in ULK, but touched on the abuses faced by wimmin in
Federal Correctional Institution - Dublin (FCI-Dublin). On the
ineffectiveness of PREA audits in Virginia, the comrade wrote about how
the audits were pre-announced, communications with the auditors were
done in front of staff, and once the auditors left, staff retaliated
against prisoners who talked. Comrades in Pennsylvania
and Texas
have also reported on retaliation for filing PREA complaints, as is
common for filing any kind of grievance against staff. The failure of
PREA is just a subset of the failure of any accountability of prison
staff across the country for abusing prisoners.
After the incidents at FCI-Dublin that were largely reported in 2022,
nothing changed. This led to over 63 lawsuits being filed. On Monday, 11
March 2024, the FBI raided FCI-Dublin and arrested the acting Warden,
Associate Warden, a Captain and an Executive Assistant who all lost
their jobs. They were all members of the infamous “rape club” at
FCI-Dublin, which continued on after previous firings in recent
years.
“Federal law classifies any sexual contact between staff and
incarcerated people as a felony punishable with up to 15 years in
prison. But, as one incarcerated survivor testified during the trial of
former Warden Ray Garcia, the Prison Rape Elimination Act “really
doesn’t exist at Dublin.”(1)
PREA doesn’t really exist in most of this country, where grievances
are routinely thrown in the trash and retaliation for filing PREA
complaints is the norm. And this is not the first time the FBI has been
involved in investigating and arresting FCI-Dublin staff for rape.
Trans Pride Initiative (TPI) is working to hold PREA auditors
accountable in Texas. However, they report:
“Under PREA § 115.401(o), auditors “shall attempt to communicate with
community-based or victim advocates who may have insight into relevant
conditions in the facility.” TPI has seldom been contacted concerning
information we have about Texas prisons, and the National PREA Resource
Center, which oversees the audit process, has failed to hold auditors
accountable to this requirement. TPI has developed a simple auditor tool
for auditors to see current information about any unit that we have in
our system, so they do not have to even contact us. They are required to
list if they tried to contact others about prison information and who
they contacted. We are seeing many auditors list no contacts, or
contacts that are perfunctory and likely provided no
information.”(3)
TPI has an impressive database of incidents of violence and
retaliation against prisoners on their website. They want the details of
dates, who did what, what happened, what was said, where it happened,
witnesses, etc., which you can send to:
TPI
PO Box 3982
Dallas, TX
75208
Before publishing this article, an investigation into suits filed
under the Adult Survivors Act in New York City’s state supreme courts
revealed that 719 of 1,256 cases came from Riker’s Island Jail.(2) That
is, more than half of the suits filed in the whole city of New York for
sexual assaults that had occurred in the past were filed against city
correctional officers. Almost all of them came from the wimmin’s jail.
Like the rest of the country, wimmin make up a small minority of
prisoners at Rikers. While male-bodied
prisoners face very high rates of sexual assault compared to the general
U.$. population, it is clear that being in a wimmin’s prison puts
you in one of the highest-risk groups to be sexually assaulted.(4) And
within men’s prisons, being trans, gay, queer, intersex, smaller or
weaker will all put you at greater risk as the reports below
suggest.
Gender oppression is built in to the U.$. prison system. Despite
laws, lawsuits and FBI raids, it is not going away on its own. It is
only by organizing the oppressed to stand together that we can put an
end to these abuses.
Below are a couple recent reports from Polunsky Unit in Texas on how
PREA incidents are handled. TPI’s data shows they have received many
more PREA reports from other Texas prisons, including: Allred, Hughes,
Connally, Telford and Stiles Units.(5)
A Trans Prisoner at Polunsky Unit in Texas Reported in March
2024: I put a Step 1 Grievance against one officer and wrote to
the Ombudsman in Huntsville and he denied any allegations and got other
officers to start to do stuff to me. I wrote to the Warden Mr. Anderson
and I was placed around other gang members who keep threatening to harm
me and call me punk, snitch, hoe and all that and use officers against
me. Last month another officer name Suniga started threatening to harm
me and sexually harassed me.
…Later Suniga got mad at me and threatened to take my booty shorts
and other clothes. He told all those other inmates that I’m snitching on
them with the I.G. who coming to investigate me for the incident with
the other officer I mention before. And they took my jail housing manual
charter #30 for the LGBTQ inmates with all the PREA standards, rules and
regulations for jailers and inmates.
He took it and threw it away, so I put a step 1 grievances and sent a
letter to the PREA offices in Huntsville, who are doing an
investigation, and the PREA officer respond back and said they did an
investigation but can’t go forward because Mr. Suniga resigned from his
job. Now no body want to do anything or restore my papers which I don’t
get for free. …even if Suniga quit his job, the TDCJ should be
responsible for what he did while he were employed at the TDCJ.
A female officer who worked with Suniga before and knows that I put a
Step 1 against Suniga, works here named Ms. Smith. When she came to my
cell door she tell me that I got her friend in trouble and she refused
to feed me my lunch. She said that she was going to write me up for not
being dressed appropriately because I was wearing my shorts and she said
that she don’t care if I were punk, transgender, or whatever.
They stop our physical mail claiming that too much drugs are coming
into the TDCJ units. She worry about me wearing booty shorts, but drugs
still get here every day. And not only K2, they get methamphetamine,
ice, weed, all kind. I know because I seen who bring into the C pod. And
I got notes in my cell right now, on 8 March 2024, on people who ask me
if I want to buy K2 and ice, but I can’t say shit because if I do or
report it to the I.G. or STG they going to let these gang members know
that I told on them and more retaliations going to occur.
I am the only transgender or gay at C. Pod. All other inmates here
are gang members or part of some groups. I filed I-60 requests and send
letters to classification in Huntsville asking to move me to a pod or
unit where most LGBTQ prisoners are and never get a reply or get moved.
It is so cruel what they doing to us. About a month ago, someone killed
himself on C. pod. And two others try to cut they self too… Now, one
more time, I ask please help me with legal assistance to put a stop to
all this abuse. Thank you and hope I can hear from y’all or someone who
want to help me.
Another Polunsky Unit prisoner wrote us in March 2024:
I was called out by Captain Cerda concerning a PREA Safe Prison for
sexual harassment and sexual assault…. he began asking me what’s up with
this letter to PREA Ombudsman. I began to explain and he said, “aw hell,
we got to do this whole PREA thing.” He then hands me a statement sheet.
I ask for the dates for the PREA letter and times, but he said “don’t
worry about it, just leave ’em out.” I told him I needed them cause this
inmate was suppose to be out of his assigned work area and in safe
keeping, and I’ve written PREA Ombudsman about this repeatedly. He
stated, “If we weren’t so short handed all this shit wouldn’t be
happening and if TDCJ had housing, safe keeping wouldn’t be on my
fucking unit cause I damn sure don’t want yall here!”
I felt badgered and like I was wrong for filing the complaint with
only half the info. And with Captain Cerda’s demeanor and Lt. Rodriguez
throwing questions in… and her standing over me I felt pressured and I
wrote as little as possible. I just wanted to be away from them.
…TDCJ Executive Directive PD22 #4 Tampering with a witness violation
level 1: states “An employee shall not attempt to hinder or influence in
any manner the testimony or information or any witness or potential
witness in an investigation or administrative proceeding.”
The Digital mail system launched by the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice (TDCJ) last year has been disastrous for prisoners and those who
communicate with them.
One comrade from Coffield Unit just wrote to say:
“In response to the TDCJ Digital Mail initiative article from ULK
84. My own postal mail has been averaging 3 months for receipt
since the implementation of the program. Even our Securus e-mail at my
unit has been taking up to 3 or 4 weeks to be received – both incoming
and outgoing.”
Meanwhile we are receiving mail from comrades in Allred Unit that is
dated from 3 months ago. While there are more delays in mail going in,
they are happening in both directions.
The Warrior In White newsletter has been investigating
delays and received the following responses:
[TDCJ Ombdusman to the nonprofit:] “There are no staff shortages and
all mail is being processed within the 3 day limit as stated in the
policy.”
[Mail System Coordinator in Huntsville:] We are currently
experiencing a staff shortage. We were not expecting the volume of mail
at the Dallas facility. All mail to you has been received at the
facility, but not yet scanned (acknowledging the USPS Informed Delivery
Service evidence showing the mail at the Dallas facility).”
[From Securus:] “There is no staff shortage. All mail is being
processed within 5 days, unless there are pictures or photos, in which
case it may take a little longer.”
Another comrade wrote in response to that suit to suggest:
“To a Texas prisoner who has filed a complaint challenging the
constitutionality of the Agency’s contracting with a private vendor
(i.e.: a for-profit company in Dallas, Texas) to digitalize all Texas
prisoners’ incoming general mail and photographs for computer-generated
posting to a prisoner’s Securus authorized tablets. I believe this Texas
prisoner needs to read Securus Technologies, LLC’s Agreement of Terms
and Conditions when challenging the Agency’s policy-related ban of
senders’ mail piece items off of prisoners physical mail. See Texas
General Arbitration Act.”
For those who cannot commit to participating in the lawsuit, we can
continue to agitate around this issue. And one way is to file
grievances. Below is an example grievance from a comrade that can help
you write your own:
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