Under Lock & Key

“We stand for active ideological struggle because it is the weapon for ensuring unity within the Party and the revolutionary organizations in the interest of our fight. Every communist and revolutionary should take up this weapon.” – Comrade Mao, “Combat Liberalism”

Within every class, gender, and nation, trans women are being oppressed and persecuted because of their trans disposition. This has been so within both capitalist and socialist societies, among revolutionaries as among reactionaries.

Many hallmark social/revolutionary movements in America’s history had non-supportive regard for trans people. The consciousness was not there yet; revolutionary consciousness evolves by degrees, through years, decades, the same for such movements (and governments) in other countries.

In century 21, both political and revolutionary consciousness are at a much higher frequency. Trans political resistance is occurring across the country (and the world); trans people have become cognizant of the political aspects of their quality of life existence, and are getting politically involved in a revolutionary manner.

The political and revolutionary consciousness evolution of trans people is taking place in America’s prisons. In California, the 36 Movement of trans women is politically active against the anti-trans oppression, persecution, and genocide of the prison system for their lives, livelihood and for political power. There is also the right-wing reaction they must contend with on the yards, and, as well, reactionary behavior towards them by left revolutionaries, and by presumed progressive media outlets on the left. People do not become progressive or revolutionary overnight. Anti-trans sentiment is deep among those so afflicted, because putrid bourgeois opinion predominates in American society, and is infectious.

How are the cadre to address such reactionary or quasi-reactionary tendencies within the revolutionary camp? For one, internal indoctrination can put light on the subject, so that new cadre are aware. But so must elder cadre become aware. For another, ideological discussion on trans issues are worthwhile – trans within society/prison, within the revolutionary ranks – discerning among each other and within oneself traces of reactionary inclination and weeding them out, aligning personal in line with revolutionary principles that guide attitudes towards the people, and propagating the new awareness.

By such ideological debate, properly practiced, broader unity will result. This is revolutionary. This is the revolutionary guidance of Mao Thought.

Across the wider spectrum, included is regard for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and gender nonconforming people.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The transgender question has come out of the closet in recent years. This is a necessary step towards ending gender-based oppression. The question is what bringing the issue to light under capitalist patriarchy will achieve.

We can look back at the gay/lesbian/queer struggles in this country and see how they led to integration of those once separate communities into mainstream Amerika. While white wimmin have always been allies to white men in national oppression, this relationship has only solidified with increasing power of wimmin in Amerikan society. Both of these examples inform our understanding of nation as principal to our struggle against all oppression.

If we look at nation, we also see integrationism though. Today the integration road is presented as a viable option in the United $tates, rather than something you have to fight for. However, with nation, that integration was not complete. The ghettos became more isolated, even though they have since become more dispersed, and the koncentration kamps of course expanded with oppressed nations filling the cages. With the integration of both the relatively gender and nationally oppressed in this country, we did not see improvements for wimmin or oppressed nations overall in the world. So there is a problem with looking just at U.$. society for measuring progress.

The fact that transgender issues have not been a public discussion for as long as other forms of oppression does create the sense that transgender people are the most oppressed, and need the most attention. And this is the conclusion by many advocates of identity politics. As this comrade says, they have faced oppression in all parts of society. However, with our understanding of society within the framework of dialectical materialism we can talk about why nation is principal under imperialism, look at the historical examples of gender struggles in this country, and predict that the transgender struggle is not going to move us toward ending oppression the fastest.

None of that discounts what the comrade says about struggling for the inclusion and acceptance of transgender prisoners, and people in general, in the revolutionary movement. In some ways the prison population was ahead of the curve on this one as the prominence of transgender wimmin in male prisons has made this issue part of daily life for prisoners before many Amerikans began grappling with it. Still, this has not led to an overall overall progressive attitude among male prisoners, in part due to the hyper masculinity that the prison environment engenders.

This is an example of how communists must try to address all issues holding back the revolution, while focusing on the principal contradiction. We join this comrade in calling for ideological discussions around trans issues in mass work. This will foster greater unity within the oppressed nations and among the revolutionary movement of prisoners overall.

[MIM(Prisons) prints the following as background info on a group that has been engaging with us and with the United Front for Peace in Prisons and Agreement to End Hostilities in California prisons. The purpose is for our readers to have more information on what this group is about. We like their focus on the state as the enemy, while serving to defend transgender prisoners from all reactionary elements. Though we disagree that the state exploits prison labor. We hope to continue to build with 36 Movement to promote integration and inclusion of transgender prisoners into the evolving progressive and revolutionary prison movements.]

The 36 Movement is an in-prison transgender political resistance with a column of militia (Red Roses). We fall with the broader category of the revolutionary movement and including the prison movement. Our origin is in the prisons: by their oppression of us, we acquired a revolutionary political consciousness, tempered mind and resolute endurance, cadre tested in the fire.

Our first principal agenda is the accurate analysis of the concrete conditions in which we live in society and in prison, which guides us in our second principal agenda, that of confrontation with the oppressor. Towards the first, political study is key. Adamant discipline fortifies us and facilitates success in our endeavors. These culminate in initiative. Our current political initiative is that of resistance against our oppression and to educate transgender people in the moral right and obligation to oppose our oppression and to do so proactively and within a revolutionary framework.

Our condition of being oppressed and persecuted in prison by the pigs and the reactionary element must be effectively challenged for our survival and peace of mind, a united and organized effort with learned and experienced leadership. Where pigs are concerned, we employ the tactical political weapons of knowledge of the rules and the laws to counter their maltreatment of us and hold them accountable, filing administrative complaints and lawsuits about our needs in prison in retaliation to our transgender status and discrimination against us, and outreach for public support and to educate of our conditions and our resistance. Where the reactionary element is concerned, we function as needs be. Although we are not on a military offensive, a military wing under the control of the political wing is indispensable within a revolutionary party formation. For one, it serves as deterrent. Establishment of a citizens’ militia is not against the law; in fact, it is a constitutional right. Many exist.

We are a multiethnic formation. We discourage drug and alcohol use among our cadre as a matter of political discipline and to foster good health and a clear mind towards our objectives, and discourage criminal thought and behavior. We respect on a mutual basis. We practice genuine unity among ourselves by sticking close together, trusting and sharing. Each of us is accountable for our individual and collective responsibilities.

Having first educated ourselves as to the best way to live our lives under a prison and political system tyrannical and genocidal towards us because of our transgender disposition and prisoner status and lack of political power, we likewise educate other transgender people and organize them to struggle together in a united offensive for our freedom from oppression and for our livelihood and to have political power.

We hold that as a people oppressed from multiple quarters, the principal enemy is the State. The State is always the first enemy. We acknowledge other enemies in the form of the reactionary element within and without. Whatever our engagement with these, we are not diverted from political confrontation with the State.

By the State is meant the economic and political system of capitalism that has resulted in millions of economically oppressed people, and both the domestic law enforcement apparatus that protects its interests and the military complex that ensures its foreign resources and dominance of nations otherwise known as imperialism, capitalism’s most advanced stage: the bourgeois strata that dominates the means of production and access to them and thus the flow of the domestic economy and that includes economic and financial blocs, the bureaucratic political apparatus that allows for and is corrupted by the bourgeoisie; the militarism that forces itself upon and exploits nations for their natural resources and cheap labor and as strategic geopolitical location for capitalist control of the world economy and warmongering, briefly. Prison is government, a State enterprise, and represents and upholds all of this, is a part of it, itself exploits the cheap or free labor of prisoners for capital gain. Who fights against prisons, fights against capitalism and imperialism.

Our prison experience has been one of heightened consciousness: we perceive prisons as camps of systematic indoctrination and training for a revolutionary outcome, prison-spawned revolutionary consciousness and organization along a political matrix, restructuring criminal mentality into revolutionary political consciousness, the revolutionary weaponization of prison, turning the State’s prisons against the State. Our experience is one of becoming and creating revolutionary cadre out of one of the most degrading features of the State, its prisons, filled to over capacity with wretched souls; how to see and economize on the concrete reality of our misery to forge a new type of human being, an upgrade of the species, a more worthwhile person, one to construct and partake in a more worthwhile and humane socio-economic-political reality.

This is our theory and practice within the revolutionary theater at this time. We have politicized our minds, indoctrinated and trained, which enables us to discern and analyze our circumstances concretely and so live our lives. This is the space our formation occupies and is putting into practice, the accurate development of revolutionary cadre in prison, and tactical political engagement with the oppressor.

Trans prisoners in all prisons are encouraged to become politically aware and politically active against our mistreatment in prison and to join the 36 Movement. Our power lies in our organized unity. 36 cadre must be vetted through the leadership at this location. Refer: Natalie Alvarez / 3102 E Highland Ave #25 / Patton, CA 92369. All power to the people.