Consolidating our forces becomes an important task when we must prepare
for a struggle. Right now in California prisoners are gearing up for a
second round of struggle against the SHU and related issues prisoners
face there. Since 2011, USW leaders have been doing what they can to
consolidate the prisoner rights movement there, under torturous
conditions of isolation and targeted censorship and repression.
Recently it was brought to our attention that Michael Novick of
Anti-Racist Action addressed MIM in an issue of Turning the
Tide focused on a consolidation around a new group in alliance with
the Black Riders Liberation Party. Drawing out our line differences is
part of consolidating progressive forces around one line or another.
Before getting to that, let me address an effort to consolidate our
support base for Under Lock & Key.
Become a ULK Sustainer
Having passed our five year anniversary of publishing Under Lock
& Key we recognize the importance of revolutionary institutions
that are reliable and sustainable. In those five years we have never
missed a deadline, and ULK currently comes out like clockwork
every 2 months, representing the voice of the anti-imperialist movement
in U.$. prisons. A small minority of you have been right there with us
providing regular reports, articles, poetry, art and finances for
Under Lock & Key. Without your support we could not be that
voice.
While we have a writers group, a poetry group and an artist group that
prisoners can join to become regular contributors, we have not had a
funders group. Well, that has changed. And we encourage all readers who
think ULK is important to join the funders group. As we all
know, prisoners are a unique group of people in this country who
sometimes don’t have access to any money. But everyone should be able to
find a way to contribute to Under Lock & Key, and sending
regular funds is one way to do so. Like our other groups, those who are
regular contributors will get priority for free books and other support.
Here’s how the funder group will work. To join, write to us and make
your pledge, and whether you will pay it in stamps or in checks. A
pledge should be the amount you will contribute to each issue of
ULK, which comes out every 2 months. It costs us approximately
$1 to get each prisoner a copy of ULK. Therefore to just cover
your own issue you should pledge $1 per issue or $0.50 per month.
So when should you send your donation in? For those who pay in stamps
you can send them in any time that works for you, but at least once
every 2 months to be an active sustainer. For those who pay by check or
money order, please remember that WE CANNOT ACCEPT CHECKS MADE OUT TO
MIM. We will send you information on how to donate once you pledge. If
you have the option, send stamps as they can be applied most directly to
our work. Of course, outside supporters can also become financial
sustainers. Email mimprisons@lavabit.com to make your pledge.
We will record what you pay and track whether we meet our pledge goals
for 2013. We’ll also be able to see whether we can increase our pledges
over the years to come, which we will include in our annual reports that
come out each summer.
Battle for Humyn Rights in California Regrouping
Cipactli gives us a breakdown of the latest in the battle for humyn
rights in California prisons on in h
article
in this issue. Leading up to July 8, 2013, the call was made for
comrades in different sectors of the California prison system to draft
up their own list of demands. MIM(Prisons) has been working with the USW
California Council to develop a list of demands that embody what we feel
are minimal requirements to meet basic humyn rights for prisoners in
California. Fundamental to that is abolishing the use of long-term
isolation as well as punishment of people for their national, cultural
and political associations.
As one comrade in SHU wrote,
Although I support the original five demands and will continue to do so
along with any future demands for justice. I felt the need to add to the
dialogue… What I noticed from the five demands and many other proposals
being kicked around is the absence of the very core of our oppression -
the SHU itself. What we have learned since the initial strike was that
many civil rights groups and people around the world see the SHU itself
as torture. All or most of what is being asked for i.e. contact visits,
phone calls, cellies etc. can be granted were it not for SHU. Even
things like validation and debriefing become easier to combat when the
SHU is out of the picture. So it is the SHU itself that becomes the
kernel of our oppression in regards to the prison movement in general
and the current struggle we are facing in Pelican Bay. This is why any
proposals should have at the forefront the demand to close the SHUs!
And another,
We can’t afford for prisoners to sacrifice their lives [on a path that
lacks philosophical/scientific understanding]. We’re pursuing what is
essentially a tactical issue of reforming the validation process as if
it were a strategic resolution to abolishing social-extermination of
indefinite isolation. This is not a complex issue to understand, and it
requires a minimal amount of study at most to understand that the
validation process is secondary and is a policy external to the
existence of the isolation facilities. It’s not difficult to comprehend
that external influences create the conditions for change but real
qualitative change comes from within, and to render the validation
process, program failure, the new step down program, etc., obsolete, and
end indefinite isolation, requires an internal transformation of the
isolation facilities (SHU and Ad-Seg) themselves. Otherwise, in
practice, social extermination retains continuity under a new external
label.
For decades now, MIM, and now MIM(Prisons), and many other groups have
agitated around a campaign to
Shut Down the
Control Units in the U.$. As forces regroup around this struggle in
California following the intense struggles in 2011, we are working to
consolidate around a clear position on these issues for those who are in
alliance with the movements for national liberation and against
imperialism, and not interested in just playing games of back and forth
with the various Departments of Corrections.
The broader group of USW comrades in California will have a chance to
review and comment on the our draft list of demands soon. Once
finalized, we will be enlisting you to promote and agitate around these
demands.
Ideological Struggle
We didn’t have time or space to address Novick in full here. But many of
you have seen his article in the latest Turning the Tide, so we
want to address it briefly. First let’s make some factual corrections.
1) MIM Thought has always put youth as the progressive force in the
gender contradiction in the imperialist countries, not wimmin. 2) While
exploitation does only occur at the point of commodity production
according to Marx, MIM Thought draws lines of class primarily along
access to wealth not what sector one works in. Novick’s statement is
confusing the explanation that certain nations must be exploiters to be
dominated by service workers with our definition of the proletariat. 3)
Later he accuses MIM of supporting neo-colonialism in South Africa, when
ironically, MIM was on the front line of the movement in the U.$. in the
1980s supporting the revolutionary forces in South Africa that opposed
the neo-colonial solution. He does so to take a stab at
Mao’s
United Front theory.
As to the line offered in that article, we are proven correct in
drawing
a parallel between Novick and the RCP=U$A line on class and nation
in a critique written by the Black Order Revolutionary Organization in
2011. Comrades can read the commentary on the murder of Sunando Sen in
this issue, and our
recent
review of Bromma’s Exodus and Reconstruction (which has not been
published in ULK) to get our line on nation in a neo-colonial world.
Novick’s position is presented as the line of inter-communalism “in an
era when the nation-state… has become obsolete.” MIM(Prisons) has long
been skeptical of inter-communalism (originally proposed by Huey P.
Newton in the early 1970s). This presentation by Novick shows how
“inter-communalist” ideology can lead to class collaborationism by
ignoring the principal contradiction between oppressor nations and
exploited nations. We expect to address these issues more in the future.
In this issue, the broader topic of ideological struggle as part of
consolidating our forces is expanded on in Ehecatl’s article on the
importance
of study in this stage as the movement is beginning to grow.
As editor, I lament the lack of international news in this issue of
ULK. But we did not want another one to go by without printing
our review of
Zak
Cope’s new book on the labor aristocracy. This review does provide
us with an outline of a theoretical framework for understanding global
imperialism. It is also relevant to this issue of ULK in that
it directly addresses the question of consolidating our forces
ideologically, with what is the most important dividing line question of
our time and place.
While we still struggle to push the MIM line on the labor aristocracy,
MIM(Prisons) is going deeper to look at the oppressed nations in the
United $tates to have a better analysis for our work. Soso’s article on
affirmative
action is a piece of our developing line on this analysis that we
will be releasing for peer review next month, and to the public in the
not too distant future.
MIM(Prisons) is also delving into a new project this month that we hope
will expand our abilities to promote education and theoretical
development among the prison masses. And this is the heart of our
consolidation work. Consolidate means to bring together, but it also
means to discard the unwanted as well as to strengthen. We like this
word because it embodies the Maoist principles of one divides into two
as well as unity-struggle-unity. In both cases we advance by pushing
political struggle forward, rather than being Liberal in an attempt to
preserve unity. Even at the level of the United Front, where unity is
less tight than at the level of the cadre organization, we must hold to
certain principles for the United Front to be meaningful and strong.
