Under Lock & Key

This comrade has been struggling against censorship in the Indiana Department of Corrections for years. Last year ey was locked in a shower by staff, then given a disciplinary charge for panicking because ey has asthma. Ey has been locked in solitary for 6 months as a result and will not get to hug eir mother before she dies. This is an example of what is withheld from oppressed people in this country on a daily basis, a necessary result of the national oppression we seek to end.

We have the First Step Act (FSA) here and if on wait list or just in programs/classes our phone minutes are supposed to be free! They were charging me again since COVID is gone, but I filed. They now give me six calls free so they know I was right. But they are actually supposed to give all sentenced prisoners 570 minutes so I filed further just today. This has to go to region, which here is in Kansas. So if they deny it I’ll take it to DC! I gave some guys here my info and they said they’ll file so maybe there is some hope here after all! If we don’t fight together they’ll bully us and do whatever the hell they want! And I will do my best to not allow that to go down.

Here they keep coming up with what they call Institutional Supplements and for the FSA it states those aren’t required, so I’m fighting that part right now. I’ll keep you posted. Let your federal readers know that if you’re in a lock up situation such as teh ADX, SMU or CMU or lock down they are still allowed FSA incentives, even if you’re just on a wait list for programming. And if you aren’t getting it, then file.

Last summer, around June, I ordered several copies of the North Carolina Grievance petition from MIM, then had copies made and sent out. Then I announced to the block how to use the petition forms as a solution to our grievances not being answered. The forms were then distributed in the block, door-to-door in our segregated dorm. Sadly some papers were heard being ripped up as soon as they entered the cell. I challenged the chicken-shits to reveal themselves, to no avail. The remaining forms were distributed in other blocks. It wasn’t long before I realized hardly anyone would use the forms.

A couple weeks later my neighbor mentions the petition during a conversation with someone else and was telling the guy, “the police gave it to him, he saving it to the day he need to file a grievance so he could attach it to the grievance.” Translation: he has no idea how to use the petition.

Other than some people being lazy and others just don’t care, this is what I learned:

• I can’t assume we are all convicts
• Gather participants first and speak to each of them to confirm their ambitions
• Write directions on top of the form, where to send it, such as “send to address on last page or which ever office/dept you’re trying to target”
• Sometimes an orchestrator may need to influence members to participate

Close fist, Panther struggle

Comrades in SCI-Muncy came together to draft a petition for people imprisoned by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. The petition demands that the state ensure that grievances be addressed by PADOC staff in a timely manner, and that people do not face retaliation for filing a grievance. The comrades ask for additional contacts to add to the list to send the petition to, and any other edits from others in Pennsylvania.

At the end of every year, MIM(Prisons) does an assessment of our work and finances and we plan for the new year. We also solicit reports, criticisms and self-criticisms from USW comrades. We were a little late on that this year, so perhaps we will have more for next issue of ULK.

While most are finding it hard to predict what the next Trump regime will bring, it is clear from this choice that imperialism is in crisis. The uncertainty and threat of instability from things like tariffs, deportations and defunding important social programs do not bode well for the future of U.$. imperialism or stability of the current world order of U.$. domination. There are clear cracks in the latter, despite 2024 being a series of short-term victories for the U.$. empire in the Levant.

The coming upheaval of the current system requires preparation and organization. Since the dissolution of the original MIM in 2008, we cannot say that the MIM has seen significant growth. The prison ministry did accomplish a lot in the decade from 2008 to 2018, reaching new heights in MIM’s prisoner support work. In U.$. prisons we saw significant growth and some amazing actions of mass solidarity. As long-time readers know, MIM(Prisons) took some major setbacks in 2020 and we’ve been regrouping since. In that period we’ve successfully expanded our online recruitment. We’ve also seen a significant growth in MIM line in online communities that MIM(Prisons) has never or no longer participates in (meaning promotion of MIM’s 3 cardinal principles). This has come along with a general growth in “Maoist” groups popping up, evolving and dissolving, though most of these groups do not uphold the 3 cardinals. All of this indicates change in favor of the growth of our forces here on occupied Turtle Island.

Assessing 2024

In the last few years we have revamped and relaunched all of our educational programs for prisoners, which were all non-operational by 2020. We’ve also begun running them online. In 2024, we saw another significant expansion of our educational engagement with prisoners with the relaunching of our study group for USW leaders through the University of Maoist Thought (UMT). Meanwhile, every year, comrades inside and outside continue to complete our intro study courses. These education programs are the first step to building the leaders we need to grow our movement.

Beyond just education, 2024 marked the beginning of the intentional building of the MIM-led united front. By MIM-led we mean ideologically, not a centralized organization. While still in its early stages, these discussions have been fruitful, involving people in cadre orgs and mass orgs that are doing real work in the anti-imperialist movement outside of prisons.

To be prepared for the changes to come, we must continue on these fronts. We must educate more allies into leaders, through both study groups and pushing them to engage in practical work. And we must continue to develop our networks and infrastructure to support real fighting forces in the future.

In 2024, our readership in prisons has continued its steady decline dating back to 2016 now. We didn’t receive a lot of feedback last year on the possible causes of this, but some factors include: drugs, tablets, digital mail, more long-term isolation, and a general decline in the prison movement.

We had less prisoners write us in 2024 than any other year in our existence. This translated to another decrease in donations. A few years ago we accomplished our longstanding goal of having prisoners fund 10% of ULK costs. This seemed to be a result of Covid money. Since then donations have returned to the more normal rate, but with less people writing us that’s an overall decrease in donations. The percent of ULK costs covered by prisoner donations dropped to about 4.2% in 2024, down from 11.5% in 2022.

On the other hand, this summer we distributed far more copies of ULK on the streets than ever before as part of our effort to link the prison movement to the student movement for Palestine. We got close to our goal of matching distribution inside prisons. And our donations from outside supporters (outside of MIM(Prisons)) reached an all time high as well to help pay for those papers.

Overall, our budget was very stable between 2023 and 2024, and much of the small increase was due to us expanding our operations in other locations.

Other than continuing our regular publication of ULK each season, we also put the finishing touches on our paper “Why the International Communist Movement (ICM) Must Break with the Legacy of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM)”. This paper is an important summary of the MIM struggle against the Revolutionary Communist Party(U$A) in the realm of the ICM, pointing out key differences between us and the various revisionists claiming Maoism to this day.

New for 2025

We have a number of things planned for this year already.

As whitehouse.gov removes all Spanish-language content, we are excited to announce the relaunch of our Spanish page (or section) that will start in ULK 89. We already have a Spanish version of our current letter introducing United Struggle from Within and MIM(Prisons), and will have a Spanish version of the intro study course level 1 soon. So if you know people who are interested in studying with us in Spanish have them write in for that. We are also looking for incarcerated translators to help contribute to this important project.

We are already making progress in 2025 towards our unachieved goal of establishing local AIPS chapters with local outreach, regular meetings, educational events, and campaign support for comrades inside. This should continue to expand our ability to correspond with prisoners and attempt to rebuild interest in U.$. prisons around our work.

We will be pushing the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity, on the anniversary of Attica, on the streets in the forms of fasting, political work and study, and possibly larger events as we have promoted inside prisons for a decade now. We have not seen much activity around this inside prisons in recent years, so we hope this will inspire that again and that we can reinforce each others’ efforts around 9/9.

The relaunch of our study group for USW leaders has been very successful overall. Specifically, it has brought together some of our most enthusiastic and advanced thinkers within the New Afrikan Independence Movement, creating momentum around more proactive work in that realm. We will be continuing this study and looking to produce work from it for the broader movement.

Join Us

Imperialism will keep providing opportunities for resistance as its internal contradictions only continue to heighten. It has been some time since we’ve seen real opportunities within the United $tates, and it remains one of the most stable places in the world. Yet, now is the time to build. Opportunities are close enough that people are getting interested in real change, but we must build before real crisis ensues and the existing dominant forces sweep away our efforts because we were not prepared.

Since 2020 we’ve seen a persistent slow and steady growth. We need your help to sustain that growth into the future.

Damascus, the capital of Syria, fell to militia forces on 8 December 2024. The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’ath government in Syria is another setback for the resistance to U.$.-I$rael aggression in the region. The last half century has also demonstrated the limitations of bourgeois nationalism in the Levant. While Syria has been the center of meddling by the imperialists and regional powers for decades, the Ba’ath government’s failure is due to the bourgeois class’ nature as a self-interested minority that cannot fully represent the interests of the nation.

The current civil war started during the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011. Popular protests that year led to state suppression of many of the more progressive forces. Meanwhile funding via U.$. proxies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) helped prop up extremist Sunni-affiliated militias. In the chaos that ensued, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(ISIS) arose to control most of Syria, in terms of area, and parts of Iraq by 2014. At this point, the United $tates teamed up with the Kurdish nationalist movement in Syria to form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to prevent ISIS from completely taking over Syria, while Hezbollah and Iran fought ISIS on other fronts. A decade ago, it was clear the Assad government could not sustain itself.

By 2024, the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, had evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS led a coalition of militias from the Idlib region to take Homs and then the capital of Damascus soon after. At the same time, the United $tates rallied the Revolutionary Commando Army from al Tanf region near the Syrian-Jordan-Iraq border. Many of the 2000 U.$. troops currently in Syria are in al Tanf. Meanwhile, the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) continues a war against the SDF in the North of Syria. The Syrian National Army has incorporated many former ISIS soldiers, and threatens to wipe out Kurds in regions bordering Turkey to serve Turkey’s interests in suppressing the Kurdish independence movement. But the U.$. sees SDF territory as theirs, so Turkey is limited by its NATO master on that front.

In coordination with the taking of the capital by HTS, I$rael immediately seized strategic territory in the Golan Heights and destroyed Syria’s military installments (reportedly 90% of their capacity). I$rael has seized the highest point in Syria and territory that was granted to Syria as a buffer zone in a previous war. I$rael is now closer than ever to Damascus, with no Syrian military to stop them. This means the ability of Syria to stand as an independent military force against the U.$./I$rael has been eliminated. This has led HTS to say they will not allow Palestinian militants to train in Syria anymore.

Over the last decade plus, hundreds of armed organizations have operated across Syria; a condition that is hard for us in the United $tates to imagine. The situation continues to be chaotic in Syria, and those much more familiar than us have a hard time knowing what is going on on the ground. It is clear that U.$. intelligence had a good sense of the balance of forces and was able to foster this takeover by HTS and others in very short time.

Short-term Impacts

Despite the reactionary nature of the Assad regime, which led to its quick collapse in December, Syria has served as a base of resistance for the region for over half a century. This is why, in the short-term, we see the fall of Assad as a bad thing for the anti-imperialist movement, despite being inevitable.

Syria was a transit corridor for resources from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, this has been disrupted. Syria can now serve as corridor for I$rael to reach and attack Iran. The overthrow of Assad is another short-term setback in the resistance to U.$. imperialism in the region following I$rael’s successes in decapitating Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The recent peace deal between Hezbollah and I$rael also indicated a victory for the U.$. camp.

Five days after taking power, HTS declared that all Palestinian resistance forces must demilitarize. Palestinian factions, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), the Saiqa, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Martyr Ali Aswad Brigade, have had a presence in Syria as guests of the government for decades. The refugee camp “Yarmouk”, near Damascus, is the center of the Palestinian diaspora. Beginning with the Nakba in 1948, most Palestinians have been forced off of their land by I$raeli settlers, and therefore live in what are now separate countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. With the peace deal in Lebanon, I$rael is trying to demilitarize Arabs there next. By cutting off the bases of operation of the Palestinian movement and the flow of supplies, I$rael is remaking the region for a complete suppression of the liberation movement.

After more than two years without a president, Lebanon’s parliament chose Joseph Aoun on 9 January 2025. This U.$.-backed candidate clinched the vote after the Hezbollah-favored candidate withdrew. Aoun, like HTS, has pledged to demilitarize any groups outside the Lebanese army. Hezbollah has long been the strongest military force in Lebanon, while participating in a multi-party government. According to the peace deal between I$rael and Hezbollah, I$rael had 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. They have not done so as Hezbollah has also not demilitarized from the south as agreed to in the deal.

Sanction Wars

While the December events were swift, the overthrow of Assad was a U.$. operation dating back decades, through low intensity military and economic warfare. In 2002 Undersecretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the list of President Bush Jr’s “Axis of Evil” countries, justifying economic sanctions, which the Amerikans get their allies to enforce as well.

Sanctions are economic warfare. Just like when you drop bombs on a country, sanctions often result in suffering and death of the civilian population. The fear-mongering around Russian election interference is a joke compared to what the Amerikans have been doing for decades, starving people to force them to change their political allegiances.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Syria’s oil sales in 2010 would have been around $3.2 billion or 25% of the state’s revenue. But war and sanctions put an end to that within a year. Oil extraction in Syria was first done by an Amerikan beginning in 1956. By 1958, Syria was part of Nasser’s United Arab Republic (UAR), which seized the oil fields and machinery from the Amerikan company. When the Ba’ath Party took over a couple years later, with the dissolution of the UAR, they kept the oil fields nationalized. By 2013, ISIS controlled most of the oil fields and were using them to raise money. Assad stated that ISIS had two partners in stealing the Syrian oil since 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and the Amerikans. China has echoed Assad on this point. In November 2019 Trump said to the press that “We’re keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil,” referring to the SDF-controlled region of northern Syria.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Syria)

The U$ imperialists want to monopolize the global oil supply as much as possible and ensure that all major oil producing economies are selling their oil in U.$. dollars. This allows the U.$. dollar to maintain an inflated value in global commodity exchange (by forcing countries that need to buy oil from OPEC countries to have a stash of U$ currency on hand). A secondary effect is that it makes it harder for countries sanctioned by the U.$. to buy oil (forcing the use of proxies to access U$ currency and do business with OPEC). This allows the Amerikans to artificially control inflation of U$D, while currencies in other countries like Syria, or Nigeria, take on that burden.

The Revolutionary Commando Army, paid by the Amerikans, was making 12 times what the Syrian Army was paying, thanks to inflation crippling the value of the lira, or Syrian pound. This inflation can be blamed on the U.$.-imposed sanctions. However, it is also a characteristic of a capitalist economy. There is a reason why socialist China did not have inflation despite U.$. sanctions on the Communist Party of China.New China’s First Quarter-Century, Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1975 And there is a reason why inflationary forces and financial markets threaten the Chinese economy today, after 50 years of capitalism. Similarly, the Ba’ath economy was susceptible to these problems and more. Nationalist policies can slow the effects of capitalism, but cannot eliminate them like socialism does.

The Limits of Bourgeois Nationalism

The weakness of the bourgeois Syrian state is also reflected in Russia’s unwillingness to get involved and Assad’s sudden fleeing of the country leaving his army with no clear leadership for resistance. If there was a way to maintain Ba’ath rule, Russia would have wanted that. Contrast Assad to Sadaam Hussein in Iraq who faced a trial, and was executed by hanging while calling for a united Arab resistance to U.$. imperialism and a free Arab Palestine. The Ba’ath parties in both countries come from a nominally pan-Arab and nationalist background. But we see how circumstance exposes them as inconsistent allies against imperialism.

When the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party emerged, about a third of the world’s population was living under socialism, most of them in the Soviet Union or China. The Syrian Communist Party was the other party with broad mass support. These influences pushed a pan-Arab line with pro-social economic policies in the early Ba’ath Party. Ba’ath was the radical alternative to Nasserism and originally mobilized the peasantry in Syria via land redistribution. The father of Bashar al-Assad led a coup that abandoned this path, and focused on serving the urban capitalist class. Today the national and regional economic projects of the 1960s are impossible as war and divisions have become dominant under imperialist influence.

The way the Assad regime folded was a sign of its own internal weakness. Of course, this came after 13 years of more or less constant imperialist meddling and instigating of civil war. But the resistance in Gaza has not folded after 75+ years, while the once stable and relatively powerful Syrian government folded in a matter of days. This speaks to the internal contradictions. While parties like Ba’ath and Hezbollah have served to suppress communist organizations, the conditions in Palestine have united the nation to the extent that communists and bourgeois nationalists are waging guerrilla warfare in conjunction against the occupiers just days before a cease fire is expected to begin. Now that Assad’s government has fallen, Syria faces greater chaos, allowing the imperialists to play forces off against each other.

Neo-colony of U.$. or Jihadist Caliphate?

While the general media propaganda in the United $tates has been to celebrate the takeover in Syria, the more thoughtful Amerikans are concerned that HTS is “former al Qaeda.” They see conservative religious views of such groups and lump them in with Christians in the U.$. government who are fighting against abortion rights and diversity. On top of that is the racialized view of Muslims as foreign, other, and dangerous. But for the proletariat “al Qaeda” is not necessarily a negative, and the network continues to capitalize on the perception that they are fighting U.$. (and allied) imperialism.

Some real red flags for the proletariat to look out for are things like doing your first interview on CNN within hours of taking power, moving to neutralize threats to I$rael, letting I$rael seize territories of the former state, and the number 1 red flag to look out for: courting positive business relations with U.$. imperialism. These are all things HTS leaders have already done.

Osama bin Laden is rolling over in his watery grave as these rebranded al Qaeda leaders of HTS have become the tip of the U.$. imperialist spear in Syria. But what appears to be the rise of a clear U.$. puppet, emerged from the anti-imperialist bourgeois nationalism that dominates the Muslim resistance today. Their bourgeois character ultimately comes into contradiction with their nationalist claims.

As Marxists we look at class interests, and class interests in the form of national interests, to determine who are our friends and who are our enemies. And the majority of people in the Levant are proletariat and peasantry. Palestine is clearly included in the proletarian camp, despite their economic structure limiting class development and perhaps being dominated by a lumpen-proletariat or semi-proletariat.

Much has been made of the foreign nature of HTS, that it is a transnational group of ragtag extremists. But this too just feeds into neo-colonial thinking. Expelling the foreigners is progressive when aimed at the imperialists. But this is a specific brand of foreigner. And the imperialists can easily pull together a group of born-and-bred Syrians that will be happy to run the country for their Amerikan sponsors. So the oppressed must guard against this form of narrow nationalism.

Syrian nationalism may turn against HTS, but it is not clear who will take their place and how they will be any better. The national question is not clear in a country whose borders were created by the U.$. and French imperialists in 1948. Like many political forces in the region, the Ba’ath Party came from pan-Arab roots, that see one Arab nation that is destined to dissolve the imperialist imposed boundaries. Syria even briefly formed the United Arab Republic by merging with Egypt towards this goal. More recently, ISIS united broad regions of Iraq and Syria for a short period, though against the will of many in the region. What is clear is that the Arab people of the region share a common interest, and should be working together to meet that common interest. Currently I$rael is crushing the attempts at doing so.

The New “President” of Syria

Abu Mohammad al-Julani is the leader of HTS, who united the various forces that fought to overthrow Assad. He has returned to using his birth name of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. While he indicated it would be up to four years before elections would occur again in Syria, National Public Radio quickly began referring to em as the “President of Syria.” The U.$. State Department also lifted the $10 million reward it had long offered for al-Sharaa’s capture on 20 December 2024, another indication of how the Amerikans are viewing the take over.

In 2021, al-Sharaa did an interview with Frontline where ey said ey was radicalized by the Palestinian Second Intifada, stating, “I started thinking about how I could fulfill my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders.” Then al-Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11 inspired em to travel to Iraq to fight the U.$. invasion in 2003 as a soldier with al-Qaeda. Ey was arrested by the Amerikans in 2006 and imprisoned for 5 years. Ey was released, coincidentally during the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011 and began immediately working to build al-Qaeda in Syria, which ey called Jabahat al-Nusra, or in the U.$. media referred to as Al-Nusra Front. Al-Nusra eventually emerged at the center of power plays between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The differences between these groups may be mostly about power struggles and not ideology. However, ISIS was initiated by al-Qaeda affiliated people who thought they weren’t moving fast enough to liberate the land. Al-Nusra seemed to have a similar strategy, which is what led to confrontation with ISIS. In the end, HTS was militarily fighting both ISIS and al-Qaeda to govern Idlib province in the years prior to seizing Damascus, while benefiting from Turkish economic support.

U.$. State Department aide Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton that “AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria” in 2012, referring to the Al-Nusra Front.

State of Imperialist Forces

Russia’s lack of action in Syria, compared to years past, is a sign of their military over-extension with the war in Ukraine. They lost a strategic naval base in the Mediterranean Sea without a fight with the fall of the Assad regime. Like the United $tates, they seemed aware of the Syrian government’s inability to sustain itself and cut its losses, which were significant.

Recently a comrade wrote us asking about what are we waiting for to start the revolution here in occupied Turtle Island. Well a lot of things. From the Russian Revolution, Lenin taught us that a revolutionary situation is defined by the masses and the ruling class realizing the impossibility of continuing in the old way. In addition, an actual end to U.$. imperialism becomes possible when it finds itself over-extended militarily. This is clearly not the case as it is effectively exerting its interests on the other side of the world via proxies like I$rael, Ukraine, and militias in Syria. While the U.$. is footing the bill, they are doing very little in terms of providing their own military support and are not putting Amerikan lives in jeopardy to do so. This could be to avoid open conflict with Russian troops, but also avoids much of the backlash they faced while occupying Iraq.

The overthrow of Assad with only 2000 U.$. troops in the country is a victory for the imperialists, but we’ll see whether this is enough for them to establish a new client state in Syria. Syria has also been a success for the Amerikans in terms of global public opinion. Following the escalated genocide in Gaza over the last 15 months, U.$. public opinion has grown significantly to condemn I$rael, but less so Amerikkka, despite the recognition by most that I$rael is U.$.-funded. In Syria the connection is much less apparent, but the predominant sentiment is that the overthrow of Assad was a good thing. This is a big difference from the Amerikan regime change project that overthrew the Ba’ath regime in neighboring Iraq. During the invasion of Iraq, the U.$. was in the position I$rael is today. Today I$rael could fall, and the imperialist superpower lives on.

Axis of Evil - 25 years of Reshaping the Middle East

Following al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, U.$. President George Bush coined the term “Axis of Evil” to refer to Iran, Iraq and North Korea in 2002. While these countries were not united in any way, Bush claimed they were all sponsors of terrorism and manufacturers of “weapons of mass destruction.” In reality their commonality was in their resistance to U.$. imperialism.

This “Axis of Evil” was coined while the “Great Satan” U.$. imperialists were invading Afghanistan, ostensibly for their harboring of al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden. That invasion lasted until 2021, when the former governing Taliban finally returned to power. In those two decades, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions were displaced in Afghanistan. In 2011, the United $tates assassinated bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. The 9/11 attacks also triggered the United $tates to launch an international prison network made up of CIA “black sites”, in which the Bush regime okayed the CIA to ignore Geneva Convention rules against torture.

After George Bush’s speech, Undersecretary of State John Bolton gave eir own 2002 speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil” that included Cuba, Libya and Syria. In response to the “Axis of Evil” talk, people from these countries began talking about the “Axis of Resistance”, since resisting U.$. imperialist interests was the thing these countries had in common. Iran eventually took up this term around its informal alliance in opposition to the U.$. imperialist outpost of I$rael.

Before Syria’s takeover this month, Syria was the only state power, other than Iran, to serve as a training ground and supply source for the other members of the Axis of Resistance. Ansar Allah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine all participate in state power or at least dual power. Other members of this alliance include Shia militias in Iraq, other national liberation forces in Palestine, and now emerging militias in Syria that oppose the recent takeover.

In addition to opposing I$rael and the United $tates, the Axis of Resistance has generally opposed Salafist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Salafism is a revival of Sunni Islam that attempts to connect to its “authentic” traditions by opposing things that didn’t exist in the times of the prophet Mohammed; a truly reactionary ideology that wants to take society backwards.

Despite Syria’s important role in supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon and resistance forces in Palestine and being on the U.$. “Axis of Evil” list, Syria actually served the U.$. imperialists in their “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The imperialists invaded Iraq (again) in 2003 under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, which was later proved to be a complete lie. During this period CIA black sites were operating in countries across the world, including Syria. These “black sites” were a secretive international prison system focused on torture, interrogation and disappearances.

While some recent U.$. media coverage of the freeing of prisoners in Syria was proven to be fabricated, there were many people who suffered under the Assad regime who are understandably celebrating or at least relieved. While we criticized imperialist meddling against Assad and recognized the Ba’ath government as useful to the resistance in the region, its failure to serve the people led to its demise. As always, we join in the call of the resistance forces in recognizing the right to self-determination of the Syrian people and opposing all imperialist occupation of portions of Syria and imperialist meddling in the economy and resources of the region. Much struggle will be needed to make that a reality.

^{Note: Our citations for this article are not up to our usual standards, but we believe most of the facts here to be uncontroversial and easily verifiable.}

A local news station went viral when they started a live mass interview with prisoners held in State Correctional Institution - Huntingdon in Pennsylvania as part of their coverage of Luigi Mangione’s imprisonment. The innovative reporter asked questions on live TV and had prisoners respond by yelling answers and flashing lights to their local correspondent on the ground. What follows are a couple of on the ground reports to verify that event and the conditions exposed in that video.

$prayer wrote on 3 January 2025: The area where our brother Luigi was/is held is called: D-Max, D-Rear, D-Obs. It is where they (Huntingdon) puts people when they want to grind them up. It is atrocious back there, dirty and disgusting. You probably seen the pictures from the news of it.

The media was camped out here for a couple of weeks after Luigi was caught here in Blair County. This jail is the worst jail in the state of Pennsylvania as for living conditions. Light/night lights in the cells in the RHU are constantly on 24/7/365. In D-Max, you might as well be sleeping outside.

Back here in the RHU if you don’t cover up your air vent you get freezing cold because it’s all cold air coming out, no heat even in the winter.

Just the other day multiple C/Os (Correctional Officers) and a Sergeant took a prisoner to the property room in the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) where there are no cameras and beat the comrade because he wrote a nurse that works here a letter and sent it to her at her place of residence.

I’ve also enclosed documents of an assault I received here. [The grievance response confirms the comrade’s report that CO1 N. Metzgar assaulted em with OC spray in September for no reason at all.]

A Pennsylvania prisoner wrote on 14 January 2025: The part of the prison that was featured on NewsNation (The Bandfield Show); providing the “Lights Show” that went viral, is an old add-on to the “Older” prison structure that extends beyond the original structure. Whereas, there are 2 extended Blocks: E-Block, which is the Block that went viral with the light show, and F-Block, which is the so-called “honor block”. Both E and F-Blocks assume perks. However, the perks are minuscule in that such entails being in a cell with a window and radiator. The rest of the prison is Shawshank Redemption style with cells stacked by tiers and its steel bars and levelers to latch close and to release cell gates. The cells are the size of a small bathroom at best, and they are mostly occupied by 2 persons. However, the top 3 and 4 tiers (depending on the Blocks) are single cells only to relieve some of the weight as a solution to the structural damages. Prisoners are essentially housed on Blocks that should have been condemned decades ago. The Blocks that are indicated as condemned online are in fact fully occupied. Thus, prisoners are essentially threatened by structurally hazardous living conditions. Although SCI-Huntingdon isn’t up to code or PREA compliance, its cost efficiency to operate due to its outdated mechanics rather offsets payment for fines.

The compound is not only structurally hazardous, but black mold continues to persist due to an old leaky plumbing system and mold breeding conditions such as constant moisture, lack of ventilation and inadequate lighting. There is no central air conditioning units on any of the cell blocks. For the exception of the aforementioned E and F Blocks, there are radiators situated on the ground floor of the prison Blocks, and it’s only the few that works that provide the only source of heating. And since there is no air conditioning, summers are insufferable, and attributable to many heat-related illnesses, along with many bouts of psychotic episodes. The brick cells hold heat like an oven, which consequently exacerbates the health conditions of our geriatric population. To add insult to injury, SCI-Huntingdon has a rat and pest infestation. Currently, there are cell blocks riddled with bedbugs, while enduring spider bites is common.

The showers contemporarily violate PREA standards, in that the showers consist of an open area without privacy stalls, and therefore, the only means of privacy while showering is wearing boxers or shorts. Since the pandemic ravished Huntingdon’s prison population the justification to close the dining hall and relegate food trays which are barely room temperature to be eating in our cells is the new norm. Meanwhile, recreation is limited due to implementations of said “new norm” policies. These conditions are agitated by an administration that has a culture that’s attitudinally antagonistic, indifferent, incompetent, and explicitly racist. The majority of SCI-Huntingdon’s prison population are people serving extraordinary lengths or death by incarceration sentences. And this population is situated in a small rural district that’s otherwise economically depleted due to the industrialization of its farming and agricultural economy.

Thus, Huntingdon’s prison population essentially compensates for its depressed economy by counting its prison population in the census to meet requirements for federal funding and political representation for its district. As an additional point of reference, SCI-Huntingdon makes up for a bulk of the production for PA Corrections Industries. Wherefore, there’s no wonder that in spite of the conditions, which warrants its closing and demolition, the corporate/private socioeconomic interest politically outweighs the civil rights and fundamental safety of its prisoners. This dynamic is not far removed from what the Mangione case represents. Although his alleged act represents a revolt against the exploitations of corporate healthcare insurance industries, there’s a message that’s also fitting to a corporate America that’s allowed to exploit the people’s labor and basic needs on every level of society. Indeed we live in a society where corporate America is the pimp, the Government is the whore, the people are the tricks and the police enforce, protect and serve this dynamic.

While the Magione case is made specific to the basic need and right to adequate health care, such should represent to the people the primary contradiction of capitalism, which exposes a common enemy vested in a political system that panders and facilitates the corporate exploitations attributed to mass death, mass incarceration, mass inflation, and the mass affect of imperialism. However, individual acts of revolution which can serve as effective propaganda are often hijacked and trivialized by reactionaries, which are undermined by the corporate media apparatus. Although, it’s my hope that such a message would galvanize the common sense of the people, and assume a superstructure concentrated on power to the people, rather than a cult of individualism where our grief is isolated and our passions to transform the world is reduced to alienation.

MIM(Prisons) responds: The class dynamics around health care are described in the article we put out on the Mangione case. While people in this country suffer from the health care system, the wealth exploitation is happening in the Third World and bringing wealth to the whole population in the United $tates and other imperialist countries.

MIM(Prisons) regularly publishes articles speaking on the reprehensible conditions in U.$. prisons. Why do oppressed nationalities suffer these life conditions disproportionately, and what is the solution?

The United $tates has been the largest economy in the world for some time. How is that possible? It is made possible because the United $tates reaps this profit out of the Third World. Many people know this subconsciously, but do not put all the pieces together. There is a common joke about Asian children making smartphones, but we do not question why this is the case. It is the case because it is profitable for the United $tates, because the company makes more profit when they pay lower wages, then these commodities are brought to the United $tates and sold for cheap, and everyone here benefits. The company makes a profit and the Amerikans get cheap goods. That much is clear from a cursory look, and proved by the recent literature on “unequal exchange.”

It is obvious why the Third World is placed into poverty by this system, but why the oppressed nationalities within the United $tates? Historically, the internal semi-colonies were sources of wealth as well, but today it is a question of distributing that wealth from the Third World. The Amerikan nation recognizes, consciously or unconsciously, that they have an interest in keeping their plunder to themselves. For that reason, Black and Brown people are excluded from employment, education, housing, and all the benefits of Amerikan empire. Racism, therefore, is the way that Amerikans assert their economic interest in keeping others from getting a hold of their money.

The movement against racism stems mostly from the desire of the oppressed nationalities to integrate into the empire; the desire here is for an empire free of national bigotry, wherein the currently oppressed nations have equal access to the wealth which is pulled out of the Third World, the globally oppressed nations. Anyone with two eyes, however, can see that this struggle has been raging for decades without an end in sight. The oppressed nationalities within the United $tates cannot leave behind the Third World on the low chance that they may succeed in becoming one with the beast; they must ally with the Third World in the struggle against imperialism. Only by overthrowing this system of class and national divisions can the oppressed within this country live to see a day where oppression in general is dying out, and prisons in particular become based on rehabilitation instead of “punishment,” and where people are not restricted from life opportunities in the interest of protecting the wealth of the privileged nation.

Does anyone today believe that true integration, true “equality” between nationalities in this country is possible through the ballot or any other means? The response to this question will be “if not, what hope is there?” The choice seems to be between the gradual struggle for equality on the one hand or nothing on the other, since the only method of achieving liberation without reform is revolution, and most cannot imagine the oppressed nations in this country winning any real fight against the empire. But why are we imagining this fight as only between these two competitors? The oppressed nations within the United $tates are only one component part of the oppressed nations of the whole world. The struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of imperialism is a global one, uniting all who can be united. Yes, none of the oppressed nations in this country can liberate themselves: neither the Black nation, nor the indigenous nations, nor the Chicano nation. But the struggle of all these nations, by themselves too weak to overthrow imperialism, together form a mass which vastly outweighs the strength of the United $tates, and this is where our strength lies. This is where our strategic confidence in success comes from. Through the international struggle imperialism will overextend itself, and it will open inroads for success in national liberation struggles. These successes will weaken imperialism further, eventually setting the scene for the truly anti-imperialist force, the socialist working class, to make its appearance.

UPDATED VERSION AFTER TRUMP’s INAUGURATION

A group called Americans For Tax Fairness posted an announcement online that:

“The wealth of the four richest Americans hit $1 TRILLION yesterday.

“It’s the first time in history the net worth of just four men – Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg – has hit the trillions.

“These four men were worth $74 billion twelve short years ago.

“Tax billionaires.”

A startling increase in wealth for sure. And who could possibly use so much wealth? Have their lives even changed with this increase of wealth of two orders of magnitude? Did they even notice? In related news people are up in arms about one of the 4, Jeff Bezos, putting on a $600 million wedding.

Later this month, the wealth at Trump’s inauguration also topped $1 trillion, with three of the above attending with many other tech CEOs. One of them, Musk, ended a speech with a powerful seig heil (Nazi salute). Ellison also met with Trump within days of his presidency beginning.

It is true that any of these individuals could take a chunk of that wealth and ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. But like any one of us, we can only operate within the laws of the world we were born into. And the laws of capitalism would just fill that slot with another individual.

We’ll let Engels explain this in more depth:

“The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that”vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin. But the perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead-weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.” - Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring

For those four people to keep increasing their wealth, is to fulfill their destiny in the system of capitalism. It is not a question of persynal greed, nor of humyn nature, rather it is the natural law of the current economic structure.

The call to tax billionaires is ultimately a futile act in opposition to the laws of the capitalist machine. It is possible to do, and could change the balance of wealth among those living in the most wealthy country in the world. But the tendency of the laws of capitalism is to go back to this point, and surpass it, in terms of the concentration of wealth. This tendency to concentrate wealth, to maintain profitability by out-competing others, is one of the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system that require its end.

In his last speech as president, Joe Biden pandered to the labor aristocracy with a hypocritical condemnation of a rising oligarchy. People want to pretend that U.$. imperialism wasn’t always run in the interests of the largest corporations. This growing concentration of wealth is a law of capitalism that Marx exposed 170 years ago.

Marx & Engels also wrote about how the inherent contradictions of capitalism build a “reserve army” of labor, excluding more and more from participating in the wage system. Even in the richest country of the world, where there is virtually no proletariat like that described by Engels above, these laws of capitalism apply and we have a class we call the First World lumpen. A class that is excluded by capitalism – the only economic system that has ever had a thing called “unemployment.” The idea that there is no work for some people to do is unheard of in most of humyn history, as well as in socialist countries of the past like the USSR and China.

In 2024, homelessness increased 18%, following a 12% increase in 2023. The official count is over 770,000 people, meaning real numbers are approaching a million.(1) That is still less than half the people we have locked in prisons and jails in this country. And both numbers may continue to surge with proposed plans under the second Trump regime. However, mass deportations could also contribute to a decline in homelessness, as migrant raza make up a significant portion of those without houses.(2)

Most of the people in the United $tates raise their pitchforks at these billionaires in hopes of raising their taxes to maintain the standard of living here. These people believe in the system, just think it needs to change a bit. The First World lumpen are at least torn, in that they benefit from operating against the rules of the system, while also receiving some benefits from it. As contradictions spiral up, as Engels describes, the lumpen will be some of the first to see opportunity in the destruction of the old and the creation of something new, in particular the oppressed nation lumpen, who we identify in our analysis, “Who is Lumpen in the United $tates?”

<sup>1. Michael Casey, 27 December 2024, US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people, Associated Press.
2. Communist Party of Aztlán, November 2024, On Homelessness: A Growing Site of Lumpen Organizing, Under Lock & Key 87.</sup>

Welcome to the revolution! This is Alien tappin in with a response to ULK 87 article “How To Get Grievances Heard In Arkansas.”

I actually did many years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. The last six of those years was spent in the max (Brickeys/Cummins), cuz I ‘bucked’ on em repeatedly. I’ve personally been through years of what this Arkansas prisoner is describing. I filed hundreds of grievances and they always responded with a denial of allegations and found the grievance without merit, as this Arkansas prisoner said. I’ve also had similar experiences with the disciplining hearings, with disciplinary hearing officers, like ‘no-socks’, cutting the hearing camera off on me mid hearing and automatically finding me guilty, etc. For the longest time I held yards/showers down, barricaded cells with spears, stabbed people, flooded toilets, busted sprinklers, slipped cuff and attacked pigs to get justice, but I learned several things towards the end of my set that helped a lot.

So when you – this Arkansas prisoner – ask what to do I decided to give you a few answers in the long/short term; it’s inspiring to see fellow Arkansas comrades goin’ down the same path as me, while “fighting and spreading the word” in chains.

Okay, so in the short-term, request the prisoner’s self-help litigation manual (4th edition) from the law library, they usually keep several torn-up copies of them on hand, go to the exhaustion of remedies section and pull up the case law at the bottom of the pages to “shepherdize”. In 2016, while I was at Brickeys, Prison Legal News sent me a free copy of their magazine and it had a case in there from the Supreme Court that says that when a remedy (grievance) is unavailable, then it is a “dead-end” process and doesn’t have to be exhausted.

What I’m getting at is that there are certain circumstances (such as when you’re being retaliated against as a result of exhausting your remedies) that enable you to file the 42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuit, without completing the grievance process. You just gotta explain to the courts in the §1983 complaint package why you had “no available remedy to exhaust”, which sucks, cuz then you gotta survive a “summary judgement motion” – it’s not easy either – once you file the lawsuit. The Arkansas pigs are aware of this, which is why they don’t mind not signing grievances or doin’ anything about your grievances once signed. Plus they’re aware that the chances of them gettin’ sued are low. Successfully sue them a couple times and watch their attitude adjust. I personally went through this and didn’t get to finish the lawsuits cuz the pigs where I am now trashed all my files.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Study into the case law on grievance exhaustion and go from there (there’s no way to cover all the case law inside of one article). If you don’t know how to shepherdize cases, the book I told you about will instruct you on all that. On the bright side it’ll give you something to do in the max. Get in the law library, cuz while grievances don’t work in Arkansas, lawsuits do.

In the long term, I plan on collaborating with MIM(Prisons) to get a campaign going against the PLRA (Prison Litigation Reform Act §1997) – we’ll call it the “PLRA campaign”. The PLRA is what demands that prisoners exhaust all available remedies, prior to filing any Bivens/42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuits (Bivens are filed against the federal government, while §1983 is for the state/local level). According to the 1st Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” And according to the 14th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have a right to equal protection. The PLRA violates both the 1st and 14th Amendments and I intend to organize a class action challenging the constitutionality of the PLRA, through the PLRA campaign.

1. In theory, our ability to “petition the government for redress of grievances” is life-threatening and often injurious, cuz we’re forced to exhaust dangerous grievances, prior to filing §1983’s. The fact is that prisoners can and do get killed and fucked off – injured – for filing grievances nation-wide. Filing grievances is dangerous in an infinite amount of ways. They can’t legally force us to participate in a grievance process that’s going to get us stabbed in the neck or jumped on by fuck-boys, who are often in collaboration with the pigs. We are unable to petition the government if doin’ so is going to get us hurt in any kind of way. We can prove in a trial that it’s common knowledge that guards, nation-wide, are capable of silencing and do silence prisoner litigants’ petitions through retaliation which intimidates many prisoners from initiating grievances or lawsuits. The feds spent decades tryin’ to take down the five Italian mafia families, in part for silencing litigants, so why not help us take down the pigs’ PLRA, which is essentially a technical loophole that they use to evade justice or trials and silence litigants with mafia-like tactics.

The whole “deliberate indifference” standard that applies to 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) lawsuits wouldn’t apply in a 1st Amendment claim. We’d be arguing that the PLRA exhaustion requirement is “abridgement”, which doesn’t necessarily have to be deliberately indifferent.

2. The PLRA violates the 14th Amendment cuz the prison class can’t seek redress for mental injuries without there being a physical injury, and the non-prisoner class can seek redress for mental injuries even if there isn’t any physical injuries involved, which is unequal protection. Shutting the doors of the courts in prisoners’ faces so that we can’t seek redress for mental injuries doesn’t allow us equal access to the courts, which also violates the 1st Amendment. An injury is an injury. Take it from me, a severely mentally ill prisoner, when I say that many mental injuries are just as bad, if not worse than, physical injuries. Suffering from mental injuries is also a “grievance” that we should be able to “petition the government for redress” for, under the 1st Amendment. We have to ask ourselves what the aim of the PLRA is when it comes to barring us from the courts for redress of mental or psychological grievances? I think that the answer to the question is obvious and speaks volumes.

How would the prison system look without the PLRA? The PLRA is an obstacle standing in our way of combating the number one form of psychological torture of the Amerikan nation’s prison system – control units. And this is due to the fact that we can’t sue anyone for the mental injuries involved with doing hole time if it doesn’t cause physical injuries, and doing hole time, by itself, doesn’t cause physical injuries. If we can successfully take down the PLRA, then we can sue to receive compensation when we suffer mental injuries as a result of doing long-term hole or max time, without there being any physical injuries. If they have to compensate prisoners every time somebody suffers a mental injury as a result of living long-term in control units, they may lean more towards changing living conditions in the hole (such as giving one access to books, radios, phones, jobs, fixing temperature issues, etc.), flat out abolishing the control units, or reducing length of control unit sentences.

Anything mentally injurious going on inside of the prison that is simply for revenge-based punishments and not for security purposes could then lead to mass amounts of compensation. The compensation will deter psychological torture and amplify mental-health treatments.

The last aspect of taking down the PLRA is that prisoners would no longer have to exhaust remedies in order to file Bivens/§1983s. If we can end the PLRA in the long term, then this would end the grievance campaign altogether.

With that I’ll close. I hope my response was helpful.