MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Revolutionary greetings to all who stand in opposition to the oppression
being inflicted upon the people! I’m writing to you from within the
depths of the Utah state prison where it’s business as usual for these
oppressive devils. Here in the housing unit known as Uinta One, the
vents are pumping out cold air and there’s nothing much that can be
done, because if we go off and buck on the cops we will only gain a 48
hour strip cell. The situation is sickening, but only one of many!
I was placed in Uinta One at the beginning of December with no
explanation other than that I was “under investigation.” I was already
housed in maximum security gang housing under “Severe Threat Group”
(STG) classification. I’ve been put under numerous investigations before
this one and it usually involves my cell being tossed and all property
being searched or seized, along with mail and phone calls being
monitored. But now they choose to start the investigation by taking all
my stuff and shipping me to the hole where it took over 35 days before I
could even order a bar of soap or deodorant from commissary.
This has been done to many other prisoners who are housed in the
so-called STG program. Most of the prisoners whose scheduled release
from STG maximum security is close, or past due, do not get moved to
less restrictive housing, and the ones who are at the forefront of
fighting this injustice are often subject to more harassment, or in
certain cases moved to “deeper” parts of the hole, aka Uinta One.
Most recently the prisoners of Uinta Two, both STG and non-STG, have
been petitioning to change the privilege level system to one that treats
all maximum security prisoners equally. They are demanding that we all
be allowed to get 3 visits a month, unlimited phone calls while on
recreation (out of cell time, which is one hour and 15 minutes every
other day) and to be allowed the same spending limit on commissary.
These privileges are provided to prisoners who are in maximum security
but not classified as STG. What is the difference between a maximum
security prisoner who is STG and one who’s not? Nothing other than how
the oppressors have decided to classify us. Some members of LOs are
considered STG and others are not, yet we live together in the STG unit
regardless of a prisoner’s STG status, as long as our LOs are believed
to get along with each other.
Prisoners’ first amendment rights are clearly violated by the STG policy
and program here. They punish us by locking us in maximum security where
we only recreate one cell at a time for an hour and 15 minutes every
other day. We are given STG classification for tattoos or suspected gang
affiliation without ever even having any write ups (disciplinary
convictions) in this prison.
The oppression is real and thick here at the Utah State Prison, but we
are fighting back.
I hope that all of the prisoners who are showing unity can continue to
enlighten each other and others to the need for a united struggle! I
know we have our differences, but we all are similarly oppressed. Stand
tall, stand strong.
MIM(Prisons) adds: “Threat Group” classification is used by
prisons across the country to target oppressed nation prisoners,
specifically those who are politically active and organizing others to
stand up for their rights. The classification system is arbitrary and
allows use of things like holiday cards, or legal help, as evidence of
association. Further, in many states the evidence is kept secret so
prisoners can’t fight false classification. This status often gets
prisoners locked in isolation units, where conditions like those
described above eat away at physical and mental health. This is part of
the systematic oppression of the criminal injustice system, serving
imperialism by keeping the lumpen in check. As this prisoner wrote,
unity is key to our fight against this system.
Like in a shroud of nopal she exists within the confines of the
people, To and from, history to the future lies her footprint for a
better day. A distant star propels her will and intrepid appeal
soothes the oppressed in her path to freedom. Dialectics remains her
lantern which cuts deep canyons into the jungle of despair illuminating
the mysterious and unseen. I see her hand through the concrete
pillars of occupation bathed in a glow of fluorescent light, leaking
from the cuts it has endured from the miles of razor wire. Her voice
traveling from history defies the relations of production in its tone,
it is a roar that discards any trace of bribery and which the chains of
patriarchy have no chance. Her demands have always been for justicia
throughout history and continue to ignite this call into the future, a
future where infant Brown fists rise out of the fields strapped on the
backs of young mothers, of the youth pried out of the claws of
criminalization. Without her marching side by side the path becomes
obscured and cold, and so we continue in sync with the boundaries of
existence merely being a physical aspect of today’s social reality, a
manifestation of occupation that the girl from history has seen rise and
fall in her perpetual march through history.
I’m a sick fuck But so are you Been trained like Pavlov’s
dog Getting off on watching you Suffer Have we had
enough Role playing hierarchy Is this really the way you want
it Baby Angry and violent Scared and simpering Playing the
part like Pavlov’s dog Bells and whistles – spittle
buckets Nooses, nines, suicides Wiping up our messes I want out
your pornography Show me the way out this insanity I’m a sick fuck
for wanting you This way Your sick smile Why do we play It’s
not the way we want it But it’s the way we get it Patriarchal sex
toys manipulated by playboy Ignorant puppets pushing,
pulling Lipsticked lips quivering, smiling Hiding the tears
beneath our sweat Mascara, muscle, gritted teeth,
fingernails Buried sickness in holy matrimony You done yet
As crazy as this may seem, Don’t nothing come to a sleeper but a
dream. Fighting against the oppressor, Has gotten the capitalist
wanting to scream.
Hurray! I say unto you. My Comrades are my pride and joy. Together
in this struggle, Like an army ready to deploy.
With every difficulty there is ease, So we must continue demanding
more. While oppressors continue squirming in their chairs, I’m
trying to keep their asses sore.
They break the law to punish lawbreakers Unconstitutional conditions
and censorship policy They give us four envelopes a
month Expecting our return to society be successful with no
one They create these dungeons, punishing revolutionary
behavior Been alone so long with no telephone, mind and family
gone They believe they are gods chosen and we are Satan’s
spawn Going home to beat wives, child porn and manicured
lawns They mourn 9-11 like we didn’t deserve it Sending sons and
daughters off terrorists hunting patriots They hate prisoners,
Blacks, Latinos and First Nations White dark night killer deserving
of understanding and forgiveness They wonder why the world hates them
beyond words Military bases spread like cancer the earth over They
seem so pretty, smart, happy and photogenic Just the rich man’s
puppets on Broadway, Hollywood, Pennsylvania Ave Dropping bombs on
Nagasaki, Hiroshima, unmanned drone celebrations They could come in
the morning and shoot me like a dog But it’s not going to save them,
we will never stop
My security level was recently lowered and I was immediately assigned as
an inmate orderly, to my chagrin. It is like a trustee who works on an
assigned cell block, and I know of all the pigs’ malicious intent of
using certain prisoner orderlies as tools. Tools used to hurt other
prisoners.
I got my block assignment and was given the usual lecture about all the
things I could not do – basically anything that would ease my fellow
prisoners plight/suffering. I politely related to this sergeant, while
maintaining every intent to help those confined on this segregated cell
block. I was not too long ago confined behind the door, so it was an
obvious obligation to do so.
Anyway, that was Wednesday. By Sunday, another shift tried to enlist me
as a complicit to starve an individual prisoner, to which I declined.
But, the other orderly slaving with me agreed to help. Through
intimidation I was able to persuade this orderly to do otherwise.
I warned the target of the pig’s intent and, days later, the other
prisoner about the plot against them. Well, this orderly informed the
pigs that I was alerting all targeted prisoners. So the pigs tried,
through aggressive body language, to scare me. The pigs claimed that I
wasn’t playing with the team, blah, blah. Took all my property and
locked me down pending trumped up disciplinary charges.
A few days later, the other punk ass orderly gives another inmate an
empty food tray. This prisoner did not take it lightly. The target
became disorderly – and rightly so. This led to the individual being
administered chemical agents. And he refused to tap out after several
rounds of being gassed. Dude forced the pigs to run the cell extraction
team, which beat this man stupid. Eight on one.
All because of a stool pigeon. Shit crazy.
Even more crazy, I receive a kite from someone who was my neighbor
before classification made me an orderly. The kite informed that the day
after I left the cell block, a white shirt and four officers popped up
at the cell with a minicam. Long story short, the pigs were coming with
the intent to inflict bodily harm. The veracity of the event was
confirmed by an affiliate.
They missed me by one day!
My belief is this was planned because I was part of a core group which
gave voice to the rampant pig violence towards prisoners.
“MIM had come to the conclusion from the degeneration of numerous
genuine forces like the Progressive Labor Party in the United States
that such especially difficult ideological struggle is a permanent
fixture in the imperialist countries where the material basis for
degeneration is much greater than in the oppressed countries…”
“Since it is unlikely that imperialism will be able to come up with too
many more entirely new tricks, there will come a time in MIM’s
development where our principal task will be to unite those who can be
united around our very confrontational line. Right now we are emerging
principally from struggle against revisionism, imperialist economism and
pseudo-feminism. When we have finished going into detail on our
differences with others on the above questions we will focus on unity as
the principal way to advance the overall struggle. We will prepare for a
strategic length of time to do battle with imperialist economism,
revisionism, pseudo-feminism, Trotskyism, anarchism and so on in a
distinctive way. However, even in seeking unity, MIM will find itself in
struggle much more often than many parties in communist history for a
variety of reasons what MIM has said is rare to non-existent in the
imperialist countries. So even as the labor aristocracy thesis becomes
clear as day to us and ‘old hat’ it will seem fresh to many for some
time to come.” - The Journey Back to Maoism.
MIM Theory 5, Diet
for a Small Red Planet
So what do these passages mean? We’re so bought off it’s ridiculous!
Worse still, as a result of our being bought off we’re that much more
susceptible to bourgeois manipulation a la ideological
trickery. Therefore we cannot obtain a proletarian mindset without some
hard study.
We in the imperialist countries have the distinct strategical advantage
of not having to be in armed struggle at this time. And in connection to
this fact we have a responsibility not only to the international
proletariat but to our own oppressed that when conditions do begin to
change and armed struggle actually becomes a possibility we’ll be ready
to not only lead, but lead right! We have the advantage of learning from
and building on all the rational and empirical knowledge left to us by
our predecessors, both the good and the bad; especially the bad! We have
to learn from past mistakes so that we don’t commit future ones, or
worse still, repeat the old ones. It’s too late in the anti-imperialist
game for us to be messing up the way some of our leaders did before us.
Have we learned nothing?! What part of “ideological struggle in the
imperialist countries is a permanent fixture” are we not understanding?
It’s almost as if the revolution really is dead.
The fact that more and more of the oppressed nation imprisoned lumpen
are beginning to finally wake up to the reality of imperialism is a good
thing - a very good thing! However, the fact that most of these new
lumpen organizations aren’t taking the time to study and learn from the
concrete lessons of history and movements passed speaks volumes for the
dire need of these new groups to formally hook up with MIM(Prisons) and
United Struggle from Within (USW). It indicates the need for individuals
to remain within USW much longer to develop theoretically before forming
new single-nation revolutionary cells or parties. USW should serve as a
place for the most advanced to sharpen their swords together until
conditions do change within the prison population in general and within
the prison movement in particular, before calling for the building of
new organizations.
Comrades behind bars have all the time in the world to study and hence
develop themselves and others theoretically. Therefore, those of us who
are serious about revolution have no excuse for such low levels of
theoretical development within our ranks, especially those of us working
directly with MIM(Prisons).
A big part of the problem is the failure of some of us within USW to
correctly grasp the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which results
in a failure to apply it to the prison movement, and as a result we have
paralysis within the prison movement. The need for us to seriously study
dialectical materialism is directly linked to our ability to put it to
use; without a concrete understanding of dialectical materialism all
will be lost. Is this an over-exaggeration? Of course not; it’s a hard
truth. Within our conditions MIM(Prisons) makes up part of our external
causes and therefore is a part of the conditions of change with us being
the basis of change. Based on what I’m seeing, or rather not seeing,
there hasn’t been any real change thus far. Are my words too harsh? If
they are, then that’s too bad. What is MIM(Prisons) here for if not to
help us develop politically?
Related to this point is a prisyner’s letter I just read in the
revisionist Revolution newspaper of the Crypto-Trotskyists
RCP=U$A. This article was filled with the usual, flowery verbiage of
“much love to y’all beautiful people at the RCP…” and “Bob Afakean is my
daddy” type nonsense, typical of their articles. Half the articles in
Revolution don’t really say anything, while the other half are
filled with imperialist country oppressor nation chauvinist politics.
Anyways, there was a California prisyner’s letter featured that was
speaking on the Pelican Bay Short Corridor new directive. This prisyner
was writing in to basically agree that it was about time that the
prisyners put a stop to the fighting and come together for change.
However, towards the end of the letter this prisyner made a call for the
Pelican Bay Short Corridor to separate themselves from the lumpen if
they were to really have a shot at victory in their struggle.
Yup, leave it to the RCP=U$A to spread division in the guise of unity to
the prison masses at such a critical time. But how, pray tell, is the
Short Corridor to achieve its goals in their struggle (which is all our
struggle) if they separate themselves from the prison masses? Not only
does this prisyner’s line attempt to separate the Corridor leaders from
the wider prisyn movement, but it essentially makes the petty bourgeois
argument that only individual groups of prisyners should be designated
as political prisyners, and not the entire U.$. prisyn population. As if
the Short Corridor prisyners were on a different plane than the rest of
the population, or as if the short corridor weren’t lumpen-based
themselves. That RCP=U$A article makes it seem as if the mass of
California prisyners were holding the movement back. Quite the contrary:
without the prisyner masses the Short Corridor prisyners are like
generals with no soldiers, or a gun with no bullets. Instead it is the
prisyner masses that will push the prisyn movement forward.
My point here is that the RCP=U$A prints this garbage, and lots of
prisyners just eat it up. And we at USW know where “new synthesis” (old
revisionist hat) leads the movement to: oblivion.
Now assuming that a prisyner actually wrote that letter (and not just
another revisionist weed, we all remember agent Quispe and the attempt
to derail the Sendero Luminoso: strategical equilibrium) what does that
say about the theoretical development of politically-conscious and
class-conscious prisyners? And these are the leaders?!
We need real proletarian-based political development if we are to
succeed in the years to come, and the only place prisyners are gonna
find that is by working directly with MIM(Prisons). Our liberation as
oppressed nations and as a class is inextricably bound with Maoism, not
“new synthesis” politics. Don’t believe me? Go ask the klan in the
RCP=U$A where they stand with respect to the liberation of Aztlán, New
Afrika, and the various First Nations. Watch how they dance and shuffle,
deflect the question, and fake left in order to go right.
Still too busy to study theory seriously? Busier than the New People’s
Army in 1970? Good question: who or what is the New People’s Army? Who
was the Tupac Amaru for that matter? And what’s the difference between
lumpen and lumpen-proletariat? How is this question relevant to our own
conditions? And what about Kautsky – who’s his contemporary, and why
should we care?
The tenet that the revolutionary vanguard be made up of professional
revolutionaries is a Leninist tenet. Anything less than putting
revolutionary politics in command means watering down correct political
line. And correct political lines could only be put forward if there was
an organization consisting chiefly of people professionally engaged in
revolutionary activity that would devote their entire lives to the
movement subsuming the persynal for the good of the cause. We don’t need
no weekend revolutionaries and we don’t need those just in it for the
remainder of their imprisonment; we need better than that. “Better,
fewer, but better.” It’s not enough to simply read an article in
Under Lock & Key. The bulk of our imprisonment should be
spent developing the mind.
Take the sample of the prison artists. How did they get so good? By
drawing here and there, or only when there was something in it for them?
No, they developed their skills via a passion for the arts, and as a
result they’re now pretty damn good. We now come to them whenever we
need to send something home.
What about the legal-beagles? How did they get so good? They too
developed their skills with a passion, a passion to make it back home.
And as a result of that, some of them actually make it back home despite
having the deck stacked against them. Unfortunately some of them don’t
make it out. But through the skills they’ve developed some of them make
it their mission in life to file grievances, lawsuits, etc., in the name
of the prisyner population. And who do we go to when we need legal
advice or something filed?
Just as those people are great examples within their field and are
derived directly from the prisyner population, so should USW and our
allies aspire to become great examples within the revolutionary prisyn
movement so that when the time comes we can be damn well sure we don’t
lead the prisyn masses into oblivion.
Comrades breaking away from USW in order to prematurely form their own
organizations when their revolutionary skills are not yet developed are
perfect examples of being ultra-left in matters of “one divides into
two” dialectics and a form of adventurism as well.
Once again, are my words too harsh? Hell no! We’re not yet in the stage
where we should be seeking to unite all who can be united. We’re still
in the ideological struggle. The fact that I have to write this to say
as much should prove it.
Revolutionaries in the prison movement should have a concrete
understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and not a fragmentary one. We
should be well versed in political economics and revolutionary theory.
Indeed, this is our own strategical equilibrium. “Better, fewer, but
better.” There is no other way.
MIM(Prisons) adds: We have laid out the five principles of the
United Front
for Peace in Prisons (UFPP) to unite all who can be united at the
mass level in U.$. prisons. We do this alongside the tasks Ehecatl
describes for building ideological unity within USW. And this is a
different practice than MIM had when writing the article quoted in the
beginning of this letter. We find ourselves in a position similar to the
Communist Party of the Philippines at the time (discussed in that
article) who were also trying to lead a broad united front and a
vanguard party at the same time. We learn from their mistakes and
rectification campaign in order to maintain the independence and
leadership of the vanguard within the UFPP, and separate party work from
united front work.
Comrades in MIM(Prisons) and USW work hard to facilitate study groups
for prisoners who are interested in developing ideologically and not
just reading ULK. A new introductory course starts every few
months, so write us to get on the list. For more on the question of
forming new organizations, see MIM(Prisons)’s 2011 Congress resolution
on
“Building
New Groups vs. Working with USW and MIM(Prisons)”, published in
ULK 21. And if you want to know more about the history of
Ehecatl’s criticisms of the RCP=U$A, check out our
study pack on the
Revolutionary Communist Party (USA). If we don’t study, we will
lose.
I refuse to lay down, in my struggle against the
oppressor. Anti-imperialist efforts, settling for nothing lesser.
Striving together with my brotherz and sisterz – Utilizing
knowledge, wisdom and understanding. “We’re fighting for world
peace!” Is what my comrades past and present is demanding.
Anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, fuck it! I’ll be devoted to
fighting against that old slave mentality that my older peers seem to
keep holding.
We rise together and never fall. Nor stumble in sudden speech. So
to the brotherz and sisterz down in this struggle – Without
initiative and motivation you’ll forever remain stuck with your slave
mentality!
Have you forgot all the struggles and oppression, a look at the real
big picture is needed. And all I hear is talk about a recession.
Remember it was about standing for a cause when sticking together no
matter what was the main thing. Remember together we stand divided we
fall.
When there’s a will there’s a way so right now get your will
back. Like everything else struggle and oppression have an end and
a price to pay, there’s no turning back.
