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.
Based on a suggestion from a USW comrade in California, we have
reformatted all the petitions for the grievance petition campaign. The
new format makes it easy for prisoners to persynalize each petition, and
to provide clear examples of the experiences they’ve had with the broken
grievance system in their state. These are details some prison
administrators have asked for in their responses to the petitions
they’ve received.
We also incorporated all addresses for who should receive copies of the
petition right onto the petition itself. This way people don’t have to
worry about keeping track of two pieces of paper (one with the address,
and one with their signature).
Besides these significant changes in the quality of information the
petitions now provide, the campaign has spread a lot in recent months.
New petitions have been created for
Montana,
Oregon,
and
Nevada,
to add to the already active states of
Arizona,
California,
Colorado,
North
Carolina,
Oklahoma,
and
Texas.
The petitions can be downloaded and printed by people on the outside by
clicking on each state’s name above. You should send the petition to
your prisoner contacts (with extra copies if you can!) who are having
their voices and complaints quashed by prison authorities. The ability
to have grievances addressed has a direct impact on the day-to-day
living conditions of prisoners, can help to hold prison authorities
accountable for their actions, and even affects one’s ability to take an
issue to court if necessary.
We here at Wayne in Goldsboro, NC just received the invite to join the
solidarity demonstration, and certain individuals will partake. Not all
persons are willingly sacrificial, through lack of guidance and
direction. For this reason I am asking for educational material to study
and distribute through these dismal crypts.
We as politically conscious soldiers in this great struggle have a large
task of making aware the fuckery that the great imperialists are doing
through disenfranchisement and psychological warfare known as
censorship.
Myself and the Revolutionary Order I am co-organizing would like to
formally join the United Front/USW. We recognize the 5 principles as
essential and they are also woven into and throughout our structure.
We are WOMMB (Warrior’s Order Mobilized for Maximum Building) and we’re
focused on personal/social liberation and personal/social re-building,
beginning with ourselves and fellow prisoners. Our methods and
curriculum will center on rites of passage and initiatory values and
structures. We aim to awaken the population, instill discipline, build
character and destroy the bourgeois/slave identity. There are codes of
conduct to voluntarily follow and a host of topics to be studied and
mastered.
I will enclose our communique and 5 point plan/mission statement so that
you will have a complete understanding of our position and goals.
We are seeking a relationship/partnership of solidarity, mutual
assistance and collective planning and organizing. We would like to know
more about MIM(Prisons) and how we can be of service.
I don’t want to sound rude or suspicious about MIM but I have to be
straight up with you about how I feel pertaining to your activism. I am
concerned you have been already infiltrated or you’re a CIA front
organization claiming revolutionary organizing. I hope I’m just assuming
things, because I have been corresponding and studying with you for
several years. A lot of strange suspicious things happened to me like
the prison guards and other staff trying to cross me out or set me up,
or maybe the COINTELPRO is trying to discourage me. How come every time
somebody gets involved with MIM it seems like that person gets either
killed or in big trouble? Seems to me someone infiltrated your movement.
MIM(Prisons) responds: It’s important that everyone approach
security and organizing as carefully as this comrade does. We know that
revolutionary movements are infiltrated all the time, from Lenin’s
COMINTERN to the
Black
Panther Party to MIM and beyond. The best we can do is force our
comrades to demonstrate their correct line in practice, and never take
people’s word for their revolutionary commitment. If someone claims to
be a comrade but puts forth a dangerous line (i.e. pushing people into
armed struggle that will get them killed and set back the movement), or
talks a lot but never does any work, we should view them with suspicion.
Similarly, it’s good to question why repression comes down on you after
association with an individual or organization. In prison, unfortunately
this could just mean you are working with a genuinely progressive
outside group, as the authorities can read all your mail and will punish
you for working with such groups. We have countless examples of
progressive organizations being labeled “security threat groups.”
One of the reasons we encourage organizing in a
cell
structure is to limit comrades’ exposure to others. You can do good
work with people at arm’s length, forming cells with those you know and
trust. But in most cases, we recommend comrades in prison stay in touch
with MIM(Prisons) (and others), despite the risks, because of the need
to access both theoretical and practical information to help you
organize.
The danger of infiltration wherever we are is why we disagree with many
who say we should only work with prisoners in general population and we
should isolate SNY prisoners. In our article on
“Security
in the Prison Movement” we argued, “We see this as a line struggle.
Anyone can pretend to be USW inside, just like anyone can pretend to
represent MIM(Prisons) or Maoism. If they uphold the line set forth by
the vanguard organization and/or movement, then they’re out there
working to advance the struggle.”
Everyone should approach working with groups claiming revolutionary
politics with caution. It is possible the CIA is producing Under
Lock & Key or other publications like it, just to identify the
“trouble maker” prisoners. But if you read the pages of ULK you
should be able to determine if the line and actions of our members and
supporters are correct. In the end, if the CIA really was behind this
good publication and its good work, we might be getting more out of that
infiltration than they are.
As we convene our third congress, we approach our five year anniversary
as an organization. While members of MIM(Prisons) – and even more so USW
– have been in the prison movement for longer, we find this an opportune
milestone to reflect back on where the prison movement is at and how it
has developed.
In 2011 a series of hunger strikes in California made a great impact
countrywide. Many activists, from crypto-trots to anarchists to
reformists, rallied around this movement and continue to focus on prison
work as a result. While our predecessors in MIM saw the importance of
the prison movement decades ago, their foresight is proving more true
today as we begin to reach a critical mass of activity. It is now a hot
issue within the left wing of white nationalism, which is significant
because whites are not affected by the system extensively enough to call
it a true material interest.
This gradual development has been the result of two things: agitation
around the facts of the U.$. injustice system on the outside, and
prisoner organizing on the inside, both of which MIM and USW have been
diligently working on for decades. In the last year and a half, prisoner
organizing came to a head with the Georgia strike and the
California
hunger strikes, which were both coordinated on a statewide level.
While getting some mainstream and international attention, these events
rang particularly loud among the imprisoned, with a series of similar
actions still developing across the country (recently in Virginia,
Ohio,
Texas,
Illinois,
the federal supermax ADX, Limon in Colorado and a follow-up hunger
strike in Georgia).
Meanwhile, the agitational side of things came to a bit of a head with
the release of the book
The
New Jim Crow last year. This book has continued to get lots of play
from many different sectors of the political spectrum. And while in most
cases those promoting the book are amenable to the lackluster
conclusions, the organization of these facts into a book stand for
themselves. It requires a very biased viewpoint to read this book and
then turn around and deny the national oppression faced by the internal
semi-colonies through the U.$. injustice system. Therefore we think the
overall effect of this book will be both progressive and significant,
despite its limitations.
It is for these reasons that we see this as a moment to seize. When we
started five years ago we had the great fortune of building on the
legacy and existing prisoner support programs of MIM. The ideological
foundation that MIM gave us allowed us to focus our energies on more
practical questions of launching a new prison publication, building
support programs for comrades that are released, developing
correspondence political study programs, and launching a new website
that features the most comprehensive information on censorship, mail
rules, and abuses in prisons across this country.
With our infrastructure built and steadily running, we need to look at
ways to take advantage of the relative consciousness of prisoners right
now and the relative attention the U.$. population has on the prison
system. We have always said that without prisoners organized there is no
prison movement, so we see that as the principal prong of attack. Thus,
we are taking steps to improve the structure of United Struggle from
Within (USW), the mass organization for prisoners that was founded by
MIM and is now led by MIM(Prisons). Building on suggestions from some
leaders in USW, we have enacted a plan to form councils in states where
there are multiple active USW cells. Below we further explain an
organizational structure for our movement, so comrades know where they
fit in and how they should be relating to others.
As we saw during the California strikes, censorship increases, as do
other repressive measures, when organization expands. So as we step up
our efforts, we can expect the state to step up theirs. We will need
more support than ever from volunteers on the outside to do legal and
agitational work to keep the state faithful to their own laws and
regulations.
As big as those challenges are, the internal challenges will be even
greater hurdles for us to jump in the coming years. The recent large
mobilizations have begun to reveal what these challenges will be. And
there is much work to be done to identify, analyze and work to resolve
the contradictions within the prisoner population that allows for the
current conditions where the state dictates how these vast populations
of oppressed people interact with each other and live out their lives.
The prison movement that arose before the great prison boom that began
in the 1980s was a product of the national liberation struggles
occurring at the time. Today, the prison population is ten times as big,
while the political leadership on the outside is scarce. The prison
masses must guard against the great number of misleaders out there
opportunistically grabbing on to the issue of the day to promote
political goals that do not serve the oppressed people of the world.
Prisoners may need to step up to play the leading role this time around,
which will require looking inward. We must not only learn from the past,
but also build independent education programs to develop the skills of
comrades today to conduct their own analysis of the conditions that they
face. On top of that we must promote and develop an internationalist
worldview, to find answers and alliances in the oppressed nations around
the world, and remove the blinders that keep us only focused on Amerika.
There is no liberation to be found in Amerikanism. That Amerikans have
created a prison system that dwarfs all others in humyn history is just
one example of why.
So it is with cautious optimism that we approved the resolution below at
our recent congress. We think this plan addresses proposals submitted by
some USW leaders, and hope you all will work with us to make this an
effective structure.
Congress Resolution on USW Structure
MIM(Prisons) is initiating the creation of statewide councils within
United Struggle from Within (USW), the anti-imperialist mass
organization for prisoners. A council will be sanctioned when two or
more cells exist within a state that are recognized as active and
abiding by the standards of USW. MIM(Prisons) will facilitate these
councils, where the focus is on practical organizing around the needs of
the imprisoned lumpen in that state. As the U.$. prison system is
primarily organized by state, the councils will serve to develop and
address the specific needs and conditions within each state.
In the case where cells have identities other than “USW” we do not
require them to use that name. For example, the
Black
Order Revolutionary Organization, which self-identifies as a “New
Afrikan revolutionary movement,” may be invited to participate in a USW
statewide council. While USW itself does not favor the struggles of any
oppressed nation over another, as a movement we recognize the usefulness
and importance of nation-specific organizing. In the prison environment
there may be lines that cannot be crossed in current conditions which
limit the membership of a group. As long as these cells exhibit true
internationalism and anti-imperialism they may possess dual membership
in USW by joining a statewide council.
With this proposal we are expanding the structure of our movement. We
recognize two main pillars to the ideological leadership of our movement
at this time. One being the MIM(Prisons) cell, and the other being the
Under Lock & Key writers group, which is made up of USW
members and led by and facilitated by MIM(Prisons). The statewide
councils should look to these two groups for ideological guidance in
their organizing work, mainly through the pages of Under Lock &
Key. In contrast, the councils’ main function will be in practical
work directly serving the interests of the imprisoned lumpen. They will
serve to coordinate the organizing work of scattered USW cells in a more
unified way across the state.
MIM(Prisons) will be initiating the California Council immediately, with
others to follow as conditions allow.
I write in solidarity with those involved with the censorship campaign.
Power to those who down to struggle, and up to win. Today while on the
kennel cage rec yard I was approached by a California State Prison
Corcoran (CSPC) employee representing a flawed mail room, carrying an
envelope addressed to the young cadre sent from MIM Distributors
containing MIM Theory 7 in one hand and a CDCR 602 appeal in
the other.
After months of going back and forth between the Appeal Coordinator and
the mail room, utilizing a combination of the institutional informal
correspondence system and the appeals procedures, CSPC finally figured
out that I was building a paper trail capable of exposing their mail
censorship practices against those they deem paper-terrorists.
The staff gave me the MT 7 journal, after previously saying
that the journal was a violation against California Correctional
Regulations for supposedly inciting riots and so on. They instructed me
to either withdraw the complaint or settle it if I wanted the MT
7. Of course I settled it to preserve the right of the appeal for
the breach of settlement agreement. Because of their COINTEL B.$.
they’ve delayed my study group participation, and I’ve got a lot to do
to catch up. But with hard work comes hard results.
Comrades should note that this incident of CSPC issuing me MIM
Theory 7: Revolutionary Nationalism is proof that not only are they
profiling MIM Distributors with bogus censorships claiming safety and
security, but also their claims hold no weight in the people’s court.
by MIM(Prisons) July 2012 permalink
Click to download PDF of Nevada grievance petition
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies
to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters of support on behalf of
prisoners.
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
by MIM(Prisons) July 2012 permalink
Click to download a PDF of the Montana grievance petition
Mail the petition to your loved ones and comrades inside who are
experiencing issues with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies
to share! For more info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters of support on behalf of
prisoners.
ACLU of Montana PO Box 1317 Helena MT 59624
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special Litigation
Section 950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, PHB Washington DC 20530
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE PO Box 9778 Arlington, VA
22219
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
Upon deep review/research, I’ve been completely unable to find any
Oregon Law (ORS) to justify and allow the prisons in this state to
charge prisoners fines. There is no law allowing it. But there is a law
saying only a judge can change/impose fines of any kind. “The Oregon
Property Protection Act of 2000” prohibits the forfeitures of property
and funds, without a criminal conviction involving that property:
article 15 section 10(2)(b), section(3), section 10(7)(b) of the Oregon
constitution. Also, “the property of a person should not be forfeited in
a forfeiture proceeding by the government unless and until that person
is convicted of a crime involving that property.”(10)(3) The Oregon
Department of Corrections (ODOC) is a political subdivision of the
state.
Well, ODOC has taken it upon themselves to impose fines of hundreds of
dollars and automatically withdraw the money from an inmates account.
Normally, to withdraw money from our account we need to sign/and
authorize them to do it by signing a CD28 giving permission. So what
they are doing amounts to theft! And is part of their money making
racketeering illegal bullshit. Yet they’ll never get charged with
racketeering because it’s okay when pigs break the laws.
Also, there is a new tool the imperial swine have up here for ensuring
their prison population grows. It’s called Measure 57. In the past 10
years the female prison population has grown by 86% because of the
lengthening of prison sentences for drug offenses and property crimes.
And this measure will more than likely affect females more than men.
(Source: Justice Matters Spring 2012 issue)
The grievance process is a joke here. I’ve filled my allotted six a
month every month on every single rule violation that happens and none
of them have gotten anything other than “we find no evidence in your
claim.”
MIM(Prisons) responds: We commend this comrade for researching
how the Oregon prisons are violating the State’s own laws. It’s
important that we fight these battles because there are so many laws
allowing oppression, those few that we can use to defend the rights of
the oppressed must be publicized. It is very common for the pigs to
ignore the law, and it’s true that they are rarely punished for this.
But we can use these laws to our advantage. The grievance process is
just a start. The campaign to
demand our
grievances be addressed is another tactic in this fight. We have
petitions for many states that can be used to fight against the
systematic denial of grievances by building support among the prisoner
masses. Write to MIM(Prisons) for a copy of the one for your state, or
if we don’t have one help us customize the petition to your state. Legal
research and writing like this comrade is doing is essential to our
struggle against the imperialist system as a whole.
Many people are caught up in the line that millions are enslaved in
this country, and that the main motivating factor behind the prison boom
of recent decades is to put prisoners to work to make money for
corporations or the government. MIM(Prisons) has clearly shown that
U.S.
prisons are not primarily (or even significantly) used to exploit
labor, and that they are a great cost financially to the
imperialists, not a source of profit.(1)
“Indeed, at peak use around 2002, fewer than 5,000 inmates were employed
by private firms, amounting to one-quarter of one per cent of the
carceral population. As for the roughly 8% of convicts who toil for
state and federal industries under lock, they are ‘employed’ at a loss
to correctional authorities in spite of massive subsidies, guaranteed
sales to a captive market of public administrations, and exceedingly low
wages (averaging well under a dollar an hour).”(2)
Instead, we argue that there is a system of population control
(including all the elements of the international definition of genocide)
that utilizes methods of torture on mostly New Afrikan and Latino men,
with a hugely disproportionate representation of First Nation men as
well, across this country on a daily basis. As the new prison movement
grows and gains attention in the mainstream, it is of utmost importance
that we maintain the focus on this truth and not let the white
nationalists define what is ultimately a struggle of the oppressed
nations.
To analyze why the term “prison industrial complex” (“PIC”) is
inaccurate and misleading, let’s look at some common slogans of the
social democrats, who dominate the white nationalist left. First let’s
address the slogan “Welfare not Warfare.” This slogan is a false
dichotomy, where the sloganeer lacks an understanding of imperialism and
militarism.
It is no coincidence that the biggest “welfare states” in the world
today are imperialist countries. Imperialism brings home more profits by
going to war to steal resources, discipline labor, and force economic
policies and business contracts on other nations. And militarism is the
cultural and political product of that fact. The “military industrial
complex” was created when private industry teamed up with the U.$.
government to meet their mutual interests as imperialists. Industry got
the contracts from the government, with guaranteed profits built in, and
the government got the weapons they needed to keep money flowing into
the United $tates by oppressing other nations. This concentration of
wealth produces the high wages and advanced infrastructure that the
Amerikan people benefit from, not to mention the tax money that is made
available for welfare programs. So it is ignorant for activists to claim
that they are being impoverished by the imperialists’ wars as is implied
by the false dichotomy of welfare vs. warfare.
Another slogan of the social democrats which speaks to why they are so
eager to condemn the “PIC” is “Schools not Jails.” This slogan
highlights that there is only so much tax money in a state available to
fund either schools, jails, or something else. There is a limited amount
of money because extracting more taxes would increase class conflict
between the state and the labor aristocracy. This battle is real, and it
is a battle between different public service unions of the labor
aristocracy. The “Schools not Jails” slogan is the rallying cry of one
side of that battle among the labor aristocrats.
Unlike militarism, there is not an imperialist profit interest behind
favoring jails over schools. This is precisely why the concept of a
“PIC” is a fantasy. While the U.$. economy would likely collapse without
the spending that goes into weapons-related industries, Loïc Wacquant
points out that the soft drink industry in the United $tates is almost
twice as big as prison industries, and prison industries are a mere 0.5%
of the gross domestic product.(2) Compared to the military industrial
complex, which is 10% of U.$. GDP, the prison system is obviously not a
“complex” combining state and private interests that cannot be
dismantled without dire consequences to imperialism.(3) And of course,
even those pushing the “PIC” line must admit that over 95% of prisons in
this country are publicly owned and run.(4)
Federal agencies using the prison system to control social elements that
they see as a threat to imperialism is the motivating factor for the
injustice system, not an imperialist drive for profits. Yet the system
is largely decentralized and built on the
interests
of the majority of Amerikans at the local level, and not just the
labor unions and small businesses that benefit directly from spending on
prisons. We would likely not have the imprisonment rates that we have
today without pressure from the so-called “middle class.”
Some in the white nationalist left at times appears to dissent from
other Amerikans on the need for more prisons and more cops. At the root
of both sides’ line is the belief that the majority of Amerikans are
exploited by the system, while the greedy corporations benefit. With
this line, it is easy to accept that prisons are about profit, just like
everything else, and the prison boom can be blamed on the corporations’
greed.
In reality the prison boom is directly related to the demands of the
Amerikan people for “tough on crime” politicians. Amerikans have forced
the criminal injustice system to become the tool of white hysteria. The
imperialists have made great strides in integrating the internal
semi-colonies financially, yet the white nation demands that these
populations be controlled and excluded from their national heritage.
There are many examples of the government trying to shut down prisons
and other cost-saving measures that would have shrunk the prison system,
where labor unions fought them tooth and nail.(1) It is this continued
legacy of national oppression, exposed in great detail in the book
The
New Jim Crow, that is covered up by the term “Prison Industrial
Complex.” The cover-up continues no matter how much these
pseudo-Marxists lament the great injustices suffered by Black and Brown
people at the hands of the “PIC.”
This unfortunate term has been popularized in the Amerikan left by a
number of pseudo-Marxist theorists who are behind some of the popular
prison activist groups on the outside. By explicitly rejecting this
term, we are drawing a clear line between us and the organizations these
activists are behind, many of whom we’ve worked with in one way or
another. For the most part, the organizations themselves do not claim
any Marxist influence or even a particular class analysis, but the
leaders of these groups are very aware of where they disagree with MIM
Thought. It is important that the masses are aware of this disagreement
as well.
It is for these reasons that MIM(Prisons) passed the following policy at
our 2012 congress:
The term “Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)” will not generally be used in
Under Lock & Key because the term conflicts with
MIM(Prisons)’s line on the economic and national make up of the U.$.
prison system. It will only be printed in a context where the meaning of
the term is stated by the author, and either criticized by them or by
us.
