Under Lock & Key

Revolutionary Greetings to all those who struggle to remove the infestation of capitalism-imperialism from it existence on our mother Earth. From one humyn to all humyns, power to humynity…

Kern Valley State Prison has been forcing prisoners in ASUII (and who knows where else) to consume spoiled milk, rotten meat, rotten fruit, moldy bread and small rations. I’ve filed multiple 602 appeals (class action), but have only had them screed out by the Appeals Coordinator.

The staff say the conditions are due to [Governor] Arnold’s budget crisis. But I ask, what is the price that you put on humyn life? Because after this is all said and done my family might need one.

I have begun on the day of 2/27/2010 (Saturday) not accepting any of the food that they claim to offer - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t eat or drink anything!!! Because the food they are serving is bad.

I will continue this until we receive humyn justice and are fed like humyn beings.

MIM(Prisons) adds: As Under Lock & Key 13 goes to print we have not heard from this comrade since they began their hunger strike. We hope they are well, and hope to hear from them, or anyone else at Killer Kern soon with an update. As we expected, among the privileged citizens of the united $tates, it is the oppressed nations and the lumpen who increasingly feel the crunch of economic crisis in terms of real life necessities.

Hunger strikes are a tactical approach to protest that can get attention with only a few participants, but it relies on the party being protested actually being concerned about your life. They don’t need to subjectively care about you, but they must feel some pressure to prevent you from dying for their own interest.

A new report from the NATO allies revealed the true story behind drone attacks in Afghanistan. A few months back the man of change, Obama, ordered strikes killing three or four Taliban fighters and one hundred and forty some-odd civilians, among them children and wimmin. What a change for the people of the u.$. and the rest of the world! What a change for the oppression of wimmin in Afghanistan! Change came to the Afghan people in the form of 30,000 more troops to oppress, kill and torture them on their own land.

All this was done under the noses of amerikans without a protest. What happened to all those protesters under the Bush administration? The war against the oppressed has not stopped. Have they given up? That is the exact result when people trying to change an oppressive system do not have the right strategy or understanding of how to go about it.

What the Afghan and Iraqi brothers and sisters are going through is what occurred to the Mexica, Incas, Tainos and the rest of the native people of the land now called the Americas.

The capitalist system must destroy, oppress, kill and exploit in order to sustain itself. That is why the united snakes has two war fronts at the same time. We must not allow the destruction that the Iraqi and Afghan people are facing. We must fight to stop the continuation of oppression and exploitation of the rest of the world.

So far, the only way available to stop the exploitation and oppression of humyn beings by other humyn beings is through the formation of a government with a communist philosophy. This is a government we need to struggle harder to form, because the existence of the people of the world is at risk.

You, who believe in caring for your people, study communism. You, who want to help other people and nations, don’t wait until a natural disaster hits as the one in Haiti. Study socialism. You, who consider yourself a revolutionary, don’t be half-way revolutionary. Revolutionaries are constant causers or helpers of change. Be that every possible moment of your life.

Let’s change the capitalist society into a socialist society, and then the socialist into a communist and beyond as we reach communism. For the better well-being of our children’s future, brothers and sisters.

note: World Focus with Daijit Dhaliwal. PBS. February 5, 2010.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Today, reports emerged of a u.$./NATO bombing that claimed to be an attack on Taliban fighters, but it turned out to be a civilian convoy and 33 people were killed. Uncounted tens of thousands of people have been killed in Afghanistan since the u.$. occupation began in 2001.

This comrade applies the concepts of line, strategy and tactics to an international issue well in this article. We also commend h for writing an article on international news, and encourage others to follow this example, making connections between the prison struggle and the struggle of oppressed people around the world.

One thing we would add in regards to line is a deeper analysis of the protesters and other amerikans who claim to oppose the occupation of Afghanistan. For those who are serious, we must push a more radical agenda and a studying of Maoism and communism as the writer does. But what holds back most amerikans is that they don’t have a life or death interest in opposing imperialism. On the contrary, amerikans benefit from imperialism, so condemnations of war often come in the form of moralistic verbal protests, with little power or force to back it up. That said, our strategy must be adapted to this situation and we must focus on organizing the minority within u.$. borders that can be organized against imperialism. We must organize that minority around anti-imperialist demands that serve them and move them to committed struggle, and we must connect that to the struggles of the international proletariat, which are the foundation of communist revolution. We will explore these ideas more in our upcoming newsletters focused on strategy and tactics.

I started reading [The Straight Scoop from Charlie Daniels (see excerpt below)] with the thought, “Oh, he has some good music” and ended up with the, “never again will I listen to country music.” All country music is patriotic, racist pig rhetoric. Take old Toby Keith’s bullshit soldier songs.

Motherfucker, Charlie Daniels, those Taliban have been victims, their land was invaded, their wives and children murdered… Let’s see your pussy ass go through that and not have a heart attack!!!

It’s his conviction that he’s so right that’s frightening. And he is amerika. The epitomy of the average amerikan right there. Ignorant, proud, uppity, evil, wrong!

The Straight Scoop from Charlie Daniels… I’ve just returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Air Station base where we did three shows for the troops and toured several locations around the post visiting with some of the finest military personnel on planet earth. The kids seemed to really enjoy the shows and especially liked “This Ain’t No Rag, It’s A Flag” and “In America.” … The truth is that these scum bags [Taliban detainees] are not only being treated humanely, but they are probably better off health wise and medically than they’ve ever been in their lives.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Charlie Daniels is taking up the Michael Moore (maker of the film Sicko) amerikan populist line on health care. MIM(Prisons) calls for the u.$. to provide universal health care to all people in countries under u.$. occupation, while white nationalists get indignant because a thousand prisoners of war get medical attention while they are tortured in long-term isolation. Daniels thinks long-term isolation is humane, and is pissed off that they are getting such good health care. This is amerikan chauvinism at its finest as our comrade points out.

Any humynist would be pissed off that the only way Third World people have been able to get decent health care under imperialism is by being captured and tortured by the imperialists. At home, with their family, such care is not available. Racists like Daniels and Moore think Afghans and other Third World people get what they deserve, while amerikans need more when they have access to Viagra, boob jobs and an endless list of medical technology that is purely recreational and not related to survival.

A California comrade who has long thought we should do an issue criticizing the rcp=u$a writes:

I disagree with MIM however on one fine point in the article where you state that “many still see the rcp=u$a as representing Maoism because their populist politics gives them a greater public face in many areas (inside u$ prisons is one exception to this).” Do you mean to imply that the rcp doesn’t hold much sway in u$ prisyns because the masses here know better? If this is the case then I would say no, they do appear to at the very least to have some kind of foothold in CA prisyns.

I’ve noticed more people than there used to be are familiar with the rcp’s rag, but not many. Some even spew their distractionist rhetoric. Of course I debate them but there’s only so much that can be said to those who already believe avakian to be the “great man of hystory.”

Since the upcoming ULK will be centered on strategies & tactics, the exposing of the rcp’s counterrevolutionary activities might be able to play some kind of role. They must be beat back to the hole from which they came! I hypothesize that the rcp is siphoning off many potential revolutionaries from inside the prisyns. Might this be MIM’s assessment as well? The deadly rcp strategy of substituting eclecticism for dialectics is I believe at the heart of their strength and success. Would you agree?

A Missouri comrade also responded:

I wanted to briefly respond to something that comrade Wiawimawo said in the article Revisiting RCP Revisionism in ULK 12. The comrade said many of the readers of ULK are not grappling with the questions facing Maoism today. And those that cannot distinguish Maoism from right opportunism of groups like the rcp=u$a have not yet grasped it.

I am not refuting what this comrade said, I just want to say that a lot of the readers lack the information and some have never been involved in revolutionary activity. We would hope that comrades would become inspired from reading ULK to go on to study harder and learn faster. But again, there is a lack of authentic material. I have quite a bit of material and none from the rcp=u$a, so even I can’t really argue against their line when I haven’t read shit they’ve wrote. I haven’t seen a Revolutionary Worker or Worker’s World in years. The same for the Burning Spear.

At the same time, it is on us to teach those who will listen and I believe that ULK is doing a tremendous job and the Book to Prisoners Program is also a great resource.

In the last couple years, MIM(Prisons) has stepped in to re-establish the prevalence of Maoist literature available to the prison movement. This came after years of inconsistency as the Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika degenerated. The need for this literature is clear from this discussion. So supporters who can provide money or other resources to expand this work should reach out to us.

We agree with our CA comrade about the importance of combating revisionism as part of building a strong movement. While the author of that article was lamenting the need to spend time on such work, it would be idealist to expect otherwise. However, as our MO comrade points out, most of our readers are not familiar with the rcp=u$a anyway. To focus an issue of our newsletter on them would give undo attention to the topic. An issue reviewing many different political lines would be more useful, as most readers will find lines that they have come across.

We do not believe that the prison masses know better than to follow the rcp=u$a, that is why we thought it important to print that review. We do believe that MIM has had much more influence on the prison movement, despite its weak points. So MIM Thought is more likely to be identified with Maoism inside prisons than on the streets in the united $tates where rcp=u$a will be.

And yes, we agree that rcp=u$a eclecticism serves its popularity. Even among prisoners, the hard line of MIM loses us many friends. But we aren’t looking for friends, we’re looking for real allies who will stand strong for the revolutionary road.

The point made by Wiawimawo was not to say that you must understand the difference between MIM(Prisons) and rcp=u$a in particular, but rather that you must understand why the MIM line is correct in general. If you don’t you will fall for the eclecticism of rcp=u$a or any other snake oil salesman that comes along.

Certainly, rcp=u$a is recruiting people who might have otherwise worked with the Maoist movement. That could be said about a number of groups out there. But we aren’t too worried about that. We are confident in our political line, which makes us strong. Other groups will come and go, or if they have state funding they will stay and stagnate. But only the correct ideological line can build a new prison movement that has real power.

Children colored by a different sun,
then 500 yrs under the gun.
Hystorically speaking,
we are all the same.
If you will use your mind,
then you will find,
that our hystories are intertwined.
We’ve all been enslaved,
and we’ve all been colonized.
We’ve all been exploited.
Are we not still slaves
to their relations of production?
Are our peoples still not exploited
for their class consumption?
Hystorically speaking,
from a materialist viewpoint,
we are all the same.
So, Brown and Black
we must all attack,
the division amongst the masses
so there can be
no division amongst the masses
only two classes.
Us vs. them.

You ain’t a soldier!
You’s a poser!
What you soldiering for?
Fame and glory?
That story’s getting old.
What’s that man really talking bout?
Spouting consequences to stupid nonsense.
He’s only kidding,
while you’re doing his bidding.
So what’s he really talking bout?
What’s his politics about?
Fame and glory?
That same story!?
Homey please!
Tell you what?
Pick up those books,
and get a hook.
Ain’t nobody talking about revolution,
except the Maoist Internationalist Movement,
and the United Soldiers from Within,
because the Movement move men,
to bigger better things.
The mission?
Prisyn liberation from within.

The time has come
to pick up that gun,
in your mind.
Leave the petty differences behind.
Utilize your mind
to find that ideological line,
or shit will never change
in here
or out there.
It’s all the same.
Prisyners to confusion and mass distribution.
Pollution of the mind.
So take the time,
to take a look around.
Ask yourself,
who’s the real clowns?
Us or them?
Pigs united
are hard to be divided,
but the masses united
will never be divided,
or defeated.
So come together as one.
Leave the stupid shit behind.
Find that ideological line.
If you’re really a rider,
prove it.
Ride that ideological line.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) responds here to a comrade’s petition for the proper handling of grievances in California. This governmental body may be helpful in pushing our campaign forward if they receive several petitions from different participants, enough to “determine whether a pattern or practice investigation is warranted.” Participants in the grievance campaign should mail copies of their signed petitions to each party listed on the campaigns page so that we are maximizing the effects of each signature.

When we succeed with a campaign under imperialism, we are making more room for revolutionary organizing. When prison administrators, courts, and the DOJ obstruct or are non-cooperative in achieving our campaign goals, we have still drawn attention to an unresolvable problem with the status quo, as well as brought more people into the struggle against oppression. Whether the DOJ becomes involved in this battle or not, it is still important to spread the campaign as much as we can under this unjust system.

Dear Reader,

Open your eyes, close your ears sometimes, and focus on your surroundings. What I am trying to say is that we have been spending more time listening to what others around us are speaking about than opening our own eyes to the big picture. Crip is not a gang, it is a foundation that represents the understood individuals; “Controlled, Respectful & Intelligent People.” I am a leader of the Rolling 60’s Crip Foundation. I am standing on my own two feet cause no one else will stand for me but me. I am also a member of the Moorish Science Temple.

We are our own worst enemy but some of us don’t realize it until it’s too late. We spend a lot of time worrying about the next person when our main concern should be self. A lot of us don’t know our own true self, but we think we do. We will never gain the understanding of self, unless we stop oppressing one another. As a leader I ask that we focus more on self than each other.

I know it’s hard because of the way we’ve become adapted to the prison institution. Love, live and let go of the situations between one another and let’s give the system a run for its money.

A very big question that raises eye brows is why do those that play that tuff role worry about going home early so much? The answer to that question is, in my opinion, that they are afraid to fight the system but will fight each other. That’s because they know that fighting each other makes them look tuff. No. Not at all in my eyes. All that says to me is that we are more ignorant than the system makes us out to be. The system wants us to be at each others’ throats. Why do ya’ll think that when we stand up for each other they become heated? But when they suit up and call a team to intimidate us a lot of us fold out of fear of being hurt & locked up in segregation. Heck, we are already locked up, what else can they do to us?

Martin Luther King didn’t have a weak dream, he had an uplifting dream for us to stand together and fight those who oppress us. Let us rise and fight for what we stand for as human beings.

MIM(Prisons) adds: The principle contradiction in the world today is that between the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations. This is an antagonistic contradiction, that must be resolved by the latter overtaking the power of the former. But before we get there, there are other contradictions that the oppressed face.

In prisons, the principal contradiction is among the people, as this comrade explains. The resolution of this contradiction requires those working for unity overcoming the mindsets of division. Sometimes those mindsets will be found in the oppressor, but currently they are very common among the oppressed. So there is a dialectical process occurring right now as people are starting to step back to see the big picture, to consider why they do what they do. Unity begins with the individual. Transforming oneself into a new revolutionary persyn is always happening simultaneously as we work with others to build unity and promote change on a larger scale.

Humyns are social beings that face large problems in how our society is structured. So focusing on yourself can’t address these problems. But for those who are still part of the problem, there is a great need to take a step back and reflect on oneself and how you fit into the greater society. Soon you will realize that there are many roles you can play, and you do not have to remain stuck in the one that has been taught to you.

While we know that MLK’s ideology cannot solve antagonistic contradictions within imperialism, his strategies may be very applicable to the needs of the prison movement at this stage in a country that claims to uphold freedom and civil rights.

While reading MIM Theory 11: Amerikkkan Prisons on Trial about how all United $nakes prisoners are political prisoners, and most all of these are oppressed nations, it made me question if maybe these statistics differ much in the state of Utah?

The Utah population is mostly white, so much so that over half of us convicts in these chambers are white. This statistic must really be an anomaly in the overall U.$. percentage rate of those incarcerated. Of course it’s poor whites who can’t afford lawyers who are caged here. But what saddens me to my very soul is seeing these whites running around with swastikas saying they love Amerikkka. Saying it’s not the unjust in-justice system that targeted them for slavery but it was because they chose this path, they chose not to work and slang drugs. Did they choose too to have their fathers and uncles institutionalized, I ask? Where was your father growing up, where was your dad when you were starting to buck the system that you supposedly love so well? Not in prison? So your son is now destined for the very same fate as you and your father…and you love this system?!

We were served hot dogs for the fourth of July and these people, my peers, were happy. Yelling out on the tier, “Happy fourth of July.” I screamed back, “Fuck Amerika!” If we wasn’t all in solitary, the looks on their faces would of made the Mona Lisa frown. The audacity of this Communist to say “fuck Amerika.” We got hot dogs and fireworks, they say, we have it much better than prisoners elsewhere.

Is this what we’ve come to now? Even though our families are ripped apart, severed from each other like so many heads from chickens. Now it’s our fate to run around headless, knowledge-less, happy that our captors (with swastikas too under sleeves and on hearts) feed us a damn hot dog!

As a child I remember visiting my father here at the Draper prison and even then I felt anger at him and a sort of disgust. Isn’t that how they feel on T.V. about criminals? Isn’t that how I should feel, too? Well I did. I hated him. His very own son. And why? Because that’s what I was “taught” to do. I was mind-fucked into hating my very own father the same way these lumpen racists are mind-fucked into loving a country that takes everything from you but a damn hot dog.

Now I’m the one that’s hated when mail call or visiting comes around, (“Whats wrong with you?” looks hidden behind what could have been smiles). I see my nephew’s face and the hostility there masked, just barely, and I want to grab the little guy and tell him, whisper, don’t listen to them man! Little buddy wake up! Wake up! But visiting is over and mother and grandmother won’t allow any of that “revolution” talk in front of the child, let alone any truth in letters. Return to sender. Return to ignorance. Is this how you felt, pops, at our visits? Was that why you looked at me that way? Was it pleading? As you sit in “population” or “Lone Peak work release” and I struggle here in solitary supermax, my brother in county jail, uncles and aunts in CUCF, I understand now. But it took me twenty seven years to do so, twenty seven years of self-hate, suicidal thoughts, homicidal anger, clouds of drug smoke and alcohol fog.

All I ask you sick, demented, money hungry, cold, imperialist nation is one hour. You and me alone in a dark alley. Put down that fascist oppressive stick and take off that bullshit white power mask. We’ll see who is the better man. Even with my malnourished body and soul, you’d be the one on the cold concrete, Uncle Sam. You’d be the one eating garbage, unable to get up. Every fiber of my being is now tied up with the Maoist Internationalist Movement. I, or my son, or my son’s son will take up the gun beside the people when revolution calls. It’s not going to stop until we stop it.

Most of the time we don’t even realize anything’s going on. Hell, how could we when we have hot dogs?! We must find a way to wake everybody up to what’s happening. It’s up to us, the youth of today’s generation, to figure out how best to halt the ignorance, to wake them up! The old to teach the new and the new to redo or reinvent strategy, reinvent new agitations, new minds who maintain the same line and disciplines but with a spin on dissemination, essays, and politics.

Of course the world knows what time it is but in order for our part of the revolution to have enough strength, enough firepower and muscle to take down the bourgeoisie, we need all hands on deck. We can’t be having our own family and peers wearing the wrong colors and waving the wrong flag. In my eyes those who won’t listen to the truth, who won’t take their eyes off the Seinfeld reruns, family included, those are the ones who will first trip up the movement. They’ll give the pigs the momentum to take us down. Personally I’m in prison because a family member called the kops. The more I’m learning, the more I understand the underground status, and believe it applies universally. And that’s what makes it difficult to lead by example or spread the word. This contradiction is an important one and I think the answer or solution is right here in us, in the youth. We just have to realize this.

I send strength to all comrades worldwide. As one!

{Saved by the bell

we are made this way,
then punished for being this way!
be afraid motherfuckers
its back to school today.}

MIM(Prisons) adds: Yes, Utah is an anomaly. The Black nation makes up half of the U.$. prison population, while representing about 12% of the overall population. And that is one legacy of the material basis for building socialism among Blacks and not whites. We should try to ally with all who can be allied with, but as we see Amerikans “waking up” they are too often turning to fascism.

Actually, this is a good test case for the “re-proletarianization” of the United $tates. Some argue that we must organize Amerikans now in a mass movement for socialism because as imperialist crisis advances they will become proletarian again. First of all, Amerikans have never been a proletarian nation. They began as an oppressor nation over the indigenous people of the Americas, followed soon after by African slaves and countless other peoples throughout history.

Utah prisons are an interesting example because we actually have a majority white population losing their economic privilege as well as facing extreme repression. And technically, a portion of them are even being economically exploited. An economic collapse in the u$ will not suddenly cause a boom in industry, so a lumpenization is a more accurate description of what will occur than a proletarianization. In this sense, the Utah case study parallels the hypothetical future Amerika pretty well.

So, what is the result? A minority of whites, like our comrade here, will become radicalized towards finding solutions to the inherent contradictions in the system. The majority of whites will cling to their heritage and wave Amerikan flags and scream white power.

All U.$. citizens are criminals–accomplices and accessories to the crimes of U.$. oppression globally until the day u$ imperialism is overcome. All U.$. citizens should start from the point of view that they are reforming criminals. Comrades like the writer are already well on their way to becoming contributors to a brighter future for humynity.