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.
In April, we published a piece covering the
killing of Adam Toledo: a 13-year-old Mexican lumpen youth who was a
member of the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhood of Little Village, westside
Chicago. Here we address some of the organizing that has come out of
this tragic death.
The Mexican/Chican@ Youth
Speak
On the day the Chicago city government released the body camera
footage of the way Adam was killed, police abolitionist rallies and
protests were gathered in Chicago and other major cities of the United
$tates. Primarily, these rallies were calls for abolition and reform of
pig forces in the United $tates and were attended by the Mexican and
Chican@ masses – mostly the youth. Despite comprador Mayor Lightfoot and
the Chicago Pig Department’s fearful cries of imminent social unrest and
“riots,” these social rallies were peaceful and non-violent.(1)
During school time, the same youth who might have attended those
non-violent rallies mourning Adam’s death and righteously condemning the
Chicago Police Department (CPD) would have found a bit more safety than
usual due to the lack of pig presence in their schools. Chicago Public
Schools (CPS) officials announced on the 23rd of April – a week after
the release of the body cam footage – that uniformed pigs won’t be on
school campus until the fall semester. This policy however, is only
temporary and will not apply to sergeants who patrol the areas around
CPS schools. On top of that, officers are still assigned to 55 high
schools whose local school councils voted to keep them in.(2)
The murder of a fellow oppressed nation youth has sparked a lot of
righteous resentment against the oppressive police system among
Chicago’s public school students during that month – the CPS population
is comprised of 83% oppressed nation students.(3) Nathaniel Martinez, a
sophomore of Roosevelt High School in Albany Park, made the following
statements:
“The cops are the ones who are holding the gun. They have the power
to choose what will happen, what won’t happen. And what they chose for
Adam was death. And when I saw that, when I realized that, it just made
me scared. But at the end of the day… am I scared of cops? Yes. Am I
scared what one of them will do to me if one of them ends up having a
bad day and they just want to do something crazy? Yes, I always am. …
But right now we’re trying our best to make a difference.”
“We shouldn’t have students being monitored like criminals by cops in
schools,”
Oppressed nation youth like Nathaniel lead movements across the
country to get rid of armed pigs monitoring school halls. Many of these
youth correctly recognize the disparity of how much harsher and more
frequently New Afrikan or Latin@ children would be targeted by school
pigs as compared to their Amerikan peers. Other progressive minded
people have also recognized how the patrolling of schools and youth
(oppressed nation youth in particular) lead to those youths entering the
prison injustice system. In this sense, there is strong solidarity that
should be built among the prison movement and the youth movement.
However, a big weakness, reflecting pre-scientific thinking within these
movements, is reformism and dependency on the imperialist system. These
are ideas communists should be challenging through political education
when deepening their roots into the progressive youth movements.
The Elders Respond
One important voice that has been raised are the ones from the older
migrants. While these elders recognize the tragedy of Adam’s death, they
also supported more pig presence among the Mexican/Chican@ neighborhoods
in fear of violence from lumpen organizations. One Mexican elote
(Mexican street food) vendor aged 74, named Santamaria, had this to
say:
“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young
boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the
officer responded to the threat,”(4)
Many of our reader base will know that the oppressed nation lumpen in
the urban centers of the United $tates have hostile relationships with
their urban petty-bourgeois counterparts. Some of our readers (and also
many communists) might be quick to condemn the above attitude claimed by
Miss Santamaria as coming from a petty-bourgeois street vendor and a
chauvinist attitude against the lumpen class. However, we shouldn’t be
too quick to brush off these sentiments and thoroughly combat the
anti-people aspect of the lumpen class as well. Ideas stem from material
reality after all. The segregated nature of the United $tates will mean
that the bread and butter of oppressed nation lumpen will be other
oppressed nation people: pigs will care less if a gangbanger steals from
a New Afrikan or a Chican@ in the ghettos/barrios than stealing from the
Amerikans. As stated in “Who
is the Lumpen in the United $tates?” by MIM(Prisons), the First
World Lumpen parasitically gets its means of living through other labor
aristocrats, or other lumpen. This examination should lead to their
surrounding petty-bourgeoisie as well. While it is true that in the
United $tates, the First World Lumpen class should be organized to
abandon the road of banditry and follow the road of revolution, it is
also true that to demand respect and sympathy from poor and lower
petty-bourgeois masses while also committing said banditry is idealist
and commandist.
One important point that has been brought up by the youth and the
intellectuals which led many of the mass rallies and discourse
surrounding the murder of Adam was the fact that many of the elders in
the Mexican/Chican@ community bring over conservative cultural attitudes
of the countryside in mother country Mexico to the cities of the United
$tates.(5) Many of these attitudes include the reaction against the
violence of the lumpen proletariat drug lords and the Mexican
bourgeoisie that fund and cooperate with these enemies of the people.
Nine times out of ten, the Mexican drug lord is a gangster and a
comprador capitalist at the same time – if not the running dogs of those
comprador bourgeoisie. In the oppressed nation areas of the United
$tates, most lumpen organizations might just be small-scale collectives
of hustlers, pimps, and drug peddlers who claim blocks and corners and
can’t afford to have the country’s military under their thumbs; in the
Third World, they are war lords who control swaths of land and political
power. This difference should stay in the minds of revolutionaries and
communists who intend to organize not only the first world lumpen, but
also the migrant proletariat who come from the third world oftentimes to
escape from war lord tyranny.
The Campaign Against
ShotSpotter
Several months after Adam was murdered, his family and activists
gathered on the site of his death to protest the ShotSpotter technology
used to detect gunshots in areas where lumpen activities heavily occur.
On the Thursday of July 29th when that rally was held, activists
demanded the cancellation of ShotSpotter’s surveillance presence in
their neighborhoods as the contract the company had with the city of
Chicago only had one month left.(6)
In response to the protests held by the people, ShotSpotter issued
this response:
“All residents who live in communities experiencing persistent
gunfire deserve a rapid police response, which gunshot detection enables
regardless of race or geographic location. Because cities lack
sufficient funds to cover an entire city with gunshot detection
technology, they deploy sensors in neighborhoods suffering the highest
levels of gun violence.”(7)
In classic Amerikan fashion, ShotSpotter disguised its surveillance
and monitoring of the empire’s problem population (the oppressed nation
of urban centers) as a gift and a right that the said population
“deserves.” Maoists recognize that gunshot detectors in ghettos and
barrios aren’t a safety measure. These technologies enable pigs to be
deployed faster to occupy these regions in a more efficient and fruitful
manner. The company also claimed that the technology detects “gunshots
regardless of race or geographic location.” Any sane person should be
able to recognize that this claim means nothing since humyn beings (in
this case Amerikan corporations profiting off of militarized police
occupation) put these technologies in to monitor New Afrikans and
Mexicans/Chican@s geographically located in ghettos and barrios. Like
Mao Zedong taught us, man is principal over machine and weaponry in
warfare.
Adam’s Place
On August 11th, Adam Toledo’s family spoke about the plan of creating
“Adam’s Place”; a non-profit shelter for at risk boys trying to escape
inner-city conditions and lumpen violence. The shelter would be built on
a 70 acre farm in Potosi, Wisconsin and was chosen by the family’s
attorney Joel Hirschorn. The location is 3.5 hours away from Chicago and
2.5 hours away from Milwaukee.(9) The non-profit is claimed to be
modeled after the Christian ministry program “Boys’ Farm.” In a town
hall meeting in Potosi, Wisconsin, Joel Hirschorn announced that the
home will not take in boys already in a lumpen organization. We are not
sure how Adam’s Place will define a child to be “in a gang” (whether
affiliates or individual hustlers will be classified as belonging to a
“gang”); however, we see the fact that Adam Toledo himself would not be
allowed in Adam’s Place as a prime example of liberal NGO tactics.(10)
We hope for stable and safe path for all children who will enter Adam’s
Place, and wish the family members of Adam Toledo for a peace of mind
from the nightmare they must be facing. For attacking the problem at the
root, and for real rehabilitation of lumpen youth, we point our
directions away from NGOism to our readers and towards socialism and
revolution.
When my brother first articulated the vision for the new venture,
Forever Protecting the Community, and his general desire to uplift Our
people, We were in a supermax prison, in the middle of nowhere. He
himself had just days prior been released from a similar prison and had
come to visit me. It was Our first time seeing each other in six years,
since my trial, in which i was unjustly sentenced to life without the
possibility of parole.
Thick, shatter proof glass separated Us in the visitation booth. i
expressed through the phone, between static, my approval and tipped my
head in acknowledgment of the self-development and maturation process
that i knew had led up to this point in his life. i knew the process
intimately, as i myself have undergone it as well in my own way. It is a
process of social and mental growth that many before us have gone
through. It is a process that sees one evolve from a state of self and
socially induced ignorance, towards a state of a more completely
functional humyn being, one who is engaged with the community and world
around them, being productive therein. It is this way which We were
meant to live among each other, but through the process of
social-economic development, from a communal economy, into a hyper
capitalistic society, We’ve become a mutation of Our true selves.
Individualism dominates collectivism, greed has taken the place of
contentment. Being as We are born and bred in such a world it takes a
process of re-education and re-commitment in order to shun these
counter-productive characteristics and act in the furtherance of
productivity and communal upliftment.
Sometime later after Our visit, Prisoner A asked me to make a
contribution to a collection of short stories that he wished to publish
under the banner of Forever Protecting the Community. He stated that his
vision was to correct those of Our homeboys behind enemy lines with the
movement that was/is in process in the streets. As it is, when Our
people are held captive by the state they’re often forgotten about, or
merely become just another hashtag, as the world moves on. Additionally
he figured, and i agreed, that brothers such as myself who are living
the effects of social alienation, political disengagement/dependence,
and economic insecurities, the combination of which has led to lives
tarnished by and through captivity, should have much to express in
regards to the direction of Our communities and Our nation (that is the
nation of Black people in Amerika which i refer to as New Afrikans).
In responses to my brother’s request i consciously refused to
contribute a ‘short story’. Reason being, short stories are fictional,
while the subject matter surrounding the necessity of Forever Protecting
the Community is far from fiction. It is real life that drugs and STD’s
have ravished Our communities. It is real life that millions of New
Afrikans – Black children, wimmin, and men are currently in captivity or
under the ‘supervision’ of the state. It is real life that the public
school system is failing Our youth, not providing the necessary tools to
live a self-sufficient life but only to enter the ranks of the wage
slaves. It is real life that in areas which We call ‘Our community’,
property ownership among New Afrikan people is less than 5%, this number
includes homes, commercial real estate, and ‘essential infrastructure’.
These property relations are significant, as it is this factor which
creates ‘social alienation, political dis-engagement/dependence, and
economic insecurities’, so it is real, very real, that many of us live
and die without having owned Our living spaces, and under the rules of
Amerikan settler-colonialism and imperialism, it is increasingly
difficult to own Our very identities, both collectively and
individually.
So because this is Our real life, and has been for sometime, i felt
what was/is needed more than mere entertainment is some ‘real talk’ as
it pertains to ‘us’. Therefore i’ve offered up this place to shed light
and open much needed communal discussion.
The word ‘protect’ means ‘to guard’; ‘to secure’; ‘to hold in safe
keeping’; all these definitions imply that there is a force, or forces
which seek to bring destruction, in whole or in part, to whatever entity
needs guarding, security, safekeeping, or protecting. In Our context We
are alluding to the need to secure Our ‘communities’, which are
essentially semi-colonized territories dependent upon and occupied by
outside forces.
It follows that if and when there is an entity that seeks the
destruction of Our territory, Our community, Our nation, Our family, Our
people, and Our self, that said entity is an avowed enemy to Our cause
and Our interests. So therefore i pose the question, ‘who are Our
enemies and who are Our friends?’ 402 years ago with the advent of the
Maafa (African slave trade; tragedy) an unresolved contradiction arose.
This contradiction has been characterized by the colonization of New
Afrikan Black people, first as slaves, a nation of slaves, and oppressed
and exploited free people, until now, where Our colonization is
characterized by the forced dependence upon the United States,
settler-imperialist neo-colonial empire, for the basic functions of
modern nationhood. That is free development of independent political,
social, and economic production and advancement.
During the last 402 years, what it means to be a New Afrikan in
Amerika has been tied to Our ongoing collective struggle to express
Ourselves in the full extent of Our humynity, to cast off the old forced
colonial relationship, which saw us as completely dependent pawns in the
‘game’ of world affairs, and to exercise a role and position which has
been guaranteed to almost all other peoples of the world, that is to
determine for Ourselves who We are, what We are (a colonized nation),
and how We wish to organize Ourselves for the daily survival of Our
people.
For the settler-empire’s part in this contradiction they’ve sought to
undermine Our natural, independent, development at every turn. All the
empire’s actions towards Our people, whether they be in the field of
military intimidation (police terrorism), propaganda, political
policies, and all other matters, they have all been to further the
relation of dependence upon their governance and economic structure.
Due to these simple truths and the multitude of ramifications that
they produce, it shouldn’t be lost on the reader that the enemy of New
Afrikan–Black people is the system of economic and political power that
has been FORCED upon us. This system is called capitalism-imperialism,
and the u.s. government at both federal and local levels is the world
leader of this system which is the cause of not only Our collective
misery, but that of the majority of the world’s people.
We, as a people, must come to understand that, ‘yes’, ‘protection’ is
needed and it is needed from the forces of power. Our enemies are not
those of another block, set, or turf who not only look like us, but more
importantly, are victims of the same systemic oppression and alienation
as us, which has fostered Our like conditions. Our enemies are not those
whom the real enemy has told us are the ‘gangs’ and ‘criminals’. These
We must begin to see as Ourselves, Our siblings, Our allies, in this
struggle. Allies whom have not yet been awakened to their place and
position within the ranks of Our New Afrikan Independence Movement.
Forever Protecting the Community, as many of you reading this already
know, has grown out of the legacy of the Forum Park Crips, in
particular, and that of New Afrikan-Black street organizations in
general. Modern street organizations within Our colonies (communities)
have for a long time possessed the tendency to re-imagine their
identities and the role in which they intend to play in the development
of Our people, that of destroyers or builders.
Prior to the creation of the original Crips of Los Angeles in 1971,
there were other street organizations. During the mid-1960’s as Our
nation was on a collective march to determine for Ourselves Our own
destiny, several Black Power organizations began to recruit effectively
within the class of people in Our colonies that were or would likely
become members of street organizations. These Black Power
revolutionaries impressed upon the sisters and brothers that the most
effective way to combat the mistreatment they all faced was to unite on
the basis of nationhood, and the shared quest for
self-determination.
On the West Coast, the main Black Power groups leading the shift in
social philosophy and participation among the ‘street class’, were the
Black Panther Party, and the US organization. The former would succeed
in consolidating ALL of the New Afrikan Black street organizations on
the West Side of South Central into one mass body. This effort was led
by Panther deputy chairman Alprentice Bunchy Carter: a former leader of
the ‘Slausons’ street organization, and convict, turned political
revolutionary while in California’s San Quentin Concentration Camp.
Bunchy Carter would help politicize most of his former ‘gang’ buddies,
recruiting them into the Panther organization and more importantly,
re-install the sense of common-unity (community) among the working class
of the surrounding area, with the former ‘destroyers’, the ‘gang’
element. This was only possible once the people could see that the 5,000
strong Slausons had made themselves a vehicle for productivity in
opposition to the people’s REAL enemies instead of assisting the enemies
of the people in the destruction of the people and Our areas of
residence. Forever Protecting the Community, if it lives up to its
calling, will follow down this same path of self-liberation, utilizing
the examples set by the Slausons and others to build upon the
advancement of Our nation in Our quest for self-determination and
independence.
“The time is NOW for a total refocusing of Our efforts, away from
non-productive distractions and other elements of temptations, and focus
towards those disciplines that will make us real [contributors] in Our
communities. We must stop the gangbanging and drive-bys. Our [nation] is
being destroyed by the killing [drugging and imprisonment] of Our own
youth. We must stop hating one another because of the block, hood, turf,
and color We represent, these actions only continue the cycle of
self-destruction.
“And finally, in my sincere appeal for peace and unity: Those of us
that have experienced being Our brother’s keeper – We must educate Our
members around Us. Education brings about awareness. Awareness generates
the ability to think. Our youth must know the end result of crime is
shame, disgrace, and imprisonment to themselves, as well as the
community. We must come to the point of outlawing those who willfully
disrupt Our communities and Our call [to Forever Protect the Community].
Crime must not be accepted as the normal way of doing things.” – Larry
Hoover’s 1993 ‘Call For Peace’
As articulated previously, there has been a tendency among New
Afrikan-Black street organizations to re-imagine their identities and
the role in which they play, or intend to play in the development of Our
people, that of destroyers or builders. Larry Hoover leading the
transition of his organization from ‘Gangster Disciples’ to ‘Growth and
Development’ is one of the most noteworthy and informative examples that
We can/should take lessons from. Yet before We delve more into the
lessons We can take from this grouping, it is important that We
illustrate the hands of the enemy in regards to the growth and expansion
of today’s street organizations and the sanctioned culture of
gangsterism.
Going back to the mid-60’s, as the Slausons and other similarly
situated groups began to cast off the self-destructive, and
counter-productive behaviors, they consequently began engaging in the
socio-political battles Our people faced at the local, ‘national’, and
global levels. Once it became clear to the masses that Our oppression
was/is political and economic and that the political reinforced the
economic, it became evident that the interests of Our people had to be
represented, by Our people, in the political sphere, and subsequently
political bodies were formulated. The Black Panther Party, along with
the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, were two of
the foremost leaders among these such groups. On a national level, the
‘street class’ began to be involved in the development of themselves,
and their people on an objective basis, as such naturally their
priorities began to shift, instead of clubbing, slanging and banging,
this class of people, many of Our predecessors, began to initiate
community political education classes, free health clinics, community
‘face lifts’, and clean up programs, free busing to prison for visits,
and a host of other ‘survival programs’.
It was during this time, because Our people had clearly drawn a line
of demarcation between themselves and the enemies of the people,
furthermore the same elements of the New Afrikan-Black Nation which had,
by force of circumstance, been most dependent upon the u.s. federal and
local governments couldn’t and/or wouldn’t. Such a development signaled
to the people that they themselves had the necessary power to liberate
themselves, hence the popularity of the phrase, ‘Power to the
People’.
Much of the oppressors continued rule depends upon the people’s
belief that they’re utterly helpless without the structure of the
settler-colonial imperialists. Once this illusion is unmasked and the
essence of the establishment is exposed, the oppressive state apparatus
must solely rely on brute force to maintain its illegitimate rule upon
the people, Our people. The establishment seeks to bypass such a
reality. Overt violence for the sake of political repression usually
swells the ranks of those in opposition to the illegitimate governmental
authorities.
It was this exact situation which saw the federal government
intensify the contradiction which began in Black August 1619 to the
level of a domestic war between two opposed and contradictory entities,
through the FBI’s declared war on the various organizations and people
within the Black Liberation Movement, by way of the Counter Intelligence
Program (COINTELPRO).
The u.s. government’s carrying out of COINTELPRO in order to prevent
the self-developed expression of the New Afrikan-Black experience as a
colonized nation held captive for centuries by the u.s. government,
resulted in numerous political assassinations of New Afrikan-Black
liberation combatants, the political/false imprisonment of various
souljahs and activists of Our cause, and the subsequent obliteration of
what has been up until this point the most progressive era of Our
collective struggle in 402 years (the Black Liberation Movement).
The defeat of the movement is important to this discourse on FPC,
because it was in the wake of the defeat of the movement that the Crips,
Bloods, Folks and Peoples established themselves. The establishment of
these street groups was facilitated by the war initiated on the
movement, and the subsequent elimination of progressive, productive, and
revolutionary leadership in the colonies which We call communities.
Ajamu Niamke Kamara (Stanley Tookie Williams), co-founder of the Crips,
said the following:
“i’m convinced that had the Black Panther Party still been recruiting
- uninterrupted by the duplicitous COINTELPRO… Huey Newton and Bobby
Seale would have salivated over the untapped youthful potential We
represented.
“Throughout this state and country, We embodied only a small divided
body within a multitude of reckless, energetic, fearless, and explosive
young Black warriors. Though we were often seen as social dynamite, i
believe We were the perfect entity to be indoctrinated in cultural
awareness and trained as disciplined soldiers for the Black
struggle.”
Unfortunately for the original Crips and Bloods, and the many
multitudes who have since followed in their foot steps, in 1971 while
Tookie Williams and Raymond Washington were establishing the teenage
clique that would become an international menace, the Black Panther
Party was enduring a major split within its ranks, which was caused,
partially, by the assault(s) of COINTELPRO, that would be the beginning
of the end for the Party and the movement.
In the wake of the defeat, the establishment initiated a wide variety
of methods to ensure that the widely dispersed wave of righteous
rebellion and the desire of an internal colony to free itself from the
forced yoke of imperialism and neo-colonialism, would never happen
again. To insure that Our people would remain collectively divided and
conquered, and sleep, the enemies invented and distributed crack
cocaine, and military grade weapons throughout the mid 1980’s and into
the 1990’s, allowed for the AIDS/HIV epidemic, created laws and policies
that would hold millions of Our youthful and vibrant siblings in
captivity based on fabricated and over-exaggerated portrayals of Our
colonized territories and peoples, and Our responses to Our colonial
oppression.
While the movement for self-determination was brutally crushed by the
u.s. government, that same government, wherever it could, assisted the
growth and expansion of the street organizations. The very industry that
was factually created by the CIA (the Crack Trade) was the vehicle which
drove Crips, Bloods, Folk, and Peoples factions in their growth across
the u.s. empire. This subsequent growth and expansion led directly to
the formation of the street organization, Forum Park Crips, an
independent Crip faction in Houston, Texas, along with countless other
similar factions and groups. What could have been the u.s.
establishment’s motive in instigating the growth of parasitic groups,
while murdering and torturing the productive organized bodies? The
answer can only possibly be the intended destruction of Our nation and
people.
With this realization that We have been manipulated, on a large
scale, to act against Our own interests and that of Our nation, the
formation of Forever Protecting the Community, though not the solution
within itself, surely takes a step in the correct direction.
“… Our women and children are suffering greatly at the hands of an
oppressive, dominant, racist political system… We can no longer afford
the forced luxury of non-involvement or non-participation. The question
remains: How can We contribute within Our limited capacities? .. i say
to you: If We accept a partial responsibility for the plight of Our own
people, then We must take an active role in the game of POLITICS.” –
Larry Hoover’s 1993, “Call to Action”
Where Do We Go From Here? As stated above, the formation of Forever
Protecting the Community is not a solution in and of itself, and it
remains to be seen whether or not this formation will live out its full
potential. What has already taken place however is the necessary act of
determining for ones self what your identity and purpose will be. There
will be naysayers who will point to all sorts of negative aspects of
those who are or become active with the new FPC movement. They will, if
hystory is any indicator, deter the general public from supporting and
identifying with the movement of Our people and colonies.
In order to get out in front of this foreseeable roadblock to Our
progress, We must do one of two things. 1) Abandon the words and
personification of ‘gang’, and ‘criminal’, to those who have defined
them (Our enemies) so that now they will have purely negative
connotations; 2) redefine those words/personifications - or create a new
word or phrase to describe organized groups within Our oppressed
colonies (communities).
Whichever choice is made, NEW concepts must be developed that
reinforce NEW forms of activity that should begin to appear on the basis
of the NEW concept. Forever Protecting the Community is the NEW concept,
and now what the leaders of this organization must act towards is
organizing a wide variety of people of the community to work
collectively to transform the ‘gang’ into a progressive organization of
New Afrikan people, which struggles and works in the interests of Our
people. The problem within Our colonies (communities) isn’t that there
are ‘gangs’, but it is the real problems which all peoples under
capitalist domination face, it is capitalism itself, and the social,
economic and political alienation it creates, which indirectly gives
birth to ‘gangs’ and ‘crime’.
Forever Protecting the Community has taken one step towards
empowerment – one critical step closer to a new sense of collective
identity, purpose, and direction – by using the power that We already
have, to define Ourselves, name Ourselves and speak for Ourselves –
instead of being defined and spoken for by others. The next step
consists of leading all the people of the community to share in the
responsibility for providing a NEW broader sense of collective identity,
purpose, and direction – for Our children and Ourselves. It is time now
to promote NEW ideas about the life We wanna live and the society We
wanna live in. Its time to promote NEW definitions of Our problems
(e.g. ‘racism’ or capitalism/colonialism) and the real solutions to Our
problems (e.g. ‘empowerment’ or genuine independence). We must begin to
promote among Our people the idea that Our purpose isn’t to simply own a
nice car, jewelry, a house, or even to quasi control a few city blocks,
but to share in Our control of entire cities, entire states, and
eventually, to share in the control of Our independent nation.
The task is to begin to formulate a community coalition behind the
idea/motto/slogan of Forever Protecting the Community. By a coalition i
mean connecting with a variety of people who identify with and support
the cause of the organization. Particularly, the following elements
within the community should be sought out for support and
assistance:
“What We have to do is get together the conscientious progressive
thinkers within these [street] organizations that know that they have to
make a change in order to survive… We have to put together a concerted
effort by all segments of Our community– clergy, business, activists,
and progressive thinkers within street organizations [local elected
officials, educators, health care providers]. You have to go within
these organizations to change them… You can’t just write off a
generation… It is time for [New Afrikans] from all over the country to
realize what has happened to Our people, and that while much of it can
be attributed to outside forces We have to begin to take responsibility
for Ourselves.” – Larry Hoover
As a politicized prisoner, and activist, co-founder of the prison
activist organization Texas T.E.A.M.O.N.E., i extend my hand, and that
of my comrades and supporters on both side of the walls, in support and
solidarity of the Forever Protecting the Community organization, and
more importantly i look forward to workin with my brothers, the 10’zzz,
on concrete actions both FPC and Team One can collab on that will suit
both Our missions.
We of TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E. believe the current United Struggle from
Within movement which We support, along with the general prison
resistance/abolition movements, align perfectly with Forever Protecting
the Community’s mission. As such, We humbly ask that if you are a part
of or support the mission to FOREVER PROTECTING THE COMMUNITY, that you
also contact and actively support the souljahs behind enemy lines within
the TX Team One formation fighting against legal slavery in Texas
prisons, and the inhumane use of indefinite, and long term solitary
confinement, as a toll of social and political repression.
Dare 2 Struggle Dare 2 Win; 1 Love 1 Struggle for LAND AND
INDEPENDENCE
“Look you a Blood, i’ma Crip, but i figure we can get back to that
Black shit, instead of killin and bangin for crack shit, is n****z too
stuck in they ways? i know We long overdue, but is We ready for change?
Stand under one flag like an ARMY brigade. Time to put the deuce-deuce
down and pick a ‘K’, and if We bangin on sum Black shit. Let’s ride for
the dead homies and get the burners for Malcolm and Nat Turner. Talkin’
to them other n*****z, my so called enemies We don’t own one block but
We live and die for these city streets. Even though the pain runs deep,
REAL n*****z know its time to make PEACE so We can FOCUS ON THE
PAYCHECK.” – Nipsey Hussle
“Now if We wanna live the THUG LIFE and the gangsta life and all
that, okay, so stop being cowards and let’s have a REVOLUTION. But We
don’t wanna do that, dudes just wanna live a character. They wanna be
cartoons, but if they really wanted to do something, if they was tough
alright, lets start Our OWN COUNTRY, lets start a REVOLUTION, let’s get
out of here [prison], let’s do something.” – Tupac Amaru Shakur
Triumphant
TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E Co-founder
New Afrikan Independence Movement
To contact/support/learn more about TX Team One:
TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E
113 Stockholm, #1A
Brooklyn, NY 11221
TexasTeamOne@gmail.com
MOwolabiIS@protonmail.com
To receive the NEW TX Team One Primer write a request to:
As we prepare this issue of Under Lock & Key (ULK) we
tallied results of our first annual fundraiser. We have chose the Fourth
of You Lie as a time to ask you to donate to this independent media
institution of the oppressed. Without prisoners’ support and
contributions this newsletter ceases to exist.
Our fundraiser had some successes in that we raised the second most
donations in a month from prisoners in years; the highest amount being
in March 2021. So we are on the upswing this year. We got an even bigger
donation from an anonymous outside supporter, which are much less
common. Our goal is to establish regular contributions from more people,
both inside and out. Whether you send donations monthly or annually, we
want to know we can count on you.
Compared to the previous 2 month period we reported on last time, our
donations from prisoners were less than half in amount and also less in
the number of people donating. The number of donators these past 2
months was about average for recent years, and far less than years past
when we had more subscribers. And once again, the vast majority
of the total amount we received from prisoners came from established USW
leaders. So we did not see much of a response to the fundraiser from our
general subscriber list.
Of course, it’s never too late to donate, and you can still send in
your 7 stamps to cover your 2021 subscription to ULK. Or 14 to
cover someone who is indigent as well. As always, ULK is
available free to U.$. prisoners, and we know that many do not have
access to funds. If that’s you, recommend ULK to friends inside
and out to build support.
This issue is coming out a little later than planned because of a few
setbacks. With more supporters on the outside working on ULK we
can make this independent institution a more resilient one. So please
get involved if you can.
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century:
Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
by John Smith
Monthly Review Press
2016
[Editor: The author of this review uses “southern countries” to refer to
what we would call the Third World, exploited or neo-colonial countries,
and “northern countries” to refer to the imperialist, First World,
exploiter countries.]
The dominant trend in capitalism for the last forty or so years has
been the relocation of production from northern to southern countries,
where the vast majority of the global industrial workforce lives. It’s
impossible to ignore the offshore origin of most of the commodities we
interact with in the U.S. every day, and equally impossible to ignore
the wretched conditions and dramatically lower wages that most of these
southern workers deal with. What this means for the present structure
and future of the global economy is less clear, and that’s where this
book comes in.
There’s a lot in this book I won’t talk about that was nonetheless
very interesting – Smith’s discussion of GDP and productivity
measurements, his history of Marxist thinking on imperialism, and his
in-depth discussion of the production of a wide range of specific
commodities.(1) I’ll just focus on his main contribution, the value
theory of imperialism, in which he incorporates and expands on Marx’s
discussion of surplus value and Lenin’s century-old understanding of
imperialism.
Surplus in Marx’s Capital
Smith’s value theory of imperialism begins with value, which is the
amount of labor required to produce a given commodity. A capitalist
producing t-shirts wants to churn out the largest amount of them in a
working day, at the highest possible intensity of work, and with the
latest technology. Out of the sale of the t-shirts he buys equipment,
raw materials, and pays wages. These wages are the monetary expression
of labor power, or what a worker is paid to show up at a specific time
and place and put their energies and abilities at the disposal of the
capitalist. In return, the worker can use the wage they get to buy a
basket of goods to keep themselves alive til the next day. The amount of
labor that goes into the production of this basket the worker needs can
be called the value of labor-power itself, which under capitalism is a
commodity just like clothing, pickups or rifles. The pile of shirts the
capitalist gets to sell at the end of the day can be sold for more money
than the wages he pays for the labor that produced it. To cut a long
story short, Marx investigates this anomaly and discovers that there is
a part of the day where workers produce enough commodities to pay for
their wages, and a part of the day where the labor they expend creates
commodities that just make the capitalist money. The labor that happens
in this second part of the day is surplus labor, and the value of the
commodities produced at this time is surplus value. This magically free
labor is the beating heart of capitalism, and its pursuit and
distribution are the core of all capitalist economic phenomena.
Marx discussed two main ways that capitalists in the 19th century
would attempt to grab more surplus value.(2) The first he called
‘absolute surplus value,’ and it consists of extending the working day
by either making workers work harder for the time they’re at work, or
making them work for longer at the same or similar wages. The second
path to more surplus is making the value of labor power (or the amount
of labor it takes to create enough goods for a worker to survive) less.
Marx called this second form ‘relative surplus value’.
Smith takes this basic account and expands it to an era Marx didn’t
live to see and couldn’t have predicted – the transformation of the
labor-capital relationship into a relationship mostly between northern
capital and southern labor.(3)
North-South
relations in Lenin’s Imperialism
Lenin’s book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
describes a world divided into oppressor and oppressed nations, the
competition of monopolies, and the trends inherent in capitalist
development of this era that lead to ever more destructive bouts of
violence. The need for more surplus and more profits drives capitalist
firms beyond the confines of their home market, to seize and exploit
foreign ones. Competition gives way to centralization and large
monopolies, and the increasing integration of these monopolistic
interests into the state makes war over colonies and their resources
more and more likely. At home, the super-profits obtained in the
colonies create a labor aristocracy, the size and influence of which has
been debated basically for the entire hundred years since Lenin’s book
first appeared.
Smith identifies a weakness in Lenin’s work, mainly that he doesn’t
discuss or use value as a concept to explain imperialism.(4) The thing
Smith attempts, after several chapters of setting up the data on the
existence and persistence of wage differentials and trade relationships
between northern firms and southern labor, is a synthesis and update of
Marx and Lenin’s contributions.
Synthesis
Smith’s point is that the outsourcing of production has allowed
capitalist firms to conduct what he calls ‘labor arbitrage,’ or buying
labor power where it is cheap and selling the commodities produced where
they can be sold dear. Thanks to innovations in shipping and
communications technology, firms can seek out the cheapest labor and the
most favorable environmental and labor laws (ideally, they want no
environmental or labor laws) to churn out the most surplus value
possible. This has driven the wage down below the value of labor power –
workers in many countries are not paid enough to survive and have to
make a living through wage-labor in capitalist factories plus something
else, like subsistence farming or stealing. This is an extreme form of
the relative surplus value extraction method that Marx discussed, or
what has also been called superexploitation.
Additionally, the relationship between companies like Foxconn (which
actually makes the iPhone) and companies like Apple (who first create a
design that breaks in three years, then contract the production out and
stamp a logo on it for 300% markup), or ‘arms-length outsourcing’(5),
hides the exploitation and transfer of value from one country to another
behind an apparently innocent market transaction. The vast majority of
the profits, taxes and tariffs from offshored production end up not in
the country where the commodity was produced, but in the country where
the final seller of the commodity is headquartered. This is how Germany,
a country that cannot produce coffee, makes dramatically more from its
re-export than any country where it is actually grown.(6) Marx hints
that this phenomenon, called ‘value capture,’ could exist theoretically,
but Smith demonstrates that it is at the core of relationships between
countries in today’s economy. There is also a lengthy discussion of
‘value chains’ or sequential input-output relationships conducted
between firms that leads to the final commodity. A Zambian copper mine
sells to a wire factory, which sells to a company that makes circuit
boards, which sells to a car company who uses the circuit board to run
an automatic transmission in a hundred thousand dollar pickup. The
conditions of work and the selling price dramatically swell along the
chain, to the point where the worker watching a robot bolt the circuit
board into place makes more in an hour than the copper miner made in a
month. But all labor really is equal. It’s not like swinging a pickaxe
is an entirely different movement in Zambia or America. And it’s not
like the people doing the swinging are any different either.
The Political Economy of
Coffee
Smith provides a lot of concrete examples of how these exploitative
relations between nations lead to permanent conditions of
underdevelopment in southern countries, and vast profits in northern
ones. Maybe the most stark of these examples is his discussion of coffee
from the early part of the book. Coffee is only grown in southern
countries, and it is almost exclusively processed in northern countries,
where the markups can exceed four hundred percent. Wages paid in the
coffee-processing sector, taxes from this business and tariffs on
imports, all contribute to the northern economy in question (Germany,
perversely for a country that can never grow coffee except in a
greenhouse, is the biggest exporter of processed coffee) and rely on
southern countries furnishing the raw material at a reliably low price,
a price that ends up being a tiny fraction of the cost of the final
product. In this case it’s clear not only how unequal the exchange is,
but also how the entire chain of production in the northern country
relies on the exploitation of other workers. Another writer on this
subject, Zak Cope, estimates that the total transfer owing to this
process of hyper-exploitation, markup and re-export, across all
commodities, amounts to sixteen percent of GDP in northern countries
every year.
What makes these conditions permanent is the persistently low price
of the export for the country where the coffee is grown, which will not
allow it to develop or move up the ladder to more capital-intensive
forms of production that might be safer on the global market. An
additional factor is politics, and the careful policing of the ability
of southern countries to raise wages, enforce their own labor laws, hold
northern firms to account when they commit crimes(7), and raise the
price of their exports. In the case of Rwanda (a major coffee producer)
in the early 90s, the political destabilization and genocide that
occurred in the country was partially the result of the collapse of an
international coffee-exporting agreement that attempted to set a (low)
floor on the price of the commodity and provide some stability and
guaranteed income for countries who rely on its export. Northern
countries oppose any agreement that would make their inputs cost more,
or make their value-chains dependent on cheap labor any more expensive.
They can be more or less effective at ensuring this, in cooperation with
the comprador bourgeoisie. A particularly galling example of this, from
the textile sector, unfolded in Haiti in 2009 over the raising of the
minimum wage of 31 cents an hour, which president Rene Preval eventually
backed away from, after opposition from the U.S. Embassy and local
factory owners.(8)
Whose fight, and who’s
fighting?
What Smith doesn’t do is discuss the immediate political consequences
of all this for us. On the last page of the book he says “together with
their sisters and brothers in the imperialist countries, [southern]
workers have the capacity, the mission and the destiny to dig a grave in
which to bury capitalism.”(9) It’s a little too convenient, and maybe in
the future he can discuss the history of this elusive internationalism.
Whether workers in northern countries fight actively or consciously for
this super-exploitation to continue, whether and to what exact extent
different groups of workers in northern countries benefit from this
arrangement of production, whether workers of the world can unite and
what they could accomplish if they could, are all questions Smith
doesn’t answer. MIM would argue that workers in northern countries
clearly benefit from imperialism, and seek those benefits in an alliance
(an alliance that might have some rough spots now and then) with the
bourgeoisie of their own countries, and are thus not a mass base for a
revolutionary movement but instead a labor aristocracy. Changes to all
of these relationships – between northern and southern countries, and
between workers and their bosses, north and south – will drive changes
in the political economy John Smith’s book goes a long way towards
helping us understand.
Notes: 1. pp. 13-34 2. p. 237 3. p. 12 4.
pp. 225-230 5. p. 68 6. p. 31 7. It always helps when the
law in northern countries maintains a fictitious barrier between a
northern firm relying on exploitation and those they exploit. A recent
extreme example is the Supreme Court’s ruling that the slave labor of
children used in harvesting product for Nestle under conditions the
company controlled wasn’t technically the company’s fault. See:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-nestle-in-child-slavery-case.html
8. Dan
Coughlin and Kim Ives, 1 June 2011, WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3
a Day, The Nation. 9. p. 315
Any pig that enjoys punishing citizens who even think about resisting
arrest or even ‘looking funny’ at him should move to Corruptarado (as we
call this state) and go work for the Denver Pig Department.
Per an 11 August 2021 article in the Denver Post, “Denver
paid $1.1 million settlement to police officers fired after beating
unarmed man, records show,” two pigs that severely beat a 23 year-old
Latino man in 2011 were fired, but as part of the ‘deal,’ were paid
thousands of dollars in exchange for agreeing to never work for a pig
department ever again.
But wait. The pigs sued, claiming they should have not been fired.
After a ten year battle, the Colorado Supreme Court allows this Colorado
Court of Appeals ruling to stand. A ruling for the pigs.
So … one of the pigs got $420k, and the other got almost six hundred
grand from the City and County of Denver. City officials said “We are
acutely aware that this result means that the officers essentially
escape the consequences of their conduct.” Ya think?
No doubt pigs around the country smile when they read of this
decision. Maybe many of them will now be sending their job applications
to the Denver Pig Department, home of the pigs with 007 licenses to
kill.
This is in reply to the article “An
Ongoing Discussion on Organizing Strategy”, which appeared in
ULK 73. In it, the author labels the following statement as
incorrect and unscientific:
“From an organizers perspective, [struggling for quality-of-life
reforms such as increased phone access] are not battles which we can
effectively push anti-imperialism forward, much less MLM…”
The author cites a failure to apply the materialist dialectic, or the
‘science’ behind scientific socialism, to the situation at hand. When
viewed in isolation and out of its proper context, the conclusion that
they have reached would certainly be a commonsense position to take. And
as they write a little further on:
“How can we then deem that prison struggles aren’t aligned with
anti-imperialism?”
Yet if the quote being critiqued were analyzed in its totality, we
can begin to see more nuance and why such a statement was made in the
first place. So to continue where the partial quote left off:
“…without veering into reformist practices of little tactical or
strategic value. I am aware that arguments of principle can be
mounted to the contrary, but absent a practicable, totalizing
strategy for revolution domestically being put forward by an MLM
organization that is actionable in the here-and-now, we cannot
effectively utilize many of these prison struggles as a proper
springboard to corresponding actions in other areas, actions which do
not translate into long-term pacification which benefits their prison
administration in an objective, cost-to-us, benefit-to-them analysis. If
we cannot muster the resources and external manpower to mount a facility
or state-specific campaign for a tactical reform to push our agenda and
continually imprint firmly in the minds of all incarcerated that we have
their best interests in mind, it may be advisable to abstain from
participation lest credit for the reforms go elsewhere and become
politically-neutered, or, worse yet, the system co-opts the struggle as
its own and touts its successes (ie. The First-Step Act). Otherwise, we
are gaining no more than sporadic traction amongst those we are
attempting to revolutionize, and then only of a transient nature.”
(emphasis added)
As mentioned earlier, there is a nuance to the position I have taken
that is obscured in comrade Triumphant’s approach to mounting an
argument on principle, and that in itself constitutes an incorrect and
unscientific approach to proper discourse. Quoting someone out of
context may buttress a particular argument or agenda, however arguments
begin to lose their strength when quotations are re-situated in their
proper place. You ask, ‘how can we then deem that prison struggles
aren’t aligned with anti-imperialism?’, but who has or where has such a
view been advocated in the first place for this allegation to be made?
As you can see, the position put forth in the original commentary
advocated not an abandonment of revolutionary struggle within prisons
but rather its placement within a more explicitly revolutionary
framework. Refining our approach does not imply an abandonment of all
struggle just to focus on study.
It is agreed that the materialist dialectic can be applied in all
manner of social phenomena, and the Amerikan injustice system and the
struggle between prison staff and the captive population are no
exception. But the real question is, should it be applied in
this particular instance in the manner which the Team One Formation,
K.A.G.E. Universal and others have done thus far – that is, pushing for
minor reforms largely divorced from a wider revolutionary
anti-imperialist agenda resulting in pacification once concessions are
made? I would argue that advocating for these various minor reforms to
address the prison masses immediate needs can be classified as
(presupposing these formations desire revolution or claim communism as
their goal) right opportunist deviations.
Right opportunism is an error in practice that occurs when an
organization attempts to embed itself in the masses and in doing so
gives up a clear revolutionary program in the interest of fighting for
immediate demands. This leads to economism/workerism (or in this case
‘prisonerism’), which is the purview of reformism: solely focusing on
economic demands (economism), or the demands of prisoners.
You write that “quality-of-life reforms are connected to the strategy
of cadre development.” Now can experience be gained in how to train
cadre and organize people while doing this? Sure, but similar things can
be argued about improving one’s marksmanship and related skills acquired
while employed as a cop too. While a rather extreme analogy, what I am
getting at is that productive skills can technically be derived from
incorrect practice. Yet the question for both scenarios remains the
same: Is there a better methodological approach to training cadre?
It is a laudable desire to want to avoid being all ‘study’ and no
struggle, but if ‘struggle’ leads a group to avoiding, obscuring or
watering down their politics in order to attain their demands, then that
is not getting us any closer to our desired results. As MIM(Prisons)
notes:
“We can also say that only focusing on the reformist campaigns,
without the larger goals, is not going to change anything in regards to
ending oppression and injustice.”
It is encouraging to see that in consequence of previous organizing
experience comrade Triumphant has pledged to focus on “reorganizing of
the TX Team One under a clearer program and a better understanding of
what our strategic and tactical goals are.” This statement also aligns
with what this comrade wrote in the November 2020 USW organizing update
in reference to the reformist practice of the Prisoner Human Rights
Movement (PHRM):
“unless anti-imperialist, revolutionary nationalist and/or communists
take hold of this movement and see it as a tactical operation instead of
a be-all end-all and thereby re-center the movement, it may only further
‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian revolutionary sector of
society we have (lumpen in prison). That could occur if cats become
pacified with all these tokens and reforms that have been struggled
for.”
But just because we re-center a movement along these lines and dress
future demands to the state in sufficiently ‘revolutionary’ language to
avoid the perception of reformism does not mean that we are actually
avoiding these same pitfalls.
Here I will argue that even with an explicitly revolutionary program
guiding us in the struggle for tactical reforms, we can still be
susceptible to a sort of unwitting crypto-reformism if our struggles are
not chosen very carefully and with the correct tactical,
strategic and narrative approach. In the original commentary I wrote
that
“we should not be trying to ‘improve’ Amerikan prisons, much like we
should not be attempting to cut a bigger portion of imperialist profits
from Third World super-exploitation for the lower class, yet still
relatively privileged, citizens of empire.”
This statement meshes with your desire not to have strictly-reformist
campaigns “further ‘Amerikanize’ the (only) vastly-proletarian
revolutionary sector of society we have.” Of course our current approach
differs strategically from the reformists but, noble intentions aside,
it is still having the same overall effect in practice: we are
inadvertently pacifying individuals, making them complacent sleepwalkers
again. You may probably think: ‘Bullshit. We are teaching the masses
not to fall for any old reform, that these are ’tactical
maneuvers’,etc. And you may very well be able to indoctrinate a core of
cadre to hold strong to a political line which promotes this view.
However, if we view matters through a historical lens, when concessions
from the state were achieved via a revolutionary stage of struggle these
victories largely blunted the sympathetic masses desire to seek further
redress by way of revolutionary means. Whether that be (to cite a
non-Maoist, yet anti-capitalist example) during the peak of IWW
organizing a century ago, the transient successes of the
anti-revisionist New Communist Movement era or our current campaigns to
‘Abolish the SHU’ and ‘Release the Kids in Kages.’ Our ‘successes’ end
up serving as a pressure-release for many and creating a ‘kinder,
gentler machine-gun hand’ for our opponents to use against us, akin to
replacing the arrogance and political incorrectness of Trump for the
soothing reassurances of Biden.
From the commentary of the same USW organizing update from November
2020, you write that
“from an anti-imperialist perspective, the PHRM is only a tactic, a
means to an end. That end being, sharpening the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations, and advancing the oppressed aspect of
that contradiction.”
But how do we really expect to sharpen the contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations and advance the oppressed aspect of that
contradiction if we are actively participating in the lowering or
resolution of the contradictions which heightened tensions in the first
place? There is a periodic ebb and flow of the revolutionary tide in
this country; why do we by way of our current tactical, strategic and
narrative approach inadvertently help turn an upswing into a downturn?
Of course the inherent contradiction in (note:their) Amerikan
society will never truly go away absent revolution, but we are in the
meantime attempting to apply balm to their societal problems
and in effect delay its arrival.
Circling back to the arguments put forth in ‘An Ongoing Discussion on
Organizing Strategy’, you bring up a good question when you write
that
“the real crux of the issue, as it pertains to linking a totalizing
revolutionary strategy, lies in practical experience gained by the
masses in asserting their collective power. For, how will we seize state
power if the people lack the strategic confidence to assert their
power?”
As my position does not advocate pushing for more quality-of-life
reforms even if there happens to be some positive by-product in cadre
development, my reply to this question is that we should re-orient our
tactics, strategy and narrative approach to the masses by
over-emphasizing self-reliance and independence-mastery on the
road to communist revolution. Therefore we should largely abstain from
trying to prevent erosions of their bourgeois legal rights such as
affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, etc. and, if we are
to engage in any tactical reforms to begin with, instead focus on
opposition to proposals to place limits on magazine capacity, bans on
assault rifles and other perceived or actual threats to their 2nd
Amendment and other measures which will aid in our ability to maneuver
and take them down when the time comes. This of course does not
mean that we don’t support LGBTQ rights or abortion access, but fighting
for their (re:Amerika’s) civil liberties and other bourgeois
rights keeps many, including some well-meaning comrades, from seeing the
bigger picture: Let their country go to hell. The Amerikan
government will not become any less imperialist by advocating for more
rights for more people within U.S. borders and it is debatable that we
are contributing to anything more than a temporary weakening of
imperialism domestically. If anything we are contributing to its further
consolidation under the guise of new exploiters with more varied
genders, orientations and skin tones.
Our cadre and the masses will gain practical experience and strategic
confidence in their power by continuing to focus on construction of
independent institutions, not making demands of an illegitimate
government to provide redress. In the prison context, I repeat: “if we
are to engage in any prison organizing, then censorship battles
concerning our political ideology, the UFPP and the Re-Lease on Life
programs should take center stage… As for our comrades who do not have
the luxury of a release date, or have sentences which essentially
translate into the same, their best hope for release lies not in reforms
but with an all-sided MLM revolutionary organization planning their
release through eventual People’s War.”
Bypass the reforms which do not help us either strengthen our
party/cell formations, build independent institutions for the people or
hasten People’s War.
Say ‘NO’ to negotiations; focus on revolutionary-separation and
self-determination.
Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) responds: I want to thank
Triumphant and S. Xanastas for their thoughtful articulations on this
topic. And i hope that printing these in ULK are helpful to
others in thinking about how to organize effectively under the United
Struggle from Within banner or on the streets.
In my many years of working on this project i would say this two-line
struggle is really at the heart of what we do. Of course, how we walk
the line between ultra-left and rightism is always at the heart of those
deciding strategy for a communist movement. But these comrades address
this question in our context today in the United $tates and in the
context of organizing the First World lumpen and engaging in
prison-based organizing.
In all contexts, going too far left means isolating ourselves from
the masses and going too far right means tailing the masses and
following them into dead ends. Therefore finding the correct path also
requires determining who are the masses in our conditions. If we did not
agree on who the masses are then we could not have this discussion in a
meaningful way. Since we do agree, this is a two line struggle within
our movement. With that frame I want to quickly address a couple points
brought up here.
First, I think the strength in Triumphant’s argument is not in the
skill-building of the individual cadre leaders as organizers, which
arguably could be found elsewhere, but rather “in practical experience
gained by the masses in asserting their collective power.” Triumphant
also talks about the importance of the tactical battles in “increas[ing]
the collective practical experience of contesting the state as a united
body.”
S. Xanastas’ suggested program echoes closely to what Narobi Äntari’s
calls for comrades to do upon release. And they echo much of
MIM(Prisons) focus, especially in more recent years. Yet, i pose the
question: can building the Re-Lease on Life and University of Maoist
Thought programs mobilize and reach the masses in the same way as the
campaigns making demands from the state?
And one final point, is that MIM always said the principal task was
not just to build independent institutions of the oppressed, but also to
build public opinion against imperialism. Isn’t a campaign exposing the
widespread use of torture in U.$. prisons an undermining of U.$.
imperialism regardless of the maneuvers the various states make to cut
back on or hide their use of long-term isolation? Or should we focus
solely on the Third World neo-colonies and expose U.$. meddling in
Ethiopia, Cuba and Haiti?
The American reformers who first devised the penitentiary believed
that criminals could be ‘reformed’ through solitary confinement, labor
and religious indoctrination. The use of solitary confinement and
isolation/sensory deprivation began at Philadelphia’s Eastern State
Penitentiary in the 1820’s. But what was actually discovered was that
conditions of sensory deprivation caused mental deterioration and
psychosis. Leading writers such as Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin,
upon touring the penitentiary, spoke out against its conditions of
mental torture. As Dickens observed: ‘I hold this slow and daily
tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than
any torture of the body.’ The Supreme Court ultimately ruled such
solitary confinement ‘mentally destructive’ and outlawed it. It
stated,
“A considerable number of prisoners fell, after even a short
confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to
impossible to remove them, and others became violently insane; others
still committed suicide, while those who stood the ordeal better were
generally not reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient
mental activity to be of sufficient service to the community.” See: In
re Medley, 134 U.S. 160, 168 (1890)
Since that time, however, solitary hasn’t ceased. This is even after
courts and legislators in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have
outlawed even the new and more scientifically designed forms of solitary
confinement.
TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E. was founded by persyns who have endured years and
decades of solitary confinement in the forms of SHU and Ad-Seg (now
called ‘restrictive housing’).
Many modern courts have found the same conditions and injuries to
prisoners from confinement in modern control units as did the high court
of 1890 in the Medley case (see: e.g. Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F.
Supp. 1146 (N.D. Cal. 1995) )
“Many, if not most inmates in SHU experience some degree of
psychological trauma in relation to their extreme social isolation and
the severely restricted environmental stimulation in SHU.” This court
concluded that confinement under such conditions may press the outer
boundaries of what humans can psychologically tolerate. The
psychological consequences of living in these units for long periods of
time are predictably destructive, and the potential for these
psychological stressors to precipitate various forms of psychopathology
is clear cut. “Another court found that isolating human beings year
after year or even month after month can cause substantial psychological
damage, even if the isolation is not total. Davenport v. DeRoberts,
844F,2d 1310, 1316 (1999)
As a study on sensory deprivation by a team of 4 Harvard
psychologists conducted for the CIA revealed:
The deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress;
The stress becomes unbearable for most subjects;
The subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli,
and;
Some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly,
and produce delusions, hallucinations and other psychological
effects.
“Segregation is the modern form of solitary confinement. Segregation
inmates are almost completely deprived of the commonplace incidents and
routines of prison life. In theory [RHU] is not punitive. In practice,
it can only be described as punishing.”
It is with the preceding information that TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E. has been
inspired to put Our lives on the line in the most literal sense, by
refusing the necessary nutrients for survival, and good health. This
coming Black August 21st, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of
George L. Jackson, TX T.E.A.M.O.N.E. will be leading the masses on
TDCJ’s Allred Unit in a hunger strike to protest and bring attention to
the fundamental injustice that is embodied in the mere use of isolation
solitary confinement. We ask the inside community to join us in
struggle, as We already have a case in the courts challenging TDCJ’s use
of the RHU. We ask the outside community to join us in solidarity
(solidarity actions will be listed at the end of this pamphlet).
What is BP – 3.91?
Board policy 3.91 has recently been revised and is set to take effect
on August 1st. These revisions seek to create an asexual environment in
prison. If the penal system has its way, all publications, pictures
which may possibly cause arousal will be considered contraband.
While We, T.E.A.M.O.N.E., recognize the needs of some to
rehabilitate themselves from what may be considered perverse sexual
behavior, the same cannot be said for all, nor even most, prison
captives. For factually speaking, each individual has individual needs
to the realm of recovery and redemption.
TDCJ, when it benefits their agenda, seems to agree. For, in recent
years they have mandated that each captive complete an ‘individualized
treatment plan.’ All captive persyns must complete the plan prior to
their release on parole, or risk remaining in prison.
What Penological
Reason Does BP – 3.91 Serve?
At the date of this writing TDCJ has refused to state any reasoning
for this policy amendment. This refusal in itself is unlawful, by the
standard set by the Supreme Court’s Turner case.
That aside, since they’ve left the reasoning up to interpretation,
let’s interpret it:
Why on earth would anyone want an asexual environment? One where in
theory only sexual desire doesn’t exist? We say in theory
only because factually speaking, no matter the variations of
sexual expression, desire and arousal are as natural as breathing. What
then happens when large masses of people are warehoused, cut off from
ALL social stimuli, as We are in RHU? Frankly, this act
falls in line with historical missions of the american establishment, in
terms of genocide, a slow and deliberate de-population of outcasted
sectors.
REMEMBER EUGENICS? The selective breeding of persyns in order to weed
out unwanted social characteristics that were thought to be found in
ones genetics. REMEMBER FORCED STERILIATION of both wimmin and men who
were largely held captive, were mentally unequipped, or otherwise
considered a liability to the social order. This BP – 3.91 is aligned
with this grim history.
But that’s not all! BP – 3.91 will ban any material which depicts a
persyn with their face covered! Still in the middle of a pandemic!
Enough said!?
Solidarity Actions
Phone-zap: Those outside persyns who’re not local should call the TX
Board of Criminal Justice on August 1st (512-475-3250) demanding BP 3.91
be annulled as it has been revised, as it is an unlawful use of prison
censorship.
On August 24th, supporters should call the executive director of TDCJ
(936-437-2101). On the 24th We will have been on strike for 3 days,
which makes it official. Demand that TDCJ begin to rectify its inhumane
confining of RHU inmates indefinitely and without meaningful review.
Express your support for the hunger strikers on Allred.
Those who are local to this region, We ask to come out in droves to
support Our cause via an outside noise demonstration at the grounds of
the Allred prison colony. We need and appreciate your support.
by Wiawimawo of MIM(Prisons) August 2021 permalink
Nancy Pelosi promotes child tax credits to Chican@s in Califaztlan, but
is another pay out the answer to the oppression of youth? Photo by:
Mario Tama
One thing we heard from those saddened by the
police murder of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was that she didn’t get
to have a childhood.(1) While nation is most certainly the primary
factor that led to the cop, Nicholas Reardon, shooting Bryant, we think
gender oppression, and in particular youth oppression, had a lot to do
with Bryant ending up where she did on that fateful day.
When people speak of being able to have a childhood, we may think of
a time of fun, carefree play, no work, no oppression, etc. Of course
most people in the world don’t have much of a childhood in this sense.
But in the United $tates many do. So already we see there is some
hierarchy involved in this idea of having a childhood, at least under
imperialism. We see this hierarchy as the realm of gender because it is
a question of leisure time and not labor time, which is the subject of
class (see Clarity
on What Gender is). But there is also the question of why we must
separate our lives into periods of fun and play and periods of work and
oppression? And why do we have oppression at all? And how did work
become a bad thing?
To answer these question briefly, the relations of production under
capitalism are what alienates people from their labor today, so that
they feel their labor time is not their time. But as “adults,” most must
spend the majority of their waking hours in labor time. While some
people want those like Bryant to have the purist, most care-free
childhood as possible, we are working towards a whole life that is
enjoyable and fulfilling. And we doubt that is possible without a
healthy dose of productive labor. The exclusion of children from work
for over 100 years in the United $tates has left them with no productive
role to play in society, leading to alienation and lack of worth.(2)
This alienation and lack of self-worth is reinforced by abuse, and leads
to destructive behavior.
As Greyhound points out in eir article
on Ma’Khia Bryant, the Soviet Union provided family for orphaned
youth through the productive life of the commune. The communes did not
work kids to the bone to squeeze out the maximum profits as the
capitalists once did in the United $tates, and still do in most of the
world. Below we look at some attempts by capitalist Amerika to provide
for youth and why they cannot get at the source of youth oppression as
well as socialist experiments that have.
Child Credits Pay the
Patriarch
With sheltering-in-place during the pandemic and no in-persyn
schooling for most children, the question of childcare has received much
attention in the United $tates. The answer from the bourgeoisie came in
the form of child credits. Amerikan families began receiving these
payments in mid-July 2021, for a total of $3000-3600 per family over the
next 6 months.
These credits are a market-based attempt to address the problem of
adults in the nuclear family spending large sums of money to have their
children cared for when they are working or otherwise occupied. These
credits put more power in the hands of the adults who get the money over
the lives of the children who qualify them for these payments. Money for
those who struggle to make ends meet can certainly mean less stressful
conditions for their children. The logic makes sense, it is just a
backwards, half-ass approach. By the 1960s in socialist China, all
children had guaranteed care that was collectively run and offered ways
for youth to voice their concerns and avoid abusive situations. This was
in a country where a decade or two earlier children were basically sold
into slavery. This is the kind of radical change the youth need, that a
profit-based system can’t provide.
Punishing Sex
Offenders to Save the Family
It is very evident that affection, support and trust in our lives as
young people have significant effects on our health throughout our
lives.(3) Lack of positive social relationships and experiences has been
linked to drug addiction and correlates strongly with imprisonment.
Therefore this is a topic very dear to the hearts of many of our
readers.
One way we see this manifest in a more reactionary politic of the
imprisoned masses is in the strong, often violent attitudes towards sex
offenders in prison culture. This sentiment exists outside prison of
course, but became part of the prison culture because of the
concentration of convicted sex offenders there. As we’ve addressed in
the past, this reactionary politic is problematic on the one hand in
that it is allowing
the state to decide who our enemies are, that in many cases the
actions that led to these cases are mild compared to many
non-sex-offender charges and in some cases the people are completely
innocent.(4) In the United $tates, white males and females, as a group,
have treated the Black male as a sexual animal that must be controlled,
sometimes by fake rape charges and imprisonment. In other words, some
who are convicted as sex offenders are actually the victims of gender
oppression, as well as national oppression.
A second reason we say the anti-sex offender politic is reactionary
is that it doesn’t offer any real solutions to the problem of the sexual
abuse of children. It is an example of why MIM always opposed the slogan
“Think global, act local.” If you think globally about this problem of
child abuse, and act locally by ostracizing or even attacking those you
come in contact with who have (or who you believe have) abused children,
you haven’t changed anything if the patriarchy remains. You can confirm
this with crime statistics, or just the fact that we live in a society
where we know this problem is still prevalent.
Addressing child abuse requires systemic change as the Chinese
instituted during their experiment in socialism. Young people need a
different system that supports them with things we know people need to
grow up healthy; mentally and physically. These things can not be
offered on conditions or the whims of one or two adults who control the
child’s life. As they say, “it takes a village to raise a child.” And
people who are serious about reducing child abuse need to work to build
those villages and build them in ways that give young people full access
to information, a wide variety of adult support people, including those
in power, and access to other youth without the interference of adults.
The village should also give repercussions to youth for “bad behavior.”
These repercussions should be consistent in order to provide the youth
with social guidance and never be used by individual adults to get what
they want from children or to take out their frustrations from a bad
day. The oversight of a more village-based model must prevent adults
from doing such things.
Different Models
What the bourgeoisie offers in place of the village is more cash to
the patriarch. These cash incentives make single-parent homes more
viable. But single-parent homes are some of the easiest places for
adults to molest and abuse children.
The reactionary approach to child abuse (imprisonment and violence)
also reinforces the patriarchy, where strong adult men must protect
youth from other adult men by physical assault. One critique of this
line points out how it views the rights of children the same as the
rights of animals in that they must be granted and enforced from the
outside.
“pseudo feminists… [accept a] zoological implication that child abuse
is going to go on forever, as if… child abuse were inherent in the humyn
species, and at the same time external to humyn social relations, like
animals.”(5)
The Maoist counter-point then is that child abuse is a humyn
relationship that is found within the patriarchal family structure. It
is part of the central problem of oppression of groups of people by
other groups that we aim to resolve through ongoing revolutionary
struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rather than
punishing sex offenders to save the family and “protect our children”,
we must replace the nuclear family with communal child-rearing, and
empower young people to criticize others in order to stop those who
might try to abuse children.
Putting child care in the public sphere will do a lot to undermine
the conditions of child abuse. But it does not eliminate the biases of
the adult population, especially those that grew up in the old
capitalist ways, from miseducating or mistreating youth as a group. And
we know that institutional living like group homes and prisons, where
many adults are involved in “care” for the youth, are rife with abuse.
For these reasons youth must have ways of coming together as a group and
voicing their interests as a group, even enforcing their interests as a
group in contradiction to the adults that they depend on. l Ruth Sidel
produced an in-depth report on Women and Childcare in China as
well as in the Soviet Union and the kibbutz in I$rael. In one Chinese
school, when asked what you’d do if you found a sick child on the
street, a 6-year-old child responded: “i’d bring them medicine and
water.” Sidel was surprised the child would not find an authority figure
first.(6) What a striking difference in world views between socialist
children and how most of us grew up in this country. These children
still spent most of their days singing and playing and doing things that
we all did in school. Yet, they were taught differently, taught to act
and be self-empowered as soon as they were able to physically complete
the tasks that might be demanded of them, like bringing another child
water, or possibly organizing resistance to an abusive adult.
Some reading this will find the youth helping other youth not so
strange because they raised their siblings at a young age. This is
another way that peoples’ “childhoods are lost” in our culture; having
to take care of other children as a child. It is not that care for those
younger than you is inappropriate to carry out as a child, but that you
need the support of a community to do so in a way that is not oppressive
to your own life and most supportive to those you help care for.
According to the story from Ma’Khia Bryant’s grandmother, the
conflict that had occurred among two groups of foster children was over
perceived disrespect to the foster mother due to the lack of chores
getting done. Most likely the situation was more complicated. But we see
how there can be a disagreement over the labor responsibilities of
members of a family that leads to violent conflict. This would be very
unlikely when people have clear responsibilities, clear and consistent
consequences that are enforced by the group for not meeting those
responsibilities, and ways to communicate up front with both adults and
youth about the roles and treatment of others.
The Roles of Youth in
Society
In discussing Ma’khia Bryant’s childhood, we must address the fact
that she was 16 years old when she was murdered by a cop because of this
conflict. Other 16-year-olds in the area could have banded together to
take revenge on Reardon for shooting her. Most members of the Black
Panther Party joined in their teens. Bobby Hutton was murdered by the
pigs emself at age 17 while on an armed patrol of the police. Sixteen is
much more physically developed than six, and would mostly only be
limited by legal restrictions like being able to drive or purchase fire
arms.
Fifteen was the age when members of the Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo(FARC-EP) could engage
in armed actions.(7) As the struggle of the Eritrean People’s Liberation
Front(EPLF) advanced, they established the Fitewerari to train male
youth 14 to 16 years old and females of all ages. They found that
training the adult females separate from adult males helped in both
groups overcoming the traditional gender roles they had been inculcated
with. The youth did not have these challenges, at least not to the same
degree.
“In addition to literacy education, political and military training,
and running their daily affairs, they participate in production,
adhering to the EPLF’s correct revolutionary principle of ‘integrating
education with production.’ They practice criticism and self-criticism
to rectify mistakes, develop work and strengthen comradely solidarity.
Upon finishing training, they are assigned to the different EPLF units
and departments to carry on the struggle on all fronts.”(8)
Much has been put into the idea that a humyn’s prefrontal cortex is
growing rapidly up until about age 25. The implication being that you
can’t quite trust the judgement of those under 25. But this is only one
data point, of a biological phenomenon we still barely understand. And
along with this data point comes some implications in how younger people
are willing to go against the status quo and can change their ways
faster. We look to history, to see the transformative power of youth
movements, rather than follow current trends in biological determinism
based in preliminary studies of the brain.
Towards a World Without
Oppression
When Maoists talk about gender, we are talking about a system of
power in the realm of leisure time; the patriarchy. In that system,
youth are generally part of the gender-oppressed. Though in the
imperialist countries, they are likely part of a gender aristocracy, a
child aristocracy, particularly those who have access to the idealized
carefree childhood.
Similar to the wimmin in bourgeois society, the bourgeois children
are relegated outside of labor and exclusively to leisure time. This
leisure time is meanwhile structured to serve the pleasure of the man
and the interests of capitalism overall. These groups being relegated to
leisure time reinforces the divide between leisure time and labor time
in society mentioned above. This is one reason why it is hard to imagine
undoing gender hierarchy without first undoing capitalism, which would
eliminate the sharp divide between labor time and leisure time. Through
this process, gender will cease to be so separate from class struggle as
it is in the bourgeoisified First World countries. Then our lives as
individuals will be more complete, as will our communities.
Youth liberation is part of and dependent on the struggle to end
capitalism and imperialism. Youth don’t need more paternalism, they need
a supportive village to learn from and the freedom to self-actualize
themselves without the fetters of oppression that shape our lives
today.
“There is nothing mystical, elusive or hidden about real working
class consciousness. It is the political awareness that the exploiting
class and its state must be fought… that the laboring masses of the
world have unity in their need for socialism…” (J.Sakai,
Settlers)
It is hard for some to accept that only through an actual revolution
against this government and its imperialist allies can this world even
hope for peace. In addition, any building, calls for unity or worse
still, claims of socialism or revolution that is not in the service of
this objective is actually in the service of capitalism-imperialism,
i.e. counter-revolution.
Mao said: it is only when there is class struggle that there can be
philosophy. And to discuss epistemology apart from practice is a waste
of time. Additionally it is only through social practice that we can
talk about correct or incorrect ideas at all. Recently bourgeois media
have made a big deal of gun violence which is an obvious response to BLM
and Defund movements. Additionally, we are all aware of the unprovoked
attacks on Asians and now the media and politicians are demanding Cuba
not crack down on protest and a promise to keep an eye on Haiti. However
there is or has been much protest regarding all these issues yet no real
consciousness being transformed. Why?
As J. Sakai states, it is due to the failure to identify our class
enemies. Also as Mao stated, our philosophy can only be forged via class
struggle. However, the reason I mentioned the above latest media spins
is to remind us the enemy sadly never forgets to engage in the class
struggle. Obviously that means we (the people) are being routed.
Presumably most of the hit squad that murdered Moise in Haiti were
trained by the U.$. Rumors are that at least one was previously on its
informant pay roll. Cuba is heavily embargoed. Trump alone put 243
additional restrictions on it and Obama and Biden very much kept their
imperialist boots on its neck. So Cuba, regardless of how spontaneous
the protest is, is very much in the cross hairs of European settlers and
their flunkies cross hairs.
When we studied Black nationalism a common refrain was an alleged
pronouncement on the entrance of an ancient school of thought in Egypt,
“Man, Know thyself.” Regardless of if this is true it simply meant for
us to know we had content and value. However, it wasn’t particularly
revolutionary, nor even dialectical. And for someone who never
experienced slavery it would have been a cliche. However, a more
dialectical saying would’ve been first to drop the “man”, and just:
“Know yourself and know your enemies.” This is dialectical materialism,
this is to understand the class struggle and enter the fight on the
right side. I say that because far too many “claim revolution” but don’t
participate in any revolutionary activities.
Social-imperialism is another way capitalism-imperialism
discombobulates our class by getting us to believe most people here in
the belly of the beast are “lost” and can be won over to revolution;
that they are supporting the parasitism of empire only because they
don’t know any better. This wastes time and it wastes resources. I was
listening to Cat Brooks, a “freedom fighter” who is bent on defunding
the police. On a 5 way call a brother who did 15 years was saying his
org don’t work with the pig at all, but Brooks said they do, “but only
limited” i.e. they have a purpose. These calls go along with $15/hr a
minimum wage or like Raymond Lotta says $10/hr is a grueling wage. These
are conscious calls of the labor aristocracy and my point here is that
it’s not just Euro-settlers who are labor aristocracy in ideology, as
well as practice. This is why commercial hip hop currently is not a
vehicle for change.
However, regardless if these people get more people to pander to
their line or not and regardless of if the imperialists share more of
their wealth or not this only serves to help imperialism fuck over the
people even more. Mao said “utopian socialists” are always trying to
persuade the bourgeoisie to be more charitable. Mao said emphatically,
“this won’t work” and that it is necessary to rely on class struggle of
the proletariat. Clearly this means in this day and age
anti-imperialism, self-determination struggles, and a clear line
denoting our class enemies and their optimistic flunkies who claim we’re
all in this together and people will care about us once they get to know
us – must be drawn.
Some say it’s too hard, but as I stated it simply is not. Our “genius
does not depend on one person or a few people. It depends on a party,
the party which is the vanguard of the proletariat. Genius is dependent
on mass line, on collective wisdom,” as succinctly stated by Mao. It is
impossible to always be in the trenches together as we deserve, but it
is a form of class struggle and perfecting this definitely is a blow
back against empire.
This update incorporates the “health and safety concerns created by
Housing Cage Staging” grievance submitted on 21 July 2021. A bullet
point appears before text from the grievance. An asterisk appears before
comments/explanations of the text for readers not familiar with terms,
misnomers, and other devices prison officials implement to obscure the
big picture.
Current policy forces prisoners from both sides of East Back (EB) to
be in close proximity to each other (forced under threat of CDCR115)
*A “CDCR115” is an infraction. Repeat infractions of this particular
variety leads to punitive solitary confinement resulting from what is
called “program failure.” Prior to and while being classified program
failure, loss of privileges, i.e. phone, canteen, packages, etc. are
imposed. But who is it that’s not playing by the rules?
Administrative level prison officials and their supervisory staff are
directing policy which discourages prisoners movement by presenting
prisoners with an ultimatum to either be placed in danger of exposure or
decline transport to destinations i.e. medical appointments, law
library, visits, mental health programs, and get a 115.
*For clarification, San Quentin Death Row prison officials refer to
these holding cages as “holding cells.” The misnomer obscures the fact
each is constructed of steel grate. The cage is approximately 3 feet
wide (front to back and side to side) with no solid partitions between
them.
If prison officials continue promoting/demanding social distancing
(even outdoors as with the “one side of EB per day” modified yard
policy) then also continue staging prisoners in cage rendering social
distancing impossible inside the unit (known to have inadequate
ventilation) that would demonstrate an extreme lack of care – a criminal
act under PC2652 (aggravates under threat).
*Prison officials know or should know placing prisoners in close
proximity makes them susceptible to exposure to any number of COVID-19
variants. Yet not only do they demonstrate an extreme lack of care
they’re basically saying “get into the cage and be exposed or else!”
Housing cages are not even disinfected between uses.
*Death row prisoners going to and coming from various locations are
staged in these cages before and/or upon return (see second bullet point
of grievance/602-1)
Staging prisoners in holding cages is for the sole purpose of
convenience not health & safety.
*Apparently due to custody staff’s inability to maintain accurate
lists of where prisoners are at any given time of day and lack of
intelligence for search and escort (SE) officers, the cages are where
prisoners are held once they are located by the desk officer who calls
out names of prisoners over a loud speaker saying “get up and dressed”
to the prisoner then saying “Tier officer bring them down to a Bay Side
Holding cell” for whatever the case may be.
Current staging policy design causes yard release
disruption/delays.
*Death row has 7 different yards (essentially split into 14 since
only one side of EB goes out at a time). Yard release is scheduled to
being 7:30 AM for these group yards but that does not happen. Further
delay/disruption occurs as the desk officer halts yard release so the
tier officers can escort prisoners with dictated medical appointments to
the holding cages instead of releasing prisoners on their tier to yard.
This disruption/delay design is relatively new.
The current holding cage staging policy has no validity in law or
science regarding its deceptive benefits and potentially adverse
effects.
*At the onset of the COVID pandemic CDCR demonstrated an extreme lack
of care with regards to its death row population. It executed
a dozen prisoners by lethal injection during a moratorium and still
seems to be aiming for more with this housing cage staging policy. The
grievance submitted 21 July 2021 concludes as follows:
Specific Action Requested: 1) Discontinue the double
standard regarding social distancing. 2) Discontinue the policy design
causing yards program disruption/delays. 3) Enforce 15CCR3271 without
implementing retaliatory/punitive policy designs under guise of safety
measures. 4) Stop threatening prisoners with CDCR115 violations who
refuse to be placed in holding cages with these conditions. 5) Stop
staging prisoners in holding cages knowingly endangering their health
and safety by rendering social distancing impossible.
*using holding cages and/or congregate staging of prisoners in close
proximity to each other going to or returning from medical appointments
for a variety of symptomatic illness, facilitates the spread of a
variety of viruses including but not limited to COVID-19 variants and
influenza strains. The bottom line is: it is illegal for prison
officials to knowingly endanger the lives of prisoners (See also
15CCR3271).
