Under Lock & Key

Comrade Eseibio, revolutionary greetings, it is my pleasure to have the opportunity to conduct this interview facilitated by the comrades at MIM(Prisons). Let me jump right into these questions:

1. By listening to your work, one can clearly see you have a firm grasp of social development. Can you share how you initially were introduced to revolutionary theory and historical organizations and individuals who practiced a revolutionary line?

My uncle was a Black Panther Party member in the early days of the Party. So I been around it all my life. My first introduction was me as a teenager getting caught shoplifting and sent to juvenile hall, and my uncle came to get me out. That’s something the Panthers did, get young brothers out of jail and juvenile hall. I was too young to understand why he did it. Then when I got a little older I had another mentor named Melvin Dickson who was a Black Panther Party member. He took me under his wing and showed me and taught me everything about being a real revolutionary and pushing a hard revolutionary line.

2. In one of your songs Bust a Cap, you spit: “I’m a revolutionary Black Nationalist,” Is this still your political identification? Why or why not?

Yes. I’m a revolutionary, a Black Nationalist, but also much more than that. Something that the Panthers taught me is that there is no more nations. Just communities. We use the word intercomunualism. Because an attack against one is an attack against all.

3. What do you believe is the current state of the revolutionary Black nationalist movement? What can we do to improve?

I believe the current state of the movement is heading in the right direction. Because comrades are getting more politically educated and are beginning to have more real solidarity with each other. And that’s what will help us organize more effectively.

4. I’ve been told your new project is centered upon Mao’s Red Book. What led you to make that book the inspiration of your project?

Yes all of my album and lyrics reflect the red book. The Black Panthers sold red books at UC Berkley. That’s a book that I read so many times it’s a part of who I am and I don’t go a day with out reading it. The Panthers got a saying: “Malcolm X in my heart, red book in my pocket.”

5. What is your favorite chapter or quote from the Red Book or from Mao generally and why?

That’s easy. The very first quote in chapter one. Because it was written on Sept 15th, and that’s my birth day. It says the force leading the cause forward is the revolutionary party. And our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.

6. With the recent elections and the clear rightward shift among most sectors, What are your thoughts on the best ways to move forward and organize in this political and social climate?

My thoughts are to organize around providing for the children. That’s how the Panthers did it. They started with a stop sign at an elementary school and a free breakfast program that was for the children. By teaching the truth to the youth you’re educating the next generation of revolutionaries to continue the struggle. The elder party members taught me and now it’s my turn to pass on the known. Each one teach one.

7. What are your thoughts about the clear rightward shift of an increasing amount of New Afrikan/Black men? Does this affect our ability to reach the masses, if so how?

Yes it does because they got the money and owns all the radio and TV stations. If we want to reach the masses we gotta be more creative and out organize them and use technology to our advantage.

8. What musical accomplishment are you most proud of? What keeps you motivated?

I’m proud of all my work and my biggest accomplishment is my album that I have not recorded yet. Or even started. It’s and accomplishment for me to keep going and making good music. Just recently I was in a documentary movie called “Stop Selling Grandma’s House.”

9. What artists do you listen to yourself?

I listen to a lot of myself. One artist that I think is dope right now is Dave East. I make beats so I listen to a lot of old school. And I listen to tons of audio books. From people like Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, etc.

10. In your music you reference Political Prisoners often. Amerika, Inc. denies the existence of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War within its institutions. Trump calls the cats from the January 6 incident Political Prisoners. So, there is confusion for some on this issue. From your perspective who or what is a political Prisoner/Prisoner of War in the context of occupied Turtle Island?

Because of the politics of America We all are political prisoners and we just don’t know it. There’s only 2 Black Panther Party members in prison left. Mumia abu Jamal and H. Rap Brown [now Jamil al-Amin]. People have that term confused and think that if you throw a rock through a window and getting arrested makes them a political prisoner. But it’s much more than that.

11. Anybody on the inside you want to shout out?

Yes I want to shout out MIM(Prisons) and say “All power to the people!” to all the comrades behind the walls, and free my little cousin Quincy Lane locked up 20+ years in the California prison system. Free Mumia and H. Rap Brown. Let’s organize and watch crime drop and turn all the gang members back into revolutionaries. Listen to my new album “West Coast Revolutionaries.” Oh yea, can’t forget about all of the sisters in prison and all the babies born in jail. Recidivism is a serious thing. Let’s stay out of prison and get back out on the streets organizing our communities.

P.S. Thanks for your time, Comrade-Brotha Eseibio. The ’rades on the inside are bumping your music and we salute you for the content you pushing. Clenched Fist salute. - Triumphant, New Afrikan Political Prisoner

MIM(Prisons) responds: Thanks to Triumphant and Comrade Eseibio for this interview; there are a couple things we’d like to address. First, it is true that Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jamil Abdullah al-Amin are still in prison, however, as far as we know, Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore and Kamau Sadiki are still in prison as well, making at least four former Panthers who are currently incarcerated.

Secondly, we’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the concept of intercommunalism and what it means for our struggle. Huey P. Newton argued that by the 1970s the concept of nation had become obsolete due to the increasing globalization of the world under capitalism. Ey argued that the whole world has become tied together as a unified, economically interconnected system, the idea of any nation gaining independence has become outmoded, and the project of national liberation is not ultimately possible. Newton said we live in an interconnected world system called “intercommunalism,” but the kind of intercommunalism we live in today is reactionary, since it is still based on the overall dominance of the United $tates. Therefore, the project in front of us is to transform reactionary intercommunalism into revolutionary intercommunalism by reorganizing the social relations in society into socialist ones. Armed struggle and revolutionary nationalism were opposed by Newton as outmoded forms of struggle in the years following the peak of the Black Panther Party, after it had split with members who went on to organize Black Liberation Army cells separately. Newton’s faction advocated for building revolutionary intercommunalism community-by-community and building the world into a socialist one on the basis of the strong economic ties created by capitalism.

In practice, the theory of intercommunalism results in “micro-politics.” Instead of fighting for the large goal of national independence and self-determination, we should fight for small, community-level changes that will eventually build up into a global change. Second, intercommunalism prevents us from supporting struggles for national liberation abroad, even though Huey Newton still upheld this to an extent, supporting the Vietnamese struggle against the United $tates; but if we carry the theory to its logical conclusions we cannot come to the conclusion that national liberation is a practicable goal. It goes without saying that these views on what is to be done are in direct contrast to ours. We see our struggle as expressly for the national liberation of the oppressed nations of the whole world, and it is for that reason that we say that we are for the nationalism of the oppressed.

But let us touch on the theory of intercommunalism briefly. It is undoubtedly true that capitalism has a tendency towards the economic integration of all nations into a whole, in a word, towards globalization. However, Newton regards this process as already complete. But if this process is complete, where does the spontaneous tendency towards nationalism arise? The struggle in Palestine, for example, is a spontaneous reaction to national oppression. Why this national division if nations no longer exist? Instead of explaining why national liberation struggles continue, Newton regards them as mistakes. Newton, therefore, fails to explain the events of the world, and merely denounces them. It is evident to anyone who asks the question as to the origin of continuing national liberation struggles that we cannot merely write them off as being the product of people having a false understanding of the world: they are rather based in the real, material interests of the nations involved. To the supporters of the theory of intercommunalism, we ask for an explanation of why national wars continue to exist. In the absence of such an explanation, we regard intercommunalism as an exaggeration of capitalism’s inherent tendency towards globalization, an exaggeration which takes a mere tendency to be already complete.

MIM recognizes the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) as the most advanced communist vanguard to have existed in North America. Specifically, we uphold the BPP from 1966 to 1970. For our analysis of the BPP see our study pack Defend the Legacy of the BPP.

12 January 1865: During the Civil War 20 New Afrikan leaders meet with General Sherman of the Union. 19 of the 20 state that they prefer to live separate from the United $tates. Initially land in the south was given to New Afrikans with the Union victory, but when President Andrew Johnson came to power ey re-established Euro-Amerikan rule in the south.

1914: Marcus Garvey founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a pan-Afrikan, pro-capitalist movement that recognized Euro-Amerikans would never live with New Afrikans as equals. UNIA organized 5 million followers in a movement to return to Afrika and built a number of successful businesses before Garvey was arrested in 1925 and deported to Jamaica.

1917: The African Black Brotherhood (ABB) for African Liberation and Redemption formed as the first Marxist Revolutionary Black nationalist organization in the United $tates, at a time when a free New Afrikan proletariat was migrating from the south to urban centers. The ABB merges into the American Communist Party in the late 1920s.

1952: Malcolm X, a son of Garveyite parents, is paroled from prison and immediately begins organizing with the Nation of Islam, quickly becoming its most influential leader, until ey is expelled in 1964.

1962: Huey P. Newton meets Bobby Seale at a rally at Merritt College opposing the blockade of Cuba. The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) is founded by “revolutionary Black nationalists” (including Max Stanford) seeking to organize an armed struggle to win national liberation for the “colonized Black nation” based in Marxism-Leninism and inspired by Mao Zedong and Malcolm X.

1963: RAM goes underground. Mao Zedong puts out an essay calling on support for Black Liberation Struggle at the behest of Robert F. Williams who was in China in exile after first going to Cuba in 1961 to avoid legal attacks by the U.$. imperialists.

1964: RAM develops armed self-defense units with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi delta region. Malcolm X becomes a RAM officer and travels through Africa building support.

28 June 1964: Malcolm X (now el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) returns from Africa and forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) with John Henrik Clarke, the OAAU was to be the broad front organization for the now underground Marxist cadre organization RAM.

21 February 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated. Bobby Seale swears to “make his own self into a motherfucking Malcolm X.”

August 1965: Watts rebellion breaks out in Watts, California, after two New Afrikan stepbrothers and their mother are subject to violence from a white pig. Both cops and white citizens of Watts are beaten by New Afrikans, riots break out throughout the city, and the National Guard are sent in.

1966: Seale leaves RAM, to work with Newton, over lack of material support against police brutality and “inability to organize brothers on the block.” Seale disagrees with RAM’s insistence on the revolutionary vanguard being clandestine. This is later addressed by Newton in the essay, “The Correct Handling of a Revolution” (1967).

1966-67: Newton and Seale adopt the imagery of a black panther, sell Little Red Books to fund handguns, and rent an office for the first chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, at the time an armed group in confrontation with police.

21 February 1967: Eldridge Cleaver and the RAM-affiliated Black Panther Party of Northern California hold a memorial for Malcolm X. Seale, Newton, and other Panthers provide an armed security detail for Betty Shabazz, his widow. Newton says their ability to stand up to police at the event finally convinced Cleaver to join the BPP.

April 1967: The Panthers begin organizing in North Richmond, holding two armed rallies and distributing newspapers informing about the murder of Denzil Dowell by the pigs and the need for armed self-defense.

2 May 1967: A delegation of thirty Panthers go to Sacramento to challenge the passing of a new bill prohibiting carrying arms in public. Twenty-four New Afrikans are accosted and arrested on the way home – 22 armed Panthers, as well as unarmed Eldridge Cleaver and an unarmed, unaffiliated New Afrikan passerby.

May 1967: The Black Panthers publish their Ten Point Program, laying out what they believe and what their demands for New Afrika are.

12 July 1967: Rioting breaks out in Newark, NJ, a majority-New Afrikan city under oppressor-nation control, after a New Afrikan cab driver is beaten too badly to walk. Molotov cocktails are thrown and businesses are looted as the rebellion grows. Twenty-one New Afrikans are murdered by police.

23 July 1967: Urban rebellion breaks out in Detroit, MI, going beyond looting to tactics such as arson and sniping. 33 New Afrikans are killed, as well as ten whites, many of them government officials.

27 October 1967: Newton shoots notorious racist pig John Frey, killing him; Frey shoots Newton in the stomach. Newton’s trial for the murder of Officer Frey sparks the “Free Huey!” movement, wherein Newton is presented as resisting the perpetration of violence against New Afrikans by the occupying-force pigs.

17 October 1967: White youth radicals protest the draft in Oakland, attempting to shut down the induction center, and are met with violent repression. Further rallies and riots against the draft eventually merge with the “Free Huey!” campaign, among both the white and New Afrikan left.

1968: RAM disbands and decides to coordinate through other groups such as the Black Liberation Party, African Peoples’ Party and House of Umoja. BPP rules state: “no party member can join any army force other than the Black Liberation Army.”

28 January 1968: Seale gives a speech at a UC Berkeley rally linking the struggles of anti-draft protestors with police brutality against New Afrikans.

31 March 1968: Malcolm X Society hosts 500 New Afrikan nationalists for the Black Government Conference in Detroit; they initiate the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afika (PG-RNA) to be composed of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

4 April 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is martyred in Memphis, Tennessee. Rebellion erupts in Memphis, and then sweeps New Afrikan neighborhoods. The Panthers play a role in quelling riots in many cities to encourage more organized rebellion.

6 April 1968: Lil’ Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old Black Panther, is martyred by police in West Oakland while doing armed pig patrols with Eldridge Cleaver.

8 September 1968: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover designates the BPP as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

Fall 1968: Cleaver goes into exile in Cuba.

17 January 1969: Los Angeles chapter leaders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins shot and killed by US organization members on UCLA campus, provoked by FBI interference. BPP leadership had institutes a policy to expel those in clandestine military formations. Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, with eir experience in the U.$. military, takes Carter’s position as Southern California Minister of Defense and begins building chapters across the south while developing underground cadre units as well

July 1969: BPP hosts Revolutionary Conference for a United Front Against Fascism conference in response to others looking to them for leadership, bringing together 4,000 activists, majority Euro-Amerikan. Bobby Seale stresses class struggle and condemns Black racism. The conference creates National Committees to Combat Fascism across the country under BPP leadership that focus on control of the police and freeing political prisoners. Cleaver appears publicly in Algiers, Algeria where ey will establish the BPP international office.

5 November 1969: Seale sentenced to four years in prison for sixteen counts of contempt, because of his outbursts during the trial. Originally being tried as part of the Chicago 8 for “inciting a riot” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, ey was bound and gagged during the trial. Seale was released in 1972.

4 December 1969: Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago chapter, is assassinated by Chicago police and FBI. The pigs killed Hampton as ey was successfully uniting lumpen organizations in Chicago of different nationalities in the original Rainbow Coalition. The BPP was also in the process of expanding the Central Committee beyond the trusted founders in Oakland to include leaders like Hampton before this happened. This never happened and contributed to the splitting of the party over regional differences.

1969: Los Angeles pioneers the first-ever Special Weapon Assault Team, or SWAT, against BPP office building in L.A.

July-August 1970: Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown join a delegation of people from the U.$. visiting North Vietnam, North Korea and China.

5 August 1970: Huey P. Newton is acquitted and released from prison, taking control of the underground military operation that was built while ey was incarcerated.

7 August 1970: Jonathan Jackson is killed at the Marin County Courthouse attempting to free eir brother George Jackson.

August 1970: Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt goes underground to develop BLA and establish guerrilla bases, with support of the party.

October 1970: People’s Republic of China Premier Zhou Enlai hosts Newton, Elaine Brown and other Panthers. Tens of thousands gather in Tiananmen Square to honor their visit They also visit Jiang Qing.

December 1970: Newton and Elaine Brown send Melvin “Cotton” Smith, a secret police informant, to Dallas to meet with Pratt.

8 December 1970: Pratt, Will Stanford, Will “Crutch” Holiday, and George Lloyd arrested in Dallas; Cotton is arrested shortly after as well.

1971: The BPP splits.

January 1971: Newton and Brown publicly denounces Pratt and others arrested in Dallas for counter-revolutionary behavior. Panther 21 (NYC) issue statement from prison supporting Weather Underground, condemning BPP for ignoring Panther 21 and Weather.

23 January 1971: Newton publishes his theory of “intercommunalism” arguing that nations and national liberation were no longer relevant in global capitalism, which ey introduced at a speech at Boston College in November 1970 following release from prison.

28 January 1971: FBI offices in Boston, NY, LA and San Francisco receive memo to capitalize on the rift over armed struggle within BPP.

13 February 1971: NY Panthers Michael Tabor, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Connie Matthews were expelled after they went underground.

26 February 1971: Newton and Cleaver (in Algiers) have a phone conversation on live TV that ends with Cleaver calling for the reinstatement of expelled members from NYC and LA and the resignation of David Hilliard as Chief of Staff. Newton follows up by calling Algiers and expelling all Panthers at the BPP International office. Elaine Brown replaces Eldridge Cleaver on the Central Committee of the BPP.

3 April 1971: Cleaver faction begins publishing own newspaper Right On! calling for insurrection as The Black Panther newspaper moves away from calling for “revolution now.”

17 April 1971: Newton puts out statement “On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver…” stating the “We will never run for political office…”

19 May 1971: On the 46th birthday of Malcolm X the BLA shoots two cops protecting the house of the NY District Attorney in charge of prosecuting the Panther 21.

18 August 1971: FBI and police raid headquarters of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika in Mississippi.

21 August 1971: Field Marshall George Jackson is killed by guards at San Quentin State Prison in California. BLA carries out multiple retaliatory attacks on police in San Francisco, and ends support for clandestine military action in Oakland.

1971-1973: 2 years following split the FBI would attribute 20 police deaths to the BLA, while claiming police killed 7 BLA members and imprisoned 18 key members. In 1971 the BLA calls for a strategic retreat, but it is too late for many and the organization is too decentralized to pull back.

1972: Bobby Seale released from prison, but at by this time the BPP was becoming little more than a local community organization in Oakland. “Afro-American Liberation Army” used in place of BLA in Humanity Freedom Peace in 1972 – reprinting essays by Geronimo Pratt. AALA claims action in Los Angeles.

1973: Elaine Brown runs for Oakland City Council.

1973: In the two years after the BPP split, the U.$. government attributed the deaths of 20 police officers to the BLA.

14 November 1973: Police kill Twyman Meyers in an ambush in the Bronx, after which they declared they had “broken the back” of the BLA.

1974: Huey Newton flees to Cuba to avoid criminal charges and Brown takes over as chair of the BPP securing federal and foundation funding for its programs.

1975: Between 1973 and 1975, the FBI claims responsibility for 7 assassinations and the capture of 18 other BLA members.

1975: Imprisoned BLA members sum up last four years in report “Message to the Black Movement” that says, “we lacked a strong ideological base and political base,” and initiated the BLA – Coordinating Committee (BLA-CC), publishing a newsletter circulated in prisons. By this time, BPP chapters with links to the BLA have no above-ground presence.

1977: Newton returns from Cuba, Brown resigns from the BPP after an incident where Newton supported male members of the party who assaulted a womyn in the party in retaliation for the womyn reprimanding a male member for lack of discipline.

2 November 1979: BLA members successfully break Assata Shakur out of prison.

1980: NYPD and FBI form the Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) to coordinate search for Assata and to smash the BLA.

1981: Brinks truck holdup with BLA and Weather members involved led to other militants getting targeted, proving that BLA still had strong membership years after big raids. The Join Terrorist Task Force would go on to conclude that the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (including Weather and BLA members) had conducted many robberies throughout the late 1970s.

December 1981: Last known action of the BLA according to the JTTF.

June 1982: Black Panther Party closes its last office.

November 1993: Former BLA members issue public call to form a New Afrikan Liberation Front.

March 1998: the NALF and PGRNA-Sponsored Jericho ’98 mobilized at least 5000 people around the country for political freedom for nationalist-related prisoner organizing.

Sources: * Triumphant, Black August 2022, Power to New Afrika, MIM Distributors. * Akinyele Umoja, June 1999, “Repression breeds resistance: The black liberation army and the radical legacy of the black panther party, New Political Science. * Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., 2013, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, UC Press, Berkeley.

Bilal Sunni-Ali (13 July 1948 – 30 December 2024) was a revolutionary and dedicated citizen of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). That dedication took various forms, from eir clandestine organizing to eir contributions to revolutionary culture via eir jazz, blues, and spoken word performances aimed at challenging the status quo and building up a revolutionary nationalist consciousness among the people.

From eir youth, Bilal partook in pro-people activities from eir time as a musician in the Youth Division of the North East Bronx NAACP, to eir later activities as a founding member of the New York City Black Panther Party fighting housing issues, police brutality, and recruiting street L.O.s into the movement. Dedicated to the self-determination of New Afrika, Bilal Sunni-Ali went underground in 1968 with the Black Liberation Army. In 1982, ey would be charged and acquitted in RICO charges related to the freeing of Assata Shakur and a bank robbery by the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (RATF) for which Sekou Odinga (who died 12 January 2024) and Silvia Baraldini were convicted. Bilal was successfully defended by the late Chokwe Lumumba in the politically charged trial, where they charged the U.$. government with conspiracy on behalf of the RNA. The RATF is described in detail in the book False Nationalism, False Internationalism as the last attempt at the radical militancy of the 1960s by members of the RNA and the Euro-Amerikan May 19th Communist Organization. Prior to this, Bilal was locked up in Soledad prison from 1970-1972, where ey struggled to develop both the general and political education of prisoners. Bilal’s support for prisoners continued throughout eir life, as before eir recent death, ey was involved in the Jericho Movement and the Imam Jamil Action Network – organizations dedicated to the struggle of political prisoners.

Bilal was a devout Muslim who truly lived in accordance to eir faith – not only by embodying the Islamic practice of standing up for the oppressed, but by raising their consciousness at the same time; drawing the connections between imperialism and white supremacy to the oppressed youth.

Sifting through Bilal’s tenor saxophone performances online, one will come across em performing at many events centered around prisoners. The usual song of choice that ey perform is entitled “Look For Me In The Whirlwind” (a title inspired by Marcus Garvey). The lyrics are as follows:

It is said that Bilal also went by the name “Spirit” and I believe that to be an apt name for an individual who epitomizes the spirit of eir people in all that ey do.

Rest in Power Bilal Sunni-Ali!

Long Live the Republic of New Afrika!

I have been trying to follow the Palestinian liberation struggle for some time now, well at least in the best ways I can behind enemy lines: piecing bits and pieces of information together from the various media sources that make it in here.

What strikes me the most at this juncture is the dialectic between New Afrikan youth and Palestinian youth. Over here in the Amerikkkan empire, New Afrikan youth, particularly New Afrikan male youth occupy very unfortunate spaces in the Amerikkkan oppressor nation’s mental. These youth dwell in the danger zone, spaces that are purely a figment of the “white” imagination. This criminal Black youth label. This “hyper-reality” is no more real than the emperor’s new clothes, analogous to the rapist who takes the mentally ill patient back to the scene of the crime, back to the moment of trauma, when the delusions began. It is within the dark interiority of this lived nightmare, the womb of the unforgiving chattel slavery regime enclosed within old style colonialism that the New Afrikan male youth was conceived. This is critical and informative for understanding mass imprisonment in New Afrika.

This process of marking New Afrikan youth as criminal prisoners essential to the functioning of mass incarceration is a mechanism of social control operative under national oppression. For this repressive institution to succeed, New Afrikan youth must be branded as criminal before they are formally subject to this mechanism of control. This is essential, for forms of explicit colonial control are not only prohibited but are widely condemned. Capitalism evolved.

Both New Afrikan and Palestinian people are entrenched beneath the boot of their colonizers without a state that is theirs to foster, nurture, and facilitate their respective national liberation struggles to actualize control over their destiny. Both face the repressive arm of mass imprisonment to undermine and destroy their resistance efforts and thus fine comb their national oppression nightmare.

The I$raeli colonial project is a direct extension of U.$. imperialism. The U.$. penal system being the first and largest experiment in humyn bondage, it is only fitting that this institution of social control finds its way into the Palestinian lived experience under I$raeli occupation.

Palestinian youth are the only youth that are formally subject to a “military” court/detention system. Palestinian youth are not privy to a civil court; that means when they go before a judge they are not entitled to a lawyer, nor a translator even though the entire court proceedings are in Hebrew – a non-Arabic language. And if they remain silent, that means they plead guilty. So no civilian proceedings for any Palestinian youth at all.

Many of these oppressed youth are taken during night raids from their parents or adult supervisors to further facilitate intimidating interrogation techniques. These parallel a lot of New Afrikan juvenile situations as the school-to-prison pipeline. The harsh penalties for simple offenses that are the rule, just the whole criminalization process of entire neighborhoods/locations mirror U.$. law enforcement imposition of gang injunctions/occupational patrolling of predominantly New Afrikan neighborhoods in the United $tates of Amerikkka.

The I$raeli settler occupation project parallels Amerikkkan national oppression of New Afrika with the language and practical application of the tried and tired excuse of blaming the so-called “savages” for provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending themselves and the land “God ordained” them to have thus dehumanizing and criminalizing a whole nation. The zionist regime’s actions against Palestinian youth are nothing short of genocidal.

In the current news, it is important to note the essential role played by the Palestinian youth, mostly under 18. The resistance movement there is mobilizing their youth to stand up and struggle forward. This is very important to glean lessons from, particularly within the historical and contemporary social dynamics encircling settler colonialism and national oppression in Occupied Palestine. This is good for an application to the Amerikan empire. As ULK aptly notes: the Black Panthers were mostly teenagers.

i want to begin with a sort of disclaimer or qualifier, due to the fact that many speak on the realities of the lumpen, particularly the street gang elements, who’re not cut from that cloth, if you will.

Although i am now a committed New Afrikan Freedom Fighter, i was initiated into what is now the Forum Park Crips, in Houston, Texas, when i was in my early teens. My life in the streets was one of tribal animosities and strife, territorial beefs, and a survivalist level of hustling and scheming. i did everything one does in the street life from selling narcotics, to thievery, burglary, armed robberies, pimping, and of course ‘sliding’, as they say nowadays.

As a result of this lifestyle and my social ignorance, and lack of firm identity, purpose and direction, by age nineteen i found myself wanted for capital murder, and by twenty-one sentenced to life without parole for said murder, while holding strong to the key principle one was taught in the lumpen sub-culture, ‘No Snitching’!

Prior and during my prison stint i operated as a makeshift hystorian, and due to my persynal background i’ve paid much attention to the historical development of the lumpen in North amerikkka in general, New Afrika in particular, and the lumpen-organizational development specifically. This along with my adherence to historical dialectical materialist philosophy, i believe, qualify me to speak with a certain level of knowledge, wisdom and understanding on the subject.

The Foundation

At the moment in time of the founding of the original Crips, one of its co-founders, Tookie Williams(Ajami Kiamke Kamara) states plainly, “The crips mythology has many romanticized, bogus accounts.” i believe We in revolutionary movements take these and other similar ones too literally and therefore misrepresent the origins and hystorical functions of the Crips and others within the class and national liberation struggles. In this realm we often promote an idealized, non-materialist perspective.

Mr. Kamara(Williams) continues,

“Another version[ of Crip mythology] incorrectly documents the Crips as an offshoot of the Black Panther Party (BPP). No Panther Party member has ever mentioned the Crips(or Cribs) as being a spin-off of the Panthers. It is also fiction that the Crips functioned under the acronym C.R.I.P, for Community Resources Inner-City Project or Community Revolutionary Inner City Project.(words like ‘revolutionary agenda’ were alien to our thuggish, uninformed teenage consciousness.) We did not unite to protect the Community; our motive was to protect ourselves and our families.”

i’ve begun this ‘Foundational’ part of this piece within these words from the late Mr. Kamara, because We too often, and too easily romanticize the beginnings of the urban amerikkkan street organizations. Now that i’ve clarified that the Crips weren’t exactly founded with a revolutionary or progressive intent it makes it clearer why the Crips have largely stagnated in their operations for so long now.

The late Malcolm X once said that ‘prison is the poor man’s university’, and proving his maxim true, it was many of the first generation of Crips who populated the prisons in California, being influenced by the politicized culture in the prison established by those who came before them, who began an effort(s) to improve the imagery, and provide meaning to what Mr. Kamara himself even called, ‘a causeless cause’.

When the imprisoned Crips began to become more culturally aware in the 80’s and onward they sought to stir the crip force in another direction by establishing a constitution, which was largely influenced by the BGF constitution, they functioned under acronyms like C.R.I.P, for Community Revolution In Progress, and other similar ones, brothers began becoming Afro-centric and instituted speaking ki-swahili. Also, many around those times became radical and politicized. Some formed orgs like the Black Riders Liberation Party, a new generation Black Panther Party that was formed in the 90’s by former Crips and Bloods. Others formed more groups like the C.C.O.(Consolidated Crips Organization) which was to be de-tribalized, more centralized and politicized version of the Crips street gang. Many of these brothers had intentions of changing the various communities and ‘Crip turfs’ they represented upon their release from prison. More often than not their efforts were not effective enough to curtail or re-focus the self-destructive culture that had by then turned southern California upside down.

Simultaneously the Crips and other similar groups were spreading throughout the north amerikkkan continent, what wasn’t spreading however was the more refined and socially aware sectors or versions of the Crips entity. So instead of ’hoods across amerikkka emulating a Conscious Crip, they were emulating cats who were Crip Crazy, and this subsequently intensified elements of self-destruction among the New Afrikan nation in amerikkka.

Building On The Foundation

As the 21st century came and settled in, the spread of the Crips to every corner of the kkkountry resulted in different locales placing their own unique cultural traits and adding on to the hystory of the original formation Mr. Kamara and Raymond Washington founded along with Mac Thomas. Therefore, many people, and groups Built of the Foundation.

i’ll preface the following by stating that lumpen organizations have repeatedly showcased the capacity to turn away from basic parasitic criminality. However, they’ve done this in two similar but unique ways. One way is progressive in terms of its break from basic criminality, yet it is reactionary in terms of its benefit to the revolution. The other way is progressive in that it provides the break from the criminal mentality, and is also revolutionary in that it seeks to join the revolutionary forces in collective war against the state and its enemy institutions.

We’ve seen examples of the first way numerous of times. One which may be familiar to some is the 1966 arranged truce between the then Blackstone rangers and the East Side Disciples, which was instigated by the promise of the $930,000 in grant money from the federal government through the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The grant was based on a deal that the two street organizations would cease their beef and come together to prevent uprisings, which had become common throughout heavily populated New Afrikan enclaves throughout the kkkountry.

Local politicians in the Chicago Democratic Party and the Southern Democrats in Congress did not approve of these particular elements being provided with Grant money from the government, and the grant was cancelled a year later(1967). In 1968 the Chicago BPP was founded and these same lumpen orgs were enlisted or attempted to be enlisted by the federal government to prevent the rise in influence of the BPP and its revolutionary line. The Rangers and the Conservative Vice Lords opted for the former way, and were showered with grant money from the bourgeoisie(Clement Stone of Combined Insurance of America; Sears; First National Bank of Chicago, among others). These lumpen moved toward Black Capitalism, and filled the vacuum in what was then a new non-profit sector instituted to remove the teeth from the revolution and the revolutionary potential of the lumpen particularly.

On the other hand, the East Side Disciples changed their name to the Black Disciples (identifying as Black instead of negro was a culturally progressive action at the time) and formed an alliance with the Chicago BPP.

So as this hystorical account illustrates, the lumpen are a vacillating class. We can flow whichever way the wind blows, but Our life experience under monopoly capitalism and imperialism, suggested that absent a form of ‘class-suicide’, We will do like the Rangers and take the capitalist road, which will have us cozied up with the bourgeoisie, making love with our enemies and murdering our friends.

Within the Forum Park Crip experience there has been an evolution and a certain level of class struggle, and ideological struggle (which is one in the same thing). To quote Malcolm X, again, ‘Prisons are the poor man’s university’. One member of the Forum Park Crips (FPC) spent time incarcerated and chose to apply himself.

He learned somethings from the cats like myself who have been politicized while in captivity and he began to develop a New Vision for our street tribe. Upon release, he began to institute the New Vision. See everyone and every entity has a basic Identity, Purpose and Direction, and as evolution takes place it takes place within the nature of these three elements of the entity in question. So upon release the first step was to apply a New Vision to what the Identity of a FPC was/is.

Like the brothers in California decades ago with their C.R.I.P.(Community Revolution In Progress), the homie strove to fine tune the image, by establishing Forever Protecting the Community(FPC) as an official community organization dedicated to mentoring youth, minimizing gang violence, and empowering the community.

Because of the numerous influences, and illegitimate capitalism being foremost among them, FPC in its beginning stages turned down a similar road as Jeff Fort’s Rangers in 1960’s Chicago. FPC received grants from the city and used them along with other similar formations to fund a purchasing of acreage to start community gardens, promoting food sovereignty, a memorial tribute to victims of police and gun violence. Prior to the grants FPC provided school supplies and thousands of backpacks, sponsored summer kids’ festivals, and mentoring school children by doing speaking engagements at local schools.

As i’ve pointed out, these efforts are progressive in the sense they’re a long way from the parasitic criminality the homies had been involved with prior. However, it can be reactionary in the sense that absent any sense of revolutionary orientation, this amounts to nothing more than mere community service, and never did at the root of the systematic problems that cause the surface level expression of the oppressive social contract.

After discussing this somewhat with some of the guys plans have come to fruition to establish a campaign that attacks a particular vestige of genocidal culture in the Forum Park area. This being the out of control open-air sex trafficking that de-values our community and makes it uncomfortable and unsafe for elements in Our community. The campaign will create a class struggle for unity both within the community and the organization, and will make the bond between the org and the people. Moreso, it will begin to establish what will hopefully become a distinct line of demarcation between the local government, and the rest of the non-profit sector, who’ve become entranced with utilizing the plights of the people as a stepping stool to gain economic upliftment. As FPC and other similar formations move out of that mode of operations, and begin to call others out on it and for their deceitful service to the people, it will create unity within classes apart of the local class struggle.

In closing, i’ve found the observation of comrade Jalil Abdul Muntaqim to be true,

“Beneath the Black working class are the subculture lumpen-proletariat, the unskilled and menial laborers whose primary means of subsistence is based on hustling(stealing, selling drugs, prostitution etc), marginal employment, and welfare. For the most part the socioeconomic provision within the subculture are maintained by the ‘illegitimate capitalist’ activity of the lumpen-proletariat. In accordance with their aspirations to fulfill the social values of the bourgeoisie, they employ business acumen in criminal activity for subsistence and profit. As they seek material wealth and social status of the bourgeoisie within the confines of the subculture, they are in many ways politically reactionary, unconcerned with anything other than personal survival and individual gain. It is only when the lumpen-proletariat are educated and become politically aware of their socioeconomic condition, that the possibility exists for them to become staunch supporters of the revolution, recognizing their dire standard of living is based wholly on the system of oppression they are desperately trying to emulate…”

As has been routinely stated, the revolutionary forces must ingratiate themselves within the activities of the lumpen organization. Specifically once they’ve already reached a certain level of collective social awareness and activity. And then, influence the development of their social awareness and activity by providing political education, by conceptualizing programs that are pertinent to the particular lumpen community one is seeking to organize. The lumpen is a vacillating class, that can and often does see-saw between revolutionary and reactionary activities. There are some socially aware and nationalistic elements, particularly among the oppressed nations of north amerikka, who can be coached towards full support of the revolution, the choice between serving the people heart and soul, and the reactionary road are ultimately up to the lumpen themselves. i’ll leave with a word from Comrade George:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of the situation, understand that fascism is already here. That people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your life in revolution. Pass on the torch, join us, give up your life for the people.” - George L. Jackson

<sup>SOURCES:
1. Blue Rage Black Redemption, Stanley Tookie Williams
2. Ibid.
3. Vita Wa Watu #11, Spears & Shield Publications
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. We Are Our Own Liberators, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim, ‘National Strategy of FROLINAN’
7. Blood In My Eye, George L. Jackson</sup>

Intensify The Struggle for Class Unity

“[Our purpose is] to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.” (1)

This feature, “The Culture Corner,” is a space designated to highlight and share cultural content that expresses revolutionary ideals and principles. “The Culture Corner” appears in the newsletter Power Moves, an internal newsletter distributed in certain Texas prisons, and is being reprinted here.

In 2024, the hip-hop genre has evolved to be the most influential genre of music in the world. As such, it is incumbent upon revolutionaries to utilize this genre to express revolutionary ideals and to advance revolutionary consciousness and solidarity.

One artist that has done this prolifically, while steadfastly maintaining a revolutionary nationalist and anti-capitalist political line, is Bay Area lyrical comrade The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic.

Just as important as eir content, in my view, is the accessibility of the music to the captive population. In the prison climate today, dominated by tablet devices with their purposely indoctrinating content, Eseibio’s content does its job by providing a revolutionary alternative. Eir content can be accessed on J-pay/Securus tablets on the media store app. Simply search music and type the artist’s name as spelled above. Eseibio has an extensive catalog of music, spanning over a decade worth of material with a wide number of albums and mixtapes.

While all of Eseibio’s material is revolutionary with an underground flavor, there are certain albums and songs that stick out more than others. These include the albums “Black Panther” and “African Revolutionary”. The former’s tracklist reads like a history lesson on the Black Panther Party. Standout tracks like “10 Point Program,” “Hands Off Assata,” “Red Book,” “Letter to Afeni,” “Smile 4 Pac,” “Off the Pigs,” and “George Jackson Day of the Gun” are bangers that also educate the listener. Other standout tracks like “Juche,” “Che Guevara,” “Bust A Cap,” “Kwame Nkrumah,” “Black Boots,” “In Defense of Self-Defense,” “Free The Land,” “Free Em All,” and “C.R.E.A.M-Capitalism Rules Everything Around Me” should be in steady rotation.

Most important of all is that Eseibio, and other artists that shall be featured in “The Culture Corner” in the future, provide a platform for political prisoners to bring brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who were left by the wayside into the revolutionary movement. It is not good enough to complain of the maneuvers of the enemy. We have to be good at improvising on the new realities. This is only one way of mixing up the necessary improvisation.

A clenched fist salute to The Revolutionary Eseibio The Automatic and all other revolutionary and conscious artists using their talents for the advancement of the class and national struggles.

“The Culture Corner” will put the spotlight on other artists in future issues, We recommend you to go check out the comrade Eseibio.

^{Notes: (1) Mao-Tse-Tung’s Selected Works III p.84, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.”}

Comrade Ruchell Magee was one of two survivors from the Marin County Courthouse massacre that took General Johnathan Jackson’s life on August 7, 1970 (peace be upon him). Comrade Ruchell Magee is now 84 years old. Ruchell Magee was born in 1939 in Louisiana. He would go on to spend 67 years of his life in unjust captivity, starting the year after the murder of Emmett Till. In 1956, Ruchell Magee (like Emmett Till) was framed in a similar fashion of unfounded accusations of rape, where the victim originally did not identify Ruchell Magee. Nevertheless, he was convicted in a one day trial by an all white jury. After serving 7 years on a 12 year sentence he was released on parole in 1962. Comrade Magee then moved to Los Angeles.

After a 10 dollar quarrel over marijuana ending in a kidnapping charge, Magee was convicted (with little evidence) after a two day trial and sentenced to serve seven years to life on kidnapping charges that legally only carried a penalty of up to the maximum of five years. In 1965 he appealed the charges and was denied. While housed at San Quentin Magee became a jailhouse lawyer. There he met Comrade George who was also serving a Cali-type sentence of one year to life. They were routinely denied by the parole boards. Ruchell was also a major participant in the movement for prisoners’ rights and never stopped fighting for his release.

The Marin County Courthouse Massacre

Around the young age of 15-years old, Johnathan Jackson became politically active witnessing the injustice done to his brother George by the legal system. Johnathan was a very smart student, scoring at the top of his classes.

George Jackson later had Johnathan move in with Angela Davis to keep her safe. There he learned weapons training and dated Angela’s girlfriend who was white. He would later impregnate her before his demise, with a son his mother would deny. A son that would grow into a polar opposite of George Jackson.

The day before the Marin County Courthouse Massacre, Johnathan Jackson sat in the courtroom in a trench with a bag for the trial of James McClain. The next day he visited George Jackson. They spoke, embraced, then left.

A few hours later a Sheriff spotted Johnathan in the courthouse with the same trench coat and bag on from the day before. The suspicious Sheriff approached Comrade Johnathan and asked him: “What’s in the bag?” Johnathan replied:

“Alright gentlemen, freeze. Nobody move. We’ll take over from here.”

After equipping his comrades with artillery the armed defendant James McClain and the witnesses called there for a prison murder, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee, left with the prosecutor, judge, and three jurors as hostages, demanding the release of Comrade George and the guarantee of safety for themselves.

James McClain walked the judge (with a shotgun barrel roped around his neck) to the van with the hostages. As they where leaving the parking lot hundreds of officers took aim on the custom made bullet proof van. A lot of the officials were from San Quentin. As Johnathan was leaving the parking lot holding a handgun out the window he was shot in the hand while holding it out the window.

The rest of the officers opened fire on the van, the shotgun goes off, and the prosecutor snatches the gun off Johnathan’s hand as he brings his hand back in the window with the gun. The prosecutor would then murder Comrade Johnathan, James McClain, and William Christmas. As the Sheriff and state officials continue to shoot the van they eventually shot the prosecutor in the back, paralyzing him. Ruchell Magee was later found unconscious.

Ruchell Magee was charged with murder and kidnapping, along with Angela Davis who allegedly provided Mr. Jackson the guns. In a separate trial Angela was acquitted, but in 1973 Mr. Ruchell Magee was convicted of simple kidnapping and voted 11 to 1 to acquit him of the murder charge.

Even though an autopsy of the judge who had been killed proved Ruchell did not kill him, and no evidence proved Ruchell knew anything about Johnathan Jackson’s plan to liberate the prisoners from the Marin County Courtroom, on 23 January 1973, Magee was sentenced to life in prison.

After the conviction he was denied parole 16 times and housed at high security prisons like Folsom and Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, while he became one of the most consistent and successful jailhouse lawyers and advocates for prisoners.

Earlier in his bid, Ruchell took the name Cinque from the African leader Sengbe Pieh of the 1839 La Amistad slave ship rebellion, insisting that Africans have the right to resist “unlawful” slavery. Ruchell maintains that Black people in the U.$. have the right to resist this new form of slavery which is part of the colonial control of Black people in the country.

“My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery. This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.”

Ruchell has now been released on a new bill passed in California that allows incarcerated medical leave for those who are at fatal health risks.

Welcome home the G, AKA General Magee

^{Sources: The Road to Hell, by Paul Liberatore
Ruchell Magee released after 67 years in prison!, by Claude Marks of Freedom Archives}

Life is about growth and change. A constant change is needed, or even the small pleasures that we enjoy begin to lose their excitement. Even though I don’t agree with a lot of changes, well the ones that aren’t progressive or geared to help us go forward, I still understand that their presence is needed. You see, revolution as a necessity only begins to make sense to those who have the keen insight into atrocities that make revolution a necessity. The problem we encounter is communicating this to the overwhelming majority, and those people are willing and even oftentimes unwilling participants in the progression of the things that make revolution truly a necessity.

The problem is also in how revolution is perceived. Most people equate civil disorder, small riotous acts such as killing police, kidnapping government officials etc. as the revolution itself and this is not the case. Revolution is all about complete change of society as a whole – a violent overthrow of a class dictatorship by another. In some ways, many small revolutions take place each day, but they are not what we need to move forward in good shape. Revolutionary change, to mean anything, must start with the individuals changing themselves. Without that sort of progressive conduct we cannot begin to show others the benefits of our ideals.

Another problem is that the revolution has been hijacked by non-progressive puppets who act under the guise of a revolutionary progressive apparatus. This is much like what deteriorated the power of our progressive leaders of the yesteryears. The new left of the 1960s mislead the Black Panther Party. They encouraged the Panthers to miscalculate revolutionary steps and also by convincing the Panthers that they alone were the vanguard party placed too heavy a burden on its members causing them to make mistakes and also going against the central tenant of communism – from each according to ability and to each according to its needs. Another issue was that their support was only monetary and as Malcolm advised us before

“money brings advice. Since it’s their money that will eventually carry our movement, it’s their advice we will be listening to. Eventually a Black group will end up having a white brain controlling it.”

So the Panthers became the puppet group of the new left, while those who truly waged the battle sat back and got a lot of beautiful brothers and sisters killed and in the end they withdrew their support. A similar thing is occurring now, only this time, since revolution has taken on a new character tone, message, and the leaders appear more dressed up and cute rather than the rugged edge that was characteristic of the yesteryears’ soldiers, the picture has become even more foggy and harder to slice through the deception of Oligarchs.

Another problem is that we don’t own the media outlets, newspaper firms, or even the schools that teach us the absurd and outrageous lies that pacify the brain and hinder revolution. Affirmative action helped us to send more and more blacks to college and to create HBCUs (historically black colleges/universities). But the more educated we become the more dangerous we become, and so even more efforts to conceal the truth have been created.

Basically what I’m leading up to is the fact that as revolutionaries – whether cultural, economic or spiritualist – there is so much work to do. If we let those whose political economic interests do not match ours at the bottom of the rung continue to tell us how best to revolt or change the world then we will continue to lose. What they are really doing is letting the powers that be know how we are coming that way all efforts to forestall our movement will happen before we get to make our moves. The people who have advised us before sometimes become our enemies as well. Why do you think Elijah Muhammad was so adamant about “his” ministers not saying anything about JFK? It was because those same people he called the devil is who financed his program. So he allowed Malcolm to say what he said with no warning (even though he advised all other ministers), that way Malcolm’s fall from grace was ensured.

Even this newspaper Under Lock & Key doesn’t escape scrutiny. There is no published material that is anti-government that escapes censorship. So how big is your commitment to change? Because a lot of what is published as it relates to issues pertaining to Blacks and “our place” in revolution, or how we are “supposed” to move forward seems like the same advice by the new left to the Panthers. Am I making an indictment? No, however, being as aware as I am and considering how aware you are supposed to be, I must wonder if your commitment is sincere. Especially since we are in the belly of the beast and could suffer the same fate as our fallen comrade George Jackson under the same pretextual designs by each state to prevent the disciplined practice of revolution.

As a show of your commitment, since I’m questioning it, I would like this to be printed, not to offend you but to ask brothers and sisters to question their own sincerity as well. If our commitment is not cemented by the events that we must actually change, then we are letting people co-opt our direction and that cannot happen unless they can prove with facts that their direction is more beneficial and helpful. But if that were the case wouldn’t we be a lot more further on that issue and all issues in general?

Galaxy Ruler Universal Sole Controller Allah

MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with this comrade about the central role played by funding sources in the path (and splitting) of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). And it is fair to say we have not offered a concrete solution to this. The Panthers raised funds from the masses by selling their newspaper and doing other fundraisers, as do we. The Panthers also got funds and resources from local businesses as they asserted political power in areas like Oakland. It was largely the legal repression of the state that pushed the Panthers to start branching out into their fundraising efforts among wealthy Amerikan celebrities and such.

In practice the BPP was the vanguard of its day, with other oppressed nation formations trying to follow suit and white student/youth groups offering support. The BPP correctly encouraged similar formations and leadership to develop for other nations in the United $tates. Yet there did develop a line that the Black revolution here on occupied Turtle Island is the vanguard of the revolution globally, a line some promote to this day. While the oppressed of the world understandably put great hope in this internal force for revolution in the belly of the beast, we understand today that revolution comes from the periphery and works its way to the core. A successful revolution from within the United $tates is conceivable, but not before many successful revolutions elsewhere bring the socialist camp to a point of strength in the world again. The BPP itself reached its peak in part due to international alliances that cooled as struggle against the United $tates cooled internationally.

We also agree with this comrade that it is healthy to question the sincerity of MIM(Prisons) and whoever you choose to work with. Not to the point of paralysis, that it prevents you from working with others. But the only way we will succeed in offering effective leadership is if we receive thoughtful critique from an educated populace. That is why we are always attempting to teach how to think along with what to think. The bigger problem we have today is that there is no revolutionary leadership recruiting mass followings. People aren’t being misdirected by the funding of revolutionary organizations, they’re being misdirected by the funding of non-profits and social media platforms. At its peak, the BPP had an operating budget over $9 million in 2023 dollars(1), but even that would be nothing for the imperialists to double. Not to mention the measly MIM(Prisons) budget. Therefore, the need to address the risk described by this comrade is real and important in the longer term.

Are we sincere? committed? Hell yeah! But intentions are only a starting point. The only real measure is effectiveness. And effectiveness is no easy measure either. In our underdeveloped conditions it’d be easy to say that nothing is effective, which is why we must study other times and places to learn what effectiveness looks like and how to achieve it. The BPP of 1968 was looking pretty effective, but they did ultimately fail. “How much of that was avoidable?” and “how could it have been avoided?” are the key questions for us to attempt to answer. These are questions this comrade’s letter brings to the fore.

In another letter this comrade says we must ensure people are not committed merely to advance their own careers. We agree, and we do have an answer to that, which is anonymity. We intentionally discourage the promotion of cults of persynality, we even try to prevent people from publicly taking credit for the things they’ve done as individuals. We are one body, that takes credit for what we do as a body, and we struggle to prevent splits and offshoots.

<sup>Notes:
1. Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, 2013, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, University of California Press: Berkeley, p. 392. and https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1970?amount=1200000
2. get our study pack “Defend the Legacy of the Black Panther Party 50th Anniversary Edition” for $6 stamps or cash or work trade for more analysis of the BPP</sup>

This year marks the 51-year anniversary for the fallen comrade, BGF founder/leader, Black Panther General/Field Marshall and Dragon of Ho Chi Minh. This year also marks the 52 year anniversary of his alter ego, the man-child, snatched away too soon, Jonathon Jackson, whose brave revolutionary effort at only the age of 17 to free his older brother George Jackson from a legal lynching, can only be viewed with awe. Their stories of determination inspire the question of why the revolution has been snared, and to seek a newer and more improved method for the revolution that we new soldiers, guerrillas, and political scientists plan to usher into the near future.

This month of August (Black August) is dedicated to the fallen soldiers who bravely gave their lives to improve the quality of living of not only the Afrikan Amerikans who belong to the original man, but also to educate ourselves about the correct ways of living that the history of antiquity has provided us with. It is a time to internalize those lessons in a way that would help us to bridge the racial gaps and get us to do away with our class masters and black, brown, red (a variation of brown), yellow and white could live in a world that is free from the trifles that have destroyed humanity.

George Jackson was a very strong, intelligent, courageous, and dedicated brother whom the history books should teach us more about. For many, George’s career as a shining revolutionary leader ended about as quickly as it began. However, those exist outside of the mainstream corporativism politics know well that George lived and existed as a legend long before the Soledad Brother case that would make him famous.

George Jackson entered the California penitentiary system in 1960 with an indeterminate sentence of one year to life, for the conviction of a service station robbery that resulted in the theft of $70.00. Though the evidence was in his favor, his court appointed attorney convinced Jackson that if he would only plead guilty to a lesser offense that he would receive some light county time. However, through a change of hands, his deal that was promised would result of his conviction and an indeterminate sentence that then in California would prove often times volatile because it was up to a parole board if you ever went home. A system that was heavily racist and extremely dangerous, proved to be fertile grounds of an indeterminate sentence of one to life, becoming life or in George’s case the death penalty.

The author of 2 classic pieces of Black literature that could be used as a treatise of sorts, George laid out the harsh realities of California’s prison system. The atmosphere was so openly racist that whites were even working hand in hand to kill Black and Mexican prisoners, even though ironically enough, just like in Texas some Mexicans would make alliances with racist organizations and join in killing Blacks. Through these activities George felt the need to organize what he called “the chief of staff” and that chief of staff that organized to combat the killing of Black prisoners would later on become what is now known as the Black Guerrilla Family, a revolutionary group that George attempted to align to the revolutionary movements not only in Amerika, but also in Cuba and other Third World nations. In a nutshell George agreed with International Communist Solidarity.

An avid reader, George transformed himself from an adolescent, rebellious street gangster, to a revolutionary leader and prison activist whose knowledge about history, economics, and politics, would make college professors marvel at his intellect. But this is also part of the larger reason why he was never paroled. You see, the sentence that George had, at the most allowed for a convict to do 2 years and then be paroled, but it was this political insight at a time were Black male expression was denied. Not only Black male expression, but at a time when George found communism, Amerika was trying its best to crush this red scare. So his knowledge of capitalist Amerika was that great that prison officials went to the extremes of trying to kill him. Their line to whites was “kill Jackson it will do you some good.” However as gifted as he was mentally and intellectually, he was also gifted as a self-trained guerrilla assassin. George practiced a very special bastardized style of martial arts and kung-fu called iron palm and he worked out 6 to 7 hours a day doing 1000 finger tips a day.

Typing laboriously on a prison typewriter, Jackson wrote position papers that dealt with prison life, economics, and the corrosion of Amerika’s corporate capitalist culture and circulated these papers throughout prison walls. For his activities, he was first rewarded with segregation, often times with a welded lock. Once that proved to not be enough, he was set up to be killed. But since he was a fierce warrior, oftentimes even fighting for other prisoners who were the victim of racial assaults, he would fight single-handedly 5 or 6 prisoners and come out on top. At this point the white prisoners and officers hated but feared him.

George was loved and respected by the Black prisoner population and became their teacher and leader. Even the most racist whites respected George because to them he was a man who was totally straight. All while others would murder mouth and sell wolf tickets, George was as good as his word. If he made a statement of some kind, it would always be followed by action. George formed a political education class and through that he gave his comrades the revolutionary platform that would transform their Black criminality into a Black revolutionary mentality. He also taught martial arts at a time where martial arts was outlawed in prison.

His commitment was so great that during a prison protest that led to some white inmates trying to actually lynch a Black demonstrator under the order of racist cops, when George saw all of these white guys about to push this brother off of a 30 ft. tier, he began punching, kicking, and knocking those guys off the tier. However, for this, he, not the white inmates, was locked up. It was only later on that prison officials would admit that he stood up for a brother about to be hung.

In 1969, the California parole board who had been stringing George along for years, but who had no intentions of ever releasing him, told him that he was going to be transferred from San Quentin to Soledad and that if he maintained clean conduct for 6 months he would be granted parole. Soledad was a racist penitentiary that stoked the flames between prisoners, and that ignited racial animosity to build to murder. George, as a “class based” revolutionary always strove to get the convict class to see that they could easily overcome their oppressors if they would only unite, because by playing at racism the law would essentially win since it would only be 2 maniac groups at war.

On 13 January 1970 after months of lockdown due to racial killings, a new rec yard was opened. A system where Blacks, whites, and Mexicans are to remain segregated from each other, a so-called “mistake” took place and 7 Blacks and 8 white were led to the rec yard where predictably a fight broke out. The officer’s job is to give a warning shot. However, officer O.G. Miller with a military background, southern upbringing, and racist attitude shot and killed 3 Black prisoners in cold blood. One of the dead was George’s close friend and mentor W.L. Nolen. Three days after these killings the Monterey County Courthouse, over prison radios, announced that these killings were justifiable homicide. In less that 30 minutes later anger would turn into redemption as 25-year-old officer Mills was beaten to death and thrown over a 30 ft. tier with a note in his pocket that said “one down 2 to go.”

In February, George Jackson, John Clutchette, and Fleeta Drumgo would be formally charged for the officers death even though they had no evidence outside of their prison files that labeled them as Black revolutionaries. According to prison officials, George was blamed because he was the only person who could have done it. Hardly enough in the area of evidence, it finally gave the state the legal pretext to do what they had been trying to do quasi-legally for years. If George was convicted it meant death since he already had life.

When George received visits from his family they would bring his younger brother Jonathan and the two of them would get off to one side of the visiting room where George would do his job as an educator and at the age of 16 Jonathon had a remarkable insight into guerrilla warfare, communism, and uniterian conduct locally and globally. His love for his brother made him grow-up. He saw that they never intended to let his brother go. At a time when most teens are thinking about self-gratification, Jonathon could only think of George. He said “people tell me that I’m too involved with the movement and my brother’s case, but I have one question to ask people who think like this, ‘What would you do if it was your brother?’”.

George and Angela Davis became somewhat of a power couple and George appointed Jonathan to be her bodyguard. After being fired from UCLA as a professor, just because she identified with communism, George feared that some right-wing nut might feel like a hero by killing her. It was around this time that the state asserts that Angela Davis provided the weapons that Jonathan Jackson would use on 7 August 1970 when he took a bag full of guns to a courthouse in Marin County and passed the out to 3 prisoners on trial. Calm and cold he stated “alright gentlemen I’m taking over now” and “you can take our pictures, we are the revolutionaries.” At the young age of 17 Jonathan had sense enough that the only way he could affirm justice was through a bold act that would take his life.

A year and 2 weeks later on 21 August 1971 prison authorities would concoct the most outrageous story ever invented to justify the assassination of one of our most gifted leaders, George Jackson. The state “asserts” that after a visit with his attorney Stephen Bingham that George had a metallic item in his hair that proved to be a gun that he used to gain control of the Adjustment Center after he said these chilling words “The dragon has come.” The absurdity is that when they reenacted this in a court, they affirmed that George’s cell was 50 yards away from the visiting room at San Quentin, a highly sophisticated, technological prison. And when they reenacted how it would’ve taken place they said “the gun wobbled dangerously”, meaning that it couldn’t have happened that way. At best if George did end up with a weapon he must have wrestled it away from his assassins.

But the kicker is “they say” George had explosives that he intended to blow a 20 ft wall away and escape. “They say” that George ran towards a wall and was shot in his ankle that was immediately shattered, yet somehow he managed to get up and run again and a second shot was fired that entered his back and exited his head. However, what “they say” again proved to be a lie as autopsy proved that the shots that were fired couldn’t have come from a high position as they assert, but rather from the ground.

Now why such an outrageous story for this situation? I mean to me, even though I feel very sorry for Georgia Bea Jackson as she lost 2 sons within a year, I still can’t help but admit that if he went out as the state asserts, it even more adds to his legend. Killing 5 people in the span of 30 seconds (which is impossible) before being killed is remarkable. But upon investigation, if George would’ve went to trial and beat his case, he very well may have been released from prison. So instead of us believing in government created conspiracies, we need to question the facts. In love and revolution, may George and Jonathon both rest within the essence, while they continue to live through people like me and countless others.

Peace to those who don’t fear freedom