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.
Mail the petition to your loved ones inside who are experiencing issues
with the grievance procedure. Send them extra copies to share! For more
info on this campaign, click
here.
Prisoners should send a copy of the signed petition to each of the
addresses below. Supporters should send letters on behalf of prisoners.
Warden (specific to your facility)
Oklahoma State Jail Inspector, Don Garrison 1000 N.E. 10th
St., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73117-1299
ODOC Office of Internal Affairs Oklahoma City Office 3400 Martin
Luther King Avenue Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73111-4298
Office of Inspector General HOTLINE P.O. Box 9778 Arlington,
Virginia 22219
United States Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division Special
Litigation Section 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, PHB Washington,
D.C. 20530
Oklahoma Citizens United for Rehabilitation of
Errants (OK-CURE) P.O. Box 9741 Tulsa, OK 74157-0741
And send MIM(Prisons) copies of any responses you receive!
MIM(Prisons), USW PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140
As I laid there on my prison issued bunk, nursing my wounds and pains, I
thought back to the very day I was sentenced to prison. Did my sentence
also include occasional excessive force? Did the judge also pronounce
contrived rule violations as part of my sentence? Were all my
constitutional rights relinquished that day? I don’t recall the judge
asserting anything to that fact. But evidently, brutality perpetuated
Under the Color of State Law is an inherited trait of prison.
The term “Under Color of State Law” means that civil rights were
violated by an individual or individuals who at the time of the
violation were employed by the local, State, or Federal government.
Since brutality under Color of State Law is so prevalent, it would be
appropriate if the sentencing Judge would state the obvious during the
sentencing phase of whatever crime a person was convicted of. The Judge
could say something to the fact, “I’m sentencing you to 10 years in
prison, plus some occasional excessive force, which will be
administrated by various rogue Correctional Officers throughout the
course of your confinement. In addition, you will also be subjected to
several contrived rule violations. The frequency of these false rule
reports will depend on the utter lack of integrity and the psychopathy
of each rogue Officer.” At least this information would give a person
facing incarceration a heads up. Time to mentally prepare themselves for
the Guantanamo Bay-style treatment that will be visited upon them.
During the course of Correctional Officer B. Johnson’s assault on me, I
felt as if I were somehow transported to a Third World country where
human rights and regulation did not exist. Apparently, my assailant felt
the same. How else could he feel so at ease with openly violating my
civil rights, right there in front of two other officers, who evidently
concurred with B. Johnson’s views on civil rights? Maybe the three
officers forgot they were in Amerika? That they were correctional
officers employed to uphold the law in a system governed by the U.S.
Constitution? Or just maybe they forgot that I am a human being? Officer
B. Johnson did call me a “Jungle Bunny.” But if that were the case,
shouldn’t animal rights have protected me that night? Here in America,
if you harm an animal, you will go to jail. Who knows what the three
officer’s were or were not thinking. Whatever it was, the shear, sadism
of it all was revealed that night.
The assault was witnessed by two prisoners. Both were housed in a cell
that gave them a direct view of the incident as it took place. One
prisoner, who initially claimed that he witnessed the assault, later
recanted his story. He became a confidential informant. He had alleged
to the investigating Officers that I conspired to falsely write up B.
Johnson for assault. He was originally placed in the hole for a cell
fight, whereupon he threw hot boiling water on his cellmate. His
cellmate received 3rd degree burns on his face and chest area. At that
time he was facing a segregated program (SHU term) for assault on a
prisoner with a weapon (hot water), causing serious injury. Also a
possible DA referral. But all that disappeared after he provided false
confidential information concerning B. Johnson’s role in the assault.
This prisoner was released from the hole and placed on Corcoran’s SNY
yard, which is a protective custody yard, equivalent to Disneyland.
Officer B. Jonson, has a history of assaulting prisoners in handcuffs.
Now I have a permanent shoulder injury. I will need surgery at some
point. I have received physical therapy treatment.
MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with this comrade’s assessment
that prison sentences in Amerika come with implicit brutality and both
physical and mental abuse. These go well beyond the legal punishments
supposedly a part of criminal “justice” in this country. As this abuse
is standard in Amerikan prisons, we disagree that the perpetrators are
“rogue officers.” We need to expose this systematic brutality and
organize towards a level of unity that will make it very difficult for
individuals to turn against their fellow prisoners, and where the guards
know that we have the numbers to fight back and prevent this violence.
On November 28, WikiLeaks began releasing U.$. diplomatic cables that
have been extremely embarrassing to the U.$. government and its allies.
This resulted in increased persecution of the WikiLeaks site and staff,
and an international debate about the role of websites like WikiLeaks.
This story underscores the failure of mainstream media to do more than
serve as a mouthpiece for the imperialists. But it also reveals the
lengths to which imperialist governments will go to persecute activists
and those causing damage to imperialism.
Humynity benefits from more availability of information about
imperialism. As revolutionaries, we welcome the opportunity to expose
U.$.-backed atrocities and the imperialists’ back room deals. Meanwhile,
the attacks on WikiLeaks and its staff present the opportunity to
further expose the myth that capitalism = democracy. The basic premises
of democracy include transparency of government and freedom of speech.
While the communist government in China under Mao encouraged the people
to criticize their leaders during the Cultural Revolution and went so
far as to provide free paper and space to post big character posters to
propagate free speech, the Amerikan government is doing all it can (in
collaboration with other governments and capitalist corporations) to
shut down the speech of those who are merely exposing facts.
WikiLeaks launched in 2007 to publish documents from anonymous sources
that generally expose the actions of imperialist governments and their
lackeys. WikiLeaks states that “One of our most important activities is
to publish original source material alongside our news stories so
readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.” On their
website WikiLeaks summarizes the major stories they have broken; an
impressive list of government and corporate corruption, brutality and
war.(1) It has been particularly valuable in exposing U.$. atrocities in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
As a result of their work exposing governments, corporations, and
churches around the world, Wikileaks has faced significant persecution.
According to their website, “Since formation in 2007, WikiLeaks has been
victorious over every legal (and illegal) attack, including those from
the Pentagon, the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the Former President
of Kenya, the Premier of Bermuda, Scientology, the Catholic & Mormon
Church, the largest Swiss private bank, and Russian companies.“(1)
Julian Assange has taken the role of public spokespersyn and as such has
faced dramatic persynal persecution, particularly after the release of
the U.$. diplomatic cables.
What’s the big deal about the U.$. diplomatic cables?
Before we get into the issues of censorship and political persecution,
let’s take a look at what these diplomatic cables really contain. The
U.$. government employs thousands of foreign service staff posted in
embassies and consulates around the world. According to the U.$
Department of State website, these people work in one of 5 general jobs:
Consular: Consular Officers protect Americans abroad and strengthen U.S.
border security.
Economic: Economic Officers work on economic partnerships and
development, support U.S. businesses abroad, and cover environmental,
science, technology, and health issues.
Management: Management Officers run our embassies and make American
diplomacy work.
Political: Political Officers analyze political events.
Public Diplomacy: Public Diplomacy Officers explain American values and
policies.
In other words, many of these people work in foreign countries
acting as spies. But not spies who are working in secret; they are overt
spies whose job is to meet with people at various levels in other
governments and then write up reports about their meetings and the
situation in those countries. This is how the U.$. government collects a
lot of its information about what’s going on around the world. The
foreign service staff don’t try to hide what they are doing. It’s a
political game which foreign diplomats sometimes use to get messages
through to the U.$. government without having to make public statements.
There is a lot of backroom deal making done this way, without having to
make information public.
So when people say that the diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks released
are embarrassing, what they really mean is that imperialist governments
and their lackeys don’t want the truth to be known publicly. As
WikiLeaks summarizes, “the cables show the extent of US spying on its
allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights
abuse in ‘client states’; backroom deals with supposedly neutral
countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats
take to advance those who have access to them.”(1) So the U.$.
government doesn’t want people to know these things. They are probably
not so much worried about the Amerikan public whose response to this
story has been split with many taking the side of their imperialist
government, but rather concerned about what people in other countries
are going to learn, especially those in the Third World being screwed by
the imperialists and the deals they make with their own lackey
governments.
Imperialists and censorship on a global scale
There was a quick and coordinated attack against WikiLeaks by the U.$.
government and their allies in the international and corporate
community. This included a coordinated December 2 attack shutting down
their domain via the New Hampshire-based company EveryDNS, and
Amazon.com cutting off the infrastructure services they were providing
to WikiLeaks. Forced to move to the French internet company OVH,
WikiLeaks then faced attacks by the French government looking for ways
to ban hosting of the site.
The finance capitalists got in on the game quickly too. On December 3
PayPal cut off the account that was collecting donations for WikiLeaks,
claiming that the account violated its “Acceptable Use Policy” by
engaging in “activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct
others to engage in illegal activity.” On December 6 MasterCard
announced its plan to cut off WikiLeaks from accepting MasterCard
payments because “MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or
indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.” Visa
took similar action on December 7. On December 8 WikiLeaks released
diplomatic papers that revealed lobbying by the Obama administration on
behalf of MasterCard and Visa.(2) And finally, the Swedish bank
PostFinance froze Julian Assange’s persynal bank account on December 6,
using the flimsy excuse that he provided an incorrect address on his
account.
On December 23 Apple dropped the WikiLeaks app (program for iPhones)
from their app store, just 10 days after it was approved for sale. The
app gave users access to the WikiLeaks Twitter feed and the ability to
access leaked documents. An Apple spokespersyn gave the official excuse:
“Apps must comply with all local laws and may not put an individual or
group in harm’s way.”(3) These examples of corporate censorship help
demonstrate the complicity between the imperialist government and big
corporations. The imperialists make backroom diplomatic deals to give
the capitalists financial advantages, and those same corporations look
out for the government’s interests by denying anti-imperialists access
to resources to exercise their free speech.
While diverting resources from WikiLeaks’ primary mission, these attacks
have also served to expose the imperialists, who only give lip service
to freedom of speech when it serves their interest. And this has
galvanized a counter attack by defenders of WikiLeaks. This counter
offensive includes hackers who have launched denial-of-service attacks
to shut down web sites that have cut off WikiLeaks, targeting EveryDNS,
Amazon, MasterCard and Visa among others.
In the United $tates, the imperialists are running around with their
pants down, unsure how to control the information already released. On
December 3 the White House issued a directive that forbids unauthorized
Federal employees from accessing the classified documents that are now
available on WikiLeaks. Carrying out this order, the Library of Congress
blocked access to WikiLeaks from its computers. Government employees,
military personnel and employees of some private corporations are
prohibited from reading the documents, even from home. Meanwhile,
college students are being threatened that if they post info about
WikiLeaks online they will not be eligible for government jobs after
graduation.(8)
Amerikan public opinion is split between those who think it’s right to
investigate those in power and those who want to see Assange prosecuted.
It might be surprising that so many Amerikans care about freedom of
speech when the imperialists so clearly oppose it. This is promising for
activists looking for ways to win over people who have a material
interest in imperialism, even if only for specific battles against the
imperialists.
Political persecution of activists
Julian Assange and others have complained of surveillance and harassment
in various countries in the past, but after the release of the
diplomatic cables this has stepped up to a level that may lead to death
or permanent imprisonment of those associated with the site. While
throwing around baseless accusations of “terrorism” against Assange,
North Amerikan politicians have openly called for him to be illegally
assassinated - the definition of terrorism.(9)
The U.$. Justice Department has been scouring the books searching for
something to prosecute Assange on, some way to punish him and stop his
work, and they are negotiating with Sweden to get him extradited to the
U.$. Assange was taken into custody in Britain after an arrest warrant
was issued by Sweden to question him on allegations of sex crimes, and
has since been released on bail.
In the United $tates, there has been a strong push to make it illegal to
conduct investigative journalism that is not approved by the State.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
argues that Assange’s actions violate the Espionage Act, a World War
I-era law crafted to punish individuals who spy on the country during
wartime. This is despite the fact that WikiLeaks has not released any
Top Secret documents and even offered to work with the U.$. government
to redact any facts that would endanger individuals in the field (which
the U.$. turned down). An initial hearing on WikiLeaks and the Espionage
Act was held on December 16 by the House of Representatives Judiciary
Committee. So far no decisions about prosecution have been made. Senator
Joseph Lieberman goes further and has urged the administration to
consider charges against media outlets that produced news articles based
on the leaked documents. These organizations, according to Lieberman,
have “committed at least an act of bad citizenship, but whether they
have committed a crime - I think that bears a very intense inquiry by
the Justice Department.”(4)
In the 1970s a very similar attack against Daniel Ellsberg was carried
out after he released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times,
exposing the Amerikan government’s lies about the Vietnam War. The U.$.
government attacked Ellsberg both covertly and overtly in court where
they put him on trial for theft and conspiracy under the Espionage Act.
Ellsberg explains, “The truth is that every attack now made on WikiLeaks
and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon
Papers at the time.”(5)
If the outcome is more chilling this time around, it will be with the
mainstream media cheering for the repression of their own rights to
report on facts. They’d rather talk about sex and persynalities anyway.
We talk about sex to stop talking about sex
Pseudofeminists have lined up on two sides of the Julian Assange “rape”
debate. One recognizes the obvious truth that this is a political ploy
by the imperialists to distract from the facts and attack Wikileaks. The
other side says we need to stand by all wimmin who claim that they are
raped. The latter are a dream come true for the FBI. The former are on
the right track, but falter in their attempts to define “real” rape.
This situation was painfully obvious in a series of debates on
Democracy Now! this week that degenerated into a pornographic
discussion of the details of various sexual encounters.(6) To both
defend Assange and uphold that some sex is not rape, Naomi Wolf ended up
making some embarrassingly incorrect claims.
If we can just admit that all sex is rape, then we can get on with the
original discussion of hundreds of thousands of wimmin (and men of
course) dying at the hands of the U.$. military as exposed by WikiLeaks
documents. The real feminist here is white male Julian Assange who
responded to TV news host Larry King’s inquiry about the sex charges
with: “It is not right to bring in sensational and, in fact, false
claims, a relatively trivial matter compared to the deaths of 109,000
people… CNN should be ashamed of doing that.” Assange was referring to a
death toll released on WikiLeaks that was recorded by the U.$. military
in Iraq who previously claimed to not be tracking Iraqi deaths.
To assure readers that these tactics are nothing new, a parallel story
played out within our own movement just 2 years ago. The decades old MIM
website at etext.org was shut down by people outside of MIM on January
9, 2009. This occurred as the primary editor of the website was
reporting death threats and the circulation of rape charges by multiple
white wimmin. He has referred to this as a “lynching,” as rape charges
have always been a tool of social control of oppressed nation men under
the rule of white power. While MIM(Prisons) and at least one other cell
made efforts to restore the content of the site, the damage was done as
all incoming links were defunct. Traffic to those documents remains at a
fraction of what it used to be.
The editor of the etext.org MIM site later explained that he did not
restore the site immediately as it could just as quickly be taken down
again. WikiLeaks is unique in its resources and high profile status, so
it has largely managed to remain online, with its mission receiving a
net benefit from the press coverage. But when decades of material are
separated from their domain name as happened to MIM, as well as many of
the over 80 hip hop websites shut down by Homeland Security last
month(7), their access to the rest of the world is seriously challenged.
As we have mentioned in the past, independent institutions of the
oppressed online are very fragile. Some combination of technology,
security tactics and alliances with the national bourgeoisie in
anti-imperialist nations will need to provide solutions to this problem
as the imperialists increase their repression on the internet.
This message replaced the content of over 80 hip hop websites in
November 2010
The need for anti-imperialist media sources
A University of Maryland study titled “Misinformation and the 2010
Election” found that people who are exposed to mainstream news sources
are quite misinformed about the facts. For instance, 42% of people
surveyed didn’t know that Obama was born in the U.$. The survey looked
at newspapers and news magazines, network TV news broadcasts, public
broadcasting (NPR or PBS), Fox News, MSNBC and CNN. They found “Looking
at the frequency of misinformation among the consumers of various news
sources, one striking feature is that substantial levels of
misinformation were present in the daily consumers of all news sources.
Even the daily consumers of news sources with the lowest levels of
misinformation still included substantial numbers with
misinformation.”(10)
This doesn’t mean we should all stop following the news; people with
higher levels of exposure to news sources had lower levels of
misinformation. This last fact had a few striking exceptions, for
instance, Fox News topped the misinformation list with the viewers with
the most incorrect information and a trend showing that the more a
persyn watches Fox the more misinformed they become. However, consumers
of other mainstream media sources were also very mislead on key facts,
including NPR and PBS consumers and viewers of other daily TV news.(10)
Without a viable daily source of anti-imperialist news, revolutionaries
still need to use mainstream media, but we need to look at it with a
critical eye and use as many international sources as we can get our
hands on.
The clear misinformation being spread by mainstream media, combined with
the constant covering up of even the most mundane of facts by the
imperialist governments and their allies, mean that the value of
alternative media sources can not be overstated. WikiLeaks provides a
clear service to anti-imperialists even without any significant
political analysis on their website. The politics are clear in the
context of the content that comes through WikiLeaks daily exposing
imperialism as a system of corruption, brutality and exploitation. News
sources like this are crucial to revolutionaries and we must defend
their existence.
It is our task to go further and provide context for the facts and help
people make connections between all the terrorist acts committed by the
U.$. and other imperialist countries and the just revolutionary
struggles of the oppressed peoples around the world.
[Below are excerpts from a proposal from a comrade. - ULK
Editor]
One of the greatest leaders to teach us how to move lumpen organizations
(LOs) to the next level by applied science was the beloved Brotha
Malcolm X. While many before him spoke about the issues of
self-determination and human rights, his was the most vocal, and his
articulation was more relevant to us with street and hood ethos because
he was once a pimp, hustler and to some degree, a gangster.
…
One of the first things I strive to illuminate to a student is the
application of these ideas to the present oppression that lumpen
organizations suffer without understanding their legitimate human rights
to exist through the Universal Human Rights of Self-Determination.
Incorporating the fundamentals of legality and sociology, I posit:
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is
that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in
politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force
citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” -Robert H.
Jackson. Supreme Court Ruling in West Virginia Dept. of Ed. v. Barnette
(1943).
and,
“History should teach us. . . that in times of high emotional
excitement, minority parties and groups which advocate extremely
unpopular social or governmental innovations will always be typed as
criminal gangs and attempts will always be made to drive them
out.” -Associate Justice, Hugo Black dissent in Barenblatt v. U.S.,
360 U.S. 109, At. 159 (1959).
Hugo Black ought to know, as a member of the outlaw and terrorist
network KKK before stepping into the justice position.
…
Common sense illuminates that if a general continues to go out to battle
using the same failed approaches and armory that has proven to be
counter-productive because it is not only known, studied and mastered by
the opposing forces, but they are the ones who designed it, s/he will
fail. S/he must retreat and restrategize and not only restock, but seek
new armory to do battle.
Even before I became an astute student of the Art of Vita or student of
Sun Tzu, and was in my street hustling mode, I knew early on that once
one of us got caught hustling a particular mode or game, it was time to
change strategy. Or to put it more simply, if that dope house got
raided, it was time to move to a new locale.
Yet in terms of strategy, a lot of LOs think we can continue in the same
old hustle scheme. Even more harmful is the individual who thinks this
way. They don’t realize they are helping the forces of hate justify
their “collective punishment” of the lumpen as a class.
…
It’s a betrayal to the struggle for street formations to still be living
and accepting this kind of treatment that affects us on the street and
in prison. How many generations of our people are in prison from each
individual formation? People need to stop accepting this mentality of
inferiority, that we are criminals for trying to define our own futures.
MIM(Prisons) responds: The right to organize for
self-determination is denied regularly to the oppressed nations in the
United $tates. Following the downfall of the most successful party to
represent the Black nation, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,
the imperialists went about a conscious effort to divide the oppressed
along class interests by integrating the petty bourgeoisie and further
criminalizing the lumpen. As a result any independent oppressed nation
organization today is automatically labeled as criminal, terrorist or a
security threat with little resistance from the oppressed nation petty
bourgeoisie and, as always, loud support from the white nation.
The failed strategies for self-determination through capitalist business
models, legal or illegal, need to be left behind for a righteous
collective struggle to be free from oppression. Not only will the lumpen
find their own power in reuniting around this struggle, but they will
begin to find allies in other groups when they stand up for true
self-determination. Self-determination is earned, not guaranteed.
As our readers already know, MIM(Prisons) runs political study
groups with our comrades behind bars. And as some of you know, and have
experienced, the state generally finds our non-violent, non-law
breaking, communist study in poor taste. In October 2009, a study group
assignment for the pamphlet “What is MIM?,” which included other
participants’ responses to the previous assignment, was mailed to a
participant held in Arizona. This study group assignment was censored
because allegedly it “may be obscene or a threat to security” generally,
and “promotes racism and/or religious oppression” specifically. Yes,
this is coming from the state that is fighting the federal government in
court to be allowed to use the color of one’s skin as probable cause for
investigating immigration law violations.
Our comrade imprisoned in Arizona appealed this decision, and
MIM(Prisons) wrote to the prison administration to request an
explanation as to how this study group assignment could “promote racism
and/or religious oppression” without even mentioning races,
nationalities, or religions:
“It is truly fascinating that your mailroom staff could find the
promotion of racism and/or religious oppression in this document.
Nowhere in the letter are the following words even mentioned: religious,
religion, christian, muslim, baptist, KKK, white, mexican, latino, asian
or arab. The word”black” is written once in the context of a reference
to the Black Panther Party’s education programs. How can you even talk
about religion or race enough to speak against it if you don’t use any
of the above mentioned words?” - MIM Distributors, Legal Assistant
No attempt has ever been made by Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC)
administration to address this point. ADC General Counsel Karyn Klausner
offered her opinion: “I have reviewed the materials sent by MIM
Distributors and find the decision to exclude the publication due to
content ‘promoting racism and/or religious oppression,’ was
appropriate.” She gave no explanation of how she came to the conclusion
that it was an “appropriate” violation of Constitutionally protected
rights. In a later letter Ms. Klausner clarified that with this
statement she didn’t mean she was “upholding” the censorship in her
official capacity as General Counsel of the Office of the Director of
ADC, just that she agreed with it on a persynal level.
Instead of explaining how the study group mailing in any way promotes
racism and/or religious oppression, ADC administrators then began to
rely on their policy of violating MIM Distributors’ First Amendment
right to free speech and association to censor this study group
assignment:
“There is nothing in case law that gives rise to a publisher’s right to
appeal a decision to exclude its material on an administrative appeal
level. . . You are not entitled to a forum within the prison system.” -
ADC Director, Charles Ryan
Director Ryan clearly had not investigated the matter on the prisoner’s
end either. He claimed that our imprisoned comrade had not appealed the
decision to censor, yet s/he had, on multiple levels, and submitted
requests for the results of these appeals.
“You claim that MIM Distributors has no rights to appeal the censorship
of their mail. While we are not lawyers, and may have put too much
weight on the Procunier case, we still uphold that we have First and
Fourteenth Amendment rights according to federal law. As employees of
the state you may not deny anyone their rights to free speech and
association arbitrarily and without due process. In fact, if you read
Thornburgh v. Abbot, 490 U.S. 401, which you referred [COLLEAGUE] to,
you will see that its procedural protection was provided because the
publisher was notified of the censorship and given the right to
independent review. A number of U.S. Court of Appeals decisions have
upheld the right of the publisher in such instances (Montcalm Publ’g
Corp. v. Beck, 80 F.3d 105, 106 (4th Cir.), Trudeau v. Wyrick, 713 F.2d
1360, 1366 (8th Cir.1983), Martin v. Kelley, 803 F.2d 236, 243-44 (6th
Cir.1986) ).” - MIM Distributors, Legal Assistant
And ADC’s response?
“You assert that ‘MIM Distributors’ First Amendment right to free
speech’ is not being respected. The Arizona Department of Corrections is
obligated to respect, within the confines of legitimate penological
interests, an inmate’s constitutional rights. It does not follow
that ADC is likewise obliged to do the same for an independent
distributor such as MIM.” - General Counsel, Karyn Klausner
It is apparent that the ADC believes themselves to be exempt from the
legal straitjacket of the United $tates Constitution, which they don’t
see as having an application in the 10th Circuit. This isn’t surprising
coming from an institution whose administrators believe that one can
promote racial and/or religious repression without ever talking about
race or religion!
Amerikans like to pretend they hold no political prisoners, yet
political repression is an integral part of the U.$. injustice system at
every step. In our struggle for a world without oppression, MIM(Prisons)
works to build public opinion for national liberation struggles amongst
prisoners through our newsletter Under Lock & Key, our free
books for prisoners program, and our study groups. Within prisons, there
are two primary ways in which the state enacts political repression:
through physical torture techniques such as solitary confinement, forced
drugging, beatings, starvation and murder; and through the control of
the spread of ideas, which also includes solitary confinement as well as
the censorship of mail, and outlawing oppressed nation organizations.
In pre-fascist Amerika, we are still promised certain rights under
United $tates laws. While we recognize that U.$. law will never lead us
to communism (a world without oppression), we still need to fight for
more room to organize and educate for revolution. Fighting against the
censorship of revolutionary literature is vital to maintaining the
connection between the inside and out, which may make the difference
between being turned on to communism or not for many people. For those
already turned on, we need to fight against censorship so that we can
continue to build our revolutionary understanding.
Like a MIM Distributors Legal Assistant mentioned above, we are not
lawyers. We do what we can to protect our Constitutional rights from the
outside with the resources we have, and we rely on prisoners to fight to
maintain their rights from the inside. If there is a lawyer who wants to
get involved with this specific incident in Arizona, or with
anti-censorship work in general, get in touch!
Sergeant S. S. Crandell, Yega, S. Motto, S. Byers, and Fish victimized
me on 15 October. They stole my television and lied, saying it had wires
sticking out.
Guard Yega handcuffed me and took me to the program office over a 602
[grievance] for indigent envelopes I never received. When I returned to
the cell, all my legal materials were in a large pile on the floor,
covered with shampoo, coffee, hair styling gel and baby powder. My
television was gone. Officer S. Motto threatened to kick my ass if I
602ed it.
Can you please help? My aunt has cancer, and my family is sick living on
a fixed income.
For years, MIM(Prisons) and others have agitated around the point that
people are getting indeterminate sentences in torture cells in
California based on things like birthday cards. Today, Sacramento
Prisoner Support made public some Freedom of Information Act documents
from the FBI showing that people on the outside can also be targeted for
who they send birthday cards to.
The gang investigation unit in California, IGI, has already made efforts
to identify people working with MIM(Prisons), so this is nothing new or
surprising. But we point to it to remind people of two lessons. First,
security is important at every stage and in everything you do when
dealing with the imperialist state because they are watching. Second,
when the FBI has to file a report every time comrades get a letter or
birthday card, that is resources being taken away from other
intelligence work. Some people view efforts developing better security
as taking away from “real” political work. But examples like this show
that security work in itself is a blow to imperialism by utilizing
resources that could be used against the Third World. Of course, anyone
who doesn’t take security seriously will never accomplish what we really
need to do to end oppression anyway.
The new Arizona immigration bill SB1070, signed into law in April by
Governor Jan Brewer, is the latest and most overt action in the ongoing
battle against oppressed nations within U.$. borders. This law, which
will take effect by August, assigns state police to question anyone they
believe is in the United $tates illegally, and requires everyone to
carry papers proving their legal status. It is even a crime to be caught
without this proof.
As Arizona is a state bordering Mexico, it has a large migrant
population, disproportionately from Mexico. In 2006, so-called
“Hispanics” accounted for 29% of Arizona’s population – most of them are
Mexican. This is double the percentage of Latinos living in the United
$tates in 2006. More than half of the Arizona residents in the
“Hispanic” category were foreign born. While there is a concentration of
Mexicans in Arizona, the portion of the population that is foreign born
(14%) is not much more than the typical percentage of foreign born
residents in the rest of the U.$. which was 12.5% in 2006.(1) But in
Arizona it is skewed towards Mexicans (and migrants born in other Latin
American countries) while other areas of the U.$. have larger
concentrations of Asians, europeans, Africans and people born in other
parts of the world. In the U.$. in general, 45% of the foreign born
population is from Latin America, which means they make up less than
half of the 12.5% of foreign-born migrants living in the U.$.(2)
According to the U.$. census these numbers had not changed much by 2008
(the latest statistics available) in terms of the proportion of Mexicans
and foreign-born residents in Arizona and the rest of the country.
This law is a logical step forward, or backward for the oppressed, in
the Amerikan spiral down the anti-immigration toilet. Those who act like
this law is un-Amerikan are missing a fundamental fact of Amerikan
imperialism: it is founded on national oppression. The Arizona law is
most definitely Amerikan, and for this reason we must oppose not only
this law, but all so-called immigration reform. Immigration is a false
issue of Amerikan imperialism which requires militarized borders to
protect the wealth that it stole from the land and labor of people in
other countries.
Rather than get caught up in talking about which people should be
allowed the privilege of coming to the United $tates (generally people
from other imperialist countries, or those who have done Amerika
political favors like the Cubans who oppose Castro), we need to be
fighting to open the borders. Recent migrants in the United $tates
should be treated no different from those who came here over the past
500 years – we are all living on land stolen from the indigenous
peoples. In contrast, the Mexican people migrating north have a
legitimate claim to the land now comprising the southwest of the United
$tates.
Between 1846 and 1848 the United $tates fought one of its earlier wars
of external aggression, against Mexico, ending in 1848 with the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty established U.$. control of what is
now the southwest of this country, but ironically guaranteed Mexican
residents in that territory the right to retain their land and enjoy the
rights of U.$. citizens. This portion of the treaty was promptly ignored
by Amerikkkans and land owned by Mexicans was illegally annexed after
the end of the war in acts of both private and government sponsored
national oppression.
Labor aristocracy benefits from closed borders and illegal workers
It should be no surprise that a recent poll by NBC and the Wall Street
Journal found 46% of Amerikans strongly supporting the Arizona bill,
while only 24% were strongly opposed. In fact, 24% might seem high to
those of us who understand that the labor aristocracy has a strong
interest in protecting the wealth of Amerikan imperialism and their role
in benefiting from the exploitation of the world’s people. This interest
leads the labor aristocracy to support imperialist wars of aggression
and reactionary anti-immigrant policies. However, this law in particular
is one that will be opposed by a lot of Latinos, even if they may
support wars of imperialist aggression. Because this law takes such a
broad sweeping attack it is hard to get behind if you might look like
you could be in the country illegally (read: are not white). So that 24%
strongly opposing SB1070 includes people who are otherwise strong
supporters of Amerikan imperialism. This is an example of why there are
more allies to anti-imperialism in the Brown and Black labor
aristocracy, even if they are not consistent.
Citizens of the United $tates are profiting just by being citizens,
enjoying artificially high standards of living propped up by imperialist
profits brought home and distributed in the form of high salaries with
benefits, as well as services. As the Maoist Internationalist Movement
(MIM) explained in
MIM
Theory 1 and 10, the wealth in Amerika is not created in Amerika;
Amerikan citizens are parasites. And to maintain this parasitism the
country must keep the borders closed. Open borders would lead to a
deluge of people migrating into the U.$. looking for an opportunity to
partake in the wealth stolen from their countries.
Rather than share the wealth in the United $tates, borders are
militarized and “illegal” workers are allowed in only when there is a
need for truly cheap labor, because Amerikan citizens are not going to
provide that labor. So Amerikan citizens benefit again from closed
borders, in the form of workers to pick their crops, and do the jobs
that no citizen wants, for cheap enough to keep the price of food,
restaurant service, and house cleaning down.
Trust the prison industry?
One ironic element of Arizona SB1070 is the provision that they trust
the police to pick out who might be suspected as an illegal immigrant
without engaging in racial profiling. The reality of the criminal
injustice system is blatant racial profiling as just one aspect of
national oppression. The injustice system overtly targets oppressed
nations within U.$. borders, from the police on the streets profiling or
just setting people up, to the laws and courts which are skewed against
oppressed nations, convicting disproportionate numbers of Blacks and
Latinos and giving them longer sentences for the same convictions, to
the prisons themselves which target oppressed nations to deny parole and
lock in control units.
Everyone knows the police already engage in racial profiling, so why
would they stop just when enforcing this law that is, in itself,
requiring racial profiling. No one is going to stop a white person and
say “Hey, I think you are here illegally from France, can I see some
proof of your immigration status?”
Further fueling the prison industry, SB1070 gives the Arizona criminal
injustice system an easy way to lock up more migrants, a growing trend
in Amerikan prisons. As we reported in the Under Lock and Key #11
article
National
Oppression as Migrant Detention: “As of July 2009, there are 31,000
non-citizens imprisoned at the federal level on any given day in the
u.$. This number is up from about 20,000 in 2006 and 6,259 in 1992.
There are more than 320,000 migrants detained each year by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and as many as a quarter of them are
juveniles. These numbers include only those imprisoned under federal
custody, although they may be located all around the country and in
state prisons and local jails.” We went on to point out that locking up
more migrants helps fill empty prison beds, something that private
prisons in particular are lobbying for.
Fight national oppression with unity
A dozen Black and Brown hip hop artists from Arizona came together to do
an
eight
minute remake of Public Enemy’s song By the Time I Get to
Arizona called Back to Arizona to oppose SB1070 with a
similar militant message. The original song documented the struggle to
get racist Arizona to reinstate the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday two
decades ago. That history drove home the connection between struggles of
all oppressed nations, which is a repeated theme throughout the video.
Among activists opposed to the new Arizona law, the slogan ‘Do I look
illegal?’ has been gaining popularity. This question calls out the
clearly racist intent behind the law which will require cops to pick out
people who don’t look like good white Amerikkkan citizens. As
revolutionaries we call on all oppressed nations to join the fight
against this latest legalization of national oppression. As
anti-imperialists we must stand against all limits on migration. The two
articles [
1,
2
] on this page written by comrades behind bars demonstrate, this unity
and correct understanding of history.
Them good ol’ boys are at it again. As much as Amerikan pre$ident Barack
Obama would like us to believe that we have reached a new stage in
Amerikkkan society, in the form of a “post-racial Amerikkka,” which is
an oxymoron by the way, state sanctioned racism raises its ugly head yet
again. This time it is in the form of Arizona’s racist and illegal
Senate Bill 1070. Racist, because it obviously gives Arizona’s
occupational forces (law enforcement) the right to stop or pull people
over solely for the color of their skin.
Reactionaries in high places as well as other proponents of SB1070 argue
that the power to stop and card people will only be called for with
“probable cause,” and that this power to card people for their
citizenship papers is wholly sanctioned by the 4th Amendment of the
constitution. However, we from the oppressed communities know full well
that “probable cause” is a very loose and flexible term as applied by
occupation forces. “Probable cause” can range from “gang attire” and
looking “suspicious” to being seen by pigs in the wrong neighborhood. We
from the oppressed communities recognize at a glance the obvious
implications of “probable cause” such as “driving while Black.” Only a
fool or a racist would think this oppressive tool, SB1070, is right in
any way.
Although the Amerikan judicial system has given occupation forces and
the kangaroo court system wide berth and due deference when it comes to
the way that they apply “probable cause,” we must note that technically
the way in which probable cause is actually applied is illegal. So it is
no surprise that many people have expressed outrage at the idea of this
racist and illegal law.
While “probable cause” has hystorically been directed at the lumpen
class within the U.$., SB1070 now gives the state of Arizona the power
to not just target the destructive side of oppressed nations, but the
power to further oppress, harass, detain and deport whole nations of
people within their jurisdiction, not to mention the authority that
Arizona will now have to incarcerate people.
Just days before the signing of SB1070 into law, piece-of-shit
republican senator Hunter of California appeared before news cameras
touting the excellence and morality of the racist law. He then took it
one step further however, when the good senator began advocating that
the 14th Amendment be repealed to deny children born in the United
$tates citizenship status if their parents are undocumented.(1) This
further drives home that being Amerikkkan is about the fictional concept
of race and not about where one is born, raised and pays taxes.
A week later, following the huge May Day protests that took place across
the U.$., we saw the reactionaries and their allies attempt to push back
with their meager show of support for the newly signed law by organizing
counter-protests in bands of tens and twenties. These counter-protests
were largely made up of the most backward Euro-Amerikkkans, however they
did have some interesting mouthpieces at the front.
First, we heard from an openly gay man about how all “illegal aliens”
should just go back to Mexico because all they brought to the table was
crime, drugs, etc.(2) Then we heard from an African-Amerikkkan who was
participating in the counter protests in a show of solidarity with his
fellow Amerikkkans as well as claiming to represent a sell out
organization called “Black Shield.” He spoke of how Black people could
no longer find good jobs or decent middle class jobs because Mexicans,
and other “illegal aliens” were stealing them all.(3) It wasn’t Mexicans
who threatened to kill Blacks every time they tried to work in an
Amerikan factory or study at an Amerikan school over the last 400 years.
Last, but certainly not least, we heard from a seemingly orthodox Jewish
man, indeed he spewed the most vile hatred towards immigrants. Among
other things this man said that there was nothing wrong with having to
present proper identification to law enforcement officials if you
appeared to be “illegal.” He stated that this was a constitutionally
protected right and just couldn’t understand what all the fuss was
about. (4) Ugh, what? Weren’t the enactment of similar laws in Nazi
Germany preludes to the forced display of Stars of David by Jewish
people and eventually the dispersal of the Jewish peoples across Europe
into concentration camps and genocide?
Days later at a candlelight vigil in support of immigrant rights, the
reverend Al Sharpton addressed the Black nation, perhaps as an answer to
Black people who might of been asking themselves and each other, as well
as the Rev. Sharpton, why they should support immigrant rights and
oppose SB1070. The Reverend answered, “… because at night, we all look
Latino.”
Notes: (1) ABC 7 News, Los Angeles. 25 April 2010. (2), (3), (4)
Noticiero Telemundo 52. 3 May 2010.
Shortly after MIM(Prisons) posted an
article
talking about the use of excess prisons to lock up migrants, CNN
reported that the u.$. government is looking to take over another empty
state prison, this time for Muslims from the Third World.(1) The Federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) already secretly opened two control units for
Muslim Arabs in recent years at USP Terra Haute and USP Marion (which
became the original control unit in 1983, but was later downgraded to
medium security). These units hold 94% and 75% Muslims, respectively,
are even more isolating than many prisons holding English-speakers and
u.$. citizens.(2)
Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois is an unused, high tech, maximum
security prison with a capacity of 1600 that still sits virtually empty.
The government promises that if Third World Muslims are to be sent
there, that it will be made even more secure than the official federal
control unit, ADX in Florence, Colorado. According to the CNN article,
Thomson is the top contender to take most of those now held in
Guantanamo Bay after its planned closure, scheduled for January 2010.
There are only 215 prisoners at Guantanamo, and the BOP already holds
340 people that they say are “linked to international terrorism.”(1)
While the imprisonment of Latino migrants dwarfs these numbers, one must
also consider that there are many u.$. prisons in occupied Iraq and
Afghanistan and other secret military locations that hold primarily
Muslims from the Middle East.
Governor Quinn is excited at the prospect of bringing these prisoners to
Illinois because of the money it will bring to the region. This is
consistent with
his
policies of using prisons to combat recession (3), and he may be on
to something. With more and more amerikans being employed to physically
oppress other people, importing people who are a threat to the
imperialist order to hold in amerikan-run prisons would not be an
unlikely form for amerika to take as it turns more fascist in the face
of imperialist crisis. As one resident pointed out to Reuters, the local
population in rural Illinois would back the mission of the prison (4),
unlike people in the Middle East where the u$ currently holds most of
its Middle Eastern prisoners. A turn toward fascism would be necessary
to prevent non-citizens from gaining access to the bourgeois democratic
rights promised to those on u.$. soil. (Those currently held in
Guantanamo have never been convicted of a crime.) When convenient for
them, the imperialists believe humyn rights begin and end at man-made
borders.
Of course bourgeois rights are denied to citizens of the united snakes
as well, as the FBI demonstrated by assassinating New Afrikan Imam,
Luqman Ameen Abdullah in Detroit. Abdullah was a member of Jamil
al-Amin’s (formerly Black Panther H. Rap Brown) Muslim network called
“Ummah.” New Afrikan Muslims are the second largest group in the Marion
Communications Management Unit.(2)
